About a Boy

‘He just seems so much older,’ Fiona said one afternoon, after Will had dropped him off, and he had disappeared into his bedroom with a cursory thank you and a brusque hello to his mother.

‘Where did we go wrong, eh?’ Will asked plaintively. ‘We’ve given that boy everything, and this is how he repays us.’

‘I feel as though I’m losing him,’ said Fiona. Will still hadn’t got the hang of joking with her. What left his mouth with the weight and substance of froth on a cappuccino seemed to enter her ear like suet pudding. ‘It’s all Smashing Pumpkins and Ellie and Zoe and… I think he’s been smoking.’

Will laughed.

‘It’s not fu

‘It is, kind of. How much would you have given for Marcus to be caught smoking with his mates a few months ago?’

‘Nothing. I abhor smoking.’

‘Yes, but…’ He gave up. Fiona was determined not to see the point he was trying to make. ‘Does it bother you that you’re losing him?’

‘Why do you ask that? Of course it bothers me.’

‘It’s just that you’ve seemed… I don’t want to be crude about it, but you’ve seemed better recently.’

‘I think I am. I don’t know what it is, but I just feel less worn down by everything.’

‘That’s great.’

‘I think I’m just on top of things more. I don’t know why.’

Will thought he knew one of the reasons why, but he also knew that it would be neither wise nor kind to elaborate. The truth was that this version of Marcus really wasn’t so hard to cope with. He had friends, he could look after himself, he had developed a skin—the kind of skin Will had just shed. He had flattened out, and become as robust and as unremarkable as every other twelve-year-old kid. But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on.

Marcus came out of his room scowling.

‘I’m bored. Can I go and get a video?’

Will couldn’t resist it: he had a theory he wanted to test out. ‘Hey, Fiona. Why don’t you get your sheet music out, and we can murder "Both Sides Now"?’

‘Would you like to?’

‘Yeah. Sure.’ But he was watching Marcus, whose expression was that of a boy who had been asked to dance naked before a mixed audience of supermodels and cousins.

‘Please, Mum. Don’t.’

‘Don’t be silly. You love singing. You love Joni Mitchell.’

‘I don’t. Not any more. I bloody hate Joni Mitchell.’

Will knew then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Marcus would be OK.