# Read the first page of A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Read the opening of A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby free, no signup. Four strangers meet on a London rooftop, each planning to jump.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/a-long-way-down-nick-hornby
- Genre: Literary fiction
- Year: 2006
- ISBN: 9781101146798
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781101146798&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781101146798
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781101146798

## The opening

Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block? Of course I can explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block. I'm not a bloody idiot. I can explain it because it wasn't inexplicable: It was a logical decision, the product of proper thought. It wasn't even very serious thought, either. I don't mean it was whimsical—I just mean that it wasn't terribly complicated, or agonized. Put it this way: Say you were, I don't know, an assistant bank manager in Guildford. And you'd been thinking of emigrating, and then you were offered the job of managing a bank in Sydney. Well, even though it's a pretty straightforward decision, you'd still have to think for a bit, wouldn't you? You'd at least have to work out whether you could bear to move, whether you could leave your friends and colleagues behind, whether you could uproot your wife and kids. You might sit down with a bit of paper and draw up a list of pros and cons. You know: CONS: aged parents, friends, golf club PROS: more money, better quality of life (house with pool, barbecue, etc.), sea, sunshine, no left-wing councils banning "Baa, Baa Black Sheep," no EEC directives banning British sausages, etc.

It's no contest, is it? The golf club! Give me a break. Obvi- ously your aged parents give you pause for thought, but that's all it is—a pause, and a brief one, too. You'd be on the phone to the travel agent's within ten minutes.

Well, that was me. There simply weren't enough regrets, and lots and lots of reasons to jump. The only things on my "cons" list were the kids, but I couldn't imagine Cindy letting me see them again anyway. I haven't got any aged parents, and I don't play golf. Suicide was my Sydney. And I say that with no offense to the good people of Sydney intended.

MAUREEN

I told him I was going to a New Year's Eve party: I told him in October. I don't know whether people send out invitations to New Year's Eve parties in October or not. Probably not. (How N would I know? I haven't been to one since 1984. June and Brian across the road had one, just before they moved. And even then I only nipped in for an hour or so, after he'd gone to sleep.) But I couldn't wait any longer. I'd been thinking about it since May or June, and I was itching to tell him. Stupid, really: He doesn't understand, I'm sure he doesn't. They tell me to keep talking to him, but you can see that nothing goes in. And what a thing to be itching about anyway! It just goes to show what I had to look forward to, doesn't it? The moment I told him, I wanted to go straight to confes- sion. 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.)

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