But dying, what was the point of that? You spent your life being aware, taking in information, creating things, like P.P. Penrose created Woodbine, or Mr Doveston his wonderful bed. And then you died. And that was it. No more awareness, no more creativity, no more anything. What on Earth, or off it, was the Point of dying?

It’s a big question, you know. A really big question.

I won’t labour it too much here, because I don’t want you getting bored and closing the book, especially as it does get really exciting as it goes along. But it’s important that I do address the issues that led me to take the course of action that I took.

You see, even though I was young, I did have this thing about death. It bothered me, it upset me, it annoyed me. And even way back then, when I was so young and all, I felt that there had to be a point to it. It couldn’t be that you just appeared out of nowhere, into the universe, lived for a short while, then were just snuffed out and were gone for ever more. That seemed utterly absurd. Utterly wasteful. Utterly pointless. There had to be something more. Something beyond life. Something we weren’t being told about.

But then, of course, we were being told about it. We were being told about it all the time. I was being brought up in a Christian society. I was being told what would happen to me when I died. If I was good, I’d go to heaven; if not, then down below to the bad place. For ever.

Now that didn’t make any sense to me. The proportions were all wrong. You only got sixty, seventy, eighty years alive, then your creator decided your eternal future. That certainly wasn’t fair. That was ludicrous. So what did happen after you died? Did anyone know? My conclusion was, no, they didn’t. They were only guessing.

People believed that they knew. But that was all it amounted to, belief. No one really knew for sure. It was all very well having faith in a religious hereafter, but having faith in a belief didn’t mean it was correct. I’m sorry if I’m going on about this, but it is important. I personally believe that the whole God thing was invented by some clever blighter, because he knew that it was the best way to keep society behaving in a decent fashion. And, more than that, he realized that without some belief in the hereafter, with rewards for the good people and punishment for the bad, society would go all to pieces.

I think that whoever that person was, he (or she) was probably right. I mean, imagine if it was proved conclusively that there was no life beyond death. Imagine if all those Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Jews suddenly found out for certain that the whole thing was a hoax. I’ll bet they’d be really upset. I’ll bet a lot of them would go down to the nearest pub, get commode-hugging drunk and then go looking for a vicar or a priest to punch.

They would, they really would.

I’d been brought up as a Christian, but at that time in my life I didn’t believe in a hereafter. It didn’t make any sense to me. I remember my Uncle Tony dying. He’d had Alzheimer’s, although they hadn’t had a name for it back then. All that was Uncle Tony had died before his body did. His personality, along with his understanding, his memories, his recognition, gone. So what of Uncle Tony was going to the afterlife? In my opinion, nothing. The way I saw it, when you were dead, you were dead. Gone, finished, goodbye.

But I was torn, you see, because I could understand the point of being alive (I thought) but I couldn’t understand the point of being dead. And I felt sure that there had to be a point. That’s been my problem all along, I suppose, thinking that there has to be a point. It’s been tricky for me.

Difficult.

Difficult times. Difficult thoughts.

But I was young then, so I can forgive myself.

“Wotchadoin’?”

I opened my eyes and beheld my bestest friend. His name was David Rodway. Answering to Dave. Dave was short and dark and dodgy. A born criminal. I know there are lots of arguments, the nature-versus-nurture stuff. I know all that and I don’t know the answer. But Dave was dodgy, dodgy from young, from the very first day I met him back in the infant school. But dodgy is compelling, dodgy is glamorous – don’t ask me why, but it is. I liked Dave, liked him a lot. I was his bestest friend.

“Hello, Dave,” said I.

“I’ve just been round your house,” said Dave. “Your daddy was fighting with your Uncle Jon.”

“Was he winning?” I asked.

“No. Your uncle had him down and was belabouring him with his blind-man’s stick.”

“Good,” said I. “My daddy clicked my jaw out once again.”

“Never mind,” said Dave. “One day you will be big and your daddy will be old and frail and then you can bash him about at your leisure. You could even lock him in a trunk in the cellar, feeding him dead mice through a hole and giving him no toilet paper at all.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” said I. “And offers some happy prospects for the future.”

“Glad to be of assistance.” Dave climbed onto the Doveston marble bed and lay down next to me. “I figured you’d be here,” he said. “You being so morbid and everything. You always come here when there’s fighting in your house.”

“There’s usually fighting in my house,” I said. “If it’s not my dad and my uncle, then it’s my dad and my mum.”

“What about your brother?”

“He’s gone to prison again.”

“For fighting?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I never fight,” said Dave. “Don’t see the fun in it. You know my funny uncle?”

“Uncle Ivor? The one who’s a homo?”

“That’s him. I said to Uncle Ivor, ‘Do you like all-in wrestling?’ And do you know what he said?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘If it’s all in, why wrestle?’”

I shook my head once more. “P.P. Penrose is dead,” I said.

“No?” said Dave. “You’re joking. It’s not true.”

“It is.”

“But he’s my favourite writer.”

“Mine too.”

“I know, you introduced me to his books.”

“He’s the greatest.”

“Was the greatest, now.”

“Still is and always will be.”

“This is really bad news,” said Dave, taking out his hankie and burying his face in it.

“I’ve seen that trick before,” I said. “Give me one of those humbugs.”

“What humbugs?” said Dave, with one cheek bulging.

“You just slipped a humbug in your mouth. Give me one.”

“It was my last.”

“You are so a liar.”

“There’ll be no more Adam Earth books, although they were rubbish. But there’ll be no more Lazlo Woodbine books.” Dave rooted in his trouser pocket and brought out a fluffy-looking humbug. “Imagine that, no more Lazlo Woodbine thrillers.”

I took the fluffy-looking humbug, spat upon in and cleaned it on my jersey sleeve. “There’s going to be a wake,” I said. “For P.P. Penrose. And my daddy and my uncle will be going to it. They knew him.”

“They never.”

“They did. My daddy said that Mr Penrose was a great sportsman. That he thought sportsmanship was everything. Or something like that.”

“I’ve never cared much for sportsmanship,” said Dave, chewing ruefully upon his humbug. “But we should go to this wake. Do you think the coffin will be open and the dead corpse on display?”

I popped the still rather fluffy humbug into my mouth and nodded.

“We could get something,” said Dave.

“Get something? What do you mean?”

Dave grinned me a toothy smile. “Something to remember him by.”

“We have his books to remember him by.”

“No, I mean something more personal than that. Something of his. Some personal possession.”

“Steal something from a dead man? That’s not nice.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“Only coffin handles and stuff. Not from someone newly dead.”

“Relics,” said Dave. “We could take relics. After all, that man was a saint amongst writers and there’s nothing wrong with owning the relics of a saint. It’s something you do out of respect. It’s not really stealing.”