What is the ideal length for a suicide note? Asking for a friend. I suppose the major variable  is how many people the note is directly addressing, each with a personalised plea petitioning their forgiveness. But that doesn't apply in this case. I - my friend - has no partner, no children, will not be survived by any parents, no siblings, a classic example of a solipsistic singleton, though in truth any suicide is a solipsistic act. No friends even - oh crikey, there goes the pretence. So this note won't be padded to excess by any valedictions. In that sense it differs from a lonely hearts advert, where you are charged by the word. It pays to be pithy in love but prolix in death.

I have too few readers of my books even to address them with this note. Which is a pity as the one thing this letter would be is well-written. Literary even. Yet I can't see that any of them would be terribly upset at my passing, even they were even to notice it. We don't quite have the relationship whereby I could inform them retrospectively by this note written ahead of time. Besides I don't know any of their names.

So I write this for the sole pair of eyes likely to be clapped on to it. belonging to someone I have never met and again, whose name I do not know. The policeman who is called by my faceless neighbours when the smell of me begins to offend. Nil by mouth. Nil by ears (even though I will henceforth make no noise across my floor). Nil by eyes. And nil by nose. All of me will just be nil. An all round nullity. In death as in life. Actually bureaucracy will likely entail that these words would be perused by two readers, as the Bobby on the Beat passes it over to the coroner. A brace constitutes an audience. A readership. So now I have something to aim for. Perhaps I should research the length of an average coroner's report and thereby ensure that this my last missive is longer than that particular testimony. I don't suppose he would be obliged to include a verbatim record of this my final pronouncement signing off in order for him to sign off on my death, but it would double the length of his monograph. However, something to tilt at perhaps... Only such research, like any normal writing assignment, represents nothing more than procrastination on my part. And I cannot afford that. Even though I am sure I will still be in the mood tomorrow. Or the next day. So I ask again, what is the ideal length for a suicide note?