“No,” replied Derek as he ran from the room.

Derek’s mother took the three to movies on his birthday. The following Saturday morning, Jock woke Derek early and told him get dressed.

“We are going fishing,” said his father, as if it was something they’d done before.

The boy dressed and went to the kitchen where he stared at his mother, hoping at least for an explanation from her. She didn’t look at him, but handed his father a basket.

“Your lunch,” she said. “Good luck!”

Jock drove Derek to a farm that offered trout fishing, including the hiring of equipment. They were receiving instructions on how to fly fish, which even Jock was finding hard to follow, when a man arrived with a boy Derek’s age.

“Ah, David. Good,” said Jock.

The man, it was revealed during the morning, was a clerk at Jock’s factory. The fishing, Derek realised, was a ruse to introduce him to a boy his age. He and Philip were meant to become friends. Philip was as indifferent to fishing and making new friends as Derek was. The day, which ended early when Philip got a hook stuck in his foot and his father rushed him to a doctor, was a disaster. The only thing, bar Philip’s foot, that anyone hooked was the branch of a tree alongside the lake. The only time the boys spoke to one another had been to say hello when they were first introduced.

“There was no effort. No effort at all,” said Jock, as he dumped the basket on the kitchen table in front of his wife that afternoon. “I’ll not waste any more time on the boy. He’ll amount to nothing.”

But still, even though Jock liked Derek’s friend Michelle, he never stopped hoping his son would pal up with members of his own gender. Surrounding oneself with ambitious males was, he believed, important to “getting ahead in life.”

“I don’t know why you let it get to you, Father,” said Derek, by then a teenager. “You always say I won’t amount to anything, so why would a few male friends make any difference?”