JESS

It didn't take long for the papers to find out. A couple of days, maybe. I was in my room, and Dad called me downstairs and asked me what I'd been up to on New Year's Eve. And I went, Nothing much, and he went, Well, that isn't what the newspapers seem to think. And I was like, Newspapers? And he said, Yeah, there's apparently going to be a story about you and Martin Sharp. Do you know Martin Sharp? And I was, you know, Yeah, sort of, only met him that night at a party, don't know him very well. And so Dad goes, What the hell kind of party is it where you meet someone like Martin Sharp? And I couldn't think what kind of party that would be, so I didn't say anything. And then Dad was like, And was there… Did anything… All tenterhooks or whatever, kind of thing, so I just dived in. Did I fuck him? No I did not! Thanks a bunch! Bloody hell! Martin Sharp! Eeeeuch! And so on and so on until he got the idea.

It was fucking Chas, of course, who phoned up the newspapers. He'd probably tried before, the little shit, but he never had much to go on then, when it was just me. The Jess Crichton/Martin Sharp combo, though… unresistable. How much do you think you get for something like that? A couple of hundred quid? More? To be honest, I'd have done it if I were him. He's always skint. And I'm always skint. If he'd been anyone worth selling up the river, he'd be halfway out to sea by now.

Dad pulled back the curtain to sneak a look, and there was someone out there. I wanted to go out and have a go at him, but Dad wouldn't let me; he said that they'd take a mad picture of me, and I'd look stupid and regret it. And he said it was undignified to do that, and in our position we had to rise above it all and ignore them. And I was like, In whose position? I'm not in a position. And he went, Well, you are, whether you like it or not you are in a position, and I go, You're in a position not me, and he said, You're in a position too, and we went on like that for a while. But of course going on about it never changes anything, and I know he's right, really. If I wasn't in a position then the papers wouldn't be interested. In fact, the more I act as though I'm not in a position, then the more I'm in a position, if you see what I mean. If I just sat in my room and read, or got a steady boyfriend, there'd be no interest. But if I went to bed with Martin Sharp, or threw myself off a roof, then there would be the opposite of no interest. There'd be interest.

When I was in the papers a couple of years ago, just after the Jen thing, I think the feeling was I was Troubled rather than Bad. Anyway, shoplifting isn't murder, is it? Everyone goes through a shoplifting phase, don't they? By which I mean proper shoplifting, boosting Winona-style, bags and clothes and shit, not pens and sweets. It comes just after ponies and boy bands, and right before spliff and sex. But I could tell that it was different this time, and that was wh............