Marcus nodded unhappily.

‘That’s not a sandwich, that’s a bloody french loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would have killed me.’

‘Oh, Marcus,’ Suzie sighed. ‘What were you playing at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, it looks like it,’ said Will. Marcus hated him even more. Who did this Will think he was?’

‘I’m not sure it was me.’ He was going to test out his theory. If Suzie didn’t believe him, there was no chance the police and judges would.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I think it must have been ill. I think it was going to die anyway.’ Nobody said anything; Will shook his head angrily. Marcus decided this line of defence was a waste of time, even though it was true.

They were staring so hard at the scene of the crime that they didn’t notice the park-keeper until he was standing right next to them. Marcus felt his insides turn to mush. This was it.

‘One of your ducks has died,’ said Will. He made it sound as if it were the saddest thing he’d ever seen. Marcus looked up at him; maybe he didn’t hate him after all.

‘I was told that you had something to do with it,’ said the park-keeper. ‘You know that’s a criminal offence, don’t you?’

‘You were told that I had something to do with it?’ said Will. ‘Me?’

‘Maybe not you, but your lad here.’

‘You’re suggesting that Marcus killed this duck? Marcus loves ducks, don’t you, Marcus?’

‘Yeah. They’re my favourite animal. Well, second favourite. After dolphins. They’re definitely my favourite bird, though.’ This was rubbish, because he hated all animals, but he thought it helped.

‘I was told he was throwing bloody great french loaves at it.’

‘He was, but I’ve stopped him now. Boys will be boys,’ said Will. Marcus hated him again. He might have known he’d grass him up.

‘So he killed it?’

‘Oh, God no. Sorry, I see what you mean. No, he was throwing bread at the body. I think he was trying to sink it, because Megan here was getting upset.’

The park-keeper looked at the sleeping form in the buggy.

‘She doesn’t look very upset now.’

‘No. She cried herself to sleep, poor love.’

There was a silence. Marcus could see that this was the crucial time; the attendant could either accuse them all of lying, and call the police or something, or forget all about it.

‘I’ll have to wade in and get it,’ he said. They were in the clear. Marcus wasn’t going to jail for a crime he probably—OK, possibly—didn’t commit.

‘I hope there’s not some sort of epidemic,’ said Will sympathetically, as they started to walk back towards the others.

It was then that Marcus saw—or thought he saw—his mum. She was standing in front of them, blocking the path, and she was smiling. He waved and turned around to tell Suzie that she’d turned up, but when he looked back his mum wasn’t there. He felt stupid and didn’t say anything about it to anyone, ever.

Marcus was never able to work out why Suzie had insisted on coming back to the flat with him. He’d been out with her before, and she’d just dropped him off outside, waited until he’d let himself in and then driven off. But that day she parked the car, lifted Megan out in her car seat, and came in with him. She was never able to explain why she had done it.

Will wasn’t invited, but he followed them in, and Marcus didn’t tell him not to. Everything about that two minutes was mysteriously memorable, even at the time, somehow: climbing the stairs, the cooking smells that got trapped in the hall, the way he noticed the pattern on the carpet for the first time ever. Afterwards he thought he could recall being nervous, too, but he must have made that up, because there wasn’t anything to be nervous about. Then he put the key in the door and opened it, and a new part of his life began, bang, without any warning at all.

His mum was half on and half off the sofa: her head was lolling towards the floor. She was white, and there was a pool of sick on the carpet, but there wasn’t much on her—either she’d had the sense to puke away from herself, or she’d just been lucky. In the hospital they told him it was a miracle she hadn’t choked on her own vomit and killed herself. The sick was grey and lumpy, and the room stank.

He couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t cry either. It was much too serious for that. So he just stood there. But Suzie dropped the car seat and ran over to her and started screaming at her and slapping her. Suzie must have seen the empty pill bottle as soon as she walked in, but Marcus didn’t spot it until later, when the ambulancemen came, so at first he was just confused; he couldn’t understand why Suzie was so mad at someone who was not very well.

Suzie yelled at Will to call for an ambulance and told Marcus to make some black coffee; his mum was moving now and making a terrible moaning noise that he had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. Suzie was crying, and then Megan started up too, so in seconds the room had gone from a terrifying silence and stillness to noisy, terrifying panic.

‘Fiona! How could you do this?’ Suzie screamed. ‘You’ve got a kid. How could you do this?’

It was only then it occurred to Marcus that all this reflected badly on him.

Marcus had seen some things, mostly on video at other people’s houses. He had seen a bloke put another bloke’s eye out with a kebab skewer in Hellhound 3. He had seen a man’s brains come out of his nostrils in Boilerhead—The Return. He had seen arms taken off with a single swing of a machete, he had seen babies with swords where their willies should be, he had seen eels coming out of a woman’s belly-button. None of it had ever stopped him sleeping or given him nightmares. OK, he hadn’t seen many things in real life, but up until now he hadn’t thought it mattered: shocks are shocks, wherever you find them. What got him about this was that there wasn’t even anything very shocking, just some puke and some shouting, and he could see his mum wasn’t dead or anything. But this was the scariest thing he’d ever seen, by a million miles, and he knew the moment he walked in that it was something he’d have to think about forever.

When the ambulance came there was a long, complicated discussion about who would go to the hospital and how. Will was hoping he’d be packed off home, but it didn’t work out like that. The ambulancemen didn’t want to take Suzie and Marcus and the baby, so in the end he had to drive Megan and Marcus there in Suzie’s car, while she went with Marcus’s mother in the ambulance. He tried to stay tucked in behind them, but he lost them the moment they got out on to the main road. He would have liked nothing better than to pretend he had a flashing blue light on the top of the car, drive on the wrong side of the road and crash through as many red lights as he wanted, but he doubted whether either of the mothers ahead of him would thank him for it.

In the back seat Megan was still crying hard; Marcus was staring grimly through the windscreen.

‘See if you can do anything with her,’ said Will.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Think of something.’

‘You think of something.’

Fair enough, Will thought. Asking a kid to do anything at all in these circumstances was probably unreasonable.

‘How do you feel?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She’ll be OK.’

‘Yeah. I suppose so. But… that’s not the point, is it?’

Will knew it wasn’t the point, but he was surprised that Marcus had worked it out quite so quickly. For the first time it occurred to him that the boy was probably pretty bright.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Work it out for yourself.’

‘Are you worried she’ll try it again?’

‘Just shut up, all right?’

So he did, and they travelled to the hospital in as much silence as a screaming baby would allow.