‘You told him about Dr Peacock’s will?’
‘Who knows? I may have let something slip.’
‘When?’ Her voice was paper-thin.
‘Eighteen months ago, maybe more.’
Silence. Then: ‘You bastard,’ she hissed. ‘Are you trying to make me believe that this was a set-up from the start?’
‘I don’t care what you believe,’ I said. ‘But I’m guessing that he was protective. He didn’t like you living alone. He hadn’t mentioned marriage yet, but if he had, you would have said yes.’ I paused. ‘How am I doing so far?’
She fixed me with eyes the colour of murder. ‘You know, this is pointless,’ she said. ‘You’re never going to sell me this. Nigel didn’t care about money.’
‘Really? How romantic,’ I said. ‘Because according to the credit-card statements I came across when I cleared out his flat, when Nigel died he was badly in debt. To the tune of nearly ten thousand pounds — it can’t have been easy, making ends meet. Maybe he got impatient. Maybe he got desperate. Dr Peacock was old and sick, but his illness was far from terminal. He could have lived another ten years—’
Now her face was colourless. ‘Nigel didn’t kill Dr Peacock,’ she said, ‘any more than you could have done. He wouldn’t do a thing like that—’ Her voice was wavering. It hurt me to cause her such distress, but she needed to know. To understand.
‘Why couldn’t he, Bethan? He’s done it before.’
She shook her head. ‘That was different.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Of course it was!’
I grinned.
She stood up abruptly, sending her chair clattering. ‘Why on earth does it matter?’ she cried. ‘All that was such a long time ago, so why do you always keep bringing it up? Nigel’s dead, it’s over now, so why can’t you just leave me alone?’
Her distress was strangely moving, I thought. Her face was bleak and beautiful. The emerald stud in her eyebrow winked at me like an open eye. Suddenly, all I wanted was for her to hold me, to comfort me, to tell me the lies that everyone secretly most wants to hear.
But I had to go on. I owed it to her. ‘It’s never over, Bethan,’ I said. ‘There’s no going back from murder. Especially when it’s a relative — and Benjamin was only sixteen—’
She eyed me with hatred, and now, for the first time, I could almost believe her capable of the act that had already deleted two of Gloria Winter’s boys permanently from existence.
‘Nigel was right,’ she said at last. ‘You are a twisted bastard.’
‘That hurt my feelings, Albertine.’
‘Don’t play the innocent, Brendan.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s hardly fair,’ I said. ‘It was Nigel who murdered Benjamin. I was lucky I wasn’t there. If things had been different, it could have been me.’
Part Five
mirrors
1
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 23.40 on Tuesday, February 19
Status: restricted
Mood: tired
Listening to: Cyndi Lauper: ‘True Colours’
All right. You can call me Brendan. Does that make you happy now? Now do you think you know me? We choose our names, our identities; just as we choose the lives we lead. I have to believe that, Albertine. The alternative — that these things are allocated at birth, or even before, in utero — is far too appalling to contemplate.
Someone once told me that seventy per cent of all praise received in the course of an average lifetime is given before the age of five. At five years old, almost anything — eating a mouthful of food; getting dressed; drawing a picture in crayon — can earn the most lavish compliments. Of course, that stops eventually. In my case, when my brother was born — my brother in blue, that is — Benjamin.
Clair, with her love of psychobabble, sometimes speaks of what she calls the reverse halo effect; that tendency we all have to assign the colours of villainy on the basis of a single flaw: such as having swallowed a sibling, perhaps, or collected a bucket of sea creatures and left them to die in the scorching sun. When Ben was born, my halo reversed; and henceforth blueeyedboy was stripped of all his former privileges.
I saw it coming. At three years old, I already knew that the squalling blue package Ma had brought home would bring me nothing but misery. First came her decision to allocate colours to her three sons. That’s where it started, I realize, although she may not have known it then. But that’s how I became Brendan Brown — the dull one, neither fish nor fowl — eclipsed on one side by Nigel Black and on the other by Benjamin Blue. No one noticed me any more — unless, of course, I did something wrong, in which case the piece of electrical cord was only too quick to be deployed. No one thought I was special enough to merit any attention.
Still, I’ve managed to change all that. I’ve reclaimed my halo — in Ma’s eyes, at least. As for you, Albertine — or must I call you Bethan now? You always saw more than the others did. You always understood me. You never had the slightest doubt that I, too, was remarkable, that beneath my sensitivity beat the heart of a future murderer. Still —
Everyone knows it wasn’t my fault. I never laid a hand on him. In fact, I wasn’t even there. I was watching Emily. All those times I watched her, followed her to the Mansion and back, felt Dr Peacock’s welcoming hug, flew with her on her little swing, felt her mother’s hand in mine, heard her say: Well done, sweetheart —
My brother never did those things. Perhaps he never needed to. Ben was too busy feeling sorry for himself to take an interest in Emily. I was the one who cared for her; took pictures of her from over the hedge; shared the scraps of her strange little life.
Perhaps that was why I loved her then; because she had stolen Benjamin’s life just as he had stolen mine. My mother’s love; my gift; my chance; all of them passed to Benjamin, as if I’d simply held them in trust until the better man came along.
Ben, the blue-eyed boy. The thief. And what did he do with his big chance? He pissed it away in resentment because somebody else got a bigger break. Everything: his intelligence; his place at St Oswald’s; his chance at fame; even his time at the Mansion. All thrown to the winds because Benjamin didn’t just want a slice of the cake, he wanted the bloody bakery. Well, that’s what it looked like to Brendan Brown, left with only the few crumbs he managed to steal from his brother’s plate —
But now, the cake belongs to me. The cake, as well as the bakery. As Cap would say: Pure pwnage, man —
I got away with murder.
2
You are viewing the webjournal of: blueeyedboyposting on :
Posted at: 23.47 on Tuesday, February 19
Status: public
Mood: vulnerable
Listening to:Johnny Cash : ‘Hurt’
They call him Mr Brendan Brown. Too dull to be gifted; too dull to be seen; too dull even for murder. Shit-brown; donkey-brown; boring, butthead, bastard-brown. All his life he has tried to be blind, an unwilling spectator to everything, watching through interlaced fingers as the action unrolls without him, wincing at the slightest blow, the smallest hint of violence.