'I bought you an escape route. You and Carol. You're going to university, you're going in from a door that opens into a room that is yours, and I'm done discussing it, because my entire job description since you were eight has been making sure your head got to the next thing in one piece. This is the next thing. Take the keys.'
Kieran put the keys down on the hall carpet, very carefully, as though they were hot. Then he stood up, and for a moment Rory thought he was going to walk out of the flat. Instead Kieran put his arms round his brother's neck, a graceless full-body hold from a boy who'd never learnt to hold anyone smaller than himself, and pressed his forehead into Rory's shoulder.
'You're an arse.'
The voice soft.
'Yeah.'
'Proper arse.'
'I know.'
'Big one.'
'I'm aware. Let go, you're crushing my collar.'
Kieran did not let go. He tightened once, the way a child tightens a grip before allowing himself to separate, and then stepped back and wiped his nose with his hand like a nine-year-old who had been told the cat was not coming back but had now been told there was a new cat.
'Carol knows,' Rory said. 'I rang her Saturday.'
'You told Carol before me.'
'Carol is sensible. You are a sentimental man with a weakness for gestures. I needed her onside first.'
'I am not sentimental.'
'Kieran. You just called me an arse with tears in your eyes. That is the textbook definition of sentimental.'
'Shut up.'
From the kitchen doorway, Neil, who had been pretending not to listen and failing, caught Rory's eye. Rory, still holding a box of sellotape, still with a younger brother two feet in front of him, gave Neil the small nod that meantthis is who I am, this is what I do with money, and Neil felt the last unaligned thing in his chest move half a centimetre and settle.
They'd hired a van. Rory drove, badly, the gears grinding on every turn, the wing mirrors adjusted and readjusted because Rory navigated by instinct and Neil navigated by mirror. Kieran helped load. He lifted boxes with the sullen efficiency of a teenager bribed with pizza and fulfilling the minimum contractual obligation.
'What's in this one?' Kieran said. Staggering under a box marked BOOKS, HEAVY.
'Books.'
'It weighs more than a person.'
'It contains the collected works of Thomas Hardy. Hardy was a prolific man.'
'Hardy should have written less.'
'Don't let your brother hear you say that.'
'Rory doesn't read Hardy. Rory reads art books and pretends they count as literature.'
'They do count as literature.'
'They're pictures with captions.'
'Go and load the van, Kieran.'
When they were done, Rory locked the old flat for the last time. Kieran stood in the emptied hallway looking at the space his life had occupied for ten years. The sofa dent was still visible in the carpet. He hadn't taken the mug, the chipped one with the permanent coffee ring. It sat on the counter. The final holdout.
On the fridge, a Post-it in his handwriting:
