When Nikolas glanced up from his newspaper with a questioning look, Ben pointed to the booklet. “I’m having what your wife is probably having this weekend, Duchy organic sausage.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They took their time driving back to London, stopping if they wanted to, eating again in Windsor just before they joined the crawl of vehicles making their way back into the city ready for the working week. Ben couldn’t help feeling how immensely lucky he was. He had no plans for the week other than putting his bike back together and enjoying Nikolas’s body as often as he was allowed. Life was good.
Nikolas, he knew, would have a more troubling week.
§§§
Monday, Nikolas changed back into the Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen Ben had first met, dressing with immaculate perfection and retreating into himself. He returned from the lawyer’s offices calm but quiet. Ben made him a cup of tea. He was English; it’s what you did in times of crisis. He didn’t even think as he handed Nikolas a mug with a few oily fingerprints from his engine and with a teabag and spoon still in it. Nikolas looked at the offering and smiled for the first time that day. “Thank you, Benjamin. That is very thoughtful.”
“So? How did it go?”
“Good. I think. Amicable, as was required of me. I believe I made a statement to the effect that there were irreconcilable differences. As I did not write the statement, I could not decide if that meant that I was Danish or that I like to fuck men. It was rather surreal. We have had no differences at all for ten years. I believe we agreed on most everything about our arrangement.” He laughed suddenly. “We actually both agreed on you.”
“Me?”
“Hmm. She said one weekend that you were quite her favourite young man. I could only agree with her. Anyway, it is done. Should we celebrate? Food or sex? You decide—you seem to like both equally.”
The next day, there was a very small, clearly pre-prepared announcement in the quality press. If Nikolas saw it, he didn’t mention it. At the end of the week, however, in the supplement, there was a feature article from the society commentator entitled “The IT Girl Does IT Right”and a picture of Philipa with the caption:Lady Philipa in happier times with her favourite black lab, Bodger. The article went on to extol the virtues of amicable divorces. The photograph had been taken in Nikolas’s study at Barton Combe. Ben recognised the armchair Philipa was perched on—he’d been up close and personal with the leather once or twice. He also recognised the desk in the background; he’d been taken on that too. Most of all, he recognised the man sitting at the desk. Nikolas had been caught, almost certainly accidentally, in the background of the photograph. He had his head turned to the camera as if someone had just said something that annoyed him. He was writing, his hand poised over a chequebook. It was almost exactly the same pose as the photo Ben had of him at seventeen. Now, however, the face was neither young nor innocent, and he looked furious. Ben was pretty sure Nikolas was going to be furious again if he saw the article. He wondered if he should just hide it. It was possible Nikolas wouldn’t miss the supplement. He glanced at it again, debating.
And that’s when he saw it.
Everything that had been wrong and niggling at him just clicked into place. He sat heavily, a sense of utter dislocation washing over him. Then he flung himself up and sprinted to the bedroom, digging in a drawer. He pulled out the photo of the seventeen-year-old Nikolas and sat on the bed comparing the two pictures. Seventeen-year-old Nikolas was right handed. Forty-two-year-old Nikolas was left handed—Ben knew this very well; after all, he’d enjoyed Nikolas’s left hand many times. And then, with a foreshadowing of all the pain which he knew was coming his way, Ben heard an echo in his mind, “Then I think the question you should ask me is not if Nikolas Mikkelsen is my real name but who Nikolas Mikkelsen really was.”Whoever Nikolas was, he clearly wasn’t the boy in this photo. But they were identical, except for the right hand, left hand difference. Ben bit his lip. He knew what this meant—the boy in the photo must be Nikolas’s brother. His twin. So it begged the obvious question: why had Nikolas lied when Ben had found the photo? Why deny the existence of a brother? Why not say, with all honesty, “Oh, that’s my brother”? It didn’t make any sense.
He looked up and Nikolas was leaning in the doorway watching him. His expression was one of profound sadness.
He turned and walked away.
§§§
Ben found Nikolas in the kitchen, leaning on the counter, tossing treats to Radulf who was ignoring them and letting them skate over the tiled floor, as if being fed this way was demeaning them both. Ben sat down and laid out the photos on the table. Nikolas turned around, staring at him. “If you make me do this, Ben, then everything falls apart between us.”
“Bullshit. Stop being melodramatic.”
“Do you understand what I am saying? These things were never to be spoken of. If you make me tell you, it will be the end of everything.”
“Jesus. Sit down and just tell me, yeah?”
Nikolas sat and took the photo of the boy into his hands. “This is Aleksey, my brother. My twin brother, obviously. We were born in Russia on the coast near St Petersburg. Our father was a Russian diplomat; our mother was Danish. A pianist, actually. When Aleksey and I were born, she left our father and returned to her parents in Denmark. Their split was not amicable. We lived at my grandparents’ summer estates on Aeroe—which explains my distinct Danish accent…which you, of course, had not noticed. Anyway, when we were ten, my mother died, and we went to live with our father in Russia. We moved around a lot. He died when we were seventeen—just after that photograph was taken, actually. I had a place at the university in Copenhagen, so I returned to Denmark; Aleksey remained in Russia. He had grown fond of it, I believe. I joined the diplomatic service after my degree. I came to England ten years ago, and the rest you know.”
“And your brother?”
“He is dead. An accident.” He paused in his almost scripted, dry recital, as if unwilling to personalise the account at all, but then added reluctantly, “He fell off a balcony and was killed.”
“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry, no wonder—”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So why all the secrecy? Why didn’t you just tell me this was your brother to start with? Why let me go on thinking it was you? And why all the doom and gloom prophesy about telling me now?”
Nikolas flicked his eyes up to gauge how the next part of his story would be received. “Aleksey was a very troubled boy, Ben. We were completely different—and not just the left hand thing. From the earliest age he was the one no one could say no to. Nothing was too high or too far, no horse too powerful for him to ride, no ocean current too strong for him to swim.”
“You raced Aleksey?”
Nikolas smiled. “Yes. Every morning between the islands.”
“But you said you always won.”
