from "How to be Good"

At the beginning of my third week in Janet's flat, I come home to find Tom watching TV with a new friend. The new friend is a little fat child with a boil near his nose and a boy-band fringe that only serves to accentuate, or perhaps even poke fun at, his almost startling unattractiveness. "You know the kind of faces I'm usually found on?" the fringe seems to be saying. "Well, have a look at this one!" Tom's friends don't look like this. They look handsome and cool. Cool is very important to Tom; fat and boils (and fluffy brown-and-white sweaters) are usually of even less interest to him than they are to anyone else.

"Hello," I say brightly. "Who's this?"

The new friend looks at me, and then looks around the room, head wobbling, to try to locate the stranger in our midst.

Heartbreakingly, given his other disadvantages, he doesn't appear to be very bright; even after having ascertained that there is no one else with us, he declines to answer my question presumably on the assumption that he would get it wrong.

"Christopher," mumbles Tom.

"Hello, Christopher."

"Hello."

"Are you staying for tea?"

He stares at me again. Nope. He's not going to risk getting caught out on that one.

--Nick Hornby, How To Be Good