The Dead Duck Day Symbol Analysis

Everything about that two minutes was mysteriously memorable, even at the time, somehow; climbing the stairs, the cooking smells that got trapped in the hall, the way he noticed the pattern on the carpet for the first time ever.

I’ll watch out for you if I am able to. I think I will be. I think that when something happens to a mother, she’s allowed to do that, even if it’s her fault. I don’t want to stop writing this, but I can’t think of any reason to keep it going.

Love you,
Mum.

His mum was pretty. And Will seemed quite well off, they could go and live with Will and his kid, and then there’d be four of them, and four was twice as good as two. And maybe, if they wanted to, they could have a baby. His mum wasn’t too old. She was thirty-eight. You could have a baby when you were thirty-eight. So then there would be five of them, and it wouldn’t matter quite so much if one of them died.

‘How often do you think about it?’

‘I dunno.’ All the time, all the time, all the time. Could he say that to Will? He didn’t know. [...] All he wanted was a promise from someone, anyone, that it wouldn’t happen again, ever, and no one could do that.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Will. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say that in front of you, should I?’

‘It’s OK. People say it at school all the time.’

And that was it. That was all Will said. ‘Fucking hell.’ Marcus didn’t know why Will had sworn like that, but Marcus liked it; it made him feel better. It was serious, it wasn’t too much and it made him see that he wasn’t being pathetic to get so scared.

‘Give me a good reason.’

He could give her a reason. It wouldn’t be the right reason, and he’d feel bad saying it, and he was pretty sure it would make her cry. But it was a good reason, a reason that would shut her up, and if that was how you had to win arguments, then he’d use it.

‘Because I need a father.’

It shut her up, and it made her cry. It did the job.

Even though what they were talking about was miserable, Marcus was enjoying the conversation. It seemed big, as though you could walk ‘round it and see different things, and that never happened when you talked to kids normally. [...] his mum must have conversations like this with Suzie, conversations which moved, conversations where each thing the other person said seemed to lead you on somewhere.

‘How do you know? How do you know he wasn’t just messing about? I’ll bet you he never does anything like it again.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Ellie said.

‘Neither do you,’ Marcus shouted at her. ‘He’s not even a real person. He’s just a singer. He’s just someone on a sweatshirt. It’s not like he’s anyone’s mum.’

‘No, but he’s someone’s dad, you little prat,’ said Ellie. ‘He’s Frances Bean’s dad. He’s got a beautiful little girl and he still wants to die. So, you know.’

Marcus did know, he thought. He turned around and ran out.

What Will had been most frightened of—apart from Fiona asking him about the point [...]—was that there was going to be a cause of all this misery, some dark secret, or some terrible lack, and he was one of the only people in the world who could deal with it, and he wouldn’t want to, even though he would have to anyway. But it wasn’t like that at all [...].

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘I know some things. I know about that. I’ll tell you, Ellie, you don’t feel anything like my mum, or Kurt Cobain. You shouldn’t say that you feel like killing yourself when you don’t. It’s not right.’

Ellie shook her head and laughed her low nobody-understands-me laugh, a noise that Marcus hadn’t heard since the day they met outside Mrs. Morrison’s office. She was right, he hadn’t understood her then; he understood her much better now.

But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on.