It was their decision, not mine. I didnt feel that I had the right to decide, not really, even though a quarter of the money did belong to me. I was the one whod suggested the holiday in the first place, to JJ, when we were talking about Cosmic Tony, so I didnt think it was right that I should join in when they took a vote on it. I think what I did is, I abstained.

Three of them swore, anyway.

JJ was the only one who thought it was brilliant, so I had a go at him, and he had a go back because I didnt like it. He was all, Is it because your daddy reads books? Is that why you come on like such a dork? Which was an easy one to answer, because Daddy doesnt read books, bad luck, and I told him so. And then I said, Is it because you didnt go to school? Is that why you think all books are great even when theyre shit? Because some people are like that, arent they? Youre not allowed to say anything about books because theyre books, and books are, you know, God. Anyway, he didnt like that much, which means I got him right where it hurts. He said that he could see that what was going to happen to our reading group was that I would wreck it, and how had he been so stupid as to expect anything else? And I was like, Im not going to wreck anything. If a books shit, Ill say so. And he went, Yeah, but youre gonna say theyre all shit, arent you, because youre so fucking contrary, sorry Maureen. And I said, Yeah, and youre gonna say theyre all great, because youre such a creep. And he said, They are all great, and he went through all these people we were supposed to be talking about in the club - Sylvia Plath, Primo Levi, Hemingway.

Some people can see this whenever they want to, I thought, but then I had to stop thinking that because it would have got in the way of the things I wanted to think about. It was a time to be feeling grateful, not to be coveting my neighbours wife, or his sea views.

F— hell, said Jess. Its only a week in the poxy Canary Isles. Ive been there. Its just beaches and clubs and that.

I cant remember the last time I wept because I was happy. Im not saying that because I want people to feel sorry for me; its just that it was a strange feeling. When JJ said he had an idea, and then explained what it was, I didnt even allow myself to think for a moment that it would ever come to anything.

And then this weird thing happened, if you can call a deep response to Five Leaves Left weird.

People dont want to hear it, do they? she said.

Eddie was the worst. It was like we were married, and picking up a book was my way of telling him that I had a headache every night. And like a marriage, the longer we were together, the worse it got; but now that I think about it, the longer we were together, the worse everything got. We knew we werent going to make it, as a band and maybe even as friends, and so we were both panicking. And me reading just made Eddie panic more, because I think he had some bullshit idea that reading was going to help me find some sort of new career. Yeah, like thats what happens in life.

And you probably also know that when you look out of an aeroplane window and see the world shrink like that, you cant help but think about the whole of your life, from the beginning until where you are now, and everyone youve ever known. And youll know that thinking about those things makes you feel grateful to God for providing them, and angry with Him for not helping you to understand them better, and so you end up in a terrible muddle and needing to talk to a priest. I decided I wouldnt sit in the window seat on the way back. I dont know how these jet-set people who have to fly once or twice a year cope, I really dont.

Im sorry, Maureen, said Martin. I wasnt being ungallant. I just couldnt imagine the four of us sitting around a swimming pool on our sun loungers.

And because of who we were and what had happened to us, we wanted to talk about personal things, so it was embarrassing him standing there.

So, no, Im not a b九-九-藏-书-网ig reader.

We didnt fall out on the first night. Everyone was happy then, even Jess. The hotel was nice, and clean, and we all had our own toilets and bathrooms, which I hadnt been expecting. And when I opened the shutters, the light poured into the room like a torrent of water through a burst dam, and it nearly knocked me over. My knees buckled for a moment, and I had to lean against the wall. The sea was there too, but it wasnt fierce and strong, like the light; it just sat quiet and blue, and made tiny little murmuring noises.

And Jess could see that she meant it, and she shut up, and we listened to the whole rest of the album in silence, and if you looked at Maureen closely you could see her eyes were glistening a little.

OK, not an old folks home. A boring folks home.

But I also enjoyed the lightness of it, so it probably wasnt at all like missing a leg, because I dont suppose people whove had a leg taken off do enjoy the lightness of it very much. And I was going to say that it was much easier to move around without Matty, but its much harder to move around with only one leg, isnt it? So maybe it would be more truthful to say that being on the plane without Matty was like being without a third leg, because a third leg would feel heavy, I expect, and it would get in the way, and you would be relieved if it was taken off. I missed him most when the plane was doing its shaking; I thought I was going to die, and I hadnt said goodbye to him. I panicked, then.

Oh, fucking hell, said Martin quietly. Now, Oh, fucking hell can mean a lot of different things, as you know, but there was no ambiguity here; we all understood. What Martin meant by Oh, fucking hell in this context, if I can explain an obscenity with an obscenity, is that he was fucked. Because what kind of asshole was going to say to Maureen, you know, Yeah, well, its the thought that counts. Hope thats enough for you.

Its funny, because people think its Matty that stops me fitting in. But Mattys not so bad. Hard work, but… Its the way Matty makes me feel that stops me fitting in. You get the weight of everything wrong. You have to guess all the time whether things are heavy or light, especially the things inside you, and you get it wrong, and it puts people off. Im tired of it.

And its true what I said, that he doesnt, not really, although because of his job he has to pretend that he does.

Hey. What about that? Why not? I said. Lets all take Maureen on holiday somewhere. Martin burst out laughing.

No, no, said Maureen. I took no offense. Not much, anyway. And I know nobody wants to go on holiday with me, and thats fine. I just got a bit weepy because JJ suggested it. Its been a long… Nobodys… I havent… It was just nice of him, thats all.

I would like to say this, though, and I dont care how it sounds: it was the nicest meal Ive ever had in my life, and perhaps the nicest evening Ive ever had in my life. Is that so terrible, to be so positive about something?

Anyway, it turned out not to be the easy option at all. Fucking hell! You should try and read the stuff by people whove killed themselves! We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: she killed herself because she couldnt make herself understood. You only have to read one sentence to see that. I sort of identify with her a bit, because I suffer from that sometimes, but her mistake was to go public with it. I mean, it was lucky in a way, because she left a sort of souvenir behind so that people like us could learn from her difficulties and that, but it was bad luck for her. And she had some bad luck, too, if you think about it, because in the olden days anyone could get a book published because there wasnt so much competition. So you could march into a publishers office and go, you know, I want this published, and theyd go, Oh, OK then. Whereas now theyd go, No, dear, go away, no one will9９ｌib•ｎｅt understand you. Try pilates or salsa dancing instead.

I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldnt be enough pain involved. Id want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing them one at a time. Its music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows youre being a jerk, but when you get music rage, youre carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.

The only debate was about whether to go now or in the summer, because of the weather, but there was a general feeling that, what with one thing and another, it was better to go now, before Valentines Day. For a moment they thought we could afford the Caribbean, Barbados or somewhere, until Martin pointed out that the money we had would have to cover Mattys time in the care centre as well.

I do think. I know no one believes it, but I do. Its just that my way of thinking is different from everyone elses. Before I think, I have to get angry and maybe a bit violent, which I can see is sort of annoying for everyone else, but tough shit. Anyway, that night, in bed, I thought about JJ, and what hed said about how I hated books because Daddy read them.

We ate in a seafront restaurant not far from the hotel. I had a nice piece of fish, and the men ate squid and lobster, and Jess had a hamburger, and I drank two or three glasses of wine. I wont tell you when Id last eaten out in a restaurant, or had wine with a meal, because Im learning not to do that.

So I said, Well whats the point of doing the reading club if you know in advance theyre all great? Whats fun about that? And he said, Its not Pop Idol, man. You dont vote for the best one. Theyre all good, and we accept that, and we talk about their ideas. And I was like, well if shes anything to go by, I dont accept theyre all great. In fact I now accept the opposite. And JJ got really worked up about that, and there was some unpleasantness then, and Martin stepped in and we decided not to do any more books for a while, in other words ever. That was when we decided to have a go at musical suicide instead. Maureen had never heard of Kurt Cobain, can you believe it?

Jen was a reader, though. She loved her books, but they scared me.

This is how I feel, every day, and people dont want to know that. They want to know that Im feeling what Tom Jones makes you feel. Or that Australian girl who used to be in Neighbours. But I feel like this, and they wont play what I feel on the radio, because people that are sad dont fit in.

I would, said Jess.

And what makes you the most fascinating person on the planet? Martin said.

Lets go without Maureen, then, said Jess, and I was hurt, for a moment, until it turned out she was joking.

Twenty-six. She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and I was really hoping that she was feeling sorry for him and his family. The alternative was that she was envying him for having spared himself all those unnecessary extra years. You want people to respond, but sometimes they can overdo it, you know?

I didnt even try to tell the others, because I could feel the weight for myself, and knew it was more than they would want to carry. Anyway, they knew by this time that it was donkeys years since Id done anything at all, apart from the things I do every day of my life. They took it for granted.

But I dont. I cant. I cant because Im too lazy, too stupid, and I cant even make the effort because something stops me. They just sit there looking at me, day after day, and one day I know Ill put them all in a big pile and burn them.

Wed never heard Maureen talk like this, didnt even know she could, and even Jess didnt want to stop her.

And like five days later we were on a plane to Tenerife.

But it hadnt been up until then, not at all, nothing like, unless you count me and Martin sitting on Jesswww.9９ｌｉｂ•ｎｅｔs head. And even that was being cruel to be kind, rather than kind plain and simple. Up until then it had been the story of four people who met because they were unhappy and then swore at each other.

Martin was like, Lets drink up and go, and he stood up. But Captain Coffee went, Whats the matter now? So I said, The thing is, we need to have a private conversation, and he said he understood completely, and hed go outside until wed finished. And I said, But really, everything we say is private, for reasons I cant go into. And he said it didnt matter, hed still wait outside unless anyone else came. And thats what he did, and thats why we ended up going to Starbucks for our coffee meetings. It was hard to concentrate on how miserable we were, with this berk in an army uniform leaning against the window outside checking that we werent stealing his biscuits, or biscotties as he called them. People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if thats what you want?

Id left one band full of aggressive illiterates, and I sure as hell wasnt going to join another one. When youre unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.

I dont think I was ever going to be a big reader, because she was the brainy one, not me, but Im sure I would have been better at it if she hadnt put me off by disappearing. It wasnt the first time Id been in her room, and it wouldnt be the last, I knew, and the books all sit there and look at me, and what I hate most is knowing that one of them might help me to understand. I dont mean that Ill find some sentence shes underlined that will give me a clue about where she is, although I looked, a while ago. I flicked through, just in case shed put like an exclamation mark by the word Wales, or a ring around Texas. I just mean that if I read everything she loved, and everything that took her attention in those last few months, then Id get some picture of where her head was at. I dont even know whether these books are serious or sad or scary. And youd think Id want to find out, wouldnt you, considering as how much I loved her and everything.

I said it because I wanted to be sympathetic, but then I remembered Cosmic Tony, and I realized that now Cosmic Tony had the money.

I was making little sobbing noises that embarrassed everyone, myself included.

I want to describe every moment of the journey, because it seemed so exciting, but that would probably be a mistake, too. If youre like everybody else then youll already know what an airport looks like, what it sounds and smells like, and if I tell you about it, then it would be just another way of saying that I havent seen the sea for ten years. Id got a one-year passport from the post office, and even that caused too much excitement, because I saw one or two people from the church in the queue, and they know Im not a big traveler. One of the people I saw was Bridgid, the woman who didnt invite me to the New Years Eve party I didnt go to; one day, I thought, Ill tell her how she helped me to take my first trip abroad. Id really have to know how much things weighed before I tried that, though.

It was funny, but up to that point, we hadnt really ever been nice to each other. Youd think that would have been a part of the story, considering how wed met. Youd think this would be the story of four people who met because they were unhappy, and wanted to help each other.

Have you not got ears? Maureen said suddenly. Cant you hear how unhappy he is, and how beautiful his songs are? We looked at her, and then Jess looked at me.

But hes such a drip, she said. Hes like, I dunno, a poet or something.

The book group thing was JJs idea. He said people do it a lot in America, read books and talk about them; Martin reckoned it was becoming fashionable here, too, but Id never heard of it, so it cant be that fashionable, or Id have read about it in Dazed an藏书网d Confused. The point of it was to talk about Something Else, sort of thing, and not get into rows about who was a berk and who was a prat, which was how the afternoons in Starbucks usually ended up. And what we decided was, we were going to read books by people whod killed themselves. They were, like, our people, and so we thought we ought to find out what was going on in their heads.

This was meant to be an insult: I was spending my days with someone who thought that poets were creatures you might find living in your lower intestine.

Yeah, right, said Jess. What are we? Volunteers for like an old folks home or something? Maureens not old, I said. How old are you, Maureen? Im fifty-one, she said.

They scared me when she was around, and they scare me even more now.

I dont mind it, said Martin. I wouldnt walk out, if he was playing in a wine bar.

I dont look like that, for a start. Anyways, I thought you were on my side? And almost unnoticed, amid all the laughter and the general scorn, Maureen had started to cry.

And so suddenly Maureen was like my girl, because she got it, and because she felt the music rage too, and I wanted to say the right thing to her. You need a holiday.

Not having Matty with me was like missing a leg. It felt that strange.

It wasnt as if there was a big argument, though. Everyone was all for it.

Because youre foolish enough as it is. She was steamed. She had the music rage too. Just listen to him for a moment, and stop blathering.

And all that is a long-ass way of explaining why I freaked out at Jess.

When did he die? Nineteen seventy-four. He was twenty-six.

And for some reason, I thought music was going to be easier, which, considering Im a musician, wasnt real smart. I only have a lot invested in books, but I got my whole life invested in music. I thought I couldnt go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people whove got the blues. If you havent heard him… Man, its like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams youve let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. Youre pinned into your seat, as if its a wall of noise, but its not - its still, and quiet, and you dont want to breathe in case you frighten it away. And we were listening to him over at Maureens, because we couldnt play our own music at Starbucks, and at Maureens youve got the sound of Matty breathing, which was like this whole extra freaky instrument. So I was sitting there thinking, man, this is going to change these peoples lives for ever.

JJ Our cultural program was all on my shoulders, because none of the others knew anything about anything. Maureen got books out of the library every couple weeks, but she didnt read stuff we could talk about, if you know what Im saying, unless we wanted to talk about whether the nurse should marry the bad rich guy or the good poor guy. And Martin wasnt a big fan of Literature. He said he read a lot of books in prison, but mostly biographies of people who had overcome great adversities, like Nelson Mandela and those guys. My guess is Nelson Mandela wouldnt have thought of Martin Sharp as a soul brother. When you looked at their lives closely, youd see that theyd wound up in jail for different reasons. And, believe me, you dont want to know what Jess thought of books. Youd find it offensive.

Martin said he thought we might learn more from people who hadnt killed themselves - we should be reading up on what was so great about staying alive, not what was so great about topping yourself. But it turned out there were like a billion writers who hadnt killed themselves, and three or four who had, so we took the easy option, and went for the smaller pile. We voted on using funds from our media appearances to buy ourselves the books.

She was right about me, though, kind of. How could she not be? Ive spent my entire life with people who 藏书网dont read - my folks, my sister, most of the band, especially the rhythm section - and it makes you really defensive, after a while. How many times can you be called a fag before you snap? Not that I mind being called a fag blah blah blah, and some of my best friends blah blah, but to me, being a fag is about whether you like guys, not whether you like Don DeLillo - who is a guy, admittedly, but its his books I like, not his ass. Why does reading freak people out so much?

Id be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafes. Im happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and Im like, Der. Thats the point.

I wanted to tell Jess that I hadnt even seen an English beach since Matty left school; they used to take them to Brighton every year, and I went with them once or twice. I didnt say anything, though. I may not know the weight of many things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things arent going well for you when you cant even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because theyll presume youre asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose its why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.

No one said anything, because we werent sure where she was at.

What was in them? What did they say to her, when she was unhappy and listening only to them and to no one else - not her friends, not her sister, no one? I got out of bed and went into her room, which has been left exactly as it was on the day she left. (People are always doing that in films, and you think, Yeah, right, like you dont want a guest bedroom, or somewhere to put all your crap. But you try going in there and fucking everything up.) And there they all are: The Secret History, Catch-, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, No Logo, The Bell Jar (which is a coincidence, or maybe not, because that was one of the books JJ wanted us to read), Crime and Punishment, , Good Places to Go When You Want To Disappear… That was just a joke, that last one.

Hey, you like Updike? You must be a cool guy. Heres a $, job in our advertising agency. We spent all those years talking about the stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different, and it broke both of our hearts.

You probably know that you sit in a row of three. They let me sit in the window seat, because theyd all been on planes before. Martin sat in the middle and JJ sat next to him on the aisle for the first few minutes. After a little while, Jess had to swap places with JJ, because she had an argument with the woman sitting next to her about the wee bag of nuts they give you, and there was some shouting and carrying on. Another thing you probably know is that theres a terrible noise when you take off, and sometimes the plane shakes in the air. Well of course I didnt know any of those things, and my stomach turned to water, and Martin had to hold my hand and talk to me.

Ha ha, said Jess. You like something Maureen likes. She sang this last part, like a little kid, nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.

Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up fucking space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isnt.

At the end of the first song, Jess started putting her fingers down her throat and making faces.

Dont pretend to be more foolish than you are, Jess, said Maureen.