Second Best E-Book

David Foenkinos

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 274

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Hundreds of actors were auditioned, but only two remained. This novel tells the story of the boy who wasn't chosen.It's 1999. Martin Hill is ten years old, crazy about Arsenal and has a minor crush on a girl named Betty. Then he makes it to the final two in the casting for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.In the end, the other boy is picked for the role of a lifetime. A devastated Martin tries to move on with his life. But how can he escape his failure, especially when it's the most famous film series in the world?Foenkinos's smash-hit Second Best is a playful, poignant story about fate, loss and forging one's own path in an age of never-ending comparison.

Leseprobe

David Foenkinos is the author of eighteen novels which have been translated into more than forty languages. His novel Charlotte won both the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des lycéens in 2014, and The Mystery of Henri Pick (2020) was a Guardian Book of the Summer. The Martins (2022) was an Independent Book of the Month.

Megan Jones is a translator. She lives in London.

Praise for The Martins:

‘A charming, clever book … As well as telling a deft story of family regrets, sorrows and bitterness, Foenkinos astutely explores auto-fiction in a novel that is full of good inside jokes’

The Independent

‘David Foenkinos is at his best in this playful novel’

Elle

‘A wonderful surprise – light, fizzy, at once uplifting and melancholic’

L’Express

‘Clever, well-written … If you had to file him in a manual of literary history, you might class him alongside the writers of the eighteenth century, but with the playfulness of Tintin’

L’Obs

Praise for The Mystery of Henri Pick:

‘A charming, quirky addition to the whimsical subgenre of books about book lovers, done with a light Gallic touch’

The Guardian,

Top 50 Books of the Summer

‘A dull pizza chef becomes the author of an unlikely bestseller in this charming novel about the literary life ‘

Sunday Times,

100 Best Summer Reads

‘A charming literary caper … A playfully droll satire of the French publishing scene and a completely delightful

jeu d’esprit’ Daily Mail

Praise for Charlotte:

‘Foenkinos writes arrestingly about Charlotte, masterfully imagining her interior life … [A] beautiful, wretched story’

The Guardian

‘I am deeply, deeply affected by this sad, beautiful, indignant, wrenching, important book … It is an artistic privilege and (I think) almost a moral duty that you all read this’ Sarah Perry, author of

The Essex Serpent

‘An astonishing novel. Every line has something profound to say about love and loss, hope and fear, time and memory, and the enduring power of art’

Andrew Michael Hurley, author of

The Loney

Praise for Delicacy:

‘A more whimsical, less knowing variation on David Nicholls’ blockbuster One Day … Immensely likeable, unexpectedly compelling and moving’

Irish Times

‘“Delicate” is probably the mot juste for this ineffably Gallic romance’

The Independent

‘Reads like an Amelie for grown-ups … this novel’s delicacy and lightness is given weight by the undercurrent of grief and broken hearts’

Stylist

Second Best

DAVID FOENKINOS

Translated from the French by Megan Jones

Pushkin Press

A Gallic Book

First published in France as Numéro deuxby Editions Gallimard, 2022

Copyright © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2022

English translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2023First published in Great Britain in 2023 by

Gallic Books, 12 Eccleston Street, London, SW1W 9LT

This book is copyright under the Berne ConventionNo reproduction without permission

All rights reserved

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-805333-68-5

Typeset in Fournier byPalimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,Croydon CR0 4YY

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

NOTE TO THE READER

Although some aspects of this novel are based on real events, the author has sought to let his imagination run free in this entirely fictional tale.

In 1999 the search to find the young boy who would play Harry Potter began. The boy who would become world-famous. Hundreds of actors were auditioned. In the end, only two remained. This novel tells the story of the boy who wasn’t chosen.

PART ONE

1

In order to understand the depth of Martin Hill’s trauma, we must go back to where it all began. In 1999 he had just turned ten, and lived in London with his father. He remembered this period as happy. In a photo from that time he could be seen with a smile as wide as a promise. The preceding months, however, had been difficult; his mother had left them to return to Paris. By mutual agreement, and so as not to cut him off from his friends, adding another separation on top of their separation, it was decided that young Martin would remain with his father. He saw his mother every weekend and during the holidays. The Eurostar, though more often praised for bringing France and England together, also hugely eased logistics for separated families. To tell the truth, Martin was very little affected by the change. Like all children who grow up seeing their parents argue, he could no longer bear their permanent state of disagreement. Jeanne had ended up hating everything that she had once loved about John. Where she had once adored his artistic, dreamy side, now she saw nothing more than a lazy lump.

They had met at a Cure concert in 1984, at a time when John had the same haircut as the singer, a sort of baobab tree sprouting from his head. Jeanne was working as an au pair for a wealthy, yet strict, young English couple, and she wore her hair in a pristine bob. If compatibility were measured in haircuts, they never would have met. What is more, Jeanne had ended up at the concert somewhat by chance, persuaded by another French girl, Camille, whom she had met in Hyde Park. Both girls noticed this bizarre individual at the back of the room looking wasted. He was downing beer after beer while the band played song after song. After a while, his knees gave way. The two girls went over to him to help him back on his feet; he tried to thank them, but his furry tongue was beyond producing any intelligible sound. They took him to the exit so he could get some air. John was just lucid enough to feel sorry for himself. Camille, a devoted fan, returned to the concert, while Jeanne stayed beside the troubled young man. Later she would ask herself: Should I have fled? The moment we met he was already falling apart. That’s not nothing. ‘Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good,’ as Henry de Montherlant wrote. Or at least, Jeanne thought it was he who had written it, most likely in The Girls, a book that all her friends had been devouring at the time. Years later, she would discover that the quote was in fact by Talleyrand. In any case, Jeanne let herself be won over by the boy’s strangeness. It bears mentioning that he had a particular – perhaps what one would call British – sense of humour. As he regained his wits, he said, falteringly: ‘I’ve always dreamed of being at the back of a rock concert downing beers. I’ve always dreamed of being that cool guy. But nothing doing. I’m just a loser who loves Schweppes and Schubert.’

So Jeanne missed the incredible eight-minute version of ‘A Forest’: Robert Smith loved to draw out this trippy song which had been their first hit in the British charts. It started to rain heavily, and the two of them took refuge in a taxi heading for the centre of London, where John lived in a tiny flat he had inherited from his grandmother. Before she died, she had told him: ‘I’ll leave you the flat on one condition: that you water the flowers on my grave once a week.’ The honouring of an open-ended contract between the living and the dead is admittedly somewhat unusual – but perhaps this was another example of British humour. Anyway, the deal was done, and the grandson never broke his promise. But let’s return to the living: that night Jeanne decided to go up to John’s flat, which was quite unlike her. They deemed it sensible to undress, so as not to stay in their soaking-wet clothes. Once they were naked, facing one another, they had no choice but to have sex.

Early next morning John suggested they go to the cemetery – he had to pay his dues. Jeanne thought this idea for their first walk utterly charming. They strolled for hours, in the first throes of love. Neither of them imagined that, fifteen years later, it would all come crashing down.

2

They loved that their names were John and Jeanne. They spent hours telling each other stories, all the pages of their pasts. At the start of a relationship, the beloved is a Russian novel: long, deep and wild. They discovered they had a lot in common. Literature, for example. They both loved Nabokov and vowed one day to go butterfly-catching in his honour. At that time, Margaret Thatcher was brutally ignoring the demands and stifling the hopes of the striking miners. Neither of them cared. Happiness doesn’t trouble itself with the conditions of the working class. Happiness is always a little bourgeois.

John was at art college, but his true passion was inventing. His latest creation was the umbrella-tie, an object that would surely become indispensable for every British person. Though the idea was brilliant, it had nonetheless hit a wall of general disinterest. Clock-pens were still all the rage. Jeanne told him over and over that all geniuses experienced rejection to begin with. He had to give the world time to catch up with his talent, she added loftily and with affection. For her part, Jeanne had fled to London to escape her parents, who had never known how to express their love. She already spoke perfect English. She dreamed of becoming a political journalist, interviewing heads of state – although she didn’t really know where this obsession had come from. Eight years later, she would put a question to François Mitterrand at a press conference in Paris. In her eyes, this would mark the start of her success. First, she quit her job as a nanny to become a waitress in a restaurant whose speciality was an excellent chilli. She quickly worked out that she had only to speak with a strong French accent to earn bigger tips. Day after day, she perfected the art of riddling her English with mistakes. She liked it when John watched her from the street, waiting for the end of her shift. Then, when she finally left work, they would walk through the night. She would tell him about some rude customers she’d had, and he would enthusiastically explain his latest idea to her. Between them, there was a harmony that was part dream, part reality.

After several months of hoarding her tips, Jeanne decided she had saved up enough to leave her job. She wrote a magnificent covering letter which landed her an internship with The Guardian. As she was French, they asked her to assist the newspaper’s Paris correspondent. This was a blow. She had hoped for an exciting life, running around reporting here and there, but her role consisted of organising meetings and booking train tickets. It was ironic, but being a waitress had felt more intellectually stimulating. Luckily, the situation improved. Through sheer determination she showed what she was capable of, and was soon given more responsibility. She even published her first article. In a couple of lines, she described the advent of soup kitchens in France. John read and re-read these few words as though it was a sacred text. It was an incredible feeling, seeing the name of the woman he loved in the newspaper – or rather, her initials, J. G. (Her last name was Godard, though no relation to the French-Swiss director.)

When she arrived at the office a few days later, she discovered among the classified ads these three lines, written in French:

INVENTOR WITHOUT A BRIGHT IDEA

HAS SEEN THE LIGHT.

WILL YOU MARRY ME J.G.?

Jeanne sat stunned at her desk for several minutes. Such happiness startled her. For a moment, she thought: I’ll pay for this one day. But her mind quickly returned to the idyllic direction her life was going in. She briefly tried to think of an original response, a ‘yes’ that would surprise him, something spectacular that would match his proposal. On the other hand, no. She picked up the telephone, dialled their home number, and when he answered she simply said: yes. The ceremony was intimate and rainy. At the town hall, a song by the Cure played as the bride and groom entered. The few invited friends applauded the couple who, as is traditional, kissed passionately after exchanging their vows. Unfortunately, and rather surprisingly, no one had thought to bring a camera. Perhaps it was better that way. Without physical traces of happiness, there is less chance of eventually drowning in nostalgia.

They then went away for a few days to a little farm in the heart of the English countryside, and spent their honeymoon learning how to milk cows. Upon their return, they moved into a larger two-bedroom flat. This place would allow them each to have some space if ever they argued, they said to each other, smiling. It was that wonderful time in a relationship when humour comes so readily; everything is so easy to laugh at. But this didn’t stop Jeanne from having big plans for her career. Even if she thought her husband was gifted, it didn’t mean she was prepared to take financial responsibility for both of them. He had to grow up, he had to work. Why must we always submit to the practical side of life? John wondered. But thankfully, things fell easily into place. Stuart, an old friend from art college who was now a film production designer, invited John to join his team. So John found himself on the set of A View to a Kill, the new James Bond film. Among his contributions was the green paint on a door handle opened by Roger Moore. For years, every time the film was on, he would shout, ‘That’s my door handle!’ as though the success of the entire film relied on that prop. He took pleasure in being part of the silent army that hurried about behind the scenes. And so the years passed, alternating between film shoots and fruitless attempts at inventing something revolutionary.

On the night of the New Year’s Eve that would see 1988 turn into 1989, Jeanne was overcome with nausea, though she hadn’t yet had a drink. She sensed immediately that she was pregnant. At the stroke of midnight, while they were in the middle of a party and everyone was kissing each other, she said to John, not ‘Happy New Year, my love,’ but instead, ‘Happy New Year, Papa.’ It took him a few seconds to understand, and then he almost fainted – he had a melodramatic streak. Quite understandably, though: he, who was lost in a desert, devoid of inspiration, was going to create a human being. And so Martin was born, on 23 June 1989, at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, one of the oldest maternity hospitals in Europe. The new parents had chosen his name because it was easily understood on both sides of the Channel. In fact, without getting ahead of ourselves, it was in that same hospital, exactly one month later, that Daniel Radcliffe – the actor who would go on to play Harry Potter – first entered the world.

3

Martin’s arrival, naturally, changed their life. The lightness of their early days was over; now they had to do sums, predict, anticipate. All this planning was incompatible with John’s nature. He was still working on films, but not enough. Several production designers no longer wanted to work with him, finding him too fiery whenever disagreements arose over artistic choices. Jeanne had tried to teach him diplomacy, or at least how to choose his words more carefully, but he clearly had a problem with authority. He often spent his time criticising those in power. During these rages, he even denigrated the newspaper his wife worked for, claiming it was in thrall to those in power.1 And yet The Guardian was hardly known for being lenient towards the government. In these moments, Jeanne couldn’t bear his constant complaining, this attitude that revealed his bitterness. She would feel so aggravated by him – but then her tender feelings would come back.

John was an amateur genius. Should he have been angry at himself for not being blessed with inspiration? Can you die of not being Mozart, when all you can get out of the piano are second-rate melodies? He basked in the role of misunderstood artist. He was the sort who wanted to slum it at rock concerts despite hating the music. Perhaps his entire personality could be summed up in this central contradiction: John dreamed of being an inventor, but he had no real ideas. He suffered from an unfulfilled creative force that he felt in the deepest part of him. Luckily, fatherhood offered him a way to nurture his creativity: he loved making up all manner of games. Martin was incredibly proud to have a father like him. Their daily life was full of surprises; each day held something new. In his son’s eyes, John could do no wrong. And the way his son gazed at him helped John to calm down, gradually alleviating his frustrations.

On a professional level, things began to improve as well. On set one day, he had to stand in for a prop designer who was unwell. It was like an epiphany. It was a complicated job that required quick decision-making. His role consisted in sorting out the practical problems: placing a wedge under a chair that had suddenly become wobbly, finding a corkscrew that was easier to operate, or changing the colour of a teabag. Not only was John more autonomous in this job, but he also thrived under the constant pressure. He had found a vocation that mixed inventiveness with design – everyone has a calling. In his words, he had become a ‘last-minute artist’.

1

A few years later, Jeanne was walking through a bookshop and couldn’t stop herself from buying the new Philip Roth novel,

I Married a Communist.

4

Jeanne hadn’t suffered the same difficulties. Her star was in the ascendant. She had managed to realise her dream of joining the politics team, and often travelled with her work, as a roving reporter. When she phoned her son from these business trips, he coloured in her location on a map. There came a time when his mother’s footsteps covered a large part of Europe. Without realising it, Jeanne had begun to distance herself from her home. John became like one of those first loves that don’t survive into adulthood. It was evident that they had grown apart. But so many couples survive despite being incompatible. There were so many reasons still to love one another: their son, their past, the embers of their passion. Jeanne was fond of John, but did she still love him? She wanted to preserve their love story, but as time went on, she felt something essential was passing her by; her heart was beating in a way that was far too sensible. She was sometimes annoyed by their domestic quarrels: you didn’t put this away, why did you forget that. These household disputes drove her up the wall. She’d had higher hopes for her life. But these reproaches were a way of expressing her frustration.

Some stories are written even before they begin. Jeanne got on well with one of her colleagues in the sport section. They had lunch together a few times, in that seemingly innocent way that masks the ambush of seduction. Then he suggested: ‘Why don’t we go for a drink one evening?’ She had said yes without thinking. The strangest part was that she didn’t tell her husband the truth; she gave the excuse of the newspaper going to press late. It was all there, in that lie which betrayed what she was truly feeling. After the drink, there was the suggestion of dinner – which required another lie – then a second dinner, then a kiss, and then the idea of finding a hotel. Jeanne acted surprised, but her reaction was nothing more than a façade, concealing her elation. She desired this man; she thought about him constantly, about his face, his body. Sensuality returned to the foreground of her life. And he felt the same way; he had never cheated on his wife before. Beneath his self-assured manner lay an intense turmoil. Ashamed and surprised at themselves in equal measure, they swore their affair would not last long. They just wanted to inject some passion into their everyday existence, and tried to do so without being crushed by guilt. Life was too short to be perfect.

But then the deceived wife interrupted this little interlude when she came across their messages. She could have left her husband, but instead demanded an immediate end to the affair. He complied at once, not wanting to give up the family he had created or his life with his three children. He resigned from the newspaper and found a position with a local television channel in Manchester, for which he had to move house. Jeanne never saw him again. She remained in a daze for weeks, frightened by how quickly her happiness had vanished. Going to work became painful. She realised that this affair, which she had believed to be something casual, had shaken her to the core. Affairs of the heart being ever ironic, John had been particularly loving throughout that period. The more Jeanne seemed to pull away, the closer he tried to get to her. But he was a nuisance; she needed to be alone. She didn’t love him any more. She started arguments over nothing. She embraced falling out of love.

Suddenly, Jeanne could no longer stand England, that land filled with the visible reminders of her aborted passion. But what could she do? Martin was only nine years old. She was trapped. She couldn’t uproot him by returning to France, even less take him away from his father. Then fate decided for her. She was offered a job as a political journalist for L’Événement du jeudi. Georges-Marc Benamou had just taken over the weekly newspaper and was eager to rejuvenate and energise it. She had met him in London when Tony Blair was elected. They had certainly got along, but she never imagined he would call on her. Jeanne felt this was surely a sign, a hand reaching out towards her future. Just before they went to sleep, in the darkness of the bedroom, she told her husband softly: ‘I’m leaving.’ John turned on the light and asked her where on earth she thought she was going at this late hour.

She talked about their last few years together. In this sudden urge to confess, she was unsure whether or not to reveal her infidelity, but decided against it. There was nothing to be gained by causing even more damage now that it was over. She spoke of feeling worn down, of how time was passing – generic phrases that said everything and nothing all at once. And then she brought up the professional opportunity she had been offered.

Three times, John sighed: ‘It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be,’ until eventually he said: ‘You can still go to Paris if it’s important to you. I’ll take care of everything. And we can see each other every weekend.’

‘That’s not what I want. I want to move forward.’

‘…’

‘It’s over between us.’

‘…’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘…’

‘Martin can stay with you. I don’t want to cut him off from his life here, from his friends. He can come and stay with me at the weekends, and during holidays … That is, if you agree …’

John was silent. It wasn’t a discussion; it was a statement. He began to imagine himself alone in the flat, his son on the other side of the Channel. Soon she would ask for full custody, he was sure of it. At the start she would try to cajole him, pushing him little by little towards losing his son.

What would become of him? How would he live without her? He let his mind wallow in the darkest vision of his future.

5

A new life began. John tried not to show what he was feeling – that he was a clown in the circus of separation. When he took Martin to the station on Friday evenings, he grinned and said, without fail, ‘Kiss the Eiffel Tower for me!’ Any child would have been able to detect the pathos in this joke. For every journey, he made Martin a tuna mayonnaise sandwich which he wrapped carefully in tinfoil, a ritual that was a pure demonstration of love. Then he returned home where the solitude was deafening. He spent most of his weekends imagining the walks his son was taking with Jeanne. Where were they going? What were they doing? But when he picked Martin up from the station on Sunday nights, he hardly asked him any questions. He didn’t have the strength to hear tales of their life without him. Instead, he just asked his son: ‘So, was the sandwich good?’

6

It was 1999. Martin was a young English boy like any other. A football-crazy Arsenal fan, he had jumped for joy when Nicolas Anelka joined his favourite team. When Anelka scored a goal, Martin was proud to have a French mother. What else is there to tell? His favourite singer was Michael Jackson. He had a poster of Princess Diana in his bedroom. He dreamed of one day owning a dog he would name Jack. Also worth mentioning is the crush he had on Betty, a redhead who preferred his friend Matthew to him. But some days, he wasn’t sure that he really liked her. He found her loudmouthed ways insufferable. Perhaps he was looking for flaws to ease the pain of rejection. At ten years old, he already understood that one of the ways of being happy was to change your perception of reality. The same reality that you can escape with flights of imagination, or the images conjured when reading books. All around him, people were talking more and more about a book called Harry Potter. His friend Lucy swore by the story of the wizard. But Martin felt no particular desire to follow the crowd. The books he had to read for school were more than enough for him. In general, he felt no real artistic calling. He didn’t want to learn a musical instrument, nor did he feel comfortable on stage during the end-of-year plays. The few times his father had taken him to a film set, he had been profoundly bored. Naturally – a child on a James Ivory set is like a vegetarian in a butcher’s shop.

Martin’s life might have continued like this. Nothing that happened subsequently was preordained. For him to end up at the Harry Potter audition, there had to be a change of trajectory. Which is exactly what happened – twice.

*

Fate is always thought to be a positive force, propelling us towards a magical future. Surprisingly, its negative side is very rarely mentioned, as though fate has entrusted the management of its brand image to a PR genius. We always say, for example, ‘As luck would have it!’ Which entirely obscures the idea that the things that luck would have are not always lucky.

*

Firstly, there was a long lorry drivers’ strike in Britain in the spring of 1999. They were fighting for an improvement in their working conditions. For weeks, London was cut off from the rest of the country with no supplies, without even essential foodstuffs. But that will play its part a little later on. For the moment, Martin is at school. Every year, the students had to have a medical examination, a basic evaluation of their well-being. The children were always delighted at the chance to miss an hour of lessons. Just like during fire drills, when a torturous science class was replaced by joyful roaming. Therefore, peeing into a jar became a joy. Martin wasn’t sporty – he could even be considered rather puny – but he stood up straight and looked energetic. The nurse who was examining him took his blood pressure, made him take a deep breath and then cough, and tapped his knees with a strange hammer to test his reflexes. Finally, she asked him to stand up and touch his toes. Then she asked him a few questions about his family life and his diet, a sort of fast-track psychoanalysis in which Martin announced his mother had left to live in France while also admitting that he never ate broccoli.

Finally there was an eye test which is still fun as an adult. There is something exciting about trying to make out that Lilliputian alphabet. You squint your eyes in an exaggerated, ridiculous manner, and end up seeing an H instead of an M. In Martin’s case, the verdict was damning. ‘Your eyesight has deteriorated since last year. You’re going to have to wear glasses,’ the nurse decreed. At ten years old, this is pretty good news. You don’t yet know about the hours you will waste looking everywhere for those two round pieces of glass that you cannot leave the house without; nor do you know that you will break them before an important meeting and have to muddle through in a complete fog. And you don’t know that if one day you have to wear a surgical mask, you will go about the world at the mercy of misted-up lenses. For now, Martin thinks that glasses will give him a serious air, or at least an intelligent one – one that Betty might like.

That evening, Martin relayed the news to his father, who couldn’t help feeling that this was a consequence of the separation. ‘His eyesight is getting worse because he doesn’t want to see the new reality of his life.’ An interesting theory, but not one that would change the course of events. Jeanne wasn’t going to suddenly return to London because her son had lost a tenth of the vision in his left eye. The next day, they went to the optician. Strangely, there wasn’t a single pair of glasses on the display stands.

‘I can’t stock up until the strike is over. I barely have anything,’ the optician’s assistant explained.

‘So what can we do?’ asked John.

‘You’d have to ask the lorry drivers that. I’ll show you the catalogue, and your son can choose the style he wants. I’ll order them as soon as I can.’

‘…’

‘In the meantime, I can offer you these ones here.’

The man opened a drawer and took out a pair of round glasses with black frames. Martin, rather miffed, looked at them. When he tried them on, he found his face looked a little strange. The optician added that he could put in the correct lenses that same day.

‘They really suit you! We don’t even need to look at the catalogue. Really, they’re perfect!’ John gushed. Martin was immediately convinced that this enthusiasm was fake and had only one aim: to avoid having to come back here.

And that’s how Martin came to wear round glasses.

7

The second agent of fate was named Rose Hampton, a young woman of twenty-two who looked after Martin while his father was on set. Martin was fascinated by her ever-changing hair – she was forever dying it different colours. A few years later, when he discovered the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet’s character immediately made him think of Rose. She had the same charisma, the same sweet zaniness. Martin would never have dared admit it for fear of seeming ridiculous, but he had feelings for her. Sometimes, in the body of a child beats the heart of a man. Unfortunately, she was in a relationship with a cricket-playing moron. But that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was a fall down the stairs.

Margaret, Rose’s beloved grandmother, had missed a step on the staircase and taken a violent tumble. She died instantly. Devastated, the young woman left straight away for Brighton to organise the funeral, and to let herself be overcome by an immeasurable grief. She wandered along the seashore for days on end, haunted by happy memories from her childhood. It was absurd that her grandmother should die like that, when old age didn’t seem to have taken hold of her yet. One wrong step, off by perhaps a millimetre, had been deadly. One tiny mistake could push you towards death. And it was this same infinitesimal misstep, this sprinkling of misfortune, that would dramatically change Martin’s destiny too. The step missed by his babysitter’s grandmother would be the root cause of his tragedy.