‘That’s more like it.’

It was much more confusing than he had imagined, making people up, and he was beginning to realize that he hadn’t thought it through properly at all. He already had a cast of three—Paula, Ned and his mother (who wasn’t imaginary in quite the same way, having at least been alive once, although not, admittedly, recently)—and he could see that if he was going to carry this through, then there would soon be a cast of thousands. But how could he carry it through? How many times could Ned reasonably be whisked away by his mother, or maternal grandmother, or international terrorists? What reasons could he give for not inviting Suzie round to his flat, where there were no toys or cots or nappies or bowls, where there was no second bedroom even? Could he kill Ned off with some awful disease, or a car crash—tragic, tragic, life goes on? Maybe not. Parents got pretty cut up about kids dying, and he’d find the requisite years of grief a real drain on his thespian resources. What about Paula? Couldn’t he just pack Ned off to her, even though she didn’t want to see him much? Except… except then he wouldn’t be a single father any more. He’d lose the point of himself, somehow.

No, disaster was approaching, and there was nothing he could do about it. Best pull out now, walk away, leave them all with the impression that he was an inadequate eccentric, nothing more—certainly not a pervert, or a fantasist, or any of the bad things he was about to turn into. But walking away wasn’t Will’s style. He always felt something would turn up, even though nothing ever did, or even could, most of the time. Once, years ago, when he was a kid, he told a school-friend (having first ascertained that this friend was not a C. S. Lewis fan) that it was possible to walk through the back of his wardrobe into a different world, and invited him round to explore. He could have cancelled, he could have told him anything, but he was not prepared to suffer a moment’s mild embarrassment if there was no immediate need to do so, and the two of them scrabbled around among the coathangers for several minutes until Will mumbled something about the world being closed on Saturday afternoons. The thing was, he could still remember feeling genuinely hopeful, right up until the last minute: maybe there will be something there, he had thought, maybe I won’t lose face. There wasn’t and he did, loads of it, a whole headful of face, but he hadn’t learnt a thing from the experience: if anything, it seemed to have left him with the feeling that he was bound to be lucky next time. So here he was, in his mid-thirties, knowing in all the places there were to know that he didn’t have a two-year-old son, but still working on the presumption that, when it came to the crunch, one would pop up from somewhere.

‘I’ll bet you could do with a coffee,’ said Suzie.

‘I could murder one. What a morning!’ He shook his head in amazement, and Suzie blew her cheeks out sympathetically. It occurred to him that he was really enjoying himself.

‘I don’t even know what you do,’ Suzie said, when they were settled into the car. Megan was in the baby seat beside her; Will was in the back with Marcus, the weird kid, who was humming tunelessly.

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh.’

He usually made something up, but he had made too much up already over the last few days… if he added a fictitious job to the list, not only would he begin to lose track, he’d be offering Suzie nothing real at all.

‘Well, what did you do before?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve never worked?’

‘I’ve done the odd day here and there, but—’

‘Oh. Well, that’s…’

She trailed off, and Will knew why. Not having a job ever, that’s… nothing. There was nothing to say about it at all, not immediately, anyway.

‘My dad wrote a song. In nineteen thirty-eight. It’s a famous song, and I live off the royalties.’

‘You know Michael Jackson, right? He makes a million pounds a minute,’ said the weird kid.

‘I’m not sure it’s a million pounds a minute,’ said Suzie doubtfully. ‘That’s an awful lot.’

‘A million pounds a minute!’ Marcus repeated. ‘Sixty million pounds an hour!’

‘Well I don’t make sixty million pounds an hour,’ said Will. ‘Nothing like.’

‘How much, then?’

‘Marcus,’ said Suzie. ‘So what’s this song, Will? If you can live off it, we must have heard of it.’

‘Umm… "Santa’s Super Sleigh",’ said Will. He said it neutrally, but it was useless, because there was no way of saying it that didn’t make it sound silly. He wished his father had written any other song in the world, with the possible exception of ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’, or ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?’

‘Really? "Santa’s Super Sleigh"?’ Suzie and Marcus both started singing the same part of the song:

People always did this. They always sang, and they always sang the same part. Will had friends who began every single phone call with a quick burst of ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’, and when he didn’t laugh they accused him of a sense of humour failure. But where was the joke? And even if there was one, how was he supposed to make himself laugh at it every time, year after year after year?

‘I expect people always do that, don’t they?’

‘You two are the first, actually.’

Suzie glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, it’s OK. I ask for it, really.’

‘But I don’t understand. How does that make money? Do carol singers have to pay you ten per cent?’

‘They should do. But you can’t always catch them. No, it’s on every Christmas album ever made. Elvis did it, you know. And the Muppets.’ And Des O’Connor. And the Crankies. And Bing Crosby. And David Bowie, in a duet with Zsa Zsa Gabor. And Val Doonican, and Cilla Black, and Rod Hull and Emu. And an American punk band called the Cunts, and, at the last count, at least a hundred other recording artists. He knew the names from the royalty statements, and he didn’t like any of them. Will prided himself on his cool; he hated making his living from Val Doonican.

‘But haven’t you ever wanted to work?’

‘Oh, yes. Sometimes. It’s just… I don’t know. I never seem to get round to it.’ And that was the long and the short of it. He never seemed to get round to it. Every day for the last eighteen years he had got up in the morning with the intention of sorting out his career problem once and for all; as the day wore on, however, his burning desire to seek a place for himself in the outside world somehow got extinguished.

Suzie parked the car in the Outer Circle and unfolded Megan’s buggy, while Will stood awkwardly on the pavement with Marcus. Marcus had shown no interest in him whatsoever, although he could hardly claim to have made a vigorous effort to get to know the boy. It did occur to Will, however, that there were few adult males better equipped than him to deal with a teenager (if that is what Marcus was—it was hard to tell. He had a strange frizzy bush of hair, and he dressed like a twenty-five-year-old chartered accountant on his day off: he was wearing brand-new jeans and a Microsoft T-shirt). After all, Will was a sports fan and a pop music fan, and he of all people knew how heavy time could hang on one’s hands; to all intents and purposes he was a teenager. And it wouldn’t do him any harm with Suzie if he were to strike up a sparky, mutually curious relationship with her friend’s son. He’d work on Megan later. A quick tickle would probably do the trick.

‘So, Marcus. Who’s your favourite footballer?’