The Fix

Chapter 2 Tommy Chocolate

Thomas Alexander William Hayes had always been an outsider. Born in 1979 and raised in the urban sprawl of Hammersmith, West London, Hayes was bright but found it hard to connect with other kids. His parents divorced when he was in primary school. When his mother Sandra remarried, she took Hayes and his younger brother Robin to live with her new husband, a management consultant, and his two children in the leafy, affluent commuter town of Winchester, bordering a stretch of bucolic countryside in the south of England. The couple fostered a child and later had a daughter of their own. They bought a big house on a pretty street lined with them. It was always full.

Hayes's mother was a naturally timid woman, and when Hayes misbehaved or became angry, she did everything she could to placate him. From an early age few people said no to him. In his teenage years, Hayes saw less of his father Nick, a left-wing journalist and documentary filmmaker who relocated to Manchester in the north of the country with his girlfriend, a crossword writer for The Guardian newspaper. Hayes attended Westgate, a well-regarded state secondary school a 10-minute walk from his new home, and then Peter Symonds, a sixth-form college that was even closer. His college math teacher, Tania Zeigler, remembers him as a “kind, thoughtful and normal” student.¹ Hayes achieved good grades but had a small circle of friends. Awkward and quiet, with lank, scraggly hair and acne, he rarely socialized ...