‘Will you come with me really, Ellie?’

‘Yeah, of course. If you want me to. It’d be a laugh.’ Marcus knew she would say yes, if he asked her. Ellie would say yes to just about anything, apart from a dance at a party. ‘Anyway, you don’t want to go up there on your own, do you?’

He always did things on his own, so he had never bothered even thinking about whether there was a choice. That was the trouble with Ellie: he was frightened that when and if he didn’t see her any more, he’d still be aware that there were choices, but it wouldn’t do him any good because he wouldn’t be able to get at them, and his whole life would be ruined.

‘Not really. Would Zoe come?’

‘No. She wouldn’t know what to say to him, and I will. Just us.’

‘OK then. Brilliant.’ Marcus didn’t want to think about what Ellie might have to say. He’d worry about that later.

‘Have you got any money? ‘Cos I haven’t got the train fare.’

‘I can get it.’ He didn’t spend very much; he reckoned he had at least twenty pounds saved up, and his mum would give him what he needed for the trip anyway.

‘So shall we go next week, then?’ It was nearly Easter, and they were on holiday next week, so they could stay overnight if they wanted. And Marcus would have to ring Ellie at home to make arrangements—it would be like a proper date.

‘Yeah. Cool. We’ll have a great time.’

Marcus wondered for a moment whether his idea of a great time would be the same as Ellie’s idea of a great time, and then he decided not to worry about that until later.

Fiona wanted to come to King’s Cross with Marcus, but he managed to talk her out of it.

‘It’d be too sad,’ he told her.

‘You’re only going for a night.’

‘But I’ll miss you.’

‘You’ll still be missing me if we say goodbye at the underground station. In fact, you’ll have to miss me for longer.’

‘It’ll seem more normal to say goodbye at the underground, though.’

He knew he was overdoing it, and he knew what he was saying didn’t make much sense anyway, but he wasn’t going to risk a meeting between Ellie and his mum at the station. She’d stop him from going if she knew he was taking Ellie along to Cambridge to blow up his dad.

The two of them walked from the flat to Holloway Road station, and said goodbye in the tube entrance.

‘You’ll be OK,’ she said to him.

‘Yeah.’

‘And it’ll be over before you know it.’

‘It’s only for a night,’ he said. By the time they reached the underground he’d forgotten he’d told her how much he would miss her. ‘It’s only for a night, but it seems like forever.’ He was hoping his mum wouldn’t remember this when he came back. If she did, he probably wouldn’t be allowed down to the shops on his own.

‘I shouldn’t be making you go. You’ve had such a rough time lately.’

‘I’ll be fine. Really.’

Because he was going to miss her so much, she gave him an enormous hug that went on forever, while everyone walking past watched.

The tube wasn’t crowded. It was mid-afternoon—his dad had worked out the train times so that Lindsey could pick him up from Cambridge on her way home from work—and there was only one other person in his carriage, an old guy reading the evening paper. He was looking at the back page, so Marcus could see some of the stuff on the front; the first thing he noticed was the photo. It seemed so familiar that for a moment he thought it was a picture of someone he knew, a member of the family, and maybe they had it at home, in a frame on the piano, or pinned on to the cork board in the kitchen. But there was no family friend or relative who had bleached hair and half a beard and looked like a sort of modern Jesus…

He knew who it was now. He saw the same picture every single day of the week on Ellie’s chest. He felt hot all over; he didn’t even need to read the old guy’s paper, but he did anyway. ‘ROCK STAR COBAIN DEAD’, was the headline, and underneath, in smaller writing ‘Nirvana singer, 27, shoots himself’. Marcus thought and felt a lot of things all at once: he wondered whether Ellie had seen the paper yet, and if she hadn’t then how she’d be when she found out; and he wondered if his mum was OK, even though he knew there was no connection between his mum and Kurt Cobain because his mum was a real person and Kurt Cobain wasn’t; and then he felt confused, because the newspaper headline had turned Kurt Cobain into a real person somehow; and then he just felt very sad—sad for Ellie, sad for Kurt Cobain’s wife and little girl, sad for his mum, sad for himself. And then he was at King’s Cross and he had to get off the train.

He found Ellie underneath the departure board, which was where they had arranged to meet. She seemed normal. ‘Platform ten b,’ she said. ‘It’s in another part of the station, I think.’

Everyone was carrying an evening paper, so Kurt Cobain was everywhere. And because the photo in the paper was exactly the same picture that Ellie had on her sweatshirt, it took Marcus a while to get used to the idea that all these people were holding something that he had always thought of as a part of her. Every time he saw it he wanted to nudge her and point at it, but he said nothing. He didn’t know what to do.

‘Right. Follow me,’ Ellie shouted in a pretend-bossy voice that would have made Marcus giggle at any other time. Today, however, he could only manage a weak little smile; he was too worried to respond to her in the way he usually did, and he could only listen to what she was saying, not the way she was saying it. He didn’t want to follow her, because if she was out in front she was bound to notice the army of Kurt Cobains marching towards her.

‘Why should I follow you? Why don’t you follow me for a change?’

‘Ooh, Marcus. You’re so masterful,’ said Ellie. ‘I love that in a man.’

‘Where are we going?’

Ellie laughed. ‘Ten b. Over there.’

‘Right.’ He stood directly in front of her and began to walk very slowly towards the platform.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Leading you.’

She pushed him in the back. ‘Don’t be an idiot. Get a move on.’

He suddenly remembered something that he’d seen in one of the Open University programmes his mum used to have to watch for her course. He’d watched it with her because it was funny: there were all these people in a room, and half of them were wearing blindfolds, and the other half had to lead the blindfolded half around and not let them bump into each other. It was something to do with trust, his mum had said. If someone could guide you around safely when you were feeling vulnerable, then you learnt to trust them, and that was important. The best bit of the programme was when this woman walked an old man straight into a door and he smashed his head, and they started having a row.

‘Ellie, do you trust me?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Do you trust me, yes or no?’

‘Yes. As far as I can throw you.’

‘Ha, ha.’

‘Of course I trust you.’

‘OK, then. Close your eyes and hang on to my jacket.’

‘Eh?’

‘Close your eyes and hang on to my jacket. You’re not allowed to peek.’

A young guy with long, straggly bleached hair looked at Ellie, at her sweatshirt and then her face. For a moment it looked as though he was going to say something to her, and Marcus began to panic; he stood in between her and the guy and grabbed her.

‘Come on.’

‘Marcus, have you gone mad?’

‘I’m going to guide you through all these people and I’m going to get you on the train, and then you’ll trust me forever.’

‘If I trust you forever, it won’t be because I spent five minutes wandering around King’s Cross station with my eyes closed.’

‘No. OK. But it’ll help.’

‘Oh, fucking hell. Come on, then.’

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘Eyes closed, no peeking?’

‘Marcus!’

They set off. To get to the Cambridge train you had to go out of the main part of the station and into another, smaller part tucked away at the side; most people were walking in their direction to get the train home from work, but there were enough people coming at them holding newspapers to make the game worthwhile.