Nick Hornby

The right question was: what the hell difference did it make? Because if the only things that separated Fiona from the rest of them were Suzie’s reassuring car keys and Will’s expensive casual clothes, then she was in trouble anyway. You had to live in your own bubble.

You forgot? You forgot a suicide letter?’

‘Well, I didn’t think I’d ever have to remember it, did I?’ She laughed at that. She actually laughed. That was his mother. When she wasn’t crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

Two wasn’t enough, that was the trouble. He’d always thought that two was a good number, and that he’d hate to live in a family of three or four or five. But he could see the point of that now: if someone dropped off the edge, you weren’t left on your own. How could you make a family grow if there was no one around to, you know, help it along?

‘Do you really want to?’

‘Yes. It’s funny. Don’t you think it’s funny?’

‘It’s not very realistic, is it?’

She was driving him mad. ‘He’s spent the last five minutes trying to kill himself. Like you did. I didn’t want to watch it, and I didn’t want you to watch it.’

‘I’ll come if you can take my mum too. And she hasn’t got any money, so either we’ll have to go somewhere cheap or you’ll have to treat us.’

‘Right. Hey, say what you mean, Marcus. Don’t beat around the bush.’

‘I don’t know how else to say it. We’re broke. You’re not. You pay.’

‘It’s OK. I was joking.’

‘Oh. I didn’t get it.’

looks nice now, but he’ll mess it up soon enough with his biscuits and crisps and what have you.’

Will hadn’t thought about his biscuits and crisps and what have you, so on the way home he stopped off for some chocolate chip cookies and a couple of bags of cheese and onion, squashed everything up, and sprinkled the crumbs generously over his new purchase.

She was thirty-eight. You could have a baby when you were thirty-eight. So then there would be five of them, and it wouldn’t matter quite so much if one of them died

‘Are you all right, sweetie?’

He just felt it would help if his mum ordered the same food as Will. He didn’t know why.

But he knew this: if a girl and a boy met, and they didn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and they both looked all right, and they didn’t mind each other, then they might as well go out together. What was the point in not?