Marc seemed a little drunk when his shift was over, and unwilling to be alone. He stayed standing and smoking outside the pub door, gesticulating with his bad hand. Someone told him he might need stitches. Marc shook his head, no. Someone had given him some painkillers – ‘ones they give to cancer patients’ – he couldn’t feel fuck all! And he laughed, and so did his friends, and soon they all started walking down the hill to the city centre, to carry on drinking. David followed.

For the next few hours chill turned to cold and the drizzle to a downpour, and David trailed Marc to pub after pub, watching him go in with one group of people, and leaving with others who would, in turn, be replaced with identical hangers-on: drunk, blowsy women, a teenager or two, balding, grim-faced men.

One by one, the hangers-on left, and were not replaced, and by ten o’clock, Marc was alone. He stood on the step of a pub called The Bristolian, wobbling on his heels. He looked old, tired. The stain on his bandage was larger now, more symmetrical, and a brighter red. He stepped into the street, and wandered south, towards the canal. David followed.

The rain had stopped, but the temperature had dropped so that the slicked streets were turning icy. Twice Marc stumbled, slipped. Once he stayed down, breathing hard, laboured as an old horse. And David followed. Marc made it to the water’s edge, to a bridge that smelled of piss and damp, the ground scattered with used condoms, like desiccated jellyfish. David, standing on the bank, heard the sound of a zip, a sigh of relief, and the splash of urine against stone; then the click of a lighter and fizz of a cigarette. He heard the traffic. His heart. The soft lap of the water, and his own footsteps on the bank, on the slippery towpath. And he was nothing, and he was free and— Now. Act. Do. He stopped about five feet away from the man, saw him turn to face him, and then ran swiftly, smoothly, towards him, the knife outstretched, and jammed it into the soft flesh just below Marc’s shoulder. It was easy. It was like he’d imagined it. It was like slicing butter.

‘You shouldn’t hurt women,’ he told him.

Marc jerked backwards.

For a split second, they looked at each other. David smiled at him, and then ran at him with the knife again, getting him this time in the belly, deep; deep enough to feel fresh blood squirming through his knuckles, into his palm; deep enough that it jarred on something solid; stuck into something hard, and his blood-slicked fist struggled to pull it free. Marc made a sound – a kind of animal sound, an angry, lowing noise, loud, but only once, twice and then nothing. He staggered back into the dark, then, back under the bridge like a troll.

Was that it? Had he done it?

David took a step into the darkness. The blood roared in his ears. The puzzle box of his mind clicked and shifted, its smooth surface fracturing along invisible lines; because he hadn’t done it. Marc wasn’t dead. Marc was on his hands and knees a few feet away, and he was hurt, he was shaken, but he was very much alive.

David watched him clutch at the wall with one bloodied hand, levering himself up; he watched him stand up, and now, now, and now… What? What now? The man wouldn’t die, the man wouldn’t die, the man—

‘Saw you today,’ Marc gasped. ‘Saw you in the park.’ He staggered towards David, his filthy, bandaged hand palm up, as if greeting him. ‘Saw you. Outside… pubs…’

That triggered the puzzle-box mechanism of David’s mind, and everything he’d managed to keep inside – the rage, the fear, the self-hatred – suddenly rushed out, and he was only sixteen! He was only a boy, alone, in a big city where things were loud and frightening and, somehow, he’d stabbed a man and, somehow, the man wasn’t dead, and oh God he wished he was at home, in his room, safely organising ‘Precious Memories!’ Home, where he was safe and things were quiet and—

From far away someone was singing, singing badly. The faulty notes echoed down the towpath and the noise made things even worse... made him panic just that little bit more. He scurried up the bank to the top of the bridge to get away from it.

The singing drunk girl was still far away, but getting closer, and from the top of the bridge, David could hear the sound of Marc’s tortured breathing from beneath the bridge, and there he was, staggering out from the shadows, wobbling. David, horribly visible just above, still with a knife in one cold, bloody hand, had to think fast. Man up man up man up. He kicked at half a loose paving stone, and levered it, creaking, on one toe of his trainer. It was heavy. It was heavy enough. He put the knife in his pocket, picked up the rock using both hands to hold it against the edge of the bridge wall. Breathe breathe breathe. The singing seemed far away, but the acoustics were weird here. He had to finish it. He had to do it, now, before the drunk girl got any closer. Marc’s red baseball cap bobbed into view. David’s body twitched like a dog in a dream. He let the stone drop.

It smashed onto Marc’s left shoulder and side of the neck, sending the hat spinning, and he went down on his side like a felled ox, rolling to the water’s edge, one hand trailing in the dirty water, one spastic leg scrabbling for traction. The paving stone had cut into his scalp and cheek – a flap of skin hung down jaggedly, a child’s quavering ‘V’, and he lay crumpled on his left side, a few feet away from the bloodstained cap, and his mouth was open as if to shout for help, but only a wheezy, whispery sound escaped him.

David made his way down the bank. He looked curiously into the dying man’s eyes. There must be something there. There must be.

‘… seen you…’ Marc managed. His eyes were flat and dull as pennies. ‘Seen you before.’

David pushed his body to the edge of the canal with one foot. Half of his body rolled towards the water and dropped in, but his hairy, strong hands clung to the side. Suddenly, one of them grasped David’s left trainer with surprising strength, and he felt himself being dragged towards the water by the big man’s weight. He kicked at Marc’s head wildly, felt the hand tighten spasmodically, and stamped again and again, savagely, until Marc’s grip loosened, until his fingers fell away and he sank silently into the dark water.

David picked up the baseball cap. The paving stone had cracked in half with the impact; one half was cleanish and this he placed carefully in the canal. The other half was gore streaked and pieces of it had chipped off into bloody gravel. He scraped up all the pieces and put them inside the hat, along with half of the heavy, blood-covered stone. Then he crouched down, pushed his hands into the freezing water, rubbed them together to get rid of the blood. He didn’t have a bag to put everything in, so he just shoved them under his coat and zipped it up. If he hunched, no one would be able to see the bulge.

Then he walked up the bank again, to the bridge, crossed the street, and kept on walking. The singing girl was walking in the same direction. He slowed to let her pass. She was with friends, three young women, blue with cold and loud with booze, on their way to last orders. They didn’t look at David. They wouldn’t remember he was there. He walked slowly through the city, avoiding the main streets that might have CCTV. He found a carrier bag in the street, transferred the hat, the knife and the rock into it, and headed towards the station.

He caught the last train home, sharing the carriage with a few drunks whose laughter and singing made his head hurt.

When he got home, he stripped off his clothes, and put them in the washing machine on a boiling setting – just in case there were any bloodstains on them. Then he stood under a scalding hot shower, scrubbing at his hands, washing his hair three times.

He hid the bag in the back of his wardrobe. When he got into bed, shivering and burning, he knew was sick.

The next morning, he struggled down to the kitchen, intending to cycle to Jenny’s, see if she’d heard the news about Marc, but Mother took one look at him and refused to let him leave the house. He put up a bit of a fight, but he felt weak, too weak to persist, and allowed himself to be led back to his room, allowed Mother to enter, tuck him back into his bed, feel his forehead with one cool hand.

‘You’re burning up,’ she said. ‘Did you feel ill yesterday?’

‘A bit.’

‘Get some rest and we’ll see how you are in an hour or so.’

David fell asleep then, a solid, blank gap of consciousness, and came round to the image of a white-faced, concerned Mother holding a cup of water to his lips and begging him to drink something. He felt the water run down his chin and onto his chest, which was sweaty and bare – why wasn’t he wearing a T-shirt? What had happened to his T-shirt? And Mother was telling him that they had to take it off; he was so hot he’d sweated right through it, and please, darling, please drink some water, for me? Just try?

Thoughts and memories of the night before – or was it the night before that? – swirled in his mind like oil on water, and sometimes he thought that maybe he’d fallen in the canal instead of Marc – he was so cold and wet, and where was his hat? And Tony – what was he doing here? He was NOT ALLOWED in his room! GET OUT OF MY ROOM AND DON’T HURT WOMEN, and that must have worked, that must have frightened him off, because now they were inside, not by the canal, and Mother was here, not Marc, and Mother held his hot hand in her gentle cool one; she held his hand even though it was dirty – sticky with blood, and he tried to say sorry, sorry, I tried to wash it off, but it must have stained, but she said Shhhh. Calm now, Shush now. She said: ‘there’s an ambulance coming, darling, don’t worry, there’s an ambulance coming soon.’

* * *

At first, they thought he might have meningitis. He retained a dim memory of the needle going into his spine, the strange sensation as the fluid was extracted, the wincing anxiety on Mother’s face. The pain in his chest, combined with the fever, eventually led them to diagnose pneumonia, and he was able to leave hospital, weak and woozy, after three days suspended in pharmaceutical calm.

‘Bed rest, fluids and painkillers for the next two weeks,’ Mother said firmly. ‘We’ll have some Mother and Son time, yes? Movies, and treats and—’

The novelty quickly wore off for both of them, though. David didn’t like movies, and the fact that his mother didn’t know that he didn’t like movies irritated him. In turn, the sullen way he suffered through Merchant Ivory classics annoyed her. They played card games which David, humourlessly, won every time, and he wasn’t interested in her latest dabblings in watercolour, and didn’t want to join her. Mother and Son time turned out to be a bit of a chore… but Catherine didn’t give up. She was grimly determined to Nurse Him Back to Health, so he had to Stay Nice and Warm Indoors.

The better he got, the more he resented being watched, fussed over and assessed. He’d imprisoned himself too – he couldn’t even retreat to his own room because the hat, the knife and that paving stone were all still there, poisoning the carefully calibrated calm. All he really wanted to do was sit quietly, alone, or with Tinker, concentrate on getting strong again so he could see Jenny again because not seeing her was driving him mad. She must know by now that Marc was dead, and she must know on some level – on the indefinable, animal level that connected them – that David was responsible. But this stupid illness had robbed him of his reward. It was like reading a book with the last chapter ripped out. Not that he read fiction, but still. It was infuriating, and his fury weakened him still more, wore him out. And he had to sit here and imagine the gradual, dawning delight she’d felt when she realised what he’d done. He had to wait for her gratitude. It wasn’t fair.

And because his anxiously awaited denouement had been so cruelly postponed, more injustices tormented him. Marc. Marc wouldn’t go away. David would be happily doing nothing, stroking Tinker, maybe, or squeezing a few spots on his shoulders, and Marc would swim back, his hands, pale and water-wrinkled, clinging to the side of the canal, his face, incredulous, smashed, and David would have to kill him again and again, sometimes three or four times a day. In daylight, Marc would finally allow himself to slip into the water, but at night it was a different story. At night, Marc wouldn’t leave him alone, and he should leave him alone now. He had to. He was dead. It was wrong to keep hanging around in his mind like this… it simply wasn’t fair. At night, Marc was more powerful, his shrivelled fingers were stronger, his breath was a rolling mist of decay, and he dragged David down with him, into the inky freeze, where one day, he knew, he’d stay for ever…

David would wake, shivering and sweating, from these dreams that he knew were not dreams but threats, and he’d reach for the nearest live, warm thing, the thing that wouldn’t ask him why he was crying, why he was scared – Tinker. Tinker, with her sleepy eyes, her familiar purr, her warm, responsive body, was the only thing that got David through these nights with Marc.

It couldn’t go on like this. He knew what the problem was – the knife, hat and paving slab in his room. They didn’t belong here. They shouldn’t be here. That was how Marc kept coming back… Marc would bleach out all the colour that Jenny had lent the world.