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don’t all jump off of buildings, man.’
    ‘No. But like Jess says, maybe they should.’
    ‘Really? You think anyone who makes a mistake of this kind should die? Woah. That’s some heavy shit,’ said JJ.
    Did I really think that? Maybe I did. Or maybe I had done. As some of you might know, I’d written things in newspapers which said exactly that, more or less. This was before my fall from grace, naturally. I’d called for the restoration of the death penalty, for example. I’d called for resignations and chemical castrations and prison sentences and public humiliations and penances of every kind. And maybe I had meant it when I’d said that men who couldn’t keep their things in their trousers should be… Actually, I can’t remember what I thought the appropriate punishment was now for philanderers and serial adulterers. I shall have to look up the column in question. But the point is that I was practising what I preached. I hadn’t been able to keep my thing in my trousers, so now I had to jump. I was a slave to my own logic. That was the price you had to pay if you were a tabloid columnist who crossed the line you’d drawn.
    ‘Not every mistake, no. But maybe this one.’
    ‘Jesus,’ said JJ. ‘You’re real tough on yourself.’
    ‘It’s not just that, anyway. It’s the public thing. The humiliation. The enjoyment of the humiliation. The TV show on cable that’s watched by three people. Everything. I’ve… I’ve run out of room. I can’t see any way forward or back.’
    There was a thoughtful silence, for about ten seconds.
    ‘Right,’ said Jess. ‘My turn.’
JESS
    I launched in. I just went, My name’s Jess and I’m eighteen years old and, see, I’m here because I had some family problems that I don’t need to go into. And then I split up with this guy. Chas. And he owes me an explanation. Because he didn’t say anything. He just went. But if he gave me an explanation I’d feel better, I think, because he broke my heart. Except I can’t find him. I was at the party downstairs looking for him, and he wasn’t there. So I came up here.
    And Martin goes, all sarcastic, You’re going to kill yourself because Chas didn’t turn up at a party? Jesus.
    Well, I never said that, and I told him. So then he was like, OK, you’re up here because you’re owed an explanation, then. Is that it?
    He was trying to make me sound stupid, and that wasn’t fair, because we could all do that to each other. Like, for example, say, Oh, boo hoo hoo, they won’t let me be on breakfast television any more. Oh, boo hoo hoo, my son’s a vegetable and I don’t talk to anyone and I have to clean up his… Well, OK, you couldn’t make Maureen sound stupid. But it seemed to me that taking the piss wasn’t on. You could have taken the piss out of all four of us; you can take the piss out of anyone who’s unhappy, if you’re cruel enough.
    So I go, That wasn’t what I said either. I said an explanation might stop me. I didn’t say it was why I was up here in the first place, did I? See, we could handcuff you to those railings, and that would stop you. But you’re not up here because no one’s handcuffed you to railings, are you?
    That shut him up. I was pleased with that.
    JJ was nicer. He could see that I wanted to find Chas, so I was like, Duh, yeah, except I wished I hadn’t done the Duh bit because he was being sympathetic and Duh is taking the piss, really, isn’t it? But he ignored the Duh and he asked me where Chas was and I said I didn’t know, some party or another, and he said, Well, why don’t you go looking for him instead of fucking around up hereand I said I’d run out of energy and hope and when I said that I knew it was true.
    I don’t know you. The only thing I know about you is, you’re reading this. I don’t know whether you’re happy or not; I don’t know whether you’re young or not. I sort of hope you’re young and sad. If you’re old and happy, I can imagine that