Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower-block? Of course I can explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower-block. Im not a bloody idiot. I can explain it because it wasnt inexplicable: it was a logical decision, the product of proper thought. It wasnt even a very serious thought, either. I dont mean it was whimsicalI just meant that it wasnt terribly complicated, or agonized. Put it this way: say you were, I dont know, an assistant bank manager, in Guildford. And youd been thinking of emigrating, and then you were offered the job of managing a bank in Sydney. Well, even though its a pretty straightforward decision, youd still have to think for a bit, wouldnt you? Youd at least have to work out whether you could bear to move, whether you could leave your friends and colleagues behind, whether you could uproot your wife and kids. You might sit down with a bit of paper and draw up a list of pros and cons. You know:

CONSaged parents, friends, golf club.

PROSmore money, better quality of life (house with pool, barbecue, etc.), sea, sunshine, no left-wing councils banning Baa-Baa Black Sheep, no EEC directives banning British sausages, etc .

Its no contest, is it? The golf club! Give me a break. Obviously your aged parents give you pause for thought, but thats all it isa pause, and a brief one, too. Youd be on the phone to the travel agents within ten minutes.

Well, that was me. There simply werent enough regrets, and lots and lots of reasons to jump. The only things in my cons list were the kids, but I couldnt imagine Cindy letting me see them again anyway. I havent got any aged parents, and I dont play golf. Suicide was my Sydney. And I say that with no offence to the good people of Sydney intended.

I told him I was going to a New Years Eve party. I told him in October. I dont know whether people send out invitations to New Years Eve parties in October or not. Probably not. (How would I know? I havent been to one since 1984. June and Brian across the road had one, just before they moved. And even then I only nipped in for an hour or so, after hed gone to sleep.) But I couldnt wait any longer. Id been thinking about it since May or June, and I was itching to tell him. Stupid, really. He doesnt understand, Im sure he doesnt. They tell me to keep talking to him, but you can see that nothing goes in. And what a thing to be itching about anyway! It just goes to show what I had to look forward to, doesnt it?

The moment I told him, I wanted to go straight to confession. Well, Id lied, hadnt I? Id lied to my own son. Oh, it was only a tiny, silly lie: Id told him months in advance that I was going to a party, a party Id made up. Id made it up properly, too. I told him whose party it was, and why Id been invited, and why I wanted to go, and who else would be there. (It was Bridgids party, Bridgid from the church. And Id been invited because her sister was coming over from Cork, and her sister had asked after me in a couple of letters. And I wanted to go because Bridgids sister had taken her mother-in-law to Lourdes, and I wanted to find out all about it, with a view to taking Matty one day.) But confession wasnt possible, because I knew I would have to repeat the sin, the lie, over and over as the year came to an end. Not only to Matty, but to the people at the nursing home, and Well, there isnt anyone else, really. Maybe someone at the church, or someone in a shop. Its almost comical, when you think about it. If you spend day and night looking after a sick child, theres very little room for sin, and I hadnt done anything worth confessing for donkeys years. And I went from that, to sinning so terribly that I couldnt even talk to the priest, because I was going to go on sinning and sinning until the day I died, when I would commit the biggest sin of all. (And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life youre told that youll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that its a kind of queue-jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, Excuse me, I was here first. They dont say, You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity. That would be a bit strong.) It didnt stop me from going to the church. But I only kept going because people would think there was something wrong if I stopped.

As we got closer and closer to the date, I kept passing on little tidbits of information that I told him Id picked up. Every Sunday I pretended as though Id learned something new, because Sundays were when I saw Bridgid. Bridgid says therell be dancing. Bridgids worried that not everyone likes wine and beer, so shell be providing spirits. Bridgid doesnt know how many people will have eaten already. If Matty had been able to understand anything, hed have decided that this Bridgid woman was a lunatic, worrying like that about a little get-together. I blushed every time I saw her at the church. And of course I wanted to know what she actually was doing on New Years Eve, but I never asked. If she was planning to have a party, she mightve felt that she had to invite me.

Im ashamed, thinking back. Not about the liesIm used to lying now. No, Im ashamed of how pathetic it all was. One Sunday I found myself telling Matty about where Bridgid was going to buy the ham for the sandwiches. But it was on my mind, New Years Eve, of course it was, and it was a way of talking about it, without actually saying anything. And I suppose I came to believe in the party a little bit myself, in the way that you come to believe the story in a book. Every now and again I imagined what Id wear, how much Id drink, what time Id leave. Whether Id come home in a taxi. That sort of thing. In the end it was as if Id actually been. Even in my imagination, though, I couldnt see myself talking to anyone at the party. I was always quite happy to leave it.

I was at a party downstairs in the squat. It was a shit party, full of all these ancient crusties sitting on the floor drinking cider and smoking huge spliffs and listening to weirdo space-out reggae. At midnight, one of them clapped sarcastically, and a couple of others laughed, and that was itHappy New Year to you too. You could have turned up to that party as the happiest person in London, and youd still have wanted up to jump off the roof by five past twelve. And I wasnt the happiest person in London anyway. Obviously.

I only went because someone at college told me Chas would be there, but he wasnt. I tried his mobile for the one zillionth time, but it wasnt on. When we first split up, he called me a stalker, but thats like an emotive word, stalker, isnt it? I dont think you can call it stalking when its just phone calls and letters and emails and knocking on the door. And I only turned up at his work twice. Three times, if you count his Christmas party, which I dont, because he said he was going to take me to that anyway. Stalking is when you follow them to the shops and on holiday and all that, isnt it? Well, I never went near any shops. And anyway, I didnt think it was stalking when someone owed you an explanation. Being owed an explanation is like being owed money, and not just a fiver, either. Five or six hundred quid minimum, more like. If you were owed five or six hundred quid minimum and the person who owed it to you was avoiding you, then youre bound to knock on his door late at night, when you know hes going to be in. People get serious about that sort of money. They call in debt collectors, and break peoples legs, but I never went that far. I showed some restraint.