‘What did you tell your mum?’ Will asked him in the car on the way over to Rachel’s place.

‘I told her you wanted me to meet your new girlfriend.’

‘And she was all right about that?’

‘No. She thinks you’re mad.’

‘I’m not surprised. Why would I take you to meet my new girlfriend?’

‘Why would you tell your new girlfriend I was your son? You can think up your own explanations next time, if mine are no good. Listen, I’ve got some questions. How much did I weigh at birth?’

‘I dunno. It was your birth.’

‘Yeah, but you should know, shouldn’t you? If you’re my dad, I mean.’

‘Surely at this stage in our relationship we’re a bit beyond birth weights, aren’t we? If you were twelve weeks old it might come up, but twelve years old…’

‘OK, so when’s my birthday?’

‘Marcus, she doesn’t suspect we’re not father and son. She’s not going to be trying to catch us out.’

‘But suppose it came up. Suppose I said, you know, Dad’s promised me a new Nintendo for my birthday, and she said to you, when’s his birthday?’

‘Why is she asking me? Why isn’t she asking you?’

‘Just suppose.’

‘OK, when’s your birthday?’

‘August the nineteenth.’

‘I’ll remember, I promise. August the nineteenth.’

‘And what’s my favourite food?’

‘Tell me,’ Will said wearily.

‘Pasta with the mushroom and tomato sauce my mum makes.’

‘Right.’

‘And where did I go the first time I went abroad?’

‘I don’t know. Grenoble.’

‘Doh,’ said Marcus scornfully. ‘Why would I want to go there? Barcelona.’

‘OK. Got it. Barcelona.’

‘And who’s my mum?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Who’s my mum?’

The question was so basic and yet so pertinent that for a moment Will was completely thrown.

‘Your mum’s your mum.’

‘So you were married to my mum and you’ve split up.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’

‘And does that bother you? Or me?’

Suddenly the absurdity of the questions got to both of them. Marcus began to giggle, a peculiar high-pitched miaow that sounded nothing like himself or any other human but proved to be extraordinarily infectious. Will launched into his own version of a giggling fit.

‘It doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?’ he said eventually.

But Marcus was unable to reply. He was still miaowing.

One sentence, the first sentence she said, was all it took to bring the whole thing, the elaborate past, present and future he had created for the two of them, crashing to the floor.

‘Hi. It’s Will and… Mark, is that right?’

‘Marcus,’ said Marcus, and nudged Will meaningfully.

‘Come in, both of you. Come and meet Ali.’

Will had remembered every single tiny detail that Rachel had offered him that first night. He knew the names of the books she had illustrated, although he wasn’t absolutely sure whether the first one was called The Way to the Woods or The Way Through the Woods—he would have to check—and her ex’s name, and where he lived, and what he did, and… It was unimaginable that he could have forgotten Ali’s name. That was one of his principal facts. That would be like forgetting when England had won the World Cup, or the name of Luke Skywalker’s real father—it just couldn’t be done, no matter how hard you tried. But she had forgotten Marcus’s name—Mark, Marcus, it was all the same to her—and it was thus perfectly clear that she hadn’t spent the last ten days in a sleepless fever of imagining and remembering and wondering. He felt crushed. He might as well give up now. These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and… and it was too late.

Rachel lived just up the road from Camden Lock, in a tall, thin house full of books and old furniture and sepia photographs of dramatic, romantic Eastern European relatives, and for a moment Will was grateful that his flat and her house would never get a chance to meet, current north London seismological conditions prevailing. Her house would be warm and welcoming, and his would be cocky and cool, and he’d be ashamed of it.

She shouted up the stairs: ‘Ali!’ Nothing. ‘ALI!’ Still nothing. She looked at Will and shrugged. ‘He’s got his headphones on. Shall we go up?’

‘He won’t mind?’ Will would have minded, when he was twelve years old, for reasons he didn’t necessarily want to remember.

Ali’s bedroom door was indistinguishable from all the other bedroom doors: no skull and crossbones, no ‘Keep Out’ signs, no hip-hop graffiti; once inside, however, there was no question but that the room belonged to a boy stuck between the equally wretched states of childhood and adolescence in early 1994. Everything was there—the Ryan Giggs poster and the Michael Jordan poster and the Pamela Anderson poster and the Super Mario stickers… A social historian of the future would probably be able to date the room to within a twenty-four-hour period. Will glanced at Marcus, who was looking bewildered. Standing Marcus in front of posters of Ryan Giggs and Michael Jordan was like taking an average twelve-year-old to look at the Tudors in the National Portrait Gallery. Ali himself was slumped in front of his computer, headphones still on, oblivious to his guests. His mother went over and tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped.

‘Oh, hi. Sorry.’ Ali stood up, and Will immediately saw that this wasn’t going to work. Ali was cool—basketball boots, baggy skatepunk trousers, shaggy grunge hair, even an earring—and his face seemed to darken when he took in Marcus’s yellow cords and hairy jumper.

‘Marcus Ali, Ali Marcus,’ said Rachel. Marcus offered his hand, and Ali took it almost satirically. ‘Ali Will, Will Ali.’ Will raised his eyebrows in Ali’s direction. He thought Ali might appreciate the understatement.

‘Do you guys want to hang out up here for a while?’ Rachel asked them.

Marcus glanced at Will and Will nodded once, while Rachel’s back was turned towards him.

‘Yeah,’ Marcus shrugged, and for a moment Will loved him, really loved him.

‘OK,’ said Ali, with even less enthusiasm.

Rachel and Will went downstairs; ten minutes later—time enough for Will to have dreamed up a whole scenario whereby the four of them took a house in Spain for the summer—they heard a door slam. Rachel went to investigate and came flying back into the sitting room seconds afterwards.

‘I’m afraid Marcus has gone home,’ she said.

Twenty-seven

Marcus had meant to try. He knew the lunch with Rachel was a big thing for Will, and he knew too that if he did well today, acted out his part, then Will might feel that he had to help him out with Ellie somehow. But this Ali kid never gave him a chance. Will and Rachel went downstairs, Ali stared at him for a few seconds and then started on him.

‘There’s no fucking way,’ was the first thing he said.

‘No?’ said Marcus, in an attempt to buy himself some time. He had obviously missed something already, although he wasn’t quite sure what.

‘I’ll tell you, if your dad goes out with my mum you’re fucking dead. Really. Dead.’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Marcus.

Ali looked at him as though he were mad.

‘I don’t care if he’s all right. I don’t want him going out with my mum. So I don’t want to see him or you round here ever again, OK?’

‘Well,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m not sure it’s really up to me.’

‘It better be. Or you’re dead.’

‘Can I have a go on the computer? What games have you got?’ Marcus knew that a change of subject wouldn’t necessarily work. It worked sometimes, but maybe not when someone was threatening to kill you.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, but… I’m not sure there’s very much I can do at the moment. We’ve come for lunch, and Will… that’s my dad, I call him Will, because, anyway… he’s talking to Rachel, that’s your mum—’