Nick Hornby

Being told that he was too nice, that he needed to be meaner, was an unusual experience for Will, but he was feeling so weedy that it was easy to see how Paula had walked all over him.

and the two of them scrabbled around among the coathangers for several minutes until Will mumbled something about the world being closed on Saturday afternoons.

So here he was, in his mid-thirties, knowing in all the places there were to know that he didn’t have a two-year-old son, but still working on the presumption that, when it came to the crunch, one would pop up from somewhere

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.