Marcus and Fiona move to London after Fiona breaks up with her boyfriend Roger.

Will invents a two-year-old son named Ned and joins SPAT to meet attractive single mothers.

Marcus accidentally kills a duck at the SPAT picnic by throwing a whole French bread loaf at it.

Will tells the park keeper the duck was already dead, saving Marcus from getting into trouble.

Marcus and the group arrive at his house to find Fiona unconscious from a pill overdose.

Marcus must stay at Suzie's for the night while Fiona is kept in the hospital.

Marcus decides he needs to find Fiona a boyfriend and identifies Will as a suitable candidate.

Marcus takes Will and Fiona to a restaurant called Twenty-Eight in a deliberate matchmaking attempt.

Will takes Marcus out and buys him cool sneakers to help him fit in better at school.

Fiona confronts Will about the stolen sneakers and his false claim of having a child.

Marcus meets rebellious Ellie McRae outside the headmistress's office and the two begin a friendship.

At a New Year's Eve party, Will meets Rachel and allows her to believe Marcus is his son.

Will confesses to Rachel that Marcus is not his son and explains their real relationship.

Ellie smashes a record shop window displaying a Kurt Cobain cut-out and she and Marcus are arrested.

Will reflects that he and Marcus have each lost something old to gain their new identities.

Marcus moves to London with his depressed mother Fiona and immediately struggles with bullying at his new school. Will, a wealthy bachelor living off royalties, invents a fake son to join a single parents' group and meet women. The two meet at a picnic where Marcus kills a duck and Will covers for him, only for them to discover Fiona collapsed from a suicide attempt at home. Determined to protect his mother, Marcus schemes to get Will and Fiona together as a couple, dragging the reluctant Will into their lives permanently. Will and Marcus develop an unlikely bond, with Will buying Marcus new sneakers, meeting Rachel at a party, and eventually being forced to come clean about his lies. By the novel's end, Marcus has shed his oddities and become a typical teenager while Will has shed his cool indifference and become a responsible adult.

The headline events that drive Will and Marcus's story from first meeting to final transformation.

Will meets Angie, a single mother, and becomes her temporary stepfather for the first time.

Angie breaks up with Will, claiming she is not ready to move on from her ex-partner Simon.

Marcus notices that Fiona's crying has worsened and is now happening every morning.

Nicky and Mark tell Marcus to stay away from them after his presence draws the bullies to target them.

Will meets Suzie at SPAT and fabricates a story about being abandoned by his child's mother.

Marcus and Fiona watch Groundhog Day together and Marcus turns it off when a suicide scene appears.

Will proposes a day out to Suzie; Marcus agrees only if Fiona can come and Will pays.

Will gets drunk after an uncomfortable dinner with Fiona and vows to have nothing more to do with her or Marcus.

Will reluctantly agrees to spend Christmas with Fiona, Marcus, Clive, Lindsey, and Lindsey's mother.

Suzie confronts Will at the Christmas gathering about using SPAT to meet single mothers.

Marcus and Ellie meet at Suzie's New Year's Eve party and debate whether parents have the right to end their lives.

Will and Rachel have sex for the first time, and she offers to speak to Fiona on his behalf.

Fiona tells Marcus he must travel to Cambridge to visit Clive, who broke his collarbone falling off a window ledge.

On the train to Cambridge, Ellie reveals she has seen a headline about Kurt Cobain and pulls out a bottle of vodka.

Marcus stays with Clive in Cambridge, and Clive admits to being an ineffective and absent father.

Will's habit of dating single mothers begins with Angie, whose breakup with him inspires his scheme of presenting himself as the ideal part-time father. Marcus, meanwhile, is caught between Fiona's worsening depression and his inability to make friends at school. The two gradually weave into each other's lives through shared outings and the Christmas holiday, where old tensions surface. New relationships deepen as Will falls for Rachel and Marcus grows closer to Ellie, both connections pulling them toward adulthood and adolescence respectively. The trip to Cambridge following Kurt Cobain's death brings a crisis that forces Marcus to confront his absent father. The story closes with Marcus forging a more independent sense of himself and Clive finally acknowledging his failures as a parent.

The supporting moments that fill out the full world of Will, Marcus, and the people around them.

Marcus involuntarily sings in English class and his teacher allows another student to mock him for it.

Fiona tells Marcus she needs him to attend the SPAT picnic because they are not doing each other any good.

On the walk back from the picnic, Marcus thinks he sees a vision of his mother smiling and blocking the path.

Marcus discovers Fiona's suicide note while helping prepare the house for her return from hospital.

Marcus follows Will home after the SPAT picnic to confirm he does not actually have a child.

Marcus visits Will and threatens to expose his fake son unless Will agrees to date Fiona.

Marcus accuses Fiona of forcing her own values on him and declares that he needs a father figure.

Will hears Santa's Super Sleigh on the radio and recognises the parallel between his alcoholic father and depressive Fiona.

Fiona and Will meet at a pub where Will tells her Marcus used the father figure speech to manipulate her.

Marcus loses his temper at Mrs. Morrison's useless advice about avoiding bullies and storms out of school.

Will spots Marcus truanting on Upper Street in the afternoon but decides not to confront him.

Will lets Marcus in after he rings the doorbell for half an hour and realises Marcus needs help learning to be a kid, not an adult.

Ellie beats up Lee Hartley's gang outside a newsstand after they steal Marcus's glasses.

Marcus tells Will that Fiona has started crying uncontrollably again and asks for help, but Will refuses.

Will discovers that Rachel deliberately skipped their meeting with Fiona so he would be forced to face her alone.

From the outset, Marcus is trapped between the social rules of school and the emotional demands of home, unable to fit in anywhere. Fiona's suicide attempt is the shock that forces Marcus to take action, leading him to uncover Will's secret and leverage it to pull the reluctant man into their lives. A series of confrontations — between Marcus and Will, Marcus and Fiona, and Will and Fiona — force each character to face uncomfortable truths about what they need and what they owe each other. Rachel's quiet manipulation of Will pushes him toward genuine responsibility, while Ellie's volatile grief over Cobain exposes the limits of her and Will's romanticized relationship with manufactured pain. By the time Marcus and Will each shed their old identities, the novel has traced a full arc of mutual transformation driven by the moments neither character could walk away from.

The key discoveries, confrontations, and emotional shifts that change Will and Marcus for good.