Isaac opens the cabinet, still stocked with bottles of scotch and liquor.
“William’s my half-brother. I’m our father’s bastard son.” He pulls out a bottle and inspects it. “Absinthe. The green fairy. Care to partake?”
It’s been a long time since I’ve had absinthe. “How old is it?”
“I’d guess from the twenties. It’s a fresh bottle. I guess the party never happened.”
“Maybe.” I walk across the room to him, watching him as he bends down to pull out two glasses from the cabinet.
He’s probably right: there are bottles of expensive spirits and crystal cut glasses as if a party had been about to happen. I shiver and it isn’t the cold.
“I’m going out on a limb and guessing you and your father don’t get along.” I accept a glass, smelling the alcohol.
“You’d be guessing right.” He smiles and chinks his glass to mine before tipping back the drink. “I’m the son no one knows about but unfortunately I got what he wanted William to have.”
“What’s that?”
“Intelligence.”
“I’d like to say that’s harsh but I just think it’s truthful.” I knock back the absinthe and hold the glass out for a refill. Isaac pours the liquid, glancing up at my face.
He’s cast in shadows, the light catching his cheekbones and chin that’s always tense and stubborn.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
He sits down on the chaise lounge. “You sound like a fucking shrink.”
I laugh. “I need a fucking shrink.”
There’s a nod. “My mother brought me up by herself, me and Ivy. I had no idea who my dad was and it didn’t matter because there was Heath who ran the boats who took me under his wing. When I was seven, William Senior turned up one evening, took one look at me and asked questions about me as if I wasn’t there. He took an interest. Sent money. I had no idea who he was at the time, not until he properly showed up when I was thirteen. Just money, he offered. Never his time. ”
“Hush money?”
“No. My mother would never tell anyone who my dad was. She was ashamed. I’ve never been sure it was entirely consensual between them. When I was eighteen I decided to pay him a visit and turned up at his home in London. Met my half-brother.” He laughs quietly. “William hated me from the start. Probably because our father listed all of my results from college which were all significantly better than his. And that began our competition. William was desperate to prove to daddy-dear that he was the successful one and I was determined to piss both of them off.”
“Why do the job you do now?” I sit next to him, rest the glass on my thigh. We’re close enough that his body heat pours into mine and I feel the absinthe hit my bloodstream, its warmth incinerating everything.
“Because I was interested in politics and how such a small, unrepresentative group of people could run the country. I wanted to change things.” He shakes his head. “Fucking idealistic dickhead.”
“You have a point.”
“About being a dickhead?” His eyes meet mine.
“That too.” I feel a crackle fix through my veins that’s not just the absinthe. “We all have fucked up families.”
“I heard about your sister.”
“Which bit?”
“That she’s not just a financial advisor.” He leans closer to me. “I don’t know much, but I know from what our intelligence found out that she’s been involved in a lot of causes.”
I tip my head back and look at the ornate ceiling, the paintings on there are faded now, the paint peeling away. Pictures of people dancing and feasting, the loch and the mountains, worn away by time and neglect.
“Majken lives her own fucking life.”
“She’s anti- English.”
I pour another absinthe and do the same for Isaac. “Very.”
