Seventeen 4 страница

‘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.

When they arrived Fiona had already been carted off somewhere, and Suzie was sitting in the waiting room clutching a styrofoam cup. Marcus dumped the car seat and its apoplectic load down next to her.

‘So what’s happening? ’ Will only just managed to restrain himself from rubbing his hands together. He was completely absorbed in all of this—absorbed almost to the point of enjoyment.

‘I don’t know. They’re pumping her stomach or something. She was talking a little in the ambulance. She was asking after you, Marcus. ’

‘That’s nice of her. ’

‘This isn’t anything to do with you, Marcus. You know that, don’t you? I mean, you’re not the reason she… You’re not the reason she’s here. ’

‘How do you know? ’

‘I just do. ’ She said it with warmth and humour, shaking her head and ruffling Marcus’s hair, but everything about the intonation and her gestures was wrong: they belonged to other, quieter, more domestic circumstances, and though they might have been appropriate for a twelve-year-old, they were not appropriate for the oldest twelve-year-old in the world, which Marcus had suddenly become. Marcus pushed her hand away.

‘Has anyone got any change? I want to get something from the machine. ’

Will gave him a handful of silver, and he wandered off.

‘Fucking hell, ’ said Will. ‘What are you supposed to tell a kid whose mum has just tried to top herself? ’ He was merely curious, but luckily the question came out as if it were rhetorical, and therefore sympathetic. He didn’t want to sound like someone watching a really good disease-of-the-week film.

‘I don’t know, ’ said Suzie. She had Megan on her lap, and she was trying to get her to chew on a breadstick. ‘But we’ll have to try and think of something. ’

Will didn’t know if he was a part of the ‘we’ or not, but it didn’t matter one way or the other. However absorbing he was finding the evening’s entertainment, he certainly didn’t intend repeating it: this lot were just too weird.

The evening dragged on. Megan cried, then whined, then fell asleep; Marcus made repeated visits to the vending machine and came back with cans of Coke and Kit-Kats and bags of crisps. None of them talked much, although occasionally Marcus grumbled about the people waiting for treatment.

‘I hate this lot. They’re drunk, most of them. Look at them. They’ve all been fighting. ’

It was true. More or less everyone in the waiting room was some kind of deadbeat—a vagrant, or a drunk, or a junkie, or just mad. The few people who were there through sheer bad luck (there was a woman who had been bitten by a dog and was waiting for a shot, and a mother with a little girl who looked as though she might have broken her ankle in a fall) looked anxious, pale, drained; tonight was really something out of the ordinary for them. But the rest had simply transferred the chaos of their daily life from one place to another. It made no difference to them if they were roaring at passers-by in the street or abusing nurses in a hospital casualty department—it was all just business.

‘My mum’s not like these people. ’

‘No one said she was, ’ said Suzie.

‘Supposing they think she is, though? ’

‘They won’t. ’

‘They might. She took drugs, didn’t she? She came in with sick all over her, didn’t she? How would they know the difference? ’

‘Of course they’ll know the difference. And if they don’t, we’ll tell them. ’

Marcus nodded, and Will could see that Suzie had said the right thing: who could believe that Fiona was any kind of derelict with friends like these? For once, Will thought, Marcus was asking the wrong question. The right question was: what the hell difference did it make? Because if the only things that separated Fiona from the rest of them were Suzie’s reassuring car keys and Will’s expensive casual clothes, then she was in trouble anyway. You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn’t force your way into someone else’s, because then it wouldn’t be a bubble any more. Will bought his clothes and his CDs and his cars and his Heal’s furniture and his drugs for himself, and himself alone; if Fiona couldn’t afford these things, and didn’t have an equivalent bubble of her own, then that was her lookout.

Right on cue, a woman came over to see them—not a doctor or a nurse, but somebody official.

‘Hello. Did you come in with Fiona Brewer? ’

‘Yes. I’m her friend Suzie, and this is Will, and this is Fiona’s son Marcus. ’

‘Right. We’re going to be keeping Fiona in overnight, and obviously we don’t want you to have to stay. Is there somewhere Marcus could go? Is there anyone else at home, Marcus? ’

Marcus shook his head.

‘He’ll be staying with me tonight, ’ said Suzie.

‘OK, but I’ll have to get his mother’s permission for that, ’ said the woman.

‘Sure. ’

‘That’s where I want to go, ’ Marcus said to the woman’s retreating back. She turned round and smiled. ‘Not that anyone cares. ’

‘Of course they do, ’ said Suzie.

‘You reckon? ’

The woman came back a couple of minutes later, smiling and nodding as if Fiona had given birth to a baby, rather than given permission for an overnight stay.

‘That’s fine. She says thank you. ’

‘Great. Come on, then, Marcus. You can help me open the sofa bed. ’

Suzie put Megan back into the car seat and they made their way out to the car park.

‘I’ll see you, ’ said Will. ‘I’ll call you. ’

‘I hope you get things sorted out with Ned and Paula. ’

Again the momentary blankness: Ned and Paula, Ned and Paula… Ah, yes, his ex-wife and his son.

‘Oh, it’ll be fine. Thanks. ’ He kissed Suzie on the cheek, punched Marcus on the arm, waved to Megan and went off to hail a cab. It had all been very interesting, but he wouldn’t want to do it every night.

Eleven

It was there, on the kitchen table. He was just putting the flowers in the vase, like Suzie had told him to do, when he spotted it. Everyone had been in such a hurry and a mess last night that they hadn’t noticed. He picked it up and sat down.

Dear Marcus,

I think that whatever I say in this letter, you’ll end up hating me. Or maybe end up is a bit too final: perhaps when you’re older, you’ll feel something else other than hate. But there’s certainly going to be a long period of time when you’ll think I did a wrong, stupid, selfish, unkind thing. So I wanted to give myself a chance to explain, even if it doesn’t do any good.

Listen. A big part of me knows that I’m doing a wrong, stupid, selfish, unkind thing. Most of me, in fact. The trouble is that it’s not the part that controls me any more. That’s what’s so horrible about the sort of illness I’ve had for the last few months—it just doesn’t listen to anything or anybody else. It just wants to do its own thing. I hope you never get to find out what that’s like.

None of this is anything to do with you. I’ve loved being your mum, always, even though it’s been hard for me and I’ve found it difficult sometimes. And I don’t know why being your mum isn’t enough for me, but it isn’t. And it isn’t that I’m so unhappy I don’t want to live any more. That’s not what it feels like. It feels morelike I’m tired and bored and the party’s gone on too long and I want to go home. I feel flat and there doesn’t seem to be anything to look forward to, so I’d rather call it a day. How can I feel like that when I’ve got you? I don’t know. I do know that if I kept it all going just for your sake, you wouldn’t thank me, and I reckon that once you’ve got over this things will be better for you than they were before. Really. You can go to your dad’s, or Suzie has always said she’ll look after you if anything happened to me.

I’ll watch out for you if I am able to. I think I will be. I think that when something happens to a mother, she’s allowed to do that, even if it’s her fault. I don’t want to stop writing this, but I can’t think of any reason to keep it going.

Love you,

Mum.

He was still sitting at the kitchen table when she came back from the hospital with Suzie and Megan. She could see straight away what he had found.

‘Shit, Marcus. I’d forgotten about it. ’

‘You forgot? You forgot a suicide letter? ’

‘Well, I didn’t think I’d ever have to remember it, did I? ’ She laughed at that. She actually laughed. That was his mother. When she wasn’t crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

‘Jesus, ’ said Suzie. ‘Is that what it was? I shouldn’t have left him here before I went to get you. I thought it would be nice if he tidied the place up. ’

‘Suzie, I don’t honestly think you’re to blame for anything. ’

‘I should have thought. ’

‘Maybe Marcus and I ought to have a little talk on our own. ’

‘Of course. ’

Suzie and his mum hugged, and Suzie came over to give him a kiss.

‘She’s fine, ’ Suzie whispered, loud enough for his mum to hear. ‘Don’t worry about her. ’

When Suzie had gone, Fiona put the kettle on and sat down at the table with him.

‘Are you angry with me? ’

‘What do you think? ’

‘Because of the letter? ’

‘Because of the letter, because of what you did, everything. ’

‘I can understand that. I don’t feel the same as I did on Saturday, if that’s any help. ’

‘What, it’s all just gone away, all that? ’

‘No, but… at the moment I feel better. ’

‘At the moment’s no good to me. I can see that you’re better at the moment. You’ve just put the kettle on. But what happens when you’ve finished your tea? What happens when I go back to school? I can’t be here to watch you all the time. ’

‘No, I know. But we’ve got to look after each other. It shouldn’t all be one way. ’

Marcus nodded, but he was in a place where words didn’t matter. He had read her letter, and he was no longer very interested in what she said; it was what she did, and what she was going to do, that counted. She wasn’t going to do anything today. She’d drink her tea, and tonight they’d get a takeaway and watch TV, and they would feel as though it were the beginning of a different, better time. But that time would run out, and then there would be something else. He had always trusted his mother—or rather, he had never not trusted her. But for him, things would never be the same again.

Two wasn’t enough, that was the trouble. He’d always thought that two was a good number, and that he’d hate to live in a family of three or four or five. But he could see the point of that now: if someone dropped off the edge, you weren’t left on your own. How could you make a family grow if there was no one around to, you know, help it along? He was going to have to find a way.

‘I’ll make the tea, ’ he said brightly. At least now he had something to work on.

They decided to have a quiet, normal evening. They ordered a delivery curry, and Marcus went to the newsagent’s to get a video, but it took him ages: everything he looked at seemed to have something about death in it, and he didn’t want to watch anything about death. He didn’t want his mum to watch anything about death, come to that, although he wasn’t sure why. What did he think would happen if his mum saw Steven Seagal blast some guys in the head with a gun? That wasn’t the kind of death they were trying not to think about tonight. The kind of death they were trying not to think about was the quiet, sad, real kind, not the noisy, who-cares kind. (People thought that kids couldn’t tell the difference, but they could, of course. ) In the end he got Groundhog Day, which he was pleased with, because it was new on video and it said it was funny on the back of the box.

They didn’t start watching it until the food arrived. Fiona served it up, and Marcus wound the tape on past the trailers and adverts so that they would be ready to go the moment they took their first bite of poppadum. The back of the box was right: it was a funny film. This guy was stuck in the same day, over and over again, although they didn’t really explain how that happened, which Marcus thought was weak—he liked to know how things worked. Maybe it was based on a true story, and there had been this guy who was stuck in the same day over and over again, and he didn’t know himself how it had happened. This alarmed Marcus. Supposing he woke up tomorrow and it was yesterday again, with the duck and the hospital and everything? Best not to think about it.

But then the film changed, and became all about suicide. This guy was so fed up with being stuck in the same day over and over for hundreds of years that he tried to kill himself. It was no good, though. Whatever he did, he still woke up the next morning (except it wasn’t the next morning. It was this morning, the morning he always woke up on).

Marcus was really angry. They hadn’t said anything about suicide on the video box, and yet this film had a bloke trying to kill himself about three thousand times. OK, he didn’t succeed, but that didn’t make it funny. His mum hadn’t succeeded either, and nobody felt like making a comedy film about it. Why wasn’t there any warning? There must be loads of people who wanted to watch a good comedy just after they’d tried to kill themselves. Supposing they all chose this one?

At first Marcus was quiet, so quiet that he almost stopped breathing. He didn’t want his mum to hear his breaths, in case she thought they were noisier than usual because he was upset. But then he couldn’t stand it any more, and he turned the film off with the remote.

‘What’s up? ’

‘I just wanted to watch this. ’ He gestured at the TV screen, where a man with a French accent and a chef’s hat was trying to teach one of the Gladiators how to cut open a fish and take its guts out. It didn’t look like the sort of programme Marcus usually watched, especially as he hated cooking. And fish. And he wasn’t very keen on Gladiators, either.

‘This? What do you want to watch this for? ’

‘We’re doing cooking at school, and they said we had to watch this for homework. ’

‘Au revoir, ’ said the man in the chef’s hat. ‘See you, ’ said the Gladiator. They waved and the programme ended.

‘So you’ll be in trouble tomorrow, ’ said his mum. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had to watch this tonight? ’

‘I forgot. ’

‘Anyway, we can watch the rest of the film now. ’

‘Do you really want to? ’

‘Yes. It’s funny. Don’t you think it’s funny? ’

‘It’s not very realistic, is it? ’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Marcus! You make me watch things where people jump from exploding helicopters on to the tops of trains, and you complain about realism. ’

‘Yeah, but you can see them doing it. You can actually see them doing those things. You don’t know for sure he’s waking up on the same day over and over again, because they can just pretend that, can’t they? ’

‘You do talk some rot. ’

This was great. He was trying to save his mum from watching a man committing suicide for hours on end, and she was calling him an idiot.

‘Mum, you must know why I turned it off really? ’

‘No. ’

He couldn’t believe it. Surely she must be thinking about it all the time, like he was?

‘Because of what he was trying to do. ’

She looked at him.

‘I’m sorry, Marcus, I’m still not with you. ’

‘The… thing. ’

‘Marcus, you’re an articulate boy. You can do better than this. ’

She was driving him mad. ‘He’s spent the last five minutes trying to kill himself. Like you did. I didn’t want to watch it, and I didn’t want you to watch it. ’

‘Ah. ’ She reached for the remote control and turned the TV off. ‘I’m sorry. I was being pretty thick, wasn’t I? ’

‘Yes. ’

‘I just never made the connection at all. Incredible. God. ’ She shook her head. ‘I’m going to have to get my act together. ’

Marcus was starting to lose track of his mother. Right up until recently he had always thought she was… not perfect, because they had arguments, and she didn’t let him do things that he wanted to do, and so on, but he had never spent any time thinking she was stupid, or mad, or wrong. Even when they had arguments, he could see what she was on about: she was just saying the things that mothers were supposed to say. But at the moment, he wasn’t getting her at all. He hadn’t understood the crying, and now, when he had been expecting her to be twice as miserable as she had been before, she was completely normal. He was beginning to doubt himself. Wasn’t trying to kill yourself a really big deal? Didn’t you have long talks about it afterwards, and tears, and hugs? Apparently not. You just sat on the sofa and watched videos and acted as though nothing had happened.

‘Shall I put the film back on? ’ he asked her. This was like a test. The old mum would know he didn’t mean that.

‘Do you mind? ’ she said. ‘I’d like to see how it turns out. ’

Twelve

Filling days had never really been a problem for Will. He might not have been proud of his lifelong lack of achievement, but he was proud of his ability to stay afloat in the enormous ocean of time he had at his disposal; a less resourceful man, he felt, might have gone under and drowned.

The evenings were fine; he knew people. He didn’t know how he knew them, because he’d never had colleagues, and he never spoke to girlfriends when they became ex-girlfriends. But he had managed to pick people up along the way—guys who once worked in record shops that he frequented, guys he played football or squash with, guys from a pub quiz team he once belonged to, that kind of thing—and they sort of did the job. They wouldn’t be much use in the unlikely event of some kind of suicidal depression, or the even more unlikely event of a broken heart, but they were pretty good for a game of pool, or a drink and a curry.

No, the evenings were OK; it was the days that tested his patience and ingenuity, because all of these people were at work—unless they were on paternity leave, like John, father of Barney and Imogen, and Will didn’t want to see them anyway. His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.

Occasionally, when the mood took him, he applied for jobs advertised in the media pages of the Guardian. He liked the media pages, because he felt he was qualified to fill most of the vacancies on offer. How hard could it be to edit the building industry’s in-house journal, or run a small arts workshop, or write copy for holiday brochures? Not very hard at all, he imagined, so he doggedly wrote letters explaining to potential employers why he was the man they were looking for. He even enclosed a CV, although it only just ran on to a second page. Rather brilliantly, he thought, he had numbered these two pages ‘one’ and ‘three’, thus implying that page two, the page containing the details of his brilliant career, had got lost somewhere. The idea was that people would be so impressed by the letter, so dazzled by his extensive range of interests, that they would invite him in for an interview, where sheer force of personality would carry him through. Actually, he had never heard from anybody, although occasionally he received a standard rejection letter.

The truth was he didn’t mind. He applied for these jobs in the same spirit that he had volunteered to work in the soup kitchen, and in the same spirit that he had become the father of Ned: it was all a dreamy alternative reality that didn’t touch his real life, whatever that was, at all. He didn’t need a job. He was OK as he was. He read quite a lot; he saw films in the afternoon; he went jogging; he cooked nice meals for himself and his friends; he went to Rome and New York and Barcelona every now and again, when boredom became particularly acute… He couldn’t say that the need for change burned within him terribly fiercely.

In any case, this morning he was somewhat distracted by the curious events of the weekend. For some reason—possibly because he encountered real drama very rarely in the course of an average twenty-time-unit quick-crossword-on-the-toilet day—he kept being drawn back to thinking about Marcus and Fiona, and wondering how they were. He had also, in the absence of a Media Guardian advertisement that had really grabbed him, begun to entertain strange and probably unhealthy notions of entering their lives in some way. Maybe Fiona and Marcus needed him more than Suzie did. Maybe he could really… do something with those two. He could take an avuncular interest in them, give their lives a bit of shape and gaiety. He would bond with Marcus, take him somewhere every now and again—to Arsenal, possibly. And perhaps Fiona would like a nice dinner somewhere, or a night out at the theatre.

Mid-morning he phoned Suzie. Megan was having a nap, and she was just sitting down to a cup of coffee.

‘I was wondering how things are up the road, ’ he said.

‘Not too bad, I think. She hasn’t gone back to work, but Marcus went to school today. How about you? ’

‘Fine, thanks. ’

‘You sound pretty cheerful. Did things get sorted out? ’

If he sounded cheerful, then obviously they must have done. ‘Oh, yes. It’s all blown over now. ’

‘And Ned’s OK? ’

‘Yes, he’s fine. Aren’t you, Ned? ’ Why had he done that? It was a completely unnecessary embellishment. Why couldn’t he just leave well alone?

‘Good. ’

‘Listen, do you think there’s any way I could help with Marcus and Fiona? Take Marcus out or something? ’

‘Would you like to? ’

‘Of course. He seemed…’ What? What did Marcus seem, other than slightly batty and vaguely malevolent? ‘He seemed nice. We got on OK. Maybe I could, you know, build on the other day. ’

‘Why don’t I ask Fiona? ’

‘Thanks. And it’d be nice to see you and Megan again soon. ’

‘I’m still dying to meet Ned. ’

‘We’ll fix something up. ’

So, there it was then: an enormous, happy, extended family. True, this happy family included an invisible two-year-old, a barmy twelve-year-old and his suicidal mother; but sod’s law dictated that this was just the sort of family you were bound to end up with when you didn’t like families in the first place.

Will bought a Time Out and read it from cover to cover in an attempt to find something that a twelve-year-old boy might want to do on a Saturday afternoon—or rather, something that might make it clear to Marcus that he was not dealing with your average, desperately unhip thirty-six-year-old here. He started with the children’s section, but soon realized that Marcus was not a brass-rubbing sort of a child, or a puppet theatre sort of a child, or even a child at all; at twelve, his childhood was over. Will tried to remember what he liked doing at that age, but could come up with nothing, although he could remember what he hated doing. What he hated doing were things that adults made him do, however well-intentioned those adults were. Maybe the coolest thing he could do for Marcus was let him run wild on Saturday—give him some money, take him to Soho and leave him there. He had to admit, though, that while this might score points on the coolometer, it didn’t do quite so well on the responsible in loco parentis scale: if Marcus were to embark on a career as a rent-boy and his mother never saw him again, Will would end up feeling responsible and possibly even regretful.

Films? Video arcades? Ice-skating? Museums? Art galleries? Brent Cross? McDonald’s? Jesus, how did anyone get through childhood without falling into a slumber lasting several years? If he were forced to relive his childhood, he would go to bed when Blue Peter had ceased to exert its allure and ask to be woken up when it was time to sign on. It was no wonder young people were turning to crime and drugs and prostitution. They were turning to crime and drugs and prostitution simply because they were on the menu now, an exciting, colourful and tasty new range of options that he had been denied. The real question was why his generation had been quite so apathetically, unenterprisingly law-abiding—especially given the lack of even the token sops to teens, the Australian soaps and the chicken dippers, that passed for youthful entertainment in contemporary society.

He was in the process of wondering whether the British Gas Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition could possibly be any duller than it sounded, when the telephone rang.

‘Hi, Will, it’s Marcus. ’

‘Hi. Funnily enough, I was just wondering—’

‘Suzie said you want to take me out for the day somewhere. ’

‘Yeah, well, that’s just—’

‘I’ll come if my mum can come. ’

‘I’m sorry? ’

‘I’ll come if you can take my mum too. And she hasn’t got any money, so either we’ll have to go somewhere cheap or you’ll have to treat us. ’

‘Right. Hey, say what you mean, Marcus. Don’t beat around the bush. ’

‘I don’t know how else to say it. We’re broke. You’re not. You pay. ’

‘It’s OK. I was joking. ’

‘Oh. I didn’t get it. ’

‘No. Listen, I’m quite safe, you know. I thought it might be better just you and me. ’

‘Why? ’

‘Give your mum a break? ’

‘Yeah, well. ’

Suddenly, belatedly, he got it. Giving Marcus’s mum a break was what they had been doing last weekend; she had spent the leisure time tipping a bottle of pills down her throat and having her stomach pumped.

‘I’m sorry, Marcus. I was being dim. ’

‘Yeah. ’

‘Of course your mum can come. That would be great. ’

‘We haven’t got a car either. You’ll have to bring yours. ’

‘Fine. ’

‘You can bring your little boy if you like. ’

He laughed. ‘Thanks. ’

‘That’s OK, ’ Marcus said generously. ‘It’s only fair. ’ Sarcasm, Will was beginning to see, was a language that Marcus found peculiarly baffling, which as far as Will was concerned meant it was absolutely irresistible.

‘He’ll be with his mum again on Saturday. ’

‘Fine. Come round about half-past twelve or something. You remember where we live? Flat 2, 31 Craysfield Road, Islington, London N1 2SF. ’

‘England, the world, the universe. ’

‘Yeah, ’ Marcus said blankly—simple confirmation for a simpleton.

‘Right. See you then. ’

In the afternoon Will went out to buy a car seat in Mothercare. He had no intention of filling his whole flat with cots and potties and high chairs, but if he was going to start ferrying people around at weekends, he felt he should at least make some concession to Ned’s reality.

‘That’s sexist, you know, ’ he said to the assistant smugly.

‘Sorry? ’

‘Mothercare. What about the fathers? ’

She smiled politely.

‘Fathercare, ’ he added, just in case she was missing his point.

‘You’re the first person ever to say that. ’

‘Really? ’

‘No. ’ She laughed. He felt like Marcus.

‘Anyway. How can I help you? ’

‘I’m looking for a car seat. ’

‘Yes. ’ They were in the car-seat section. ‘What make are you looking for? ’

‘Dunno. Anything. The cheapest. ’ He laughed matily. ‘What do most people get? ’

‘Well. Not the cheapest. They’re usually worried about safety. ’

‘Ah. Yes. ’ He stopped laughing. Safety was a serious business. ‘Not much point in saving a few quid if he ends up through the windscreen, is there? ’

In the end—possibly to over-compensate for his previous callousness—he bought the most expensive car seat in the store, an enormous padded bright blue contraption that looked as though it might last Ned until he was a father himself.

‘He’ll love it, ’ he said to the assistant as he handed over his credit card.

‘It looks nice now, but he’ll mess it up soon enough with his biscuits and crisps and what have you. ’

Will hadn’t thought about his biscuits and crisps and what have you, so on the way home he stopped off for some chocolate chip cookies and a couple of bags of cheese and onion, squashed everything up, and sprinkled the crumbs generously over his new purchase.

Thirteen

Contrary to what he told Will, Marcus wasn’t really bothered about leaving his mum on her own. He knew that if she did try anything again it wouldn’t be for a while, because right now she was still in this weird, calm mood. But telling Will that he wanted his mum to come with them was a way of getting her and Will together, and after that, he reckoned, it should be easy. His mum was pretty, and Will seemed quite well off, they could go and live with Will and his kid, and then there’d be four of them, and four was twice as good as two. And maybe, if they wanted to, they could have a baby. His mum wasn’t too old. She was thirty-eight. You could have a baby when you were thirty-eight. So then there would be five of them, and it wouldn’t matter quite so much if one of them died. Well, it would matter, of course it would matter, but at least it wouldn’t leave somebody, him or his mum or Will or his little boy, completely on their own. Marcus didn’t even know whether he liked Will or not, but that didn’t come into it any more; he could see he wasn’t bad, or a drunk, or violent, so he would have to do.