About a Boy

This chapter switches over to the perspective of the second boy in the novel, 36-year-old Will Freeman. When the reader meets Will, he is assessing his coolness according to a men’s magazine questionnaire. Because Will listens to hip-hop, sleeps with women he hardly knows, and earns more than 40 thousand pounds a year without working, he is cool enough to be in the “sub-zero” category (6). Will prefers to live vicariously, thinking he “could just peek over the fence at other people’s lives” through soap operas, films and music (6).

Will is content with his life, finding it uncluttered compared to the lives of people like his friends John and Christine, who have jobs and children. Will declines to be the godfather to their newborn, Imogen, and feels irritated when they ask him whether he wants to start a family of his own. However, a few weeks later, Will meets Angie, a single mother, and becomes “a temporary stepfather for the first time” (10).

Marcus considers that “he just wasn’t right for schools” because he never fits in with the other children (11). He is “weird” because Fiona prevents him from engaging with contemporary popular culture; she insists he should read books and listen to Joni Mitchell and Bob Marley instead (13). Fiona, who is an ethically minded vegetarian, thinks people who judge based on appearances are shallow and cannot comprehend the difficulties Marcus is having with his peers.

His new school is especially bad because he is being bullied and feels unsafe. Most humiliatingly, he cannot control his tendency to start singing spontaneously: “he always had a tune in his head, but every now and again, when he was nervous, the tune just sort of slipped out” (14). This happens during English class, and to Marcus’s great shame, his teacher, Ms. Maguire, allows another student to joke about his singing. Marcus, who can see that “young and nervous” Ms. Maguire is trying to gain favor with the class as a whole, is miserable (16).  

When Angie, a blond, Julie Christie lookalike tells Will she is a single mother of two, his first instinct is to escape as he has previously claimed to hate kids. However, given Angie’s beauty, he finds himself saying that “I would have been disappointed if you didn’t have children” and that he fancies himself a “good” part-time father. He plots a “new, life-changing strategy” for dating attractive single mothers (20).

Will enjoys the appreciation he receives from Angie and her youngest son, Joe. Will notices that he is most appreciated for “not being Simon,” the father of Angie’s children, who engaged in callow behavior such as being addicted to alcohol and work and “screwing his secretary” (22). Eventually, Angie breaks up with Will, claiming she is not truly ready to move on from Simon. Will, however, is happy that Angie saw him as much deeper and more serious as he is; he even enjoys watching her cry from her sense of guilt. He determines to date more single mothers and begins his “career” as the “serial nice guy” to attract them (24).

Marcus notices that Fiona’s crying has become worse because she has now started doing it in the mornings. He tries to think up a reason for her “terrible depression” but cannot find one (26). Once he is at school, “an instinct for self-preservation took over” (27) as he attempts to defend himself from the bullies, Lee Hartley and his gang. In addition to picking on Marcus, the bullies target Nicky and Mark, two computer-loving misfits who Marcus has attempted to befriend.

When Hartley and his friends approach, Marcus begins to mentally list all the chocolate bars he can think of as a means of ignoring their vicious comments. When the bullies get bored and leave, Nicky and Mark tell Marcus they do not want him to hang around them anymore because they never had any trouble before he showed up. Marcus accepts that he has made Nicky and Mark’s lives miserable and that the truest act of friendship would be to leave them alone (30). However, he himself “had nowhere else to go” (30).

When Will fears that he may never meet another Angie, he joins SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together), pretending to be a single father with a two-year-old boy named Ned. Having “had a history of pretending” to be things he is not, Will is remarkably calm about the fabrication (32).

At the group, he meets Suzie, a beautiful blonde. Her husband began an affair when she was pregnant, left her, and showed no interest in seeing his daughter, Megan. Suzie tells Will about the sorry histories of the other women in the room, and Will notices that “there were endless ingenious variations” on men leaving (36). He fabricates his own story about being left by the mother of his child and even finds himself “blinking back a tear” (37). Suzie, convinced by his genuineness, touches his arm, and Will feels like he is in with a chance. 

Life becomes more intense for Marcus, who is “having a shit time at school and a shit time at home” (40). On top of dealing with Fiona’s depression, his bullies tease him for his spontaneous singing and try to frame him for shoplifting.

When Marcus comes home to find Fiona weeping in front of a cartoon and learns that she is out sick from work, he asks her to explain herself. He complains that if she is unable to take care of him, she should find someone who can. Fiona then tells him he will be going to a SPAT picnic in Regent’s Park with her friend Suzie, while Fiona has “a rest” (42). Marcus protests, but Fiona insists, saying they are “not doing each other any good” (43). Marcus wonders about the potential harm he has caused Fiona.

Will invents the excuse that his ex-wife has summoned his pretend child away at the last minute. However, he realizes that making up a child is confusing and anticipates the moment when he will be found out. When Suzie asks him what he does, he cannot face making up another lie, so he tells her the truth: he does nothing because he lives off the royalties of a song his father invented in 1938, “Santa’s Super Sleigh.”

Marcus, who is also accompanying Will and Suzie to the picnic, rebuffs Will’s questions about football and music, although he does fabricate a Joni Mitchell revival, which confuses Will. When the conversation turns to the subject of Marcus’s mother, Marcus insists that she is “going nuts” and makes Suzie feel guilty for not visiting her enough (50). At the picnic, Will throws himself into entertaining the small children. Suzie approaches him, and they are striking up a flirtatious conversation when Marcus announces that he thinks he killed a duck. 

Marcus, Suzie, her daughter Megan, and Will, “the trendy bloke who was trying to get off with Suzie” (54), go to inspect the dead duck. When the park-keeper joins and points out that Marcus was seen throwing a whole French loaf at the ducks, Will says the duck was already dead and that Marcus was trying to sink the body—thus getting the boy out of trouble. As they walk back to the picnic, Marcus thinks he sees a vision of his mother “standing in front of them, blocking the path, and she was smiling” (56). 

When they arrive at Marcus’s house to drop him off, both Suzie and Will accompany him inside. There, Fiona is lying unconscious next to her own vomit; she has overdosed on pills. While Suzie shouts at her, Marcus is with shock. He feels this is “the scariest thing he’d ever seen, by a million miles” and that he will never forget it (58). 

Because Suzie must accompany Fiona in the ambulance, Will is charged with driving Marcus and Megan to the hospital. While Megan screams, Will tries to make small talk with Marcus. He insensitively asks Marcus if he worries about his mother trying to kill herself again. In the hospital waiting room, Suzie tries to reassure Marcus that he is not the reason Fiona tried to kill herself, but he refuses to be comforted. They learn that Fiona will be kept in the hospital overnight, so Marcus must stay at Suzie’s. Will’s attitude is one of morbid curiosity, as he feels “it had all been very interesting, but he wouldn’t want to do it every night” (63).

While Suzie and Marcus prepare the house for Fiona’s return, Marcus spots Fiona’s suicide note for him. In it, she explains that she wants to kill herself because she has been taken over by a part of her that feels “tired and bored” and would “rather call it a day” (65). When Fiona comes home, Marcus confesses that he is worried because he cannot be around to check on her all the time. He feels that he needs another person to help him and decides his new project will be growing his family.

Marcus goes to rent a video for him and Fiona to watch and struggles with the decision, given that most movies feature death in some way. He thinks that Groundhog Day, a film where actor Bill Murray’s character is destined to relive the same day, is a safe bet. However, as they are watching the film, he is annoyed when they reach a scene where Murray tries to kill himself to escape his fate. Marcus turns the film off; when Fiona protests, he eventually explains that he did not want either of them to watch a film with a suicide attempt, given the previous day’s events. Fiona, who seems more distracted than sad, wants to watch the end of the film. Marcus is confused because he thought that a suicide attempt was “a big deal” and not something where “you just sat on the sofa and watched videos and acted as though nothing had happened” (70).

Despite not having a job, Will is “proud of his ability to stay afloat in the enormous ocean of time at his disposal,” as he fills his hours with baths, television, and crosswords (71). However, he begins to harbour “probably unhealthy notions” of being needed by Marcus and Fiona and “entering their lives in some way” (73). He calls Suzie and suggests taking Marcus out for the day.

Marcus calls Will to say that he accepts the proposition, on the conditions that his mother can come and that Will pays. They agree to go out on Saturday. Will remembers he is supposed to account for the presence of a two-year-old boy in his life, so he buys a car seat and crushes biscuits and potato chips into it so that it looks used. 

Marcus’s plan is to get his mother and Will together, even though he does not particularly like Will. Having followed him home, Marcus doubts Will lives with anyone, let alone a two-year-old son, but thinks “he wasn’t bad, or a drunk, or violent, so he would have to do” (78).

At first, Marcus insists Will should take them to Planet Hollywood, but after they stand in the rain a while, he allows Will to take them to a restaurant called Twenty-Eight. When Fiona and Will are sitting at the table silently, Marcus insists that they talk to each other. Once the conversation finally gets going, Marcus thinks the date is going well and wonders about when they will all live together. 

Will recognizes Marcus set him and Fiona up on a date; however, he is not attracted to her because she is “too hippy” and unlike the glamorous women he prefers (87). Still, Will initially fantasizes about helping Fiona and Marcus and accepts an invitation to dinner. He is horrified by Fiona’s earnestness and Marcus’s singing. At home, he gets drunk to numb his discomfort and vows to have nothing more to do with Marcus, Fiona, or his single mother fantasy.

Although Will avoids Fiona and Marcus, the latter turns up at Will’s door and confronts him about not having a child. Marcus says he will keep the secret if Will agrees to go out with Fiona because, although Will is a liar, he is not “too bad” and may “cheer up” Marcus’s mother (93). When Will makes it clear he is not interested in Fiona, and tells Marcus to go home, Marcus announces that he will be back.