The moment I told him, I wanted to go straight to confession. Well, I’d lied, hadn’t

I? I’d lied to my own son. Oh, it was only a tiny, silly lie: I’d told him months in

advance that I was going to a party, a party I’d made up. I’d made it up properly,

too. I told him whose party it was, and why I’d been invited, and why I wanted to go,

and who else would be there. (It was Bridgid’s party, Bridgid from the church. And

I’d 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 Bridgid’s 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 wasn’t 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 isn’t anyone else,

really. Maybe someone at the church, or someone in a shop. It’s almost comical, when

you think about it. If you spend day and night looking after a sick child, there’s

very little room for sin, and I hadn’t done anything worth confessing for donkey’s

years. And I went from that, to sinning so terribly that I couldn’t 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 you’re told that you’ll 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 it’s 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 don’t say, ‘You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.’

That would be a bit strong.) It didn’t 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 I’d picked up. Every Sunday I pretended as though I’d

learned something new, because Sundays were when I saw Bridgid. ‘Bridgid says

there’ll be dancing.’ ‘Bridgid’s worried that not everyone likes wine and beer, so

she’ll be providing spirits.’ ‘Bridgid doesn’t know how many people will have eaten

already.’ If Matty had been able to understand anything, he’d 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 Year’s Eve, but I never asked. If she was planning to have

a party, she might’ve felt that she had to invite me.

I’m ashamed, thinking back. Not about the lies - I’m used to lying now. No, I’m

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

Year’s 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 I’d wear, how much I’d drink, what time I’d leave. Whether I’d come home in a

taxi. That sort of thing. In the end it was as if I’d actually been. Even in my

imagination, though, I couldn’t 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 P07V5dxP
midnight, one of them clapped sarcastically,

and a couple of others laughed, and that was it - Happy New Year to you too. You

could have turned up to that party as the happiest person in London, and you’d still

have wanted up to jump off the roof by five past twelve. And I wasn’t the happiest

person in London anyway. Obviously.

I only went because someone at college told me Chas would be there, but he wasn’t. I

tried his mobile for the one zillionth time, but it wasn’t on. When we first split

up, he called me a stalker, but that’s like an emotive word, ’stalker’, isn’t it? I

don’t think you can call it stalking when it’s 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 don’t, 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, isn’t it? Well, I never went near any shops. And anyway, I didn’t 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 you’re bound to knock on his door late at night,

when you know he’s going to be in. People get serious about that sort of money. They

call in debt collectors, and break people’s legs, but I never went that far. I showed

some restraint.

So even though I could see straight away that he wasn’t at this party, I stayed for a

while. Where else was I going to go? I was feeling sorry for myself. How can you be

eighteen and not have anywhere to go on New Year’s Eve, apart from some shit party in

some shit squat where you don’t know anybody? Well, I managed it. I seem to manage it

every year. I make friends easily enough, but then I piss them off, I know that much,

even if I’m not sure why or how. And so people and parties disappear.

I pissed Jen off, I’m sure of that. She disappeared, like everyone else.

I’d spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests on the Internet,

just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time, the coroner says the same thing:

‘He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’ And then you read

the story about the poor bastard: his wife was sleeping with his best friend, he’d

lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road runescape gold farmingaccident some months before…

Hello, Mr Coroner? Anyone at home? I’m sorry, but there’s no disturbed mental balance

here, my friend. I’d say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad

thing until you can’t take any more, and then it’s off to the nearest multi-storey

car park in the family hatchback with a length of rubber tubing. Surely that’s fair

enough? Surely the coroner’s inquest should read, ‘He took his own life after sober

and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become’?