‘Fiona must have things like that.’

‘Yeah, well. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like Fiona’s getting the breaks. You need them too.’

Was that really all there was to it? Probably not, Will thought, on balance. There were probably all sorts of things missing—stuff about how depression made you tired of everything, tired of everything no matter how much you loved it; and stuff about loneliness, and panic, and plain bewilderment. But Rachel’s simple positivity was something to be going on with and, in any case, the conversation about the point created a point of its own, because there was this pause, and Rachel looked at him, and that was when they started kissing.

‘Why don’t I talk to her?’ said Rachel. They were the first words spoken afterwards, although there had been a bit of talking during, and for a moment Will didn’t understand what she meant at all: he was trying to trace it back to something that had taken place in the previous thirty minutes, a half-hour that had left him feeling a bit shaky and almost tearful, and had led him to question his previous conviction that sex was some sort of fantastic carnal alternative to drink, drugs and a great night out, but nothing much more than that.

‘You? She doesn’t know you.’

‘I don’t see why that would matter. Might even help. And maybe you’d get the hang of it, if I showed you how. It’s not so bad.’

‘OK.’ There was something in Rachel’s voice that Will couldn’t quite isolate, but he didn’t want to think about Fiona just at that moment, so he didn’t try very hard. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so happy.

Thirty-one

Marcus was finding it hard to get used to the idea that winter was over. Pretty much everything Marcus had experienced in London had taken place in the dark and the wet (there must have been a few light evenings right at the beginning of the school year, but so much had happened since that he no longer had any recollection of them), and now he was able to walk home from Will’s place in the late afternoon sunshine. It was hard not to feel that everything was OK the first week after the clocks had gone forward; it was ridiculously easy to believe that his mum would get better, that he’d suddenly age three years and suddenly get cool so that Ellie would like him, that he’d score the winning goal for the school football team and become the most popular person in school.

But that was stupid, in the same way that star signs were stupid, in his opinion. The clocks had gone forward for everybody, not just him, and there was no way that every depressed mother was going to cheer up, there was no way that every kid in Britain was going to score the winning goal for the school football team—especially every kid in Britain who hated football and didn’t know which end of a ball to kick—and there was certainly no way that every single twelve-year-old was going to become fifteen overnight. The chances of it happening to even one of them were pretty slim, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be Marcus, knowing his luck. It would be some other twelve-year-old at some other school who wasn’t in love with someone three years older than him, and who therefore wouldn’t even care very much. The injustice of the scene that Marcus had just pictured made him angry, and he marked his return home by slamming the door in a temper.

‘Have you been round to Will’s?’ his mum asked. She looked OK. Maybe one of the clocks-forward wishes had come true.

‘Yeah. I wanted to…’ He still felt he should come up with reasons for why he went round, and he still couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘I don’t care. Your dad’s hurt himself. You’ve got to go up and see him. He fell off a window-ledge.’

‘I’m not going while you’re like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like crying all the time.’

‘I’m OK. Well, I’m not OK, but I’m not going to do anything. Promise.’

‘Is he really bad?’

‘He’s broken his collar bone. And he’s a bit concussed.’

He fell off a window-ledge. No wonder his mum had cheered up.

‘What was he doing on a window-ledge?’

‘Some sort of DIY thing. Painting, or grouting, or one of those Scrabble words. For the first time ever. That’ll teach him a lesson.’

‘And why do I have to go up?’

‘He was asking for you. I think he’s a bit doolally at the moment.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh, Marcus, I’m sorry, that isn’t why he’s been asking for you. I just meant… I think he’s feeling a bit pathetic. Lindsey said he was quite lucky it wasn’t worse, so maybe he’s having this big think about his life.’

‘He can piss off.’

‘Marcus!’

But Marcus didn’t want an argument about where and why he had learnt to swear; he wanted to sit in his room and sulk, and that’s exactly what he did.

He’s having this big think about his life… That had made Marcus so angry, when his mum had told him, and now he was trying to work out why. He was quite good at working things out when he wanted to: he had an old bean bag in his room, and he sat on it and stared at the wall where he had stuck up some interesting stories out of the newspaper. ‘MAN FALLS FIVE THOUSAND FEET AND LIVES’; ‘DINOSAURS MAY HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT BY METEOR.’ Those were the sorts of things that made you have a big think about your life, not falling off a window-ledge while you were pretending to be a proper dad. Why had he never had a big think before, when he wasn’t falling off a window-ledge? Over the last year or so it seemed like everyone had been having big thinks, apart from his father. His mum, for example, never did anything else other than have big thinks, which was probably why everyone had to worry about her all the time. And why did he only want to see his son when he’d broken his collar bone? Marcus couldn’t remember ever having come home before and his mum telling him to get on the train to Cambridge because his dad was desperate. All those hundreds and hundreds of days when his collar bone was all right, Marcus had heard nothing.

He went downstairs to see his mother.

‘I’m not going,’ he said to her. ‘He makes me sick.’

It wasn’t until the next day, when he was talking to Ellie about the window-ledge, that he began to change his mind about going to see his dad. They were in an empty classroom during the morning break, although it hadn’t been empty at first: when Marcus had told her he wanted a chat, she’d taken his hand, led him inside, and scared off the half-dozen kids messing about in there, kids she didn’t know but who seemed perfectly prepared to believe that Ellie would follow through with the terrible threats she was making. (Why did that happen? he wondered. She wasn’t much taller than him, so how did she get away with this stuff? Maybe if he started to wear that sort of eye make-up and cut his own hair he’d be able to make people scared of him, too, but there would still be something missing.)

‘You should go and see him. Tell him what you think of him. I would. Jerk. I’ll come with you, if you like. Give him what for.’ She laughed, and though Marcus heard her he had already drifted off by then. He was thinking about how nice it would be to have a whole hour on a train with Ellie, just the two of them; and then he was thinking how great it would be if he let Ellie loose on his dad. Ellie was like a guided missile in school, and sometimes it felt as though she were his personal guided missile. Whenever he was with her he could point her at targets and she destroyed them, and he loved her for it. She had beaten up Lee Hartley’s mate, and she stopped people laughing at him quite so much… And if it worked so well in school, why wouldn’t it work away from school? There was no reason he could think of. He was going to point Ellie at his dad and see what happened.