В Thicker Than Water, каждое ново открывается шрамом более глубокой связи между людьми. Главные герои — это два близнеца, чья жизнь разбита одной коварной встречей. Начинается с простых моментов и остается неизменным мрачно-сюрреалистическим тоном, привлекающим внимание и заставляющим ждать следующего шага....
‘Mark wrote this?’ I asked.
Jean nodded. ‘Or copied it from somewhere. And he gave it to Billy as a present. Because he thought Billy would get what he was going on about, Billy being such a bright little lad. So after that—’
‘I put my foot down,’ Tom said. ‘I told him to have nothing to do with Mark. Not even to talk to him. I said if he did, I’d stop his pocket money and pull him out of the school football team.’
Jean took the sheet of paper out of my hands and folded it up again, as though its dangerous doggerel had to be silenced.
She relapsed into dismal silence. Tom seemed thrown by the sudden detour into moral philosophy, but he struggled on manfully.
‘We didn’t discuss it with Billy,’ he said. ‘John knew all about it, of course, because they were talking about it up and down the estate, but Billy mostly stays at home and does his own thing, like. He’s got his Playstation and his books. Or he goes off wandering, sometimes, with his mates. There’s half a dozen of them - no harm in any of them, not like the bloody teenagers we’ve got round here."
"‘But as Jeanie says, Billy’s not stupid. He knew Mark had gone, and I imagine there was talk at school about what had happened.
‘His best friend,’ Jean said softly.
Tom looked at her and shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘There was five years between them.
