About a Boy

They talked a little bit longer, about Lindsey and how she wanted a baby, and how his dad couldn’t decide, and whether Marcus would mind if they did have one; and Marcus said that he’d like it, that he liked babies. He didn’t really; but he knew the value of extra people around him, and Lindsey’s baby would grow up to be an extra person one day. And then he went to bed. His dad gave him a hug and got a bit teary, but he was stoned by then, so Marcus didn’t take any notice.

In the morning his dad and Lindsey gave him a lift to the station, and enough money for a taxi from King’s Cross to the flat. He sat on the train looking out of the window. He was sure he was right about the acrobatics display; but even if it was all rubbish he was still going to carry on believing it. If it helped get him through to the time when he was completely free to make the mistakes that they were all making, then what was the harm?

Thirty-six

Wanting Rachel so much still frightened Will. At any time, it seemed to him, she might decide that he was too much trouble, or worthless, or no good in bed. She might meet someone else; she might come to the conclusion that she didn’t want a relationship with anybody at all. She might die, suddenly, without warning, in a car crash on the way back from dropping Ali off at school. He felt as if he were a chick whose egg had been cracked open, and he was outside in the world shivering and unsteady on his feet (if chicks were unsteady on their feet—maybe that was foals, or calves, or some other animal), without so much as a Paul Smith suit or a pair of Raybans to protect him. He wasn’t even sure what all this fear was for. What good was it doing him? None whatsoever, as far as he could see, but it was much too late to ask that now. All he knew was that there was no going back; that part of his life was over.

Most Saturdays now, Will took Ali and Marcus out somewhere. It had begun because he wanted to give their mothers a break… No, that wasn’t true. It had begun because he wanted to wriggle his way into Rachel’s life, and he wanted to make her believe that there was some kind of substance to him. And it wasn’t as if it was the worst job in the world; the first couple of outings had been difficult, because for some reason he’d tried to do the education thing, and he’d taken them to the British Museum and the National Gallery, and all three of them had been bored and tetchy, but that was mostly because Will hated doing those things himself. (Was there a more boring place in the world than the British Museum? If there was, Will wouldn’t want to know about it. Pots. Coins. Jugs. Whole rooms full of plates. There had to be a point of exhibiting things, Will decided. Just because they were old, it didn’t mean they were necessarily interesting. Just because they’d survived didn’t mean you wanted to look at them.)

But right when he was on the verge of abandoning the whole idea he had taken them to the cinema, to one of those dumb summer movies that were pitched at kids, and all three of them had had a great time. So now it was a regular thing: lunch at McDonald’s or Burger King, film, shake at Burger King or McDonald’s, whichever they hadn’t been in at lunchtime, home. He’d taken them to Arsenal a couple of times, too, and that was OK, but Ali would still snipe at Marcus, given half a chance, and there was more than half a chance in a long afternoon in the family enclosure at Highbury, so football was kept for those rare times when they had run out of films that would not only insult their intelligence but the rest of them as well.

Marcus was older than Ali now. The first time they had met, when Marcus had been Will’s son for the afternoon, Ali had appeared to be Marcus’s senior by many years, but his explosion that day had blown his cover a little bit, and in any case Marcus had moved on in the intervening months. He dressed better—he had won the argument with his mother over whether he should be allowed to go shopping with Will—and he had his hair cut regularly, and he tried very hard not to sing out loud, and his friendship with Ellie and Zoe (which, much to everyone’s surprise, had endured and deepened) meant that he was more teenage in his attitude: even though the girls prized and cherished his occasional eccentricities, Marcus was begi

It was strange; Will missed him. Since the egg had cracked Will had found himself wanting to talk to Marcus about what it was like to wander about with nothing on, feeling scared of everything and everybody, because Marcus was the only person in the world who might be able to offer him advice; but Marcus—the old Marcus, anyway—was disappearing.

‘Are you going to marry my mum?’ Ali asked out of the blue, during one of their pre-cinema fast-food meals. Marcus looked up from his chips with interest.

‘I du

‘I used to want him to marry my mum,’ Marcus said cheerfully. Will was suddenly seized with the desire to pour his boiling-point fast-food coffee down the front of Marcus’s shirt.

‘Did you?’ said Ali.

‘Yeah. For some reason I thought it would sort everything out. Your mum’s different, though. She’s more together than mine.’

‘Do you still want him to marry your mum?’

‘Don’t I get a say in this?’ Will asked.

‘Naah,’ said Marcus, ignoring Will’s interruption. ‘See, I don’t think that’s the right way.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because… You know when they do those human pyramids? That’s the sort of model for living I’m looking at now.’

‘What are you talking about, Marcus?’ Will asked him. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

‘You’re safer as a kid if everyone’s friends. When people pair off… I don’t know. It’s more insecure. Look at it now. Your mum and my mum get on OK.’ It was true. Fiona and Rachel saw each other regularly now, to Will’s agonizing discomfort. ‘And Will sees her, and I see you, and Ellie and Zoe, and Lindsey and my dad. I’ve got it sorted now. If your mum and Will get together, you think you’re safe, but you’re not, because they’ll split up, or Will will go mad or something.’

Ali nodded sagely. Will’s urge to scald had been replaced by an urge to shoot Marcus and then turn the gun on himself.

‘What if Rachel and I don’t split up? What if we stay together forever?’

‘Fine. Great. Prove it. I just don’t think couples are the future.’

‘Oh, well thank you… Einstein.’ Will had wanted his comeback to be sharper than that. He wanted to think of some sort of socio-cultural marriage expert whose name two twelve-year-olds would instantly recognize, but Einstein was all he could come up with. He knew it wasn’t right.

‘What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Nothing,’ Will mumbled. Marcus looked at him pityingly. ‘And don’t patronize me.’

‘What does patronize mean?’ Marcus asked, in all seriousness. So there it was. Will was being patronized by someone who wasn’t even old enough to understand what the word meant.

‘It means, don’t treat me like an idiot.’

Marcus looked at him as if to say, well, how else can I treat you? and Will had every sympathy. He was really struggling to maintain the age gap now: Marcus’s air of authority, the been-there-done-that tone in his voice, was so convincing that Will didn’t know how to argue with him. He didn’t want to either. He hadn’t lost all face yet; there was still a tiny patch left, about the size of a small scab, and he wanted to keep it.