'Well, she was a poor little thing then, wasn't she? Why take her with you on a houseboat? Couldn't you have left her with friends?'

Michael relented. 'You know, most people find this story funny. I don't know many funny stories, and this is my effort to, like, be amusing.'

'Thank you,' said Chris perfectly seriously.

Michael took a deep breath. 'Yeah. You're welcome. Anyway, the dog can't take it any more and suddenly she just jumps off the deck and jumps into the marsh. And she disappears. She just completely sinks into the mud.'

Chris covered his mouth. 'Oh my God, what did you do?'

Michael was still waiting for laughs. 'I jumped in after her. And I sank too.'

Bubbles of marsh gas had tickled his feet and smelled like farts. Michael reached into the ooze and pulled poor Peaches out. They both emerged stinking with no way to wash. Chris reacted as if Michael was describing a friend's death from cancer.

'Anyway, Dad said you're not coming onto my boat. I mean we smelled like a sewer. And so we climbed into the dinghy and just sat there.'

'Oh, it sounds disgusting,' said Chris.

'Actually, I still find it kind of funny.'

'Oh.'

'I was telling it as a joke.'

'Were you? I was thinking it didn't sound too funny at the time, being banished by your Dad.'

'I wasn't being banished. I mean, I couldn't go on board, that was all.'

'Sorry.'

So much for telling jokes.

'Actually, I was bloody angry,' said Michael.

And that made Chris laugh. 'I'd have fucking laid one on him.'

'Oh no you wouldn't. Not if you saw my Dad. My Dad was a really big guy. In fact, he was a Marine, which is why we lived where we lived near Camp Pendleton. No, he was a really big man.'

'He sounds fanciable, your father. Do you think you could introduce us?'

And Michael heard himself say, 'I did fancy him, actually.'

Yup. There you go. Chris's face froze.

Michael kept on like it was a funny story. It was some kind of revenge for the funny story. Part of Chris made him angry. 'Well, I didn't see him a lot; he never felt like my father and he was built like, whatever, and he was really handsome, and competent, and smart and I just fell in love… and one night… I made a pass at him.'

Chris went rather still. 'What did he do?'

Michael smiled. 'He went berserk. He rang my Mom.'

Chris saw the humour. He chuckled. 'That sounds awful. That sounds beyond awful.'

Michael didn't. 'It was a laugh riot.'

'I'm… I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but it does sound like some kind of living end.'

'That and more. I'm impotent, Chris. Last night was a fake. It was a pill, it was Viagra.'

Chris looked suddenly dark. 'It still seemed pretty good.'

There was something else he needed to see.

'Do you want to see my father? Do you want to see how good-looking he really was?'

Chris began to look troubled, he sulked a bit; his hot date had turned out to be a flake. 'You have a photograph?'

'More than that. Turn and look at the men's room door, and in a second, he'll come through it, wearing nothing but those swimming trunks he wore all that summer boating holiday. Turn around, Chris. Look. Now.'

The doors swung open, and out came a man wearing surfer shorts. The shorts were blue with a half-inch band of white around every edge. He was tall and square at the same time, with shoulders like volleyballs, and a bare chest that seemed to support breasts, and a collarbone that was parallel to the floor, stretching his trunk wide. He had a face a bit like a more thickset, Latin Gregory Peck, decent, almost wise. The eyes were absolutely black, darker even than Michael's. The crew cut was savage, unflattering. The thighs and calves were a particular feature; this was a big man who could sprint.

Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Blasco. Eventually made Master Sergeant, the last two years Michael knew him.

Staff Sergeant Blasco paused, looked confused, as if he'd lost his way. Drugs, you would think. A man wearing nothing but swimming trunks stumbles out of a toilet and looks confused. Conversation in the restaurant settled in a hush like the surf on Oceanside Beach.

OK, Dad. Michael toyed with the idea of making his father drop his shorts. To avenge himself. So that big uncircumcised American head could show itself. So Michael could see it again.

Michael said, 'He's dead now, actually.'

He made his father march quickly out of the restaurant.

Back home, Michael called up Henry. His Angel sat at the foot of the bed.

'Henry, it didn't work.'

'What happened?'

'The same thing that always happens. I sent him away. I've spent all my life sending people away. I told him something I've never told anyone else.'

'Ah,' said Henry and sat back.

'It just came bubbling out of me. I was mad at him, and I just suddenly heard myself say it.'

'What did you say to him, Michael?'

Michael felt a rush, as if he were in aeroplane, and it was taking off. 'I told him something about my father.'

'Something you've never told anyone else?' Henry took hold of Michael's hand and coaxed him by rubbing it.

Michael just nodded. He let go of his breath. He'd been holding it without realizing.

'Maybe the time's finally come. Why don't you tell me?' the Angel asked.

So, finally, Michael did.

What's eating Michael Blasco?

At twelve years old, Michael believed in love. He believed that love was the natural state. If you were out of love, then through a kind of natural gravity you would roll back into it. Michael believed that some day he would roll home.

Home was probably Romford, though Mum still sounded like she was from Sheffield. Michael was a mystery to his mother. His underwear was going crisp and no one had ever told Mum about wet dreams. She accused him of masturbation, and knocked on the door of the toilet when he read comics, demanding 'What are you doing in there?' Michael's puberty had been more traumatic for her than for him.

Michael's visits to California became an escape to another world of beaches and palm trees. Coming back every two years was like visiting another self. This self was called Mikey or when he got older, Mike. Mike had his own room, which was full of things, neat things his Dad had bought him, boy things. They were just where he left them: well almost. His Dad had maybe moved the boy things forward to kind of emphasize them – the baseball glove, the Swiss Army knife, the bicycle-repair tools.

Michael would come back at twelve or fourteen, to find all of Mikey's old things there. He could sit up late at night and read his old X Men comics. Sometimes there was a sense of homecoming. Hiya, how ya doing, his California self would say, perking up after two years without being used. Sometimes Michael would settle into Mike as if he were a sofa. Other times he was a bit frosty with his old self. At sixteen, his lip curled. X Men? You're still into X Men, oh God, they're terrible.

Michael would play his old records. His first love had been Mark Bolan and T-Rex and then, glistering with make-up, dear old Bowie.

This could cause some tension with his father. Dad thought rock music was socially destructive. He had few records himself. Staff Sergeant Blasco owned The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. In a strange convoluted way, this was to do with his Latin background. The Blasco family had been in California for 100 years and were thoroughly Americanized. That meant the Catholic League of Decency, and that meant Family Entertainment. At ten, at twelve, Michael heard and learned to love Camelot and Mary Poppins.

While other twelve-year-old kids were buying Grand Funk Railroad, Michael was seeking out the Original Cast Recording of Cinderella.