Twenty-nine

For three or four weeks—it couldn’t have been any longer than that, but later on, when Marcus looked back on that time, it seemed like months, or years—nothing happened. He saw Will, he saw Ellie (and Zoe) at school, Will bought him some new glasses and took him to have his hair cut, he discovered through Will a couple of singers he liked who weren’t Joni Mitchell or Bob Marley, singers that Ellie had heard of and didn’t hate. It felt as though he were changing, in his own body and in his head, and then his mum started the crying thing again.

Just like before, there didn’t seem to be any reason for it. and just like before, it began slowly, with the odd snuffle after dinner, which one night turned into a long, frightening burst of sobbing, a burst that Marcus could do nothing about, no matter how many questions he asked or hugs he gave her; and then, finally, there was the breakfast crying again, and he knew for sure that things were serious and they were in trouble.

But one thing had changed. Back in the first breakfast crying time, hundreds of years ago, he was on his own; now, there were loads of people. He had Will, he had Ellie, he had… Anyway, he had two people, two friends, and that was some kind of improvement on before. He could just go up to either of them and say, ‘My mum’s at it again, ’ and they’d know what he meant, and they’d be able to say something that might make some kind of sense.

‘My mum’s at it again, ’ he said to Will on the second breakfast crying day. (He hadn’t said anything on day one, just in case it turned out to be merely a temporary depression, but when she started up again the next morning he could see he’d just been stupidly hopeful. )

‘At what? ’

Marcus was disappointed for a moment, but he hadn’t really given Will very much to go on. She could have been at anything, which was weird if you thought about it: no one could say his mum was predictable. She could have been moaning about Marcus coming round to Will’s flat again, or she could have been on about him taking up the piano, or she could have found a boyfriend that Marcus didn’t like very much (Marcus had told Will about some of the peculiar men she’d been out with since his parents had split)… It was nice, in a way, contemplating all the things he could have meant when he’d said she was at it again. He thought it made his mum seem interesting and complicated, which of course she was.

‘The crying. ’

‘Oh. ’ They were in Will’s kitchen, toasting crumpets under the grill; it was a Thursday afternoon routine they’d got into. ‘Are you worried about her? ’

‘Course. She’s just the same now as she was before. Worse. ’ That wasn’t true. Nothing could be worse than before, because before it had gone on for ages and it had all come to a head on the Dead Duck Day, but he wanted to make sure that Will knew it was serious.

‘So what are you going to do? ’

It hadn’t occurred to Marcus that he would have to do anything—partly because he hadn’t done anything before (but then, before hadn’t worked out so brilliantly, so maybe he shouldn’t use before as any kind of example), and partly because he thought Will might take over. That’s what he wanted. That was the whole point of having friends, he thought. ‘What am I going to do? What are you going to do? ’

‘What am I going to do? ’ Will laughed, and then remembered that what they were talking about wasn’t supposed to be funny. ‘Marcus, I can’t do anything. ’

‘You could talk to her. ’

‘Why should she listen to me? Who am I? Nobody. ’

‘You’re not nobody. You’re—’

‘Just because you come round here for a cup of tea after school doesn’t mean I can stop your mum from… doesn’t mean I can cheer your mum up. In fact, I know I can’t. ’

‘I thought we were friends. ’

‘Ow. Fuck. Sorry. ’ In attempting to remove a crumpet, Will had burnt his fingers. ‘Is that what we are, d’you reckon? Friends? ’ He seemed to find this funny too; at any rate, he was smiling.

‘Yeah. So what would you say we are? ’

‘Well. Friends is fine. ’

‘Why are you smiling? ’

‘It’s a bit funny, isn’t it? You and me? ’

‘I suppose so. ’ Marcus thought about it for a little while longer. ‘Why? ’

‘Because we’re such different heights. ’

‘Oh. I see. ’

‘Joke. ’

‘Ha ha. ’

Will let Marcus butter the crumpets because he loved doing it. It was much better than buttering toast, because with toast you had that thing where if the butter was too cold and hard all you could do was scrape off the brown that made toast what it was, and he hated that. With crumpets it was effortless: you just put a lump of butter on top, waited for a few seconds, then messed it about until it started to disappear into the holes. It was one of the few occasions in life where things seemed to go right every time.

‘D’you want anything on it? ’

‘Yeah. ’ He reached for the honey, put his knife in the jar and began twirling it about.

‘Listen, ’ Will said. ‘That’s right. We’re friends. That’s why I can’t do anything about your mum. ’

‘How d’you work that out? ’

‘I said it was a joke that we’re different heights, but maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s how you should look at it. I’m your mate and I’m about a foot taller than you, and that’s it. ’

‘I’m sorry, ’ Marcus said. ‘I’m not getting you. ’

‘I had a mate at school who was about a foot taller than me. He was enormous. He was six foot one when we were in the second year. ’

‘We don’t have second years. ’

‘Year whatever it is. Year eight. ’

‘So what? ’

‘I’d never have asked him to help if my mum was depressed. We used to talk about football and Mission Impossible and that was it. Say we were talking about whether, I don’t know, Peter Osgood should be playing for England, and then I said, " Oi, Phil, will you talk to my mum because she’s in tears all the time, " he’d have looked at me as if I were nuts. He was twelve. What’s he going to say to my mum? " Hello, Mrs Freeman, have you thought of tranquillizers? " ’

‘I don’t know who Peter Osgood is. I don’t know about football. ’

‘Oh, Marcus, stop being so bloody obtuse. What I’m saying is, OK, I’m your friend. I’m not your uncle, I’m not your dad, I’m not your big brother. I can tell you who Kurt Cobain is and what trainers to get, and that’s it. Understood? ’

‘Yes. ’

‘Good. ’

But on the way home Marcus remembered the end of the conversation, the way Will had said ‘Understood? ’ in a way that was supposed to tell him that the conversation was over, and he wondered whether friends did that. He didn’t think they did. He knew teachers who said that, and parents who said that, but he didn’t know any friends who said that, no matter how tall they were.

Marcus wasn’t surprised about Will, not really. If he had been asked to say who his best friend was, he’d have gone for Ellie—not just because he loved her and wanted to go out with her, but because she was nice to him, and always had been, not counting the first time he’d met her, when she’d called him a squitty little shitty snotty bastard. She hadn’t been all that nice then. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Will hadn’t ever been nice to him, what with the trainers and the crumpets and the two video games and so on, but it would be fair to say that sometimes Will didn’t look thrilled to see him, especially if he called round four or five days in a row. Ellie, on the other hand, always threw her arms around him and made a fuss of him, and that, Marcus thought, had to mean something.

Today, however, she didn’t seem terribly pleased to see him. She looked down and distracted, and she didn’t say anything, let alone do anything, when he went to see her in her classroom at breaktime. Zoe was sitting next to her, looking at her and holding her hand.

‘What’s happened? ’

‘Haven’t you heard? ’ said Zoe.

Marcus hated it when people said that to him, because he never had.

‘I don’t think so. ’

‘Kurt Cobain. ’

‘What about him? ’

‘He tried to kill himself. Took an overdose. ’

‘Is he all right? ’

‘We think so. They pumped his stomach. ’

‘Good. ’

‘Nothing’s good, ’ said Ellie.

‘No, ’ said Marcus. ‘But—’

‘He’ll do it, you know, ’ said Ellie. ‘In the end. They always do. He wants to die. It wasn’t a cry for help. He hates this world. ’

Marcus suddenly felt sick. The moment he’d walked out of Will’s flat the previous evening he’d been imagining this conversation with Ellie, and how she would cheer him up in a way that Will never could, and it wasn’t like that at all; instead, the room was beginning to turn round slowly, and all the colour was draining out of it.

‘How do you know? How do you know he wasn’t just messing about? I’ll bet you he never does anything like it again. ’

‘You don’t know him, ’ Ellie said.

‘Neither do you, ’ Marcus shouted at her. ‘He’s not even a real person. He’s just a singer. He’s just someone on a sweatshirt. It’s not like he’s anyone’s mum. ’

‘No, he’s someone’s dad, you little prat, ’ said Ellie. ‘He’s Frances Bean’s dad. He’s got a beautiful little girl and he still wants to die. So, you know. ’

Marcus did know, he thought. He turned around and ran out.

He decided to skip the next couple of lessons. If he went to the maths class, he would sit and dream and get picked on and laughed at when he attempted to answer a question that had been asked an hour or a month before, or that hadn’t been asked at all; he wanted to be on his own to think properly, without irrelevant interruptions, so he went to the boys’ toilets near the gym and shut himself in the right-hand cubicle, because it had comforting hot pipes running along the wall which you could sort of squat down on. After a few minutes someone came in and started kicking on the door.

‘Are you in there, Marcus? I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about your mum. It’s OK. She’s not like Kurt. ’

He paused for a moment, then unbolted the door and peered round it.

‘How do you know? ’

‘Because you’re right. He’s not a real person. ’

‘You’re only saying that to make me feel better. ’

‘OK, he’s a real person. But he’s a different sort of real person. ’

‘In what way? ’

‘I don’t know. He just is. He’s like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix and all those people. You know that he’s going to die, and it’ll be OK. ’

‘OK for who? Not for… what’s her name? ’

‘Frances Bean? ’

‘Yeah. Why is it OK for her? It’s not OK for her. It’s just OK for you. ’

A boy from Ellie’s year came in to use the toilet. ‘Go away, ’ said Ellie, as if she had said it a hundred times before, and as if the kid had no right to be wanting a pee in the first place. ‘We’re talking. ’ He opened his mouth to argue, realized who he was about to argue with, and went out again. ‘Can I come in? ’ Ellie said when he’d gone.

‘If there’s room. ’

They squashed up next to each other on the hot pipes, and Ellie pulled the door towards her and bolted it.

‘You think I know things, but I don’t, ’ said Ellie. ‘Not really. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I don’t know why he feels like he does, or why your mum feels like she does. And I don’t know what it feels like to be you. Pretty scary, I should think. ’

‘Yeah. ’ He started to cry, then. It wasn’t noisy crying—his eyes just filled with tears and they started to stream down his cheeks—but it was still embarrassing. He’d never thought he’d cry in front of Ellie.

She put her arm around him. ‘What I mean is, don’t listen to me. You know more than I do. You should be telling me things about it. ’

‘I don’t know what to say about it. ’

‘Let’s talk about something else, then. ’

But they didn’t talk about anything for a while. They just sat on the pipes together, moving their bottoms when they got too hot, and waited until they felt like going back out into the world.