‘What do you fancy?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s got to be Adidas, I think.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what everyone wears.’

The shoes were displayed according to manufacturer, and the Adidas section of the shop was attracting more than its fair share of shoppers.

‘Sheep,’ said Marcus as they were approaching. ‘Baaaa.’

‘Where did you get that from?’

‘That’s what my mum says when she thinks people haven’t got a mind of their own.’

Will suddenly remembered that a boy at his old school had had a mum like Fiona—not exactly like her, because it seemed to Will that Fiona was a peculiarly contemporary creation, with her seventies albums, her eighties politics and her nineties foot lotion, but certainly a sixties equivalent of Fiona. Stephen Fullick’s mother had a thing about TV, that it turned people into androids, so they didn’t have a set in the house. ‘Did you see Thund…’ Will would say every Monday morning and then remember and blush, as if the TV were a parent who had just died. And what good had that done Stephen Fullick? He was not, as far as Will was aware, a visionary poet, or a primitive painter; he was probably stuck in some provincial solicitor’s office, like everyone else from school. He had endured years of pity for no discernible purpose.

‘The whole idea of this expedition, Marcus, is that you learn to become a sheep.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course. You don’t want anyone to notice you. You don’t want to look different. Baaaa.’

Will picked out a pair of Adidas basketball boots that looked cool but relatively unshowy.

‘What do you think of them?’

‘They’re sixty pounds.’

‘Never mind how much they cost. What do you think of them?’

‘Yeah, good.’

Will grabbed an assistant and asked him to bring the right size, and Marcus stomped up and down for a while. He looked at himself in the mirror and tried to repress a smile.

‘You think you look cool, don’t you?’ said Will.

‘Yeah. Except… except now the rest of me looks all wrong.’

‘So next time we’ll make the rest of you look OK.’

Marcus went straight home afterwards, his boots stuffed into his school bag; Will walked back beaming at his own munificence. So this was what people meant by a natural high! He couldn’t recall having felt like this before, so at peace with himself, so convinced of his own self-worth. And, unbelievably, it had only cost him sixty quid! How much would he have had to pay for an equivalent unnatural high? (Probably about twenty-five quid, thinking about it, but unnatural highs were indisputably inferior.) He had made an unhappy boy temporarily happy, and there hadn’t been anything in it for him at all. He didn’t even want to sleep with the boy’s mother.

The following day Marcus turned up at Will’s door, tearful, a pair of soggy black socks where his Adidas basketball boots should have been; they’d stolen them, of course.

Marcus would have told his mum where the trainers had come from, if she’d asked, but she didn’t because she didn’t even notice he was wearing them. OK, his mum wasn’t the most observant person in the world, but the trainers seemed so big and white and peculiar and attention-seeking that Marcus felt as though he wasn’t wearing shoes at all, but something alive—a pair of rabbits, maybe.

But she noticed they had gone. Typical. She didn’t notice the rabbits, which you never see on feet, but she spotted the socks, which were only where they should be.

‘Where are your shoes?’ she shrieked when he came home. (Will had given him a lift, but it was November, and wet, and during the short walk across the pavement and up the stairs to the front door of the flats he had soaked his socks through again.) He looked at his feet, and for a moment he didn’t say anything: he toyed with the idea of acting all surprised and telling her he didn’t know, but he quickly realized she wouldn’t believe him.

‘Stolen,’ he said eventually.

‘Stolen? Why would anyone steal your shoes?’

‘Because…’ He was going to have to tell the truth, but the problem was that the truth would lead to a whole lot more questions. ‘Because they were nice ones.’

‘They were just ordinary black slip-on shoes.’

‘No, they weren’t. They were new Adidas trainers.’

‘Where did you get new Adidas trainers from?’

‘Will bought them for me.’

‘Will who? Will the guy who took us out to lunch?’

‘Yeah, Will. The bloke from SPAT. He’s sort of become my friend.’

‘He’s sort of become your friend?’

Marcus was right. She had loads more questions, except the way she asked them was a bit boring: she just repeated the last thing he said, stuck a question mark on the end of it and shouted.

‘I go round his flat after school.’

‘YOU GO ROUND HIS FLAT AFTER SCHOOL?’

Or:

‘Well, you see, he doesn’t really have a kid.’

‘HE DOESN’T REALLY HAVE A KID?’

And so on. Anyway, at the end of the question session he was in a lot of trouble, although probably not as much trouble as Will.

Marcus put his old shoes back on, and then he and his mother went straight back to Will’s flat. Fiona started raging at Will the moment they had been invited in and, at the beginning, when she was having a go at him about SPAT and his imaginary son he looked embarrassed and apologetic—he had no answers to any of her questions, so he stood there staring at the floor. But as it went on he started to get angry too.

‘OK,’ Fiona was saying. ‘Now what the hell are these little after-school tea parties about?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why would a grown man want to hang out with a twelve-year-old boy day after day?’

Will looked at her. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything.’

‘I don’t think that’s true, is it? You’re suggesting that I’ve been… fiddling with your son.’

Marcus looked at Fiona. Was that really what she was on about? Fiddling?

‘I’m simply asking why you entertain twelve-year-olds in your flat.’

Will lost his temper. He went red in the face and started shouting very loud. ‘I don’t have any fucking choice, do I? Your son comes round fucking uninvited every night. Sometimes he’s pursued by gangs of savages. I could leave him outside to take his chances, but I’ve been letting him in for his own safety. I won’t fucking bother next time. Sod the pair of you. Now, if you’ve finished, you can piss off.’

‘I haven’t finished yet, actually. Why did you buy him a pair of expensive trainers?’

‘Because… because look at him.’ They looked at him. Marcus even looked at himself.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

Will looked at her. ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? You really haven’t got a clue.’

‘About what?’

‘Marcus is being eaten alive at school, you know. They take him to pieces every single fucking day of the week, and you’re worried about where his trainers come from and whether I’m molesting him.’

Marcus suddenly felt exhausted. He hadn’t properly realized how bad things were until Will started shouting, but it was true, he really was being taken to pieces every single fucking day of the week. Up until now he hadn’t linked the days of the week in that way: each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before. Now he could see how stupid that was, and how shit everything was, and he wanted to go to bed and not get up until the weekend.

‘Marcus is doing fine,’ his mother said. At first he didn’t believe she’d said it, and then, when he’d had a chance to listen to the words ringing in his ears, he tried to find a different meaning for them. Maybe there was another Marcus? Maybe there was something else he was doing fine at, something he’d forgotten about? But of course there was no other Marcus, and he wasn’t doing fine at anything; his mum was just being blind and stupid and nuts.