‘No, you need to be less fuckingly irritating. Donottell me you are now the last of the Frobishers, because I will not believe it.’
The moron’s brows lowered theatrically. ‘Diesel’s right: you do have a very weird brain. This is real life, matey. No, I justknew‘im.’ He got in a triumphant smirk, before continuing quickly, ‘Frobisher Major and Frobisher Minor.’ He ignored a small groan fromhimand explained, ‘Two brothers at school with me. Sharpie was in my house, so—’
‘Sharpie? Ow! Why did you do that?’ Ben rubbed his arm wherehe’dhit him.
‘You asked! I’ve told you: never ask him anything!’
Squeezy sniggered. ‘Thank you for asking, Diesel. Frobisher Major—because he was the oldest. So F Major. F Sharp—Sharpie. Easy, see?’
Ben nodded. ‘Good one. So Flattie for the Minor one?’
Squeezy shook his head sadly. ‘Nah, he needed another name, that were true. Orlando.’ He shuddered. ‘No kid’s gonna live that down for long. So it were Flattie for about half a second and then, well, his other attributes renamed him. Similar though.’
Harry coughed lightly, and the moron straightened in his chair. ‘Yeah, so, Sharpie was an odd one. They’d lost their mum and dad and lived with some old doolally grandparent in this big house down in Cornwall. Dunroamin’ it was called or something.’ Squeezy apparently caughthisfrown of confused translation and added, completely unhelpfully, ‘You know! Costa Plenty? Seldom Inn? Anyhoo, I went there once for a party, and it was like walking into Satis House—you could feel it everywhere.’ He considered Ben’s expression this time, and with a small eye roll explained, ‘Bitter disappointment, Diesel, frustrated expectations, living on the edge of some bleedin’ something that never actually happens. You know? The roof was the only thing bringing in any money—and don’t ask, cus I never did get it—crap everywhere, more books than the bleeding British Library. ‘Cording to Sharpie, there was money coming their way one day—it was theFrobisherInheritance. So, anyway, absolute nutter Sharpie was. Always banging on about the sea, adventures, that kind of thing. As if any of it would impress me, given…Dad.’ He grinned at his father, a look that shot to Aleksey’s heart, making him delighted and envious in equal measure. Before he had time to examine whether he was jealous of the moron or the old man, Squeezy continued,
‘Anyway, he reckoned the sea was in his blood, but if it was, it weren’t in a good way—more like he’d drunk too much of the salty stuff, if you ask me. And I ignored him cus I had real adventures to follow.’ His pleasure in his tale seemed to slip a bit, and Harry laid a tentative finger on his knuckle. ‘Yeah, so, anyway, Dad goes off onPetreland this nutter was banging on about some old relative’s bones of his being discovered on Henderson Island.’
‘Is that in Scilly?’
Squeezy’s head turned slowly and menacingly towards his boyfriend at this innocent question. ‘Scilly? Henderson Island? Did you just ask if Henderson Island was in Scilly?’
‘Well, I don’t know! I’ll ask you a question about Hegelian fucking dialectics and see how much you know!’ He adjusted his glasses, and murmured at Harry, ‘Sorry.’
Squeezy brushed an imaginary crumb off the table. ‘So, Henderson Island is an extinct volcano in thePacific. That’s a big bit of water between’—rubbing his arm, he ploughed on—‘and apparently they found this cave with half a dozen skeletons in it—survivors of the missing crew of theShrewsbury. Seems like they’d survived long enough to build a bit of a shelter.’
Ben added complacently, ‘I bet they turned to cannibalism—his grisly end.’
‘Nah, ends are the juicy, tender bit, so I heard. Ain’t that so, boss? Anyhoo, they had some of their bits and bobs with them. That’s how they identified them. And some of these items had come up for sale at Sotheby’s. He wanted to go up an’ watch the auction—couldn’t afford them, obviously. He just wanted to see them, seeing they werefamilyheirlooms. But I had more important things to think about, and then he were just gone. Poof—just like that.’
‘Hewinked out?’ Ben seemed determined to get his portals in.
‘Yeah, you might be right, Diesel. I mean, he’d done disappearing acts before—run off on a fishing trawler to Breton when he was fourteen. That was pretty funny when they brought him back to school—he refused to speak English and tried to convince the coppers in French that they had the wrong bloody kid.’ He sniggered softly. ‘Following year he got arrested for trespassing—on some royal estates somewhere, like he was a modern-day Robin Hood. Absolute nutter. But he was eighteen when he went missing this time, so he was put down as a runaway, and that was that.’
Aleksey glanced across at Ben, then around at the others. ‘So we have come to the end of the story? That’s it? The last of the Frobishers just ups and disappears and we never hear from him again?’
The moron smiled broadly and declared, ‘Until now, matey.’ He picked up the severed foot. ‘Meet Sharpie—aka Rafe Frobisher.’
Aleksey, glancing to Ben again to see what he thought about this, caught a look from his other half flicking between Harry and the moron, one that was disbelieving and extremely annoyed. Caught up in the tale, this was evidently a step too far for him. Aleksey gingerly held his hand out for the revolting item of contention. ‘You have absolutely no way of know—’
‘—Marlborough College First XI Rugger sock, Crusoe.Unmistakable.’
This was pushing it more than a little, for although there was some kind of material, and they had assumed it was a sock, it was so washed out and faded that it was hard to see any colour at all. He silently consulted Ben, and after that even glanced quickly at Tim. Both of them appeared as frustrated and angry as he was starting to feel.
Squeezy and Harry began to laugh at their expressions, and Squeezy explained cheerfully, ‘It helped, course, that it had his name tape sewn in. School policy.’
A quick image flashed across his mind of Babushka patiently sewing hundreds of such items into Emilia’s uniforms, and then, in turn, Molly’s. But he knew they were lying. He wasn’t stupid. Ben appeared to think so as well, for with a grunt of annoyance he took the foot and peeled the tattered, ragged material away from the bony protuberance, then snapped, ‘Nothing. This is all crap.’
Still chuckling, plainly enjoying the joke, Harry reached down to the satchel by his chair. ‘That, young Benjamin, is because that’s notyourfoot.’ He heaved out another identical object and placed it triumphantly on the table. ‘This is the oneyoufound—name tape and all. Which told us who ours belonged to—the one that was left in Snoddy’s basket by your generous chap some weeks before.’
The two feet stood together on the tabletop. Matching socks. Matching shoes.
Tim leaned back, arms folded, considering the slightly bizarre selection of items that now constituted Radulf’s precious collection. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t believe any of this. Look at it all. None of its treasure, is it? And those are just disgusting.’
Aleksey sighed, reached around to his jacket hanging on his chair, and rummaged in a pocket. As he turned back around, he flicked something to the younger man, and it caught the light, glittering as it spun. Heads or tails or treasure? Or just a story spun from nothing more than dead men’s lies? His talisman dropped amongst the other items on the table,a terrible juxtaposition, dense and beautiful alongside the feet, and yet,suddenly enhanced by the gleam of ancient gold, Radulf’s finds were now far from just detritus of the sea.
They came alive with possibility.
* * *
