Wild Bill

It doesn't take his kids to soften Bill. He's been pummeled for eight years; kneaded, massaged, beaten, molded, racked and stretched by an invisible hand until he no longer recalls the shape in which he began. Well, he can remember the shape, just not beginning in it.

Did prison work? As he tells 11-year-old Jimmy: "Do you know what the worst thing is? You get used to it."

Perhaps if he hadn't found Jimmy in the care of 15-year-old Dean he would have gone up to Scotland to work on the rigs, where you can earn a mint and female company arrives by helicopter. Or perhaps his old ways would have won through.

Bill's not looking for redemption or rehabilitation but it comes nonetheless. Does he feel guilt? He has regret, maybe, but decisions are made. "What are you going to do?"

What Jimmy's going to do is decided by Bill's presence, at that very moment and in that very situation. In another world his mother's still on the scene, in another the police get delayed on a call, in one he sees a programme about the air force and never misses a science class, in another he settles into a foster home to whatever immediate future he fancies.

Bill knows decisions are made. He knows it's not nihilism, though he may never have considered the fact.