But there was more than a whiff of the Freeman household in Fiona’s flat: you got that same sense of hopelessness and defeat and bewilderment and straightforward lunacy. Of course, Will had grown up with money and Marcus had none, but you didn’t need dosh to be dysfunctional. So what if Charles Freeman had killed himself with expensive malt whisky, and Fiona had tried to kill herself with National Health tranquillizers? The two of them would still have found plenty to talk about at parties.

Will didn’t like the connection he had made very much, because it meant that if he had any decency in him at all he would have to take Marcus under his wing, use his own experience of growing up with a batty parent to guide the boy through to a place of safety. He didn’t want to do that, though. It was too much work, and involved too much contact with people he didn’t understand and didn’t like, and he preferred watching Countdown on his own anyway.

But he had forgotten that he seemed to have no control over his relationship with Marcus and Fiona. On November the fucking twentieth, the day after November the fucking nineteenth, when he had more or less decided that Marcus would have to get by without his help, Fiona rang and started saying mad things down the phone.

‘Marcus doesn’t need a father, and he certainly doesn’t need a father like you,’ she said. Will was lost even before they’d started. At this point in the conversation he had contributed an admittedly guarded but otherwise entirely unprovocative, ‘Hello, how are you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Marcus seems to think he needs adult male company. A father figure. And somehow your name came up.’

‘Well, I can tell you, Fiona, I didn’t put him up to it. I don’t need junior male company, and I definitely don’t need a son figure. So, fine. You and I are in complete agreement.’

‘So you won’t see him even if he wants to see you?’

‘Why doesn’t he use his father as a father figure? Isn’t that the easiest solution, or am I being dim?’

‘His father lives in Cambridge.’

‘What, Cambridge, Australia? Cambridge, California? Presumably we’re not talking about the Cambridge just up the M11?’

‘Marcus can’t drive up the M11. He’s twelve.’

‘Hold on, hold on. You phoned up to tell me to keep out of Marcus’s way. I told you that I had no intention of getting in Marcus’s way. And now you’re telling me… What? I missed a bit somewhere.’

‘You just seem very keen to be shot of him.’

‘So you’re not telling me to leave him alone. You’re telling me to apply for custody.’

‘Are you incapable of conducting a conversation without resorting to sarcasm?’

‘Just explain to me clearly and simply, without changing your mind halfway through, what you want me to do.’

She sighed. ‘Some things are a little more complicated than that, Will.’

‘Is that what you phoned me up to tell me? Because I got the wrong end of the stick early on, I think, during the bit about how I was the most unsuitable man in the world.’

‘You’re really not very easy to deal with.’

‘So don’t deal with me!’ He was nearly shouting now. He was certainly angry. They had been talking for less than three minutes, yet he was beginning to feel as though this telephone conversation was going to be his life’s work; that once every few hours he would put the receiver down to eat and sleep and go to the toilet, and the rest of the time Fiona would be telling him one thing and then its opposite over and over again. ‘Just put the phone down! Hang up on me! I really won’t be offended!’

‘I think we need to talk about this properly, don’t you?’

‘What? What do we need to talk about properly?’

‘This whole thing.’

‘There isn’t a whole thing. There isn’t even a half thing!’

‘Are you free for a drink tomorrow night? Maybe it would be better to talk face to face. We’re not getting anywhere here.’

There was no point in fighting her. There wasn’t even any point in not fighting her. They made arrangements to meet for a drink, and it was a mark of Will’s frustration and confusion that he was able to look on the agreement of a time and a place as a resounding triumph.

Will had never been alone with Fiona; up until now Marcus had always been there, telling them when to talk, and what to talk about—apart from the trainers day, when he was kind of telling them what to talk about, even though he wasn’t saying anything. But when Will had got the drinks in—they went to a quiet pub off the Liverpool Road where they knew they would get a seat and be able to talk without competing against a juke-box, or a grunge band, or an alternative comedian—and sat down opposite Fiona, and ascertained, once again, without even meaning to, that he did not find her in the least attractive, he realized something else: he had been drinking in pubs for nearly twenty years and not once had he been to a pub with a woman in whom he had no sexual interest whatsoever. He thought again. Could that be right? OK, he’d carried on seeing Jessica, the ex, who always insisted he was missing out, after they had split up. But there had been sexual interest once upon a time, and he knew that if Jessica were ever to announce that she was looking for a discreet extra-marital affair, he would certainly apply for the job, put his name forward for consideration.

No, this was certainly a first for him, and he had no idea whether different rules applied in these situations. Obviously it would be neither appropriate nor sensible to take her by the hand and look into her eyes, or move the subject gently on to sex so that he could introduce a more flirtatious note into the proceedings. If he had no desire to sleep with Fiona, then of course there was no necessity to pretend that every single thing she said was interesting. But a strange thing happened: he was interested, mostly. Not in a well-I-never-knew-that kind of way, because even though Fiona probably knew a lot of things that Will didn’t, he was almost sure that all of them would be very dull… It was just that he was absorbed in the conversation. He listened to what she said, he thought about it, he answered. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, so why was it happening now? Was it just sod’s law—you don’t fancy someone, so they’re bound to be endlessly fascinating—or was something happening here that he should think about?

She was different today. She didn’t want to tell him what a useless human being he was, and she didn’t want to accuse him of molesting her son; it was almost as if she had decided that this was a relationship she was stuck with. Will didn’t like the implications of that.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said.

‘That’s OK.’

Will lit a cigarette, and Fiona made a face and wafted the smoke away. Will hated people who did that in places where they had no right to do so. He wasn’t going to apologize for smoking in a pub; in fact, what he was going to do was single-handedly create a fug so thick that they would be unable to see each other.

‘I was very upset when I called. When Marcus said he felt he needed some male input, I felt as though I’d been slapped round the face.’

‘I can imagine.’

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Why would anyone take the blindest bit of notice of anything Marcus said?

‘You know, it’s the first thing you think of when you split up with the father of your son, that he’s going to need a man around and so on. And then good feminist common sense takes over. But ever since Marcus has been old enough to understand we’ve talked about it, and every time he’s assured me that it doesn’t matter. And then yesterday it came right out of the blue… He’s always known how worried I am about that.’

Will didn’t want to get involved in any of this. He didn’t care whether Marcus needed a man in his life or not. Why should he? It wasn’t his business, even though he seemed to be the man in question. He hadn’t asked to be and, anyway, he was pretty sure that if Marcus did need a man, it wasn’t his sort. But listening to Fiona now, he realized that in some respects at least he understood Marcus better than she did—possibly, he conceded reluctantly, because he was a man and Fiona wasn’t, and possibly because Marcus was, in his own junior and eccentric way, a devious man. Will understood devious men.