He leaves and silence falls for a blissful minute.
“How could you be so bloody stupid, Gideon?” Milo hisses.
Okay, a blissful second, but it was nice while it lasted. I’m amused to see my shy brother fold his arms and glare at me. It’s a bit like being told off by a gerbil.
“Oh, don’t smile,” he says ominously, and I wipe the smile away. He nods. “Better. You’ve had fucking pneumonia, you idiot.”
“Have you ever considered a career in nursing, Milo?”
“I’d never fit my hair in that cap.” I grin, but he turns serious. “I told you to go to the doctor. I actually said those words out loud, and what did you do?” I open my mouth but he shakes his head fiercely. “You decided to take care of yourself by smoking dope, snorting coke, drinking brandy, and having a threesome. What were youthinking?”
“That I wanted a fuck, a drink, and a spliff. And coke always cheers me up if none of that works.”
“Whendon’tyou want all that?” he says sharply. “Well, this time it nearly killed you. They had to phone for an ambulance, and you were carted out of the hotel naked on a stretcher while Christian ran alongside you asking you if you’d paid the bill.”
“Hmm,” I say slowly. “Hardly a very good epitaph. I hope I said something memorable for posterity.”
“You threw up in the foyer,” Niall offers. “It was memorable enough for the hotel to ban you from staying there again.” He pauses before offering cheerfully, “For posterity.”
“Shit. Were there any press about?”
Milo shakes his head and sits back, looking disgusted. “That’swhat you’re bothered about.” I stare at him in consternation and nod. He huffs. “Well, luckily for you there were no press in the foyer at three in the morning. However, there are a lot of them downstairs at the moment writing feel-good stories about how you were so close to dying that they had to put you on a ventilator in intensive care.”
His voice breaks a little and I feel heat in my face. “I’m sorry,” I say in a small voice.
“What did you say?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” I say crossly. “I said it once. Don’t ask for the moon.”
“Oh my God, it’s like William Shakespeare has been reborn,” Niall says wryly, sitting back in his chair and propping his long legs up on my bed. “I must say there’d have been a lot less of the sonnets for poor students to analyse if you’d written them. Thou art more lovely than a rose. That’s it. Finished. I’m not fucking repeating myself, you needy cretin.”
I grin. “Pure poetry.”
“Oh, you’re smiling. How nice.” Milo’s voice has a sharp edge to it. “That certainly indicates that you’re well enough for a little visit.”
“From who?” I ask, worried now. “Mum and Dad aren’t here, are they?”
“No,” he scoffs. “They’re on a safari for their wedding anniversary which you paid for. I rang them and told them you were alright. Mum wanted to fly out and be with you but I persuaded her that you’d be cross.”
“Bewildered, more like it. Surely if she ran true to form she’d have just rung up the matron from our old boarding school. Then she could mother me in proxy the way it’s always been.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” Milo sighs, and I can see the turmoil in his eyes.
The way our parents treated us so disparately drove a wedge between us as children that was strengthened by the ten-year age difference. I got packed off to boarding school when I was seven while Milo, who seemingly activated all of my mother’s previously unused maternal instincts, got kept at home where she fussed over him twenty-four hours a day.
Once, I’d hated them for it when I’d hear of family trips I never went on, celebrations I wasn’t part of. They never even came to get me when I had appendicitis. Just left me to the less than tender matron because Milo had a speech therapist appointment. Now, I don’t feel anything apart from a distant affection for them. Something that I’m obligated to feel.
However, I love Milo. I never wanted to, and for many years I hated him for having the family life I’d always wanted. For the fact that my mother and father loved him even though they never managed it with me.
So, for a long time I distanced myself from him. Then he fell in love with Niall and it seemed to me that once again he’d taken everything away from me. Niall was my occasional hook-up, but more importantly he was my family, one of only two people I could be myself with. And it seemed like history was repeating itself all over again where Milo had everything, leaving me alone and on the outside. It seemed to reinforce all the lessons of my childhood over how unlovable I really must be and spurred me into behaving like that small child.
However, Milo still managed to edge under my barriers without me even realising. When he and I reconciled I made promises of closeness, but then I visited everyone atChi an Morand it just seemed to reinforce how isolated I was and how connected they all were, living and working on the estate and involved in each other’s lives. They had their own jokes and stories, and I’d hovered on the outside trying to take part but feeling the sting of failure. There was a distance between us all that I couldn’t bridge no matter how I tried. I didn’t visit again but instead immersed myself in very bad behaviour. The same bad behaviour that has landed me in hospital.
Despite all this, Milo is probably the only person in this world apart from my two best friends who I love, and I therefore can’t say anything more about our parents without upsetting him.
“So, who’s visiting?” I ask instead.
“Frankie,” he says with an evil smile, and I blanch at the thought of my manager.
