Chapter 13

I think they picked me because I hadn't really said anything, and I hadn't rubbed anyone up the wrong way yet. And also, maybe, because I was more mysterious than the others. Martin everyone seemed to know about from the newspapers. And Jess, God love her… We'd only known her for half an hour, but you could tell that this was a girl who had problems. My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren't they? I know they didn't invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn't know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves. But me… You couldn't really tell anything about me from looking at me, so I think they were curious.

I didn't mind talking, because I knew I didn't need to say very much. None of these people would have wanted my life. I doubted whether they'd understand how I'd put up with it for as long as I had. It's always the toilet bit that upsets people. Whenever I've had to moan before - when I need another prescription for my anti-depressants, for example - I always mention the toilet bit, the cleaning up that needs doing most days. It's funny, because it's the bit I've got used to. I can't get used to the idea that my life is finished, pointless, too hard, completely without hope or colour; but the mopping up doesn't really worry me any more. That's always what gets the doctor reaching for his pen, though.

'Oh, yeah,' Jess said when I'd finished. 'That's a no-brainer. Don't change your mind. You'd only regret it.'

'Some people cope,' said Martin.

'Who?' said Jess.

'We had a woman on the show whose husband had been in a coma for twenty-five years.'

'And that was her reward, was it? Going on a breakfast TV show?'

'No. I'm just saying.'

'What are you just saying?'

'I'm just saying it can be done.'

You're not saying why, though, are you?'

'Maybe she loved him.'

They spoke quickly, Martin and Jess and JJ. Like people in a soap opera, bang bang bang. Like people who know what to say. I could never have spoken that quickly, not then, anyway; it made me realize that I'd hardly spoken at all for twenty-odd years. And the person I spoke to most couldn't speak back.

'What was there to love?' Jess was saying. 'He was a vegetable. Not even an awake vegetable. A vegetable in a coma.'

'He wouldn't be a vegetable if he wasn't in a coma, would he?' said Martin.

'I love my son,' I said. I didn't want them to think I didn't.

'Yes,' said Martin. 'Of course you do. We didn't mean to imply otherwise.'

'Do you want us to kill him for you?' said Jess. 'I'll go down there tonight if you want. Before I kill myself. I don't mind. No skin off my nose. And it's not like he's got much to live for, is it? If he could speak, he'd probably thank me for it, poor sod.'

My eyes filled with tears, and JJ noticed.

'What are you, a f— idiot?' he said to Jess. 'Look what you've done.'

'So-rry,' said Jess. 'Just an idea.'

But that wasn't why I was crying. 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. And knowing why I was crying just made me cry more.