Fiona called him once more, soon after the excruciating supper; she left a message on the machine, and he didn’t answer it. Suzie called him too, and though he wanted to see her, he suspected she was ringing on Fiona’s behalf, so he was vague and non-committal. It looked to him like he’d taken the single mum thing as far as it would go, and he was preparing for a return to the life he had been living before he met Angie. Maybe it was for the best.

He went record shopping, he went clothes shopping, he played a bit of tennis, he went to the pub, he watched telly, he went to see films and bands with friends. Time units were filled effortlessly. He had even gone back to reading books in the afternoon; he was halfway through a James Ellroy thriller one Thursday, in that horrible dead dark time between Countdown and the news, when the doorbell went.

He was expecting to see someone selling J-cloths and brushes, so he found himself looking at nothing when he opened the door, because his visitor was a good foot shorter than the average hawker.

‘I’ve come to see you,’ said Marcus.

‘Oh. Right. Come in.’ He said it warmly enough, as far as he could tell, but for some reason he felt a rising tide of panic.

Marcus marched into the sitting room, sat down on the sofa and stared intently at everything.

‘You haven’t got a kid, have you?’

That was certainly one explanation for the panic.

‘Well,’ said Will, as if he were about to launch into a very long and involved story, the details of which were currently eluding him.

Marcus got up and walked around the flat.

‘Where’s your loo? I’m dying for a pee.’

‘Just down the hall there.’

While Marcus was gone, Will tried to think of a story that would account for the complete absence of anything Ned-related, but there was nothing. He could either tell Marcus that of course he had a child, and that the lack of both child and child-related paraphernalia was simply… simply something he would think of later; or he could dissolve into tears and own up to being a pathetic fantasist. He decided against the latter version.

‘You’ve only got one bedroom,’ said Marcus when he got back.

‘Have you been nosing around?’

‘Yeah. You’ve got one bedroom, you’ve got no children’s toys in the bathroom, there are no toys in here… You haven’t even got any photos of him.’

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘None. Apart from you’ve been lying to me and my mum and my mum’s friend.’

‘Who told you where I lived?’

‘I followed you home once.’

‘Where from?’

‘I saw you out wandering around and I followed you.’

This was plausible. He was often out wandering around and, in any case, he hadn’t told Suzie or Fiona or the SPAT woman where he lived, so there was no other explanation.

‘Why?’

‘Dunno. Something to do.’

‘Why don’t you just go home, Marcus?’

‘All right. But I’m going to tell my mum.’

‘Ooooh. I’m scared.’

Will could feel himself tumbling down a hill towards the kind of panicky guilt he hadn’t felt since schooldays, and it seemed natural to resort to the kind of phrases he used then. There was no explanation he could give Marcus, other than the truth—that he had invented a child so he could meet women—and the truth sounded much seedier than it was ever intended to be.

‘Go on then, off you go.’

‘I’ll do you a deal. I won’t say anything to my mum if you go out with her.’

‘Why do you want your mum to go out with someone like me?’

‘I don’t think you’re too bad. I mean, you told lies, but apart from that you seem OK. And she’s sad, and I think she’d like a boyfriend.’

‘Marcus, I can’t go out with someone just because you want me to. I’d have to like the person as well.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with her, but—’

‘You want to go out with Suzie, don’t you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about this with you.’

‘I thought so.’

‘I didn’t say anything. All I said was… Listen, I really don’t want to talk about this with you. Go home.’

‘OK. But I’ll be back.’ And off he went.

When Will had conceived this fantasy and joined SPAT, he had imagined sweet little children, not children who would be able to track him down and come to his house. He had imagined entering their world, but he hadn’t foreseen that they might be able to penetrate his. He was one of life’s visitors; he didn’t want to be visited.

Marcus wasn’t daft. Well, OK, he was daft sometimes, like with the singing, but he wasn’t stupid-daft, just brush-daft. He could see instantly that the things he knew about Will, the stuff about him not having a kid and not having an ex, were too good to give up all at once; they were worth something. If he’d gone straight home after his first visit to Will’s flat and told his mum and Suzie everything immediately, then that would have been the end of it. They would have stopped him from talking to Will, and he didn’t want that.

He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want that. He just knew that he didn’t want to spend this information straight away, in the same way that he didn’t want to spend birthday money straight away: he wanted to leave it in his pocket while he looked around, to work out what it was worth. He knew he couldn’t make Will go out with his mum if he wasn’t bothered, but he could make him do something else, maybe, something he hadn’t even thought of yet, so he started going round to Will’s house more or less every day after school to get some ideas.

The first time he went back, Will wasn’t too pleased to see him. He just stood in the doorway with his hand on the latch.

‘What?’ said Will.

‘Nothing. Thought I’d pop round.’ That made Will smile, although Marcus couldn’t see why. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What am I doing?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Watching TV.’

‘What are you watching?’

‘Countdown.’

‘What’s that?’ Marcus knew what it was. Every kid who had ever come home from school knew what it was: it was the most boring programme in the history of television.

‘A quiz show. Words and numbers.’

‘Oh. Would I like it?’ Of course he wouldn’t like it. Nobody liked it, apart from his dad’s girlfriend’s mum.

‘I’m not sure I care.’

‘I could watch it with you, if you want.’

‘That’s very nice of you, Marcus, but I usually manage on my own.’

‘I’m good at anagrams. And maths. I’d be really helpful, if you were serious about doing well.’

‘So you do know what Countdown is.’

‘Yes. I remember now. I really like it. I’ll go when it’s finished.’

Will looked at him and shook his head. ‘Oh, hell. Come in.’

Marcus was almost in anyway. He sat down on Will’s long cream sofa, kicked his shoes off and stretched himself out. It was as useless as he remembered, Countdown, but he didn’t complain or ask to watch another channel. (Will had cable, Marcus noted for future reference.) He just sat there patiently. Will didn’t do anything while the programme was on: he didn’t shout the answers at the screen, or tut when somebody got something wrong. He just smoked.

‘You need a pen and paper to do it properly,’ Marcus observed at the end.

‘Yeah, well.’

‘Do you ever do that?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why didn’t you today?’

‘I don’t know. Jesus.’

‘You could have done. I wouldn’t have minded.’

‘That’s very big of you.’

He turned the TV off with the remote and they sat in silence.

‘What do you want, Marcus? Haven’t you got any homework to do?’

‘Yeah. Do you want to help me?’

‘That wasn’t what I meant. I meant, why don’t you go home and do it?’

‘I’ll do it after supper. You shouldn’t smoke, you know.’

‘No, I know. Thank you for telling me. What time does your mum get home?’