‘What?’

  ‘Would that have been you? At four thirty p.m.?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. Then he remembers that today is bin collection day and that yes, he had put the rubbish out yesterday. ‘I put the rubbish out at some point,’ he says. ‘But I can’t tell you when.’ As he says this, he remembers the girls that had walked past. Two schoolgirls. One was the girl who’d acted like he was going to jump her when he was walking home from work the other night; the other was a tiny girl with black hair. They’d looked over at him and said something to each other; then they’d picked up their pace before disappearing into the house across the road.

  He’d thought he was being paranoid at the time, that he’d imagined them talking about him. Now he can only assume that they had been. He sighs.

  ‘But roughly?’

  ‘Roughly the afternoon. It was dark, I remember.’

  ‘And you haven’t left the house apart from that?’

  ‘No. I have not.’

  DI Burdett folds his notepad in half and tucks it in to his pocket. ‘Thank you, Mr Pick. I appreciate your time.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he replies. And then, just as the policeman turns to leave, he adds, ‘Is she all right? The girl?’

  DI Burdett smiles slightly. ‘She’s fine,’ he says. ‘But thank you for asking.’

  ‘Good,’ says Owen. ‘Good.’

  14

  Owen had been a beautiful child, oddly. His mother had put him in for modelling when he was about four. He hadn’t been taken on because he was awkward in front of a camera. But he’d had a cherubic face: dark eyes, red lips, a dimple.

  But the face that had looked so beautiful on a small child had not translated into a good face for a teenager and he’d been a shockingly awkward-looking boy. To this day he cannot bear to look at photos of himself between the ages of eleven and eighteen.

  But now, at thirty-three, he feels his features have settled again; he looks in the mirror and a relatively handsome guy looks back at him. He particularly likes his eyes; they are so brown that they are almost black. He inherited them from his maternal grandmother who was half Moroccan.

  He doesn’t work out, that is true to say. He has little definition, but in clothes you wouldn’t know that; you wouldn’t know about the softness of the skin around his belly button, the slightly mammary sag around his pectorals. In carefully chosen clothes, he looks just like any average gym-goer.

  Owen doesn’t believe that he’s being rejected by women on the grounds of not having a ‘fit bod’. This he could accept. But no woman has seen him undressed. Not once. Not ever. It appears that for some unexplained reason Owen fails to meet the criteria of every single woman in the land. And yet he sees men far worse-looking than himself, every single day, with women who appear to like them, or with children, proving that at some point a woman has liked them enough to let them do that to her, or wearing wedding rings or with photos on their desks of nice-looking women or photos of the children that nice-looking women have let them make inside them and really, it baffles him, it absolutely baffles him.

  It’s not as if Owen is fussy. He really isn’t fussy; in fact he would probably say yes to 80 per cent of adult women if they asked him out to dinner. Maybe even 90 per cent.

  In Tessie’s bathroom, which is heated by an electric bar above the door that glows as red as a Saharan sunset, and which would probably fail a health and safety inspection, there is a full-length mirror opposite the toilet. Owen has no idea what would possess someone to put a full-length mirror opposite a toilet. But there it is, and over the years he’s grown used to it. He ignores it most of the time. But sometimes he uses it to assess himself, physically. He needs to look upon himself at regular intervals, to see himself, because no one else sees him and if he doesn’t remind himself of his three dimensions, he might just dissolve and disappear. He looks at his penis. He has a nice penis. He’s watched the dating show with the naked men standing in pods being scrutinised by fully clothed women and nearly every one of the men has had an ugly penis. But his penis is nice. He can see that objectively. Yet no woman has ever seen it.

  He sighs, puts himself back into his underwear and zips up his trousers. He goes back to his room and to YourLoss’s blog, which Owen had discovered yesterday after clicking a link included in his online comment.

  YourLoss’s website is a portal into a world that Owen did not know existed.

  He describes himself as an incel. The term is hyperlinked at the top of his website to a Wiki page that describes incels thus:

  … members of an online subculture[1][2]. who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.[3]Self-identified incels are largely white and are almost exclusively male heterosexuals.[4][5][6][7][8][9]. The term is a portmanteau of ‘involuntary celibates’.[10]

  YourLoss is thirty-three, like Owen, and very open about the fact that he has not had sex since he was seventeen.

  Owen, on the other hand, has never had sex.

  He once had a girl touch him inside his trousers, when he was about nineteen. But it had ended badly and prematurely, with the girl withdrawing her hand rapidly and rushing to find a sink. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. He’d replayed it in his head for years, over and over, like slicing himself over and over with a sharp knife. The more he thought about it, the scareder he’d become of ever putting himself in that position again and he’s blamed himself ever since for the lack of sex he’s experienced, for the women who haven’t looked at him or touched him. As far as he’s concerned, it’s his fault, entirely. But as he reads YourLoss’s blog, he begins to wonder about this.

  Because YourLoss doesn’t blame himself. YourLoss blames everyone else and he is really angry.

  He’s angry at people he calls ‘Chads’. Chads are guys who get sex. According to YourLoss, Chads don’t get sex because they’re better than guys who don’t get sex. They get sex because they’re looksmaxxing and mugging. This means that they are pumping their bodies artificially to look more attractive than normal guys, that they are fake-tanning and tooth-whitening and getting plastic surgery and having things done to their eyebrows and their skin. They get sex because they are stacking the system unfairly against men like YourLoss. And, Owen suspects, men like him too. They are, apparently, cheating.

  But mainly, he’s angry at women. Stacys and Beckys as he refers to them. Stacys are the high-value women, the trophy women, the women who can have any man they want. These women sicken him because they know exactly what they’re doing; they know their power and their worth and use it deliberately to make guys like YourLoss feel worthless. Beckys are the less attractive women who still feel they have the right to reject men like YourLoss whom they deem to be not up to scratch.

  YourLoss walks a lot. He walks and he sits on benches and in quiet corners of pubs and he looks and he reports what he sees; the injustices he perceives to be lurking in every corner of the nameless town in which he lives.

  Owen clicks on an entry called Snow Joke. He reads:

  My town is white today. We’re snowy. It makes me feel for a minute like anything is possible; everything hidden away, like the world’s wearing a uniform. And everyone in their biggest, warmest, least attractive clothes, we’re all equal now.

  Except we’re not, are we? Under the snow, that car there is still a Mercedes coupé and that car there is still a Ford Focus and you bloody well know it without having to scrape the snow away; there’s that glint of red paintwork, that particular curve to the bumper, unmistakeable. So even though we’re all wearing our worst clothes it’s still plain to see who’s winning and who’s losing. There’s the sad, sad Becky trailing her squashed old Uggs through the snow; doesn’t she know they’re not waterproof? Sheesh. No, she does not because she is stupid. And, look, there’s a Stacy striding along in a pair of Hunter wellies – £100 a pair, don’t you know? Ugly as all fuck. But at least they don’t let in the water. And I’m sure there must be someone out there with a fetish for green rubber footwear … And she’s in full make-up, of course, can’t let a few frozen fractals stop you slapping on the slap. Can’t let your standards drop completely.

  This town, this fucking town. Full of poseurs. And if you’re not a poseur you’re a wannabe poseur. And if you’re not a wannabe poseur then you’re a loser, even when you’re a winner.

  I go to the gastropub just off the common. It’s only been a gastropub for a few weeks. It was just a pub before that. Or actually an inn, to be precise. The Hunters’ Inn as it was once known. It has lamps outside and a carriageway where horses would once have been tethered. In spite of its gentrification, in the snow, with its glowing lamps, it still looks vaguely Dickensian and for a minute I feel timeless and happy, as if I belong somehow. In the old days every man could find a woman. And if they couldn’t make a woman fall in love with them, there were other ways of finding women and keeping them. Women needed us then, more than we needed them. What the hell happened to this world?

  I buy a pint. I sit by the window. I watch the ducks skittering about on the frozen pond on the common. I watch the snow.

  Tomorrow it will be gone.

  15

  Owen puts on a grey button-down shirt and dark jeans. He assesses himself in the mirror on the outside of his wardrobe. He looks fine. Possibly overdue a haircut; his fringe hangs a little limply over his eyes. And he’s very pale. But it is February and he is always pale in February. He is due at a meeting at the college in an hour and a half. It will be the first time he’s left the house for anything other than food shopping in over two weeks. His stomach churns slightly with nervous anticipation. Not just about the thought of going on the Tube and sitting opposite people and walking through crowds of strangers, but also of what they are going to say to him. They have carried out a full investigation into the girls’ allegations. They want him to ‘pop in for half an hour or so’ so that they can give him an update.

  ‘Can’t you just tell me over the phone?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Holly had said. ‘I’m afraid not, Owen. It needs to be face-to-face.’

  He fishes the dreaded shoes out from under the bed where they’ve been lurking ever since he kicked them under there two weeks ago. They appear, trailing a family of dust bunnies in their wake. He appraises them in the light of two weeks’ absence. No, he decides, they are bad shoes. He will not wear them again. He puts on his comfy, rubber-soled black lace-ups instead, the ones he’s had to glue the soles back on to twice.

  He gets himself some breakfast in the kitchen: a slice of toast and a slice of cheese. Tessie appears as he’s putting the butter back in the fridge. She’s back from Italy and has been in a strange mood ever since she returned.

  ‘Aren’t you going to be late?’ she says. ‘You know it’s nearly ten o’clock.’

  ‘I’m not due in until eleven,’ he says.

  He hasn’t told her about his suspension. Why would he? She would just judge him, say something about his mother, make everything 10 per cent worse than it already is.

  ‘All right for some,’ she says, brushing past him to the sink where she takes an upturned tea cup from the draining board and examines the inside of it before rinsing it and switching on the kettle.

  Tessie is his mother’s big sister. His mother is dead. She died when Owen was eighteen. Owen’s father lives in south London with another wife and another son. Owen lived with them for a month after his mother died. It was the loneliest month of his life. He remembers Tessie, at his mother’s funeral, touching his arm and saying, ‘Remember, I will always have a room for you if you need it.’

  Turns out she didn’t really mean it. But now she’s stuck with him, fifteen years later and counting. She was forty when Owen moved in. Now she is fifty-five, but she acts as though she is sixty-five. You wouldn’t catch her in Lycra leggings and a hoodie. Her hair is steel grey and frothy and she shops at odd boutiques in Hampstead that sell voluminous linen tunics and trousers with baggy crotches and floppy hats.

  ‘I bumped into Ernesto last night,’ she says.

  Owen nods. Ernesto is a single man of a certain age who lives in the flat above theirs.

  ‘He said there was a visit from the police a couple of weeks back. Saw you talking to them on the front step. What was that all about?’

  Owen breathes in hard. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Some sort of attack in the area. They were doing door-to-doors.’

  ‘Attack,’ she says, narrowing her eyes. ‘What sort of attack?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He throws his crusts in the bin. Thirty-three years old. He really should be able to eat crusts at his age. ‘An assault, something like that.’

  ‘Sexual?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Probably.’

  There is a tiny but significant silence. Inside the silence he can hear the little intake of his aunt’s breath; sees a thought passing through her mind so fast that it makes her head roll back slightly. Her eyes narrow again and then it passes.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I hope they caught whoever it was. I don’t know what’s happening to this area. It used to be so safe.’

  After a tense five-minute wait in the reception area at the college, Owen is shown into the same office he was shown to last time. Jed Bryant is there, once again, with Holly and Clarice. And there is another woman, small and sharp, who is introduced to him as Penelope Ofili. She is an adjudicator.

  ‘Why do we need an adjudicator?’ he asks.

  ‘Just for transparency.’

  Transparency. Owen blinks slowly and sucks in his cheeks.

  ‘Please,’ says Jed, ‘take a seat.’

  ‘How’ve you been?’ asks Holly. ‘Hope you’ve had a chance to relax.’

  ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘No.’

  The smile freezes on Holly’s lips and she turns away abruptly and says, ‘So, thank you so much for coming in again, Owen. As you know, we’ve been working very hard to investigate the claims made by two of your students regarding your behaviour at the Christmas party last December.’

  Owen wriggles slightly in his chair, uncrosses his legs, crosses them again. He’s been over the events of that night a hundred times since the allegations were made and he still cannot find the point at which his behaviour breached the line between jovial and abusive. Because that is the bottom line here: in order for all these people to be sitting in this room together, taking time out of their own days, calling in the services of an independent adjudicator, there must be some fundamental belief that abuse has taken place.

  He uncrosses his legs for a third time and is aware that this will look edgy and uncomfortable, which is understandable but might also make it seem that he is feeling guilty. He should have spoken to someone, he realises that now. Things have escalated rather than de-escalated since he last sat here.

  ‘We’ve spoken to several people who were there on the night,’ Holly continues. ‘I’m afraid, Owen, that they all corroborate the original accusation.’

  He nods, his eyes cast downwards.

  ‘Several people saw you touch the girls in question. Several other people report being present when you splattered the girls with the sweat from your forehead. They all attest that it was a deliberate action and that you did it more than once when asked by the girls to stop.

  ‘Furthermore, we’ve had several reports backing up the claims of inappropriate teaching: favouring boys, belittling girls, ignoring them, marking them more harshly in some cases or not prioritising their work in others. Some usage of inappropriate language in the classroom.’

  He glances up. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well.’ Holly looks at her notes. ‘Using terms such as “man up”. Referring to certain pieces of code as “sexy”. Referring to female students as girls. Referring to other students as “insane” and “mental”.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Making fun of students with food allergies.’

  ‘Intolerances …’

  ‘And students who are vegans.’

  Owen closes his eyes and sighs. ‘For God’s sake,’ he mutters under his breath.

  Holly narrows her eyes at him, her finger on the last line of her notes and says, ‘Also, excessive blasphemy.’

  ‘Blasphemy?’ he says. ‘Really? Dear God.’

  He realises his faux pas and shuts his eyes.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what happens now?’

  There is a brief silence. All three people in the room exchange a glance. Then Holly pulls a piece of paper from her folder and passes it across the table to him. ‘We would like you to attend this training course, Owen. It’s a week long and addresses all the issues we’ve been discussing today. If at the end of the course it’s felt that you’ve properly engaged with the training and have a clearer understanding of what’s appropriate and inappropriate in a workplace with children, we can start talking a return to work. But you have to commit to it. One hundred per cent. Have a read. Let me know what you think. You’re a very valued member of staff here, Owen.’ A rictus smile. ‘We don’t want to lose you.’

  Owen stares at the piece of paper for a while. The words swim and swirl before his eyes. The word ‘brainwashing’ passes through his head. A week trapped in a room with a bunch of paedophiles being reprogrammed to think that vegans are superior beings and women can have penises.

  No, he thinks. No thank you. He pushes the paper back across the table towards Holly and says, ‘Thank you, but I’d rather be sacked.’

  Owen walks aimlessly for quite some time after he leaves Ealing College. He can’t face the thought of the Tube journey home. He can’t face the thought of Tessie peering at him through her horn-rimmed glasses and saying, What are you doing back so early? And then sitting in his lumpy armchair for the rest of the day staring at a screen.