A Long Way Down

Maureen has been planning her suicide for months, telling her son that on New Year’s Eve she was going to be going to a party. She had supplied details about the party, including the other guests who would be there: “It just goes to show what I had to look forward to, doesn’t it?” (5). Every Sunday she gives her son Matty a new detail about the party, as if she had learned something new to make it sound like she was getting more excited about it each week: “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” (6). She hints that her adult son, Matty, is physically disabled and that lying to your sick child might be the worst thing a person could do. Maureen talks about the party so much she almost begins to believe in it: “Even in my imagination, though, I couldn’t see myself talking to anyone at the party. I was always quite happy to leave it” (6). 

On New Year’s Eve, 18-year-old Jess had been at a party where everyone was high on drugs. At midnight, everyone clapped sarcastically: “You could have turned up at that party as the happiest person in London, and you’d still have wanted to jump off the roof by five past twelve. And I wasn’t the happiest person in London” (7). She reveals that she has recently broken up with a man named Chas and someone had told her he would be at the party. She worries that she might be behaving like a stalker but justifies her behavior: “I didn’t think it was stalking when someone owed you an explanation. Being owed an explanation is like being owed money” (8). Jess says that she had nowhere else to go, and no one to go anywhere with: “I make friends easily enough, but then I piss them off, I know that much. And so people and parties disappear” (8). Then Jess reveals that she was worried she had angered someone named Jen, who had disappeared from her life without an explanation. 

Martin had spent the previous two months before New Year’s Eve researching suicide inquests online: “And nearly every single time the coroner says the same thing: ‘He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed’” (9). This confuses Martin, because every time he read a story about a suicide, it was a man whose wife had cheated on him, whose child had died, or who had lost a loved one in a horrible accident. He rarely sees a case where he believes that the mind of the deceased was disturbed. Their suicides seem justified to him.

He thinks about the person he was two years ago: “I still had my job. I still had a wife. I hadn’t slept with a fifteen-year-old. I hadn’t been to prison. I hadn’t had to talk to my young daughters about a front-page tabloid newspaper article” (10). In no way does he feel that his desire to kill himself is the result of an unbalanced mind. He just feels that he had more difficulties and humiliations than he could endure. He also believes that he takes responsibility for his actions: “I happen to be one of those rare individuals who believe that what went on with Mummy and Daddy had nothing to do with me screwing a fifteen-year-old” (10). Martin feels as if he had wasted his life, and it was no longer a life worth preserving. Then he reveals that the night on which he wanted to end his life had been a failure: “I couldn’t even jump off a fucking tower block without fucking it up” (11). 

On New Year’s Eve, the nursing home sent an ambulance for Matty so that he could stay there overnight. Maureen fought the urge to cry as she said good-bye to him, because as far as he knew, she would be there to get him the next morning. After the orderlies take him, Maureen weeps: “He’d ruined my life, but he was still my son, and I was never going to see him again, and I couldn’t even say good-bye properly” (12).

Maureen walks to Topper’s House, the name of the building she planned to jump from. There are wires and sharp stakes guarding the rail on top of the building to keep people from going over the edge, and Maureen worries that she will not be able to find a way to jump. Then she sees a man on the other side of the roof. He has cut through the wires with wire cutters and is sitting on the edge of the roof drinking from a flask. Eventually, Maureen walks over to the hole he has cut that has allowed him to get out onto the ledge. She taps him on the shoulder through the hole and asked if he was going to be much longer. 

The party Jess was at on New Year’s Eve was in the basement of Toppers’ House. She had been talking to a man who called himself “Bong” and who had started flirting with her. He asked her if she was thinking about going up on the roof because he could see desperation and despair on her face. He said that he had been put on informal suicide watch because a lot of people came to Toppers’ House just to jump off the roof: “I suddenly realized that easily the best thing to do was make my life as short as I possibly could” (16). As she climbed the stairs, she thought about how heavy the weight of her life had begun to feel and that the only way to get rid of it was to throw it off the top of the building.

When Martin feels Maureen tap on his back through the hole he had made, he instinctively grabs the rails and begins yelling at her to back off. Once he calms down, she says that she knows him from television. This is a common occurrence for Martin: “I was about to kill myself, but I guess there’s always time for an autograph” (17). Maureen tells him that she is there to jump but will wait for him to finish. She goes to the other side of the roof, and Martin is not able to concentrate: “I couldn’t get the mood back; it was as if one of the kids had woken up just as Cindy and I started to make love” (19). He and Maureen agree to trade places, and as they talk, he realizes that even though she knows who he is, she does not know about the scandal that made him want to kill himself. After Maureen is out on the ledge, someone Martin refers to as a “lunatic” (22)rushes at them. 

Jess made it to the roof and saw Martin and Maureen. She climbed through the hole Martin had made and began rushing for the ledge with what she thought of as an Indian battle cry. Martin tackles her and then sits on her. He says that she is too young to kill herself. He tells her no matter what she has done, she still has time to fix it, in a way that he and Maureen do not. 

Martin calls Maureen over and asks her to sit on Jess. As soon as they let her up, she rushes for the ladder again and Martin has to tackle her once more. A pizza deliveryman appears on the roof and asks if they ordered a pizza. 

Maureen believes the deliveryman is American, although she has never met an American. The man tells Martin and Maureen to get off of Jess, and they let her up. When she stands, she recognized Martin and calls him an “old pervert” (27). The deliveryman recognizes him as well, but says that no one in America had heard of him. He asks them if they were all planning to jump. Jess tells him to give them some pizza, and he does. One of the pizzas is vegetarian. Maureen reveals to the reader that she was the one who ordered it. 

JJ says that he told a couple of people about that night, but they were more confused about why he was delivering pizzas than why anyone wanted to kill themselves. He says that he has always been a voracious reader, and the week of New Year’s Eve he had read the novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. He feels like a loser, but “[t]here’s more than one way to be a loser. There’s more than one way of losing” (30).

JJ was in a band that recorded two albums but never made it big, which made him miserable. He was from Chicago and had visited England with his band, which was now gone. He was working as a deliveryman because he found a pizza manager who didn’t care that he wasn’t legally permitted to work. JJ had gone to the roof on New Year’s Eve planning to jump. When he met Martin, Jess, and Maureen, they sat together and ate for 30 minutes, agreeing to see how they felt afterwards. 

When JJ arrives, Jess likens his appearance to the moment when Ringo joined the Beatles and the group had been formed. She suggests that they all spend some time talking. Martin disagrees, but JJ says that they might get something out of talking about their experiences. Jess realizes that JJ had also come to jump. She says again that they should talk: “I have to admit I had a sort of plan. My plan was that they’d help me find Chas, and Chas and I would get back together, and I’d feel better” (36). They choose Maureen to go first. 

Maureen believes that they choose her because she is unknown to them. Her problems are not obvious. She tells them about Matty, her antidepressants, and how hard it is for her to help him use the toilet. She tells them that her life is too hard to continue. Martin says that there are always ways to cope. Jess asks Maureen if she wants her to go kill Matty before she kills herself so that Maureen can go on living. Maureen starts to cry: “I was crying because all I wanted in the world, the only thing that would make me want to live, was for Matty to die” (39).

Martin goes next. He asks what everyone wanted to know that they didn’t already know from the tabloids. He tells them that the 15-year-old girl he had sex with had told him she was 18 and had looked 18. Martin was trying to take responsibility and was not making excuses, but he no longer wanted to live. JJ says that lots of people cheat on their wives and lose them but don’t jump off of buildings. Martin remembers that on his talk show he had often said adulterous men should be castrated or receive the death penalty. He believes that he is trying to practice what he preached. But he also tells the group that the public humiliation has become more than he can bear.

Jess tells them that she had come to the party looking for Chas so that he could explain why he had broken up with her. She had decided to kill herself when he wasn’t there because she couldn’t handle the thought of never having an explanation. They ask her why she doesn’t go looking for him: “I said I’d run out of energy and hope and when I said it I knew it was true” (44). Jess addresses the reader, saying that perhaps you think you understand the sadness she feels because you remember a breakup: “But can you remember carving his initials in your arm with a kitchen knife?” (44).

JJ feels embarrassed before he speaks. The others’ problems seem much bigger than his: “I’d been dumped by a girl and my band wasn’t going anywhere” (45). Jess interrupts him to ask what his initials stood for. JJ never tells anyone that he hates his real name: John Julius. Jess tells him that she’ll find out no matter what. For reasons he does not understand, JJ decides to lie about his reason for being suicidal. He tells them that he is dying of a brain condition called CCR because of his alcohol and drug abuse.

Martin tells Jess that she has to go home, and she agrees, as long as they help her find Chas. When Martin protests, she stands on the ledge again: “It wasn’t that we thought she was really suicidal; it was just that it felt like she might do whatever she wanted to do at any given moment, and if she wanted to jump off a building to see what it felt like, she’d try it” (50). They all agree that the moment for suicide has passed and discuss what they might do that night instead. Maureen says she can’t leave the roof because she only paid for one night for Matty and doesn’t want to go back. Jess says that she can see them all being friends when they are old and that they have to stay with her no matter where she went so that she didn’t “get weird” (52).

Martin asks Maureen if she is prepared to wait one more night. She believes that she does want to die, but also thinks: “Please stop me. Please help me. Please make me into the kind of person who wants to live, the kind of person who has a bit missing” (53). Martin takes out his phone and asks for the number of the respite home. Maureen has it written on a piece of paper and hands it to him. It is written on the back of her suicide note. Martin does not read it, but calls the respite home and arranges for another night for Matty. After, they all decide to help Jess look for Chas. 

Martin addresses the reader, sure that his suicidal intentions seem suspicious: “You’re thinking he wanted a tabloid photographer to capture his quote unquote cry for help” (56). He remembers a suicide intention checklist he filled out. One of the items said that a person is more likely to end their life if they choose a place that is isolated. As he goes down the stairs with the others, Martin wonders if his choosing a place as well-known as Toppers’ House on New Year’s Eve might be a sign that he wasn’t truly suicidal: “Not one of us descended those stairs having come to the conclusion that life was a beautiful and precious thing” (57). He feels they gave each other a reason to live for another day, if only that.

Jess uses Martin’s phone to make calls in order to find someone who might know Chas’s location. She hears that he might be at a party in Shoreditch. They take a cab that Martin pays for. The cab driver is a black man who tells them that “bad men” (62) had killed his wife. JJ wonders if the man had considered going up to the roof while at Toppers’ House. When they go upstairs to the party at Shoreditch, they find that it’s full of art students: JJ’s least favorite people—because he knows that they would not like his band. Two of the partygoers recognize Martin but are sympathetic when he explains what happened.

Maureen finds Jess in tears in the center of the party. Jess has heard that Chas might be at another girl’s house. Maureen reveals to the reader that she was engaged to a man named Frank and considered suicide after they broke off the engagement. She had told friends that Frank had been a mentally ill drunk who hit her: “None of it was true. Frank was a sweet man whose crime was that he didn’t love me quite enough” (67). She asks Jess if she had been engaged to Chas, then mentions what had happened with Frank. Jess is cruel, asking if Frank got behind her when they had sex so that he doesn’t have to look at her. Martin drags Jess out of the house.

Outside, Jess thinks: “I knew I had overstepped the mark, but I couldn’t stop myself. I get angry, and when it starts it’s like being sick” (68). Martin scolds her harshly and demands an explanation for why she would treat Maureen that way. Jess apologizes and promises to become a better person: “I didn’t want them to get sick of me. People do get sick of me. I’ve noticed” (69). She believes that Chas had gotten sick of her, as had Jen. She thinks of incidents in the Tate Modern and in the cinema that “might have been too much” (69) but does not give details.

JJ tells the reader that his band was called Big Yellow. He and his friend Eddie started the band in high school. He says that he liked their albums, but it was their live shows that were special. JJ says that Big Yellow meant something to the people who came to listen to them play, and sometimes he felt as if they were saving souls. But they had never been able to play as many shows as they wanted and then the band split up.

At the party, JJ stands with Maureen after her altercation with Jess. He sees a young man in a corner, who beckons him over. It is Chas, who asks if “the nutter” (73) is still there, meaning Jess. When JJ says that he is a friend of Jess’s, Chas apologizes and says he hasn’t had sex since “that night we went out” (74). He tells JJ that Jess has tried to kill him twice and has gotten him banned from several pubs, the cinema, and an art gallery. Maureen comes over and tells Chas that she would want to kill him too if she were Jess. Then she punches him.

Maureen tells the reader that Frank is Matty’s father. She has only had sex once, which produced her son: “I sinned against the Church, and the price you pay for that is Matty” (77). But now she thinks that God might have been overzealous in punishing her: “If the price you have to pay for a sin is so high that you end up wanting to kill yourself and committing an even worse sin, then Someone’s done His sums wrong” (78). After hitting Chas, she says that she had a boyfriend like him once. She says that it’s a horrible thing to have sex with someone and then disappear. She and JJ convince Chas that he has to try talking to Jess.

Chas comes out onto the street to talk to Jess. He stammers while he tries to explain why he didn’t want to come out and talk to her, but then he recognizes Martin. Jess tells Chas she had been on the roof with Martin and that they had planned on jumping. He calls Martin terrible names and laughs at his humiliation. He makes a joke about Jess being too old for Martin. Jess kicks Chas in the rear and tells him to leave, which he then does.

Jess realizes that she defends Martin because Martin has been sad enough to be suicidal, just like her. Chas is not like them because he has never felt the kind of pain that she, Martin, Maureen, and JJ have: “I just mean that something had happened to us which separated us from a lot of other people” (84). She realizes that no explanation Chas would have given for why he left her would have made her feel better: “When Chas had gone I still wanted Martin to hug me. I wouldn’t even have cared if he tried anything on, but he didn’t. He sort of did the opposite, he held me all funny, as if I was covered in barbed wire” (85). She wonders what it is like to be Martin and to have everyone be aware of you. It is five in the morning, and they decide to go to Martin’s house. 

When they get to his house, Martin asks them to be quiet because his date from the night before might still be there. Inside, a young woman is sitting on the couch, crying. Jess recognizes her as Penny Chambers, from the program Rise and Shine With Penny and Martin. She asks Martin where he was, and Jess asks him if the two of them are dating. Martin asks Penny if they can speak later, privately. JJ feels bad for her and thinks: “I think I can speak for everyone when I saw that, as a rule, potential suicides tend to be pretty self-absorbed. Those last few weeks, it’s pretty much all me me me” (90). Penny tells them that she and Martin had been at a dinner party with a couple, Tom and Christine, when Martin had said he needed to use the bathroom and never came back. 

Martin tells the reader that he has been seeing Penny for months. They had been having an affair before the scandal. After it ended, Martin felt as if he didn’t deserve her; she was younger than she was, and they struggled. One evening he told Penny to “bugger off” (93) when he was in a self-loathing mood, and she cheated on him that night with a TV chef. Martin is unsure of why he and Penny still see each other: “I associated Penny, perhaps understandably, with a time before things had started to go awry” (94). He introduces Penny to Maureen, Jess, and JJ, but when Penny asks how they all know each other, he can’t come up with an answer, and she accuses him of seeing someone else. Penny leaves and slams the door.

After Penny leaves, Jess tries to convince Martin to go after her. When Martin says no, he and Jess argue. Maureen listens to them swear at each other and realizes that their profanity no longer bothers her, as if she were a prude at the beginning of the night but has changed. Martin tells Jess that he is still miserable and how nothing has changed. Jess seems confused and tells him that they have all cheered her up, and this remark seems genuine to Maureen. Her stomach is suddenly upset, and Maureen vomits on Martin’s floor. 

While patting Maureen on the back, JJ thinks: “I didn’t feel like a dying man; I felt like a man who every now and again wanted to die, and there’s a difference. A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time” (103). Maureen says that she needs a breath mint out of her handbag, but she left it on the roof at Toppers’ House. They decide to go back to the roof with her to get it. Martin had left his car there with the keys in the ignition, and now it’s gone. On the roof, Martin looks out over London, and it seems beautiful to him. Jess proposes that they put off their suicides for six weeks, until Valentine’s Day. Maureen agrees but says that she will do better if she can see them all consistently. Martin confirms: “We’ll all live to regret it” (110).