'That's great,' I said. 'Really, really great. You've no idea.'

I called Troy on my mobile and told him. I could hear him smile.

I arrived at my flat a bit early. There was a light on in one of the windows, though I could see no sign of Kerry's car. I inserted the key in the lock, fumbling in the darkness, and pushed open the door. If no one was there, that would be a relief. If they were in, I could tell them about the house in London Fields and try to talk to Kerry. Yesterday I had felt that she would never forgive me, but today it looked different to me. Nothing had happened, except inside me.

I went up the stairs and there was a smell that made me mutter crossly to myself because it was bad enough them forcing me out of my own home, but the least they could do was keep it clean. Then I pushed open the living-room door. It banged against something that clattered out of the way as I pushed harder.

What did I see? What did I feel? I don't know, really. I never will know. It's jumbled up together in a foul twist of memory that I'll never lose.

Scuff-toed boots that I'd seen hundreds of times before, but a foot above the floor, and then his canvas trousers, stained at the knee, and a buckled belt around the waist. A smell of shit. A chair on its side. Fear a thick eel in my throat. I couldn't look up. I had to look up. His face above me, tilted to one side, his mouth slightly open. I could see the tip of his tongue. Blue around his lips. His eyes were open, staring. I saw the rope that he was hanging from.

Maybe he was still alive. Oh God, maybe he was; please, please, please. I righted the chair and clambered on to it, half falling over, and there I was pressed up against his body, trying to hold him up to relieve the pressure of the noose on his neck and trying to undo the knot. Fingers trembling too much. His hair against my cheek. His cold forehead. The slump of his body. But people can be alive when they look dead, you read about it, bringing them back to life when all hope is gone. But I couldn't undo the knot and he was so heavy and smelt of death already. Shit and death, and his flesh was cold.

I jumped down from the chair, leaving his body swaying there, and raced to the kitchen. The bread knife was in the sink, and I grabbed it and ran back to Troy. Standing on tiptoe on the chair I began sawing at the cord while still trying to hold his body. Suddenly he was free and we fell on to the floor together and his arms were over my body in a ghastly embrace.

I pushed him off me and hurled myself towards the phone. Jabbed the buttons.

'Help,' I said. 'Help. He's hung himself. Please come and help. Please. What shall I do?'

The voice at the other end of the phone was quite calm. It asked questions and I gabbled answers, and all the time Troy lay an arm's length away and I kept saying, 'But what shall I do, what shall I do?'

'The emergency services will be with you as soon as possible,' said the voice.

'Shall I give him the kiss of life? Shall I pump his chest? Tell me what to do.'

I looked at Troy while I was saying it. His skin was chalky white, except where it was blue around the lips. The tip of his tongue protruded. The eyes were open and sightless. The noose around his neck was slack now, but there was dark bruising where it had been. My little brother.

'Hurry,' I said in a whisper. 'Hurry up.'

I put the phone down and crawled across to where he lay. I put his head in my lap and stroked the hair off his forehead. I leaned down and kissed him on his cheeks, and on his mouth. 1 picked up his hand and cradled it between both my own. I did up the middle button of his shirt, which had come undone. In a minute I would pick up the phone and call my parents. How do you say: your son is dead. I shut my eyes for a moment, drenched with the horror of it.

His sweater was draped over the back of the sofa. There was a book on the table, face down. The clock ticked on the wall. I looked at it: twenty-five past six. If you could turn the clock back through the minutes and the hours until it was before Troy had stood on that chair with the noose round his neck and then kicked off, into death. If I'd arrived before, left my cheese and pickle roll and my accounts and my loitering in the warm office, and driven here instead. I ran my fingers through his hair. Nothing would ever be all right again.

The doorbell rang and I laid Troy 's head gently back on the carpet and went to open it. While they were clustered round Troy, I picked up the phone.

Everything was disjointed, skewed, in a strange light, a foreign language. My flat didn't feel like my own flat any more. It was like being out in the street when there has been an accident. People were bustling in and out who had nothing to do with me. There were three people in green overalls, who at first were very urgent and quick and shouting instructions, and then suddenly were slow and quiet because, after all, there was nothing to be urgent about any more because we were all too late. I saw a policeman and a policewoman. They must have arrived quickly. I looked at my watch, but I couldn't make out the time properly, as if the numbers were far away and in the wrong order. Someone handed me a mug of something hot and I sipped at it and burnt my lips. It felt good. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted it to make me feel something, to wake me out of this numbness. I'd talked to my mother on the phone. That had been one of the first things I'd done. Initially I'd thought of trying to break it to her gradually. It felt like the right thing to do. I'd wanted to say something like, ' Troy is seriously ill. Very seriously ill.' I could have made it easier for her, except that I couldn't. He was too cold and dead, his eyes open. So I couldn't say anything to her except that Troy was dead and that maybe she should come, but that they didn't need to because I could deal with things. I heard a gasp and then some fumbling attempts at questions. 'Dead?' 'Are you sure?' And then just a sort of moan. She started to say something about how she had thought Troy was better and I think I cut her short because I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying.

There was a hand on my arm, a female face looking into mine. She was a police officer, younger than me, pale-faced, purple spots like a rash on her cheekbones. Was I all right? I nodded. She wanted details. Troy 's name. Age. My name. I started to get angry. How could they ask stupid questions at a time like this? Then I stopped getting angry. I realized that these were the questions that needed to be asked. Suddenly I saw the scene from her point of view. This was what she did for a living. She was called to events like this, one after another. The people in the green uniforms as well. They dealt with them and went home and watched TV. The policewoman was probably specially trained to deal with people like me. When she looked at me, she saw me as just one of a series of people like me that she had to deal with, people who weren't used to this. There had probably been someone a bit like me yesterday or the day before, and there would probably be someone a bit like me tomorrow or the day after. She would look at me and wonder whether I was the sort to make trouble. Some people would be difficult, some would cry, some would just be numb and unable to talk, some would become manic, a few might turn violent. Which would I be?

There would be so much to organize, I thought. Forms to fill out, envelopes to lick, people to be informed. At that moment it hit me, like a warm, wet wave that ran through every cell. I had to open my mouth wide and gasp, as if the air in my flat were suddenly hard to breathe. My head felt light and I started to sway, and the woman's face appeared in front of me.