‘She’s all right, thanks,’ Marcus said, in a way that suggested she was always all right.

‘No, you know—’

‘Yeah, I know. No, nothing like that.’

‘Does it still bother you?’

He’d never talked about it since the night it happened, and even then he’d never said what he felt. What he felt, all the time, every single day, was a horrible fear. In fact, the main reason he came round to Will’s after school was that he was able to put off going back to the flat; he could no longer climb the stairs at home without looking at his feet and remembering the Dead Duck Day. By the time he got to the bit where he had to put his key in the lock, his heart was thumping in his chest and his arms and his legs, and when he saw his mum watching the news or cooking or preparing work on the dining table, it was all he could do not to cry, or be sick, or something.

‘A bit. When I think about it.’

‘How often do you think about it?’

‘I dunno.’ All the time, all the time, all the time. Could he say that to Will? He didn’t know. He couldn’t say it to his mum, he couldn’t say it to his dad, he couldn’t say it to Suzie; they’d all make too much of a fuss. His mum would get upset, Suzie would want to talk about it, his dad would want him to move back to Cambridge… he didn’t need that. So why tell anyone anything? What was the point? All he wanted was a promise from someone, anyone, that it wouldn’t happen again, ever, and no one could do that.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Will. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say that in front of you, should I?’

‘It’s OK. People say it at school all the time.’

And that was it. That was all Will said. ‘Fucking hell.’ Marcus didn’t know why Will had sworn like that, but Marcus liked it; it made him feel better. It was serious, it wasn’t too much and it made him see that he wasn’t being pathetic to get so scared.

‘You might as well stay for Neighbours now,’ Will said. ‘Otherwise you’ll miss the beginning.’ Marcus never watched Neighbours, and didn’t know how Will had got the idea that he did, but he stayed anyway. He felt he should. They watched in silence, and when the theme music started up, Marcus said thank you politely and went home.

Will found himself working Marcus’s visits into the fabric of his day. This wasn’t difficult to do, since the fabric of his day was tatty, and filled with any number of large and accommodating holes, but even so, he could have filled them with other, easier things, like more shopping, or more afternoon cinema visits; nobody could argue that Marcus was the equivalent of a crap Steve Martin film and a sackful of liquorice allsorts. It wasn’t that he behaved badly when he came round, because he didn’t, and it wasn’t that he was hard to talk to, because he wasn’t. Marcus was difficult simply because he frequently gave the impression that he was merely stopping off on this planet on his way to somewhere else, somewhere he might fit in better. Periods of blankness, when he seemed to disappear into his own head completely, were followed by periods when he seemed to be trying to compensate for these absences, and would ask question after question.

Once or twice Will decided he couldn’t face it and went shopping or to the cinema; but most of the time he was in at four-fifteen, waiting for the buzzer—sometimes because he couldn’t be bothered to go out, sometimes because he felt he owed Marcus something. What and why he owed him he didn’t know, but he could see he was serving some purpose in the kid’s life at the moment, and as he served no purpose in anybody else’s he was hardly going to die of compassion fatigue. It was still a bit of a drag, though, having some kid inflict himself on you every afternoon. Will would be relieved when Marcus found a purpose to life somewhere else.

On the third or fourth visit he asked Marcus about Fiona, and ended up wishing he hadn’t, because it was quite clear that the boy was messed up about it. Will couldn’t blame him, but couldn’t think of anything to say that would be of even the smallest consolation or value, so he ended up simply swearing sympathetically and, given Marcus’s age, inappropriately. Will wouldn’t make that mistake again. If Marcus wanted to talk about his suicidal mother, he could do it with Suzie, or a counsellor, or someone like that, someone capable of something more than an obscenity.

The thing was, Will had spent his whole life avoiding real stuff. He was, after all, the son and heir of the man who wrote ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’. Santa Claus, whose existence most adults had real cause to doubt, bought him everything he wore and ate and drank and sat on and lived in; it could reasonably be argued that reality was not in his genes. He liked watching real stuff on EastEnders and The Bill, and he liked listening to Joe Strummer and Curtis Mayfield and Kurt Cobain singing about real stuff, but he’d never had real stuff sitting on his sofa before. No wonder, then, that once he’d made it a cup of tea and offered it a biscuit he didn’t really know what to do with it.

Sometimes they managed conversations about Marcus’s life that skirted round the twin disasters of school and home.

‘My dad’s stopped drinking coffee,’ Marcus suddenly said one evening after Will had complained of caffeine poisoning (an occupational hazard, he supposed, of those with no occupation).

Will had never really thought about Marcus’s father. Marcus seemed so much a product of his mother that the idea of a father seemed almost incongruous.

‘What does he do, your dad?’

‘He works for Cambridge Social Services.’

That figured, Will thought. All of these people came from another country, a country full of things that Will knew nothing about and had no use for, like music therapists and housing officers and health-food shops with noticeboards and aromatherapy oils and brightly coloured sweaters and difficult European novels and feelings. Marcus was the fruit of their loins.

‘What does he do for them?’

‘I dunno. He doesn’t get much money, though.’

‘Do you see him often?’

‘Quite often. Some weekends. Half-terms. He’s got a girlfriend called Lindsey. She’s nice.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you want me to say more about him?’ Marcus asked helpfully. ‘I will if you want.’

‘Do you want to say more about him?’

‘Yeah. We don’t talk about him at home much.’

‘What do you want to say?’

‘I dunno. I could tell you what car he’s got, and whether he smokes.’

‘OK, does he smoke?’ Will was no longer thrown by Marcus’s somewhat eccentric conversational patterns.

‘No. Given up,’ Marcus said triumphantly, as if he had lured Will into a trap.

‘Ah.’

‘It was hard, though.’

‘I’ll bet. Do you miss your dad?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you know. Do you… I don’t know… do you miss him? You understand what that means.’

‘I see him. How can I miss him?’

‘Do you wish you saw him more than you do?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. That’s all right, then.’

‘Can I have another Coke?’

Will didn’t understand at first why Marcus had introduced the subject of his father, but clearly there was a value in talking about something that didn’t remind Marcus of the awful messes that surrounded him. The triumph over nicotine addiction wasn’t Marcus’s triumph, exactly, but in a life that was at the moment decidedly triumph-free it was the closest he had come for a while.

Will could see how sad this was, but he could also see that it wasn’t his problem. No problem was his problem. Very few people were in a position to say they had no problems, but then, that wasn’t his problem either. Will didn’t see this as a source of shame, but as a cause for wild and raucous celebration; to reach the age he had without encountering any serious difficulties seemed to him a record worth preserving, and though he didn’t mind giving Marcus the odd can of Coke, he wasn’t about to embroil himself in the sorry dog’s dinner that was Marcus’s life. Why would he want to do that?