A Long Way Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

fucking sitting here for half an hour looking at your fucking miserable faces,’ said Jess.
    ‘That’s what you’ve just this minute agreed to do,’ Martin reminded her.
    ‘So what?’
    ‘What’s the point of agreeing to do something and then not doing it?’
    ‘No point.’ Jess was apparently untroubled by the concession.
    ‘Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative,’ I said. Wilde again. I couldn’t resist.
    Jess glared at me.
    ‘He’s being nice to you,’ said Martin.
    ‘There’s no point in anything, though, is there?’ Jess said. ‘That’s why we’re up here.’
    See, now this was a pretty interesting philosophical argument. Jess was saying that as long as we were on the rooftop, we were all anarchists. No agreements were binding, no rules applied. We could rape and murder each other and no one would pay any attention.
    ‘To live outside the law you must be honest,’ I said.
    ‘What the fucking hell does that mean?’ said Jess.
    You know, I’ve never really known what the fuck it means, to tell you the truth. Bob Dylan said it, not me, and I’d always thought it sounded good. But this was the first situation I’d ever been in where I was able to put the idea to the test, and I could see that it didn’t work. We were living outside the law, and we could lie through our teeth any time we wanted, and I wasn’t sure why we shouldn’t.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said.
    ‘Shut up, then, Yankee boy.’
    And I did. There were approximately twenty-eight minutes of our time out remaining.
JESS
    A long time ago, when I was eight or nine, I saw this programme on telly about the history of the Beatles. Jen liked the Beatles, so she was the one who made me watch it, but I didn’t mind. (I probably told her I did mind, though. I probably made a fuss and pissed her off.) Anyway, when Ringo joined, you sort of felt this little shiver, because that was it, then, that was the four of them, and they were ready to go off and be the most famous group in history. Well, that’s how I felt when JJ turned up on the roof with his pizzas. I know you’ll think, Oh, she’s just saying that because it sounds good, but I’m not. I knew, honestly. It helped that he looked like a rock star, with his hair and his leather jacket and all that, but my feeling wasn’t anything to do with music; I just mean that I could tell we needed JJ, and so when he appeared it felt right. He wasn’t Ringo, though. He was more like Paul. Maureen was Ringo, except she wasn’t very funny. I was George, except I wasn’t shy, or spiritual. Martin was John, except he wasn’t talented or cool. Thinking about it, maybe we were more like another group with four people in it.
    Anyway, it just felt like something might happen, something interesting, and so I couldn’t understand why we were just sitting there eating pizza slices. So I was like, Maybe we should talk, and Martin goes, What, share our pain? And then he made a face, like I’d said something stupid, so I called him a wanker, and then Maureen tutted and asked me whether I said things like that at home (which I do), so I called her a bag lady, and Martin called me a stupid, mean little girl, so I spat at him, which I shouldn’t have done and which also by the way I don’t do anywhere near as much nowadays, and so he made out like he was going to throttle me, and so JJ jumped in between us, which was just as well for Martin, because I don’t think he would have hit me, whereas I most definitely would have hit and bitten and scratched him. And after that little fluffle of activity we sat there puffing and blowing and hating each other for a bit.
    And then when we were all calming down, JJ said somethinglike, I’m not sure what harm would be done by sharing our experiences, except he said it more American even than that. And Martin was like, Well, who’s interested in your experiences? Your experiences are delivering pizzas. And JJ goes, Well, your experiences, then, not