JESS
So this bloke with the dog didn’t have a name. I mean, he must have had one at some stage, but he told me he didn’t use it any more, because he didn’t agree with names. He reckoned they stopped you from being whoever you wanted to be, and once he’d explained it to me, I could sort of see what he meant. Say you’re Tony, or Joanna. Well, you were Tony or Joanna yesterday, and you’ll be Tony or Joanna tomorrow. So you’re fucked, really. People will always be able to say things like, Oh, that’s so typical of Joanna. But this geezer, he could be like a hundred different people all in one day. He told me to call him whatever came into my head, so at first he was Dog, because of the dog, and then he was Nodog, because we went for a drink in a pub and he left the dog outside. So he’d had two completely different personalities in the first hour we spent together, because Dog and Nodog are sort of opposite types, aren’t they? Bloke with dog is different from bloke with no dog. Bloke with dog has a different image from bloke in pub. And you can’t say, Oh, that’s so typical of Nodog to let his dog shit in someone’s garden. It wouldn’t make sense, would it? How can Nodog have a dog that shits in someone’s garden, or any dog at all, come to that? And his point is, we can all be Dogs and Nodogs in a single day. Dad, for example, could be Notdad when he’s at work, because when he’s at work he’s not Dad. I know this is all pretty deep, but if you think about it hard, it makes sense.
And in that same day he was Flower, because he picked me a flower when we were walking through the little park down near Southwark Bridge, and then Ashtray, because he tasted like one, and Flower is the opposite of Ashtray, too. You see how it works? Human beings are millions of things in one day, and his method understands that much better than like the Western way of thinking about it. I only called him one more name after that, and it was dirty, so that one will have to be a secret. When I say it was dirty, I mean it will sound dirty to you out of context sort of thing. It’s only really dirty if you don’t respect the male body, and that in my opinion would make you dirty, not us.
So this bloke… Actually, I can see one advantage to the Western way of thinking, which is that if someone has a name, you know what to call them, don’t you? It’s only one small advantage, and there are millions of big disadvantages, including the biggest one of all, which is that names are really fascist and don’t allow us to express ourselves as human beings, and turn us into one thing. But as I’m talking about him a lot here, I think I’ll call him just one name. Nodog will do, because it’s more unusual, and you’ll know who I’m talking about, and it’s better than Dog, because you might think I’m talking about a fucking dog, which I’m not.
So Nodog took me back to his place after we’d gone for a drink. I didn’t think he’d have a place, to be honest, what with the dog and everything. He looked like the sort of bloke who might be in between places, but I obviously met him at a good time. It wasn’t a normal sort of a place, though. He lived in a shop round the back of Rotherhithe station. It wasn’t a converted shop, either – it was just a shop, although it didn’t sell anything any more. It used to be like an old-fashioned corner shop thingy, so there were shelves, and counters, and there was a big shop window, which he kept covered with a sheet. Nodog’s dog had his own bedroom at the back, which must have been a stockroom once upon a time. Shops are actually quite comfortable, if you can put up with a bit of discomfort. You can put your clothes up on the shelves, put your telly up on the counter where the cash register would have gone, put your mattress on the floor, and you’re away. And shops have toilets, and water, although they don’t have baths or showers.
When we got there, we had sex straight off, to get it out of the way. I’d only had proper full-on sex with Chas before, and that wasn’t any good, but it was all right with Nodog. A lot more things worked, if you know what I mean, because with Chas, his bits didn’t really work and my bits didn’t really work, so it was all a bit of an effort. Anyway, this time around, Nodog’s bits worked fine, and so mine did too, and it was much easier to see why anyone would want to do it again. People go on about the first time being important, but it’s the second time that really matters. Or the second person, anyway.
Look at what a fool I was the first time, all cut up and sobbing and obsessed. See, if I’d been like that a second time, I’d have known I was going to have problems. But I really didn’t care if I saw Nodog again or not, so that’s got to be progress, right? That’s much more the way things should be, if you’re going to get on in life.
After we’d finished, he turned his little black-and-white TV on, and we lay on his mattress watching whatever, and then we started to talk, and I ended up telling him about Jen, and Toppers’ House, and the others. And he wasn’t surprised, or sympathetic, or anything like that. He just nodded, and then he goes, Oh, I’m always trying to top myself. And I was like, Well, you can’t be much good at it, and he went, That’s not the idea, though, is it? And I was like, Isn’t it? And he said that the idea was to like constantly offer yourself up to the gods of Life and Death, who were pagan gods, so they were nothing to do with church. And if the god of Life wanted you, then you lived, and if the god of Death wanted you, you didn’t. So he reckoned that on New Year’s Eve I’d been chosen by the god of Life, and that’s why I never jumped. And I was like, I never jumped because people sat on my head, and he explained that the god of Life was speaking through these people, and that made perfect sense to me. Because why else would they have bothered, unless they were like being guided by invisible forces? And then he told me that people who were brain-dead, like George Bush and Tony Blair, and the people who judged Pop Idol, never offered themselves up to the gods of Life and Death at all, and therefore could never prove that they had the right to live, and we shouldn’t obey their laws or recognize their decisions (like the Pop Idol judges). So we don’t have to bomb countries if they tell us to, and if they say that Fat Michelle or whoever has won Pop Idol, we don’t have to listen to them. We can just say, No she didn’t.
And everything he said was so true that it sort of made me regret the last few weeks, because even though JJ and Maureen and Martin had been nice to me, sort of, you wouldn’t really describe them as brainy, would you? It’s not like they had any answers, in the way Nodog had answers. But the other way of looking at it is that without the others, I’d never have met Nodog, because I wouldn’t have bothered with the intervention, and there’d have been nothing to walk out of.
And I suppose that’s the god of Life talking, too, if you think about it.
When I went home, Mum and Dad wanted to speak to me. And at first I was like, Whatever, but they were really keen, and Mum made me a cup of tea, and sat me down at the kitchen table, and then she said that she wanted to apologize to me about the earrings, and that she knew who’d pinched them. So I went, Who? And she goes, Jen. And I stared at her. And she was like, Yeah, really. Jen. So I said, So how does that work? And she went off on one about how Maureen had pointed out something that was actually blindingly obvious, if you thought about it. They were Jen’s favourite earrings, and if they’d gone and nothing else had, then that couldn’t be a coincidence. And at first I couldn’t see what difference it made, because Jen still wasn’t around. But when I saw what difference it made to her, how much calmer it made her, I didn’t care why. The main thing was, she wanted to be nicer to me.
And I was even more grateful to Nodog then. Because he had taught me this deep, clear way of thinking, the way that allowed me to see things as they really were. So even though Mum wasn’t seeing things the way they really were, and she didn’t know that for example the Pop Idol judges couldn’t prove they had the right to live, she was seeing something that could work for her, and stop her from being such a bitch.
And now because of Nodog’s teachings, I had like the wiseness to accept it, and not tell her it was stupid or pointless.
MARTIN
Who, you might want to ask, would call their child Pacino? Pacino’s parents, Harry and Marcia Cox, that’s who.
‘May I ask how you got your name?’ I asked Pacino when I first made his acquaintance.
He looked at me, baffled, although I should point out that just about any question baffled Pacino. He was large and buck-toothed, and he had a squint, so his lack of intelligence was particularly unfortunate. If anyone ever needed the compensation of charisma and good looks, it was Pacino.
‘Howjer mean?’
‘Where did your name come from?’
‘Where did it come from?’
The idea that names came from anywhere was clearly a new one to him; I might as well have asked him where his toes came from.
‘There’s a famous film actor called Pacino.’
He looked at me.
‘Is there?’
‘You hadn’t heard of him?’
‘Nope.’
‘So you don’t think you were named after him?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You never asked?’
‘Nope. I don’t ask about no one’s name.’
‘Right.’
‘Where chorname come from?’
‘Martin?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘Yeah.’
I gaped at him for a moment. I was at a loss. Apart from the obvious answer – that it had come from my parents, just as Pacino had come from his (although even this piece of information might have amazed him) – I could only have told him that mine was French in origin – just as his was Italian. As a consequence, I would have found it hard to articulate why his name was comical and mine was not.
‘See? It’s a hard question. Don’t mean I’m thick, just because I can’t answer it.’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Otherwise you’re thick, too.’
This was not a possibility that I felt I could rule out altogether. I was beginning to feel thick, for all sorts of reasons.
Pacino was a year-eight pupil at a comprehensive school in my neighbourhood, and I was supposed to be helping him with his reading. I had volunteered to do so after my conversation with Cindy, and after seeing a small advertisement in the local newspaper: Pacino was my first stop on the road towards self-respect. It’s a long road, I accept that, but I had somehow hoped that Pacino might have been positioned a little further along it. If we agree that self-respect is in, say, Sydney, and I’d begun the journey at Holloway Road tube station, then I’d imagined that Pacino would be my overnight stopover, the place where my plane could refuel. I was realistic enough to see that he wasn’t going to get me all the way there, but volunteering to sit down with a stupid and unattractive child for an hour represented several thousand air-miles, surely? During our first session, however, as we stumbled over even the simplest words, I realized that he was more like Caledonian Road than Singapore, and it would be another twenty-odd tube stops before I even got to bloody Heathrow.
We began with an appalling book he wanted to read about football, the large-print story of how a girl with one leg overcame her handicap and her team-mates’ sexism to become the captain of the school team. To be fair to Pacino, once he saw which way the wind was blowing, he was suitably contemptuous.
‘She’s going to score the winning goal in a big match, innit?’ he asked with some disgust.
‘I fear that might be the case, yes.’
‘But she’s only got one leg.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Plus she’s a girl.’
‘She is, yes.’
‘What school is this, then?’
‘You may well ask.’
‘I’m asking.’
‘You want to know the name of the school?’
‘Yeah. I want to go up there with my mates and laugh at them for having a girl with one leg in their team.’
‘I’m not sure it’s a real school.’
‘So it’s not even a true story?’
‘No.’
‘I’m not fucking bothering with this, then.’
‘Good. Go and choose something else.’
He snuffled his way back to the library shelves, but could find nothing that might interest him.
‘What are you interested in, actually?’
‘Nuffink, really.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘I quite like fruit. My mum says I’m a champion fruit-eater.’
‘Right. That gives us something to work on.’
There were forty-five minutes of our hour remaining.
So what would you do? How does one begin to like oneself enough to want to live a little longer? And why didn’t my hour with Pacino do the trick? I blamed him, partly. He didn’t want to learn. And he wasn’t the sort of child I’d had in mind, either. I’d hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour’s extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they’d given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There’s an international symbol for the gents’ toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television.
Perhaps that was the point, the sheer grinding uselessness of it. Perhaps if you knew you were doing something so obviously without value, you liked yourself more than someone who was indisputably helping people. Perhaps I’d end up feeling better than the blond nurse, and I could taunt him again, but this time I would have righteousness on my side. It’s a currency like any other, self-worth. You spend years saving up, and you can blow it all in an evening if you so choose. I’d done forty-odd years’ worth in the space of a few months, and now I had to save up again. I reckoned that Pacino was worth about ten pence a week, so it would be a while before I could afford another night on the town.
There you are. I can finish that sentence now: ‘Hard is teaching Pacino to read.’ Or even, ‘Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.’
JJ
Lizzie and Ed bought me a guitar and a harp and a neck rack from one of those cool shops in Denmark Street; and when Ed and I were on the way to Heathrow, Ed told me he wanted to buy me a plane ticket home.
‘I can’t go home yet, man.’
I was going along to say goodbye, but the tube journey was so fucking long that we ended up talking about something other than which crappy magazine he was going to buy from the bookstall.
‘There’s nothing here for you. Go home, get a band together.’
‘I got one here.’
‘Where?’
‘You know. The guys.’
‘You think of them as a band? Those losers and fucking… perverts we met in Starbucks?’
‘I been in a band with losers and perverts before.’
‘Weren’t ever no perverts in my band.’
‘What about Dollar Bill?’
Dollar Bill was our first bass-player. He was older than the rest of us, and we’d had to unload him after an incident with the high school janitor’s son.
‘At least Dollar Bill could fucking play. What can your buddies do?’
‘It’s not that kind of band.’
‘It’s no kind of band. So, what, this is for ever? You got to hang out with those guys until they die?’
‘No, man. Just until everyone’s OK.’
‘Until everyone’s OK? That girl is deranged. The guy can never hold his head up in public again. And the old woman has a kid who can hardly fucking breathe. So when are they gonna be OK? You’d be better off hoping they all get worse. Then they can jump off the fucking building, and you can come home. That’s the only happy ending for you.’
‘What about you?’
‘What the fuck’s any of this got to do with me?’
‘What’s your happy ending going to be?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I want to know what kind of happy ending is available to the rest of the population. Tell me what the gap is. ’Cos Martin and Maureen and Jess are all fucked, but you… You got a job hooking people up with cable TV. Where you going with that?’
‘I’m going where I’m going.’
‘Yeah. Tell me where that is.’
‘Fuck you, man.’
‘I’m just trying to make a point.’
‘Yeah. I get it. I got as good a shot at a happy ending as your friends. Thanks. Do you mind if I wait until I get home before I shoot myself? Or you want me to do it here?’
‘Hey, I didn’t mean that.’
But I did, I guess. When you get yourself in that place, the place I was in on New Year’s Eve, you think people who aren’t up on the roof are a million miles away, all the way across the ocean, but they’re not. There is no sea. Pretty much all of them are on dry land, in touching distance. I’m not trying to say that’s how close happiness is, if we could only see it, or some bullshit like that. I’m not telling you that suicidal people aren’t so far away from people who can get by; I’m telling you that people who get by aren’t so far away from being suicidal. Maybe I shouldn’t find that as comforting as I do.
We were coming up to the end of our ninety days, and I guess Martin’s suicidologist guy knew what he was talking about. Things had changed. They hadn’t changed very quickly, and they hadn’t changed very dramatically, and maybe we hadn’t even done much to make them change. And in my case anyway, they hadn’t even changed for the better. I could honestly say that my circumstances and prospects would be even less enviable on March 31st than they had been on New Year’s Eve.
‘You really going through with this?’ Ed asked me when we got to the airport.
‘Through with what?’
‘I don’t know. Life.’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Really? Shit, man. You must be the only one who doesn’t. I mean, we’d all understand if you jumped. Seriously. No one would think, you know, What a waste. He threw it all away. ’Cos what are you throwing away? Nothing at all. There’s no waste involved.’
‘Thanks, man.’
‘You’re welcome. I just tell it like I see it.’
He was smiling and I was smiling, and we were just talking to each other the way we’ve always talked to each other about anything that’s gone wrong in our lives; it just sounded a little meaner than usual, I guess. Back in the day he’d be telling me that the girl who’d just broken my heart preferred him anyway, or I’d be telling him that the song he’d just spent months working on was a piece of shit, but the stakes were higher now. He was right, though, probably more right than he’d ever been. There would be no waste involved. The trick is to see that you’re still entitled to your three-score years and ten anyway.
Busking isn’t so bad. OK, it’s bad, but it’s not terrible. Well, OK, it’s terrible, but it’s not… I’ll come back and finish that sentence with something both life-affirming and true another time. First day out it felt fucking great, because I hadn’t held a guitar in so long, and second day out was pretty good, too, because the rustiness had gone a little, and I could feel stuff coming back, chords and songs and confidence. After that, I guess it felt like busking, and busking felt better than delivering pizzas.
And people do put money on the blanket. I got about ten pounds for playing ‘Losing My Religion’ to a whole crowd of Spanish kids outside Madame Tussauds, and only a little less from a bunch of Swedes or whatever the next day (‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, Tate Modern). If I could only kill this one guy, then busking would be the best job I could hope to find. Or at least, it would be the best job that involved playing guitar on a sidewalk, anyway. This guy calls himself Jerry Lee Pavement, and his thing is that he sets up right next to you, and plays exactly the same song as you, but like two bars later. So I start playing ‘Losing My Religion’, and he starts playing ‘Losing My Religion’, and I stop, because it sounds terrible, and then he stops, and then everyone laughs, because it’s so fucking funny ha ha ha, and so you move to a different spot, and he moves right along with you. And it doesn’t matter what song you play, which I have to admit is kind of impressive. I thought I’d throw him off with ‘Skyway’ by the Replacements, which I worked simply to piss him off, and which maybe nineteen people in the world know, but he had it down. Oh, and everyone throws their coins at him, because he’s the genius, obviously, not me. I took a pop at him once, in Leicester Square, and everyone started booing me, because they all love him.
But I guess everyone has someone at work that they don’t get along with. And if you’re short on walking metaphors for the stupidity and futility of your working life – and I appreciate that not everyone is – then you have to admit that Jerry Lee Pavement is pretty hard to beat.
MAUREEN
We met in the pub opposite Toppers’ House for our Ninetieth Day party. The idea was to have a couple of drinks, go up on to the roof, have a little think about everything and then go off for a curry in the Indian Ocean on Holloway Road. I wasn’t sure about the curry part, but the others said they’d choose something that would agree with me.
I didn’t want to go up on the roof, though.
‘Why not?’ said Jess.
‘Because people kill themselves up there,’ I said.
‘Der,’ said Jess.
‘Oh, so you enjoyed it on Valentine’s Day, did you?’ Martin asked her.
‘No, I didn’t enjoy it, exactly. But, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know,’ said Martin.
‘It’s all part of life, isn’t it?’
‘People always say that about unpleasant things. “Oh, this film shows someone getting his eyes pulled out with a corkscrew. But it’s all part of life.” I’ll tell you what else is all part of life: going for a crap. No one ever wants to see that, do they? No one ever puts that in a film. Let’s go and watch people taking a dump this evening.’
‘Who’d let us?’ said Jess. ‘People lock the door.’
‘But you’d watch if they didn’t.’
‘If they didn’t, it would be more a part of life, wouldn’t it? So, yes, I would.’
Martin groaned and rolled his eyes. You’d have thought he’d be much cleverer than Jess, but he never seemed to win an argument with her, and now she’d got him again.
‘But the reason people lock the door is they want privacy,’ said JJ. ‘And maybe they want privacy when they’re thinking of killing themselves.’
‘So you’re saying we should just let them get on with it?’ said Jess. ‘Because I don’t think that’s right. Maybe tonight we can stop someone.’
‘And how does that fit in with your friend’s ideas? As far as I understand it, you’re now of the opinion that when it comes to suicide you should let the market decide,’ said Martin.
We’d just been talking about a man without a name called Nodog, who told Jess that thinking about killing yourself was perfectly healthy, and everyone should do it.
‘I never said anything about any of that s—.’
‘I’m sorry. I was paraphrasing. I thought we weren’t allowed to interfere.’
‘No, no. We can interfere. Interfering is part of the process, see? All you have to do is think about it, and after that, whatever. If we stop someone, the gods have spoken.’
‘And if I were a god,’ said Martin, ‘you’re exactly the sort of person I’d use as a mouthpiece.’
‘Are you being dirty?’
‘No. I’m being complimentary.’
Jess looked pleased.
‘So shall we look for someone?’ she said.
‘How do you look for someone?’ JJ asked her.
‘There’s probably someone in here, for a start.’
We looked around the pub. It was just after seven, and there weren’t many people in yet. In the corner by the gents’, there were a couple of young fellas in suits looking at a mobile phone and laughing. At the table nearest the bar, there were three young women, looking at photographs and laughing. At the table next to us there was a young couple laughing about nothing, and sitting at the bar there was a middle-aged guy reading a newspaper.
‘Too much laughing,’ said Jess.
‘Anyone who thinks text messages are funny isn’t going to kill himself,’ said JJ. ‘There isn’t enough going on internally.’
‘I’ve seen some funny text messages,’ said Jess.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Martin. ‘I’m not sure that really disproves JJ’s point.’
‘Shut up,’ said Jess. ‘What about the bloke reading the paper? He’s on his own. He’s probably the best we can do.’
JJ and Martin looked at each other and laughed.
‘The best we can do?’ said Martin. ‘So what you’re saying is that we have to dissuade someone in this room from killing themselves whether they were thinking of it or not?’
‘Yeah, well, the laughing cretins aren’t going to go up there, are they? He looks more, like, deep.’
‘He’s reading the racing page of the f— Sun,’ said Martin. ‘In a moment his mate’s going to turn up, and they’ll have fifteen pints and a curry.’
‘Snob.’
‘Oh, and who’s the one who thinks you have to be deep to kill yourself?’
‘We all do,’ said JJ. ‘Don’t we?’
We had two drinks each. Martin drank large whiskies with water, JJ drank pints of Guinness, Jess drank Red Bull and vodka, and I drank white wine. I’d probably have been dizzy three months ago, but I seem to drink a lot now, so when we got up to walk across the road, I just felt warm and friendly. The clocks had gone forward on the previous Sunday, and even though it seemed dark when we were down on the street, up on the roof it felt as though there were some light left somewhere in the city. We leaned on the wall, right next to the place where Martin had cut through the wire, and looked south towards the river.
‘So,’ said Jess. ‘Anyone up for going over?’
No one said anything, because it wasn’t a serious question any more, so we just smiled.
‘It’s gotta be a good thing, right? That we’re still around?’ said JJ.
‘Der,’ said Jess.
‘No,’ said JJ. ‘It wasn’t a rhetorical question.’
Jess swore at him and asked him what that was supposed to mean.
‘I mean, I really do want to know,’ said JJ. ‘I really do want to know whether it’s… I don’t know.’
‘Better that we’re here than that we’re not?’ said Martin.
‘Yeah. That. I guess.’
‘It’s better for your kids,’ said Jess.
‘I suppose so,’ said Martin. ‘Not that I ever see them.’
‘It’s better for Matty,’ said JJ, and I didn’t say anything, which reminded everyone else that it wasn’t really better for Matty at all.
‘We’ve all got loved ones, anyway,’ said Martin. ‘And our loved ones would rather we were alive than dead. On balance.’
‘You reckon?’ said Jess.
‘Are you asking me whether I think your parents want you to live? Yes, Jess, your parents want you to live.’
Jess made a face, as though she didn’t believe him.
‘How come we didn’t think of this before?’ said JJ. ‘On New Year’s Eve? I never thought of my parents once.’
‘Because things were worse then, I suppose,’ said Martin. ‘Family’s like, I don’t know. Gravity. Stronger at some times than others.’
‘Yup. That’s gravity for you. That’s why in the morning we can like float, and in the evening we can’t hardly lift our feet.’
‘Tides, then. You don’t notice the pull when it’s… Well, anyway. You know what I mean.’
‘If some guy came up here tonight, what would you tell him?’ said JJ.
‘I’d tell him about the ninety days,’ said Jess. ‘’Cos it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ said JJ. ‘It’s true that none of us feel like killing ourselves tonight. But like… If he asked us why, if he said to us, So tell me what great things have happened to you since you decided not to go over the edge… what would you tell him?’
‘I’d tell him about my job in the newsagent’s,’ I said. ‘And the quiz.’
The others looked at their feet. Jess thought about saying something, but JJ caught her eye, and she changed her mind.
‘Yeah, well, you, you’re doing OK,’ said JJ after a little while. ‘But I’m f— busking, man. Sorry, Maureen.’
‘And I’m failing to help the dimmest child in the world with his reading,’ said Martin.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ said Jess. ‘You’re failing at loads of different things. You’re failing with your kids, and your relationships…’
‘Oh, yes, whereas you, Jess… You’re such a f— success. You’ve got it all.’
‘Sorry, Maureen,’ said JJ.
‘Yes, excuse me, Maureen.’
‘I didn’t know Nodog ninety days ago,’ said Jess.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Martin. ‘Nodog. The one unqualified achievement any of us can boast of. Maureen’s quiz team excepted, of course.’
I didn’t remind him about the newsagent’s. I know it’s not much, but it might have seemed as though I was rubbing it in a bit.
‘Let’s tell our suicidal friend about Nodog. “Oh, yes. Jess here has met a man who doesn’t believe in names, and thinks we should all kill ourselves all the time.” That’ll cheer him up.’
‘That’s not what he thinks. You’re just taking the p—. What did you want to bring all this up for, JJ? We were going to have a good night out, and now everyone’s all f— depressed.’
‘Yeah,’ said JJ. ‘I’m sorry. I was just wondering, you know. Why we’re all still here.’
‘Thanks,’ said Martin. ‘Thanks for that.’
In the distance we could see the lights on that big wheel down by the river, the London Eye.
‘We don’t have to decide right now, anyway, do we?’ said JJ.
‘Course we don’t,’ said Martin.
‘So how about we give it another six months? See how we’re doing?’
‘Is that thing actually going round?’ said Martin. ‘I can’t tell.’
We stared at it for a long time, trying to work it out. Martin was right. It didn’t look as though it was moving, but it must have been, I suppose.
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