'Let's find a cafe then.'

'I fancy a pub meal,' I say. 'I didn't get to finish my breakfast.'

She looks round the street but the only witnesses are the two old women with tartan shopping carts from the bus and a man walking a small white dog and, across the road, two teenage boys leaning on either side of a pole, smoking cigarettes.

The end of a hot summer, a seaside town, and it's nearly deserted.

'Look,' she says, 'I think there's a cafe over there. See? Just past the pharmacy.'

I want to speak and not to speak. I want the both, for it to be better than it is, and to make it worse so as she'll leave. If I could be alone with her, alone in a room, not in the street, not where we can be seen, then I'd want the chat with her. I've never minded the chat. But I don't want to start here with her walking too close beside me.

'Let's go there,' she says.

She takes the lead and we're crossing the road side by side, close enough for my arm to touch her arm. I don't move away.

We go into the cafe, sit at a table near the window.

'I want you to be a bit nicer to me,' she says. 'Can you do that?'

I want that too, but it's not the only thing I want.

'I'll do what I can.'

'Don't be sarcastic.'

I look at the menu.

'Why do you have to behave in such a contrary way?' she says.

'I'm not being contrary. It's just that what you want isn't the same as what I want.'

4.

For my tenth birthday my parents gave me a brand-new Sting-Ray Schwinn because I'd topped my cla.s.s. There's only me and my brother, Russell, and he's seven years older. He didn't ever show any promise at school, left after his O-levels and he's ended up working in the chocolate factory with my father and he'll soon be the head parts-importer and he wears a shirt and tie, always a white shirt, always a blue tie, just like my father.

After the red Schwinn, my parents paid me even more compliments for doing well at school, but in the very next breath there'd always be jabs from my father about my mutant genes, about missing adoption papers and the whereabouts of Einstein at the time of my conception. I knew he loved me, 'course I did-every night he used sit on the settee in his thick socks and watch the TV and have me sit up close and he'd put his feet on my legs and I'd ma.s.sage his feet and then he'd do the same for me-but he got my back up with the hot and cold, with encouraging me one minute and teasing me the next.

Even without effort I was always close to the top of the cla.s.s, and when it came time to sit the grammar school exam I gave it my best and pa.s.sed easily and I think I did it because I could stomach the idea of failing even less than the idea of pa.s.sing.

In my third year at the grammar, when I was fourteen-the year I noticed Sarah-I started getting the pains in my neck and shoulders and the dread of tests put knots in my gut.

And then, one weekend, the Schwinn's gears got jammed and I took the bike apart and spent the whole day and half the night building it again. When I'd put it back together, it was perfect. I danced around in my bedroom all light-footed and shadow-boxing like Muhammad Ali.

I started reading mechanics magazines. At first I borrowed them from the library, but then I saved some of the money I earned working on Sat.u.r.day mornings at the corner shop, and I bought my first tools too, started my toolkit with adjustable spanners (a ten inch and a six inch), needlenose pliers and side cutters, then I got a set of box spanners, a ball peen hammer with a flat cold chisel, and a centre punch and some multi-grips. I knew what I needed and liked looking for the best pieces.

A few months before I fixed the Schwinn, I'd told my mates Geoff and Daniel that I wanted to run off to join the French Foreign Legion after school, or maybe as soon as I turned sixteen. I don't know why I told them. I wasn't even sure it was something I wanted to do, but I wanted to want to do something and maybe I wanted them to see me as a bit tougher.

Geoff liked the idea too and went off to ask his uncle about what kind of man could get into the Legion and his uncle told him all about it and also told Geoff that I wouldn't make the height requirements and it turned out he was right.

The night I'd spent fixing the Schwinn had given me a good confidence boost and I didn't care so much about the Legion any more.

The next Sunday I went round to my gran's house to share the good news. She always took my side in things and she said I had a good spirit and my father and my brother were like 'two tall drinks of water', but that there was nothing watery about me.

She took me to Dublin with her for a weekend when I was twelve, just me and her. We stayed in a hotel near Phoenix Park and we went down to the sea.

As soon as I was standing inside her hallway, I said, 'Gran, I think I want to be a mechanic.'

'And why do you think that?' she said.

'Because I fixed my bike last weekend and it was fun.'

'Fun is good,' she said, 'but what makes you think it's what you want to do with your life? There must be more to it.'

'I don't know how to say it.'

'See if you can.'

She waited.

'When I was doing it,' I said, 'the time flew like magic, like the world didn't exist. I thought I'd only spent an hour doing the fixing, when it turned out it was the whole afternoon. And when I was doing it, I didn't have any worries about school or anything. And the pains were gone.'

She didn't say anything, just opened her arms and gave me a good strong look and waited for me to embrace her, and when she was holding me she said, 'Dear Patrick, you've found the thing you love to do.'

She took hold of my hand then and we went in and sat on the soft blue settee and had cake and tea by the fire. It was lashing rain outside and her cat Samantha sat on my lap and we spent a very good day.

When it got dark, she had a brandy and let me take a few sips and she taught me how to play gin rummy and how to bluff at poker.

When it was time to go, I asked her to keep what I'd told her a secret.

'Of course,' she said.

'I'm not even going to tell Geoff and Daniel,' I said.

She took hold of my hand. 'It's good to sometimes keep something completely for yourself.'

Then she laughed. 'Except for me. You must tell me everything.'

She died two weeks later of a heart attack. She was sixty-five and she died on her feet. She was getting ready to go to Ma.s.s and she had her best dress and shoes on and she died, probably about to go to the dressing-table to finish putting powder on her face.

When I got the news I rode my bike to the new estate being built around behind the chocolate factory and dug a hole in the ground and screamed into it. I screamed about how f.u.c.king stupid the world is.

When I left for university, my parents and Russell came to the train station to say goodbye, and my father called me 'Professor' and 'Doctor' and 'Judge' but he laughed and shot my brother looks when he said it.

I didn't want to go to university but I didn't want to stay at home either. Leaving seemed easier than staying on, easier than talking about why I didn't want to go. They'd not like that I wanted to become a mechanic and they'd not understand it.

During the first term, I took up smoking, drank beer and improved my snooker game. I bought a set of arrows for the dartboard and played alone at night in the common room after most of the others were asleep or out on the town. By the end of the second term, I knew I was going to fail and my mood turned sour. I had stomach cramps and bouts of nausea and most days I slept till the afternoon.

My room-mate tried to cheer me up, saved jokes he'd heard down the pub or student union, but he gave up when I stopped him halfway through a joke to tell him I'd heard it before.

'What's the punch line then?'

'I can't remember,' I said. 'But I know I've heard it before.'

'When's the last time you laughed?'

'Yesterday,' I said.

I hadn't laughed for a long time and his question unnerved me.

After that, when my room-mate came back to our digs at night, I usually went straight out, and it didn't much matter where. I didn't have anything to say to him and he'd stopped talking to me anyway.

I took long walks, drank alone, or played darts.

Near the end of final term, I saw posters advertising The Merchant of Venice, one of the plays I studied at the grammar, and a girl I'd met when I won a snooker game was acting in it. The night I won the snooker, she came over to congratulate me and told me her name was Amanda. She was with her boyfriend then, but I got to wondering if she might be single by now.

Next time I saw her, I told her I was going to see her play.

'That's great,' she said. 'Maybe you could come to the party afterwards.'

I went alone to the theatre, but soon as I went in, I saw some students I recognised from my dorm standing in the foyer. There were five of them, three girls and two boys, all dressed very smart. I felt all right and thought I could make up the sixth member of the group.

I went over to them.

They reminded me of their names and I reminded them of mine and they did their best to include me. I wanted them to like me and it pleased me the way they counted me in.

'How long does a show like this drag on for?' I said.

One of the boys laughed and so did one of the girls.

'Do you have to be somewhere afterwards?' said the boy who'd laughed.

'No,' I said. 'I just want to be prepared.'

'You've just said the thing everybody wants to say but n.o.body has the courage to say,' said the girl who'd laughed.

'That's because I'm nervous,' I said.

She laughed again, but not viciously. It was as though I'd done something charming, as though they all liked me for being honest, as though it was part of a clever act I was putting on.

When we went into the theatre, the girl who'd laughed sat next to me, good and close, and she made movements like somebody snuggling up in bed. She draped her coat over her knee like a blanket and a bit of it went over my knee too.

I was bored by the play and a bit nervous about the girl and I stopped paying any attention for a good while, but that only made my restlessness worse. I wanted a drink to calm my nerves and thought I'd probably leave before the intermission and down a pint.

But when an actor on stage said:

I am a tainted wether of the flock,

Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit

Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me

tears came and clogged my throat.

I tried to swallow, but the tears forced their way and pushed through and even more tears came. I didn't know why I was crying, but I cried as though I had good reason. I didn't know then that a wether is a castrated male sheep, but I put my hands over my face to stop the noise my throat and mouth were making. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop the noise and tears.

The girl put her hand on my arm and whispered, 'Are you all right?'

I got up without answering and left the theatre. When I got outside, I stood a while and I realised that I was waiting for the girl. I hoped she'd follow. I waited for a good while and it was cold. I let myself get cold, didn't even move to keep the blood flowing, just stood and waited and waited for her to come.

She didn't come.

The next week, I sat my only exam and about ten minutes into it I tore my unfinished paper in half. Maybe I wanted witnesses to see that my failure was deliberate, but the fact I'd not lifted a finger to succeed didn't make it any easier to fail.

After the exam, I went back to my room, sat at my desk, and wrote a letter to my parents to tell them that I was quitting, that I'd soon be home. They didn't write back, didn't even phone me, and when I got home my father didn't get out of his chair in front of the TV. He said, 'So what are you going to do now?' I told him I didn't know. I expected him to be angry, but I didn't expect him to keep looking at the TV.

5.