2. The Lonliest Place

2. The Lonliest Place

There were few things Gabriel Evans had control over in his life. He didn’t control the bills and taxes that bled him dry every month. He didn’t control his family, on the rare occasions he saw them. He didn’t control the fact that he had no foreseeable future, other than a soul destroying repetition of the present. So, he worked on the things he could control: he dyed his hair blond, painted over the cracks in his bed-sit and manipulated men into buying the drinks he couldn’t afford. And now, as a final attempt at asserting control on life, he was going to choose how and when he was going to die: tonight, at Jumper’s Hump.

Gabriel didn’t live all that far from the Hump (unlike Michael, who had to trek from the ‘nice end’ of town), so he was always one of the first to know when there had been a fresh ‘jumper’. Making his way down Clarkson Avenue, he took out a cigarette - something else he didn’t have control over - and strolled nihilistically to his destiny. There was no spring in his step. For Gabriel, this was not a glorious moment of triumph, but more akin to watching a film, realising you don’t like it, and turning the television off. Never really knowing what happens at the end, but without the curiosity to care.

Turning onto Freedom Road, Gabriel saw the carnival of the police barricade and groaned to himself. Someone else got here first. How’s that for control? Well, if he was going to drag himself out on a freezing night like this, he reasoned he may as well get the inside scoop on the details. So he walked to the other side of the street - still within earshot of the Father Christmas-like officer - hoisted himself onto the bonnet of a green (or blue? The light made it hard to tell) Citroen, stuck his hands into the warm creases of his zip-up and continued to suck in the warm smoke, swinging his legs off the edge.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m afraid the bridge will be closed off for the rest of the night,” announced the policeman, who seemed to be rather enjoying his roll as envoy to the people.

The small crowd, none of whom were inconvenienced in the slightest, let out a collective grumble.

“Paramedics are on hand, and divers are on their way. We are doing everything in our power to retrieve the victim from the water,” PC Ho-Ho-Ho announced. Behind him, a group of his colleagues were standing in a circle sharing a hot drink from a flask. As they drank, clinging onto the polystyrene cups like precious stones, the steam rose in white billows up to their smiling faces.

“Did you see who it was?” asked one member of the crowd, a burley man in his fifties. The others muttered in assent. This is what they really wanted to know, the juicy details.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t disclose details at this time,” the officer recited, sounding genuinely regretful.

“I saw it.” Like the Red Sea, the gathering parted and hushed around a little old woman, puffed up with as many layers as she could wear, a thick pair of glasses distorting her eyes into those of a Roswell alien.

Gabriel was not in the least bit surprised. In his experience, whenever someone else was having a bad day it was the little old ladies who turned up first, watching like vultures circle dying animals. The first time he was ever attacked it was in front of a tenement block with 300 lace curtains pulled slightly open, and 300 pairs of elderly female eyes watching.

“I saw what happened,” the extra-terrestrial little woman repeated. Everyone, including the police officer, listened intently. “It was a woman on the bridge. She looked foreign, one of them Islams I think.”

There was a murmur among the rabble, a collective ‘oh that explains it’.

“She couldna been very old, didn’t look more ‘n twenty. Course, she had one o’ them headscarves on, so it was hard to tell, what with my eyesight,” she continued, her voluminous eyes downcast. “She stood on the edge, up there, climbed over the railing. She just stood there for a good quarter of an hour, looking down at the river. Then she just jumped. That’s when I called the police.”

The others murmured at how she had done the right thing, and began recounting their own stories about jumpers, borrowed from a friend of a friend who was there. The conversations were filled with ‘oh dear’s and ‘such a shame’s, but the people were more animated than they had been all evening.

Gabriel smiled bitterly to himself, thinking of the poor bitch who had ruined his plans for the evening. He wondered if he had beaten her to it, would the crowd be talking about him instead? Probably. The same mantras of ‘such a waste’ mumbled again and again, heads down and shaking side to side. He sucked the last life out of his cigarette and spat the glowing stub down to the pavement.

That was when he noticed the other boy, apart from the crowd. All in black (Halloween’s over mate) and a jet bit of fringe coming out from under his hood. He was tall, slender, with pale cheeks bitten red by the cold. Call it suicidal intuition, but Gabriel recognised the way he was looking past the barricade, up at the top where dying flowers lay all year round. Looks like someone else had missed the bus tonight.

Gabriel watched him and made the same assessment he automatically made of any male that passed his way: Was he doable? In this case, probably. Minus points for the emo thing, but not bad all in all. As he was contemplating the second question however (how much?), he noticed the other boy had begun to slope off, back down Burton Street. Purely on instinct and curiosity, Gabriel slid off the car bonnet - knocking into the wing mirror so it pointed up at the moon - and began to follow this other lost soul for no other reason than because he had so much time and nothing else worthwhile to do with it.