He also recognized that his younger brother was cuter, more biddable and less philosophically challenging. Under the circ.u.mstances, his parents' preference for the baby made sense, as did their lack of understanding on the subject of their older son's doom. He didn't exactly understand it himself.

They had refrained from commenting on his recent metamorphosis, having read in the Sunday supplements that teenagers were likely to behave in an eccentric manner, but Justin noticed his mother trying to peer into his mouth sometimes when he spoke. He suspected she was looking for a tongue stud. The thought of such a piercing sickened him; it made him sad that this was the level on which she believed he operated.

'h.e.l.lo, David,' she said as usual on the morning he came down to breakfast in a poppy-coloured shirt with a ruffle down the front and a pair of white trousers cinched with a belt. She glanced at her husband, and a look pa.s.sed between them suggesting a subject of previous and mutual concern. Folding his newspaper, Justin's father cleared his throat.

'David,' he began in the manner of a p.r.o.nouncement.

Justin raised his spoon to his mouth and paused.

'David. I want to know, that is, we want to know, to enquire really, your mother and I, neither here nor there in any real sense, simply to access the facts, well, ahem. That is to say. You're not h.o.m.os.e.xual, are you?'

Justin placed the spoon in his mouth and then returned it slowly to the bowl. Across the table, his brother sucked on an apricot.

'No no no!' The little boy laughed, waving his arms emphatically to no one in particular.

'Because if you are, your mother and I want you to know it's fine.'

Justin chewed and swallowed.

His parents glanced at each other.

'Well?' asked his mother anxiously.

Justin looked up, as if seeing her for the first time. 'Yes?'

'Are you...?' She blushed. 'You know.'

'HO-MO-s.e.x-UAL.' Exasperation caused his father to shout.

Justin lifted his spoon and pondered the question. Milk dripped off it as it hovered, loaded, in mid-air. h.o.m.os.e.xual? It hadn't really occurred to him. He supposed it was possible. Anything was possible.

'Not that I know of,' he said finally.

His father exhaled impatiently and returned to his paper. 'Well, that's a relief,' he snorted. 'Life's complicated enough without having a poof for a son.'

8.

School started the following Tuesday.

The radio blasted Justin awake at precisely 7 a.m. and he sat bolt upright in bed, shocked, blood pumping rapidly through alarmed organs. He hadn't been up before noon all summer.

Groaning, he flailed at the snooze b.u.t.ton until the noise stopped, and fell once more into a deep sleep. At the fourth repeat, he sat up in bed, reached over and pulled back one of the curtains.

It was p.i.s.sing with rain.

The gloom was so thick he could barely see the road from his bedroom. He sighed, facing the prospect of a new school year with all the pleasure of a worm facing a beak.

I wish I had a dog, he thought, searching under the bed for his new paisley shirt and white canvas trousers.

Justin stood up, one arm in an armhole and one lying slack by his side. He felt suddenly that if he could walk into school today with a new name, new clothes and a dog the sleekest, most elegant greyhound in creation he might possibly survive. But he had no greyhound, and the chances of getting hold of one before eight thirty seemed tragically slim. It was already ten past.

He said goodbye to his mother, picked Charlie up off the floor and whirled him around till he squealed with glee. Then he shook hands with his father and set off to meet his fate.

The thought of a pet, even an imaginary pet, soothed him. He stopped in the drizzle along the half-mile walk to school so that his dog could sniff lamp posts, trees, dead birds.

Here, boy! Come on, boy!

He called his greyhound happily. The creature possessed an effortless grace combined with serenity, dignity, wisdom. The dog's soft eyes contemplated the world with calm compa.s.sion. His body was smooth and elegant, his chest deep, legs strong and well-defined. What a combination of the physical and the spiritual! Surely no ordinary dog, no mere mortal dog could claim the attributes of of of Boy.

Good Boy! Boy was no poodle. Anyone could see that.

As he reached the school gates, Justin found himself in the midst of an excited crowd of hormonally charged human particles, each one bouncing randomly off its fellow particles, converging finally into groups of twos and threes that went about the age-old business of swapping cigarette ends and lies about summer s.e.xual conquests, picking up old friendships, and resuming grudges exactly where they'd left off.

The new term held endless golden promise: new victims for bullies, new excuses to fail literacy and play truant, new opportunities to pursue what their parents laughably referred to as an education.

'Hey, Case!' He heard a wolf whistle. 'Nice shirt.'

It was an education all right.

Justin nodded, exchanging greetings with a variety of individuals, many of whom he had known since primary school. Some could be categorized as friends, some were nodding acquaintances. Most knew his name.

It was not going to be easy to explain his new ident.i.ty.

He turned to Boy, and the greyhound slipped his velvety muzzle into Justin's hand. He left it there for a long moment, imparting strength, grace and wisdom to his owner. Justin felt himself briefly illuminated by the contact, fortified by the touch of his fabulous beast.

'Hola.'

He looked up. Peter Prince was fair-haired, toweringly tall and skinny, with bony knees and a relentlessly cheerful smile. He was known (if at all) for his peculiar genius in matters relating to astronomy. He and Justin crossed paths only in Spanish and history, subjects at which neither of them excelled.

'Good summer?'

'Only if you like psychic torment,' Justin said.

'That's too bad.' Peter appeared genuinely sympathetic. 'I don't suppose today's going to be much of an improvement.'

'No.'

Peter looked at him closely. There was definitely something different about David Case. It wasn't just his clothes, though they certainly suggested a calamity of some sort. It was an air of unease. Bordering on crisis. Not that David had ever been convincingly average, Peter thought, though perhaps he'd managed to convince himself that he was. People did.

He frowned, struggling to piece together the puzzle, but before he could reach a conclusion, the bell rang and they were swept through into the Victorian building's main hall on a scrambling tide of humanity.

Justin found a seat in his first cla.s.s with Peter to his left and Boy sprawled at his feet.

'Welcome back, etc. etc. etc.,' intoned Mr Ogle, with the jaded air of a factory pieceworker at the end of a forty-eight-hour shift. Eleven seconds into the new school year and already he radiated weariness. 'You are no doubt as happy to be here as I am. I can only hope ' he scanned the thirty faces in the room, some innocent, some insolent, the rest mainly blank with indifference 'that this year will be less of a trial than last.'

The cla.s.s shuffled with doubt.

Mr Ogle pulled out the cla.s.s register.

Justin's heart began to pound. Oh G.o.d, he thought. Here we go.

'Archer, James.'

'Yeah.'

'Bodmin, Amanda.'

'Yah.'

'Cadaprakash, Matthew.'

'Yes.'

'Case, David.'

Justin raised his hand halfway. 'Justin, actually.'

Mr Ogle stopped and looked down at the register. 'David, surely? David Case, unless I'm grossly mistaken?'

Justin shook his head. 'No. It's Justin.'

'Justin Case? Just-In-Case? He looked up at the cla.s.s, his features uncharacteristically animated. 'Is this some sort of joke?'

The cla.s.s evidently thought it was. It was bad enough that David Case had arrived for school so peculiarly dressed. But to have changed his name as well? The first-day tensions dissolved into timid chuckles which spread clockwise around the room, gaining momentum until Justin's fellow students were choking, then screaming with laughter, tears rolling down their faces.

Peter looked down at his hands, embarra.s.sed for the student formerly known as David.

Mr Ogle whacked his book against the wall with a resounding crack! and his delirious charges fell silent. The silence had an exhausted, joyous quality and Justin slumped in his chair, hoping to remain invisible in the aftermath. But the forty minutes that followed caused his hope to evaporate in a flurry of sideways glances, sn.i.g.g.e.rs and whispers. The moment cla.s.s finished, he stood up, arranged his features into a blank, looked neither left nor right, moved at a steady pace. He knew better than to thrash about. As long as there was no trace of blood in the water he'd be safe.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. He had bigger fish to fry. Bigger fish had him to fry.

With a sympathetic smile and a wave, Peter left for his next cla.s.s while Justin steeled himself for a day of humiliation. His few tenuous allies dwindled in number as the day wore on. The joke played to responsive audiences in six more subjects.

At precisely three thirty, the bell rang and he went home, slammed the front door and collapsed in a chair. His mother looked up from folding laundry and smiled.

'How was school, darling?'

'h.e.l.l.'

'What about your cla.s.ses?'

'Torture.'

'And your friends?'

'Sc.u.m.'

His mother considered him, frowning. 'You're not in trouble are you, David?' She pondered the matter, her brow furrowed. If he wasn't h.o.m.os.e.xual, perhaps he was dyslexic? The tabloids often cited dyslexia (school lunches, overcrowding, immigration, absent fathers) as a source of problems at school.

'David, love, can you tell the difference between "dog" and "G.o.d"?'

Justin's eyes snapped open. What a bizarre question. He had never known his mother to possess a metaphysical bent. Dog? G.o.d? He wasn't at all sure he could tell the difference.

He reached for his dog-G.o.d and stroked the long, curved back for rea.s.surance.

'It's not bullying, is it?'

'Not bull-ee. Bird-ee!' interrupted his brother, who had put down his toy monkey and begun flapping his arms like wings. 'Fly!'

Justin turned to him, suspicious and discomfited by this suggestion (was it a suggestion?). He often had a feeling that Charlie knew more than he let on. The child smiled at him winningly.

Justin turned back to his mother. He a.s.sured her that bullying at school was not the problem. He was being bullied all right, but not by some thicko schoolboy.

She was not rea.s.sured. 'Stand still for a moment and let me look at you, David. I think you've developed a twitch.'

Justin sighed, stood up, climbed the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom.

He stayed there until the quiet click of toenails on wooden floor, a thump, and the rea.s.suring sound of Boy snoring quietly in the hallway convinced him it was safe to come out.

9.

I really like David.

No I don't. I don't give a d.a.m.n about him.

I could run him down with a taxi. Give him a wasting disease.

Or worse, ignore him altogether. Let him live out his irrelevant little life in Luton with a dreary doting wife, two point four gormless children, and a ticking bomb for a heart.

But I do like a game now and again.

And he plays so nicely.