‘But you were just a kid.’
He shook his head – no. ‘There were other things too, when I was older. When I was fourteen, they gave him my Scalextric set. They didn’t ask me, they just gave it to him. I wasn’t playing with it by then, but that’s not the point. It was mine.’ His voice had hardened; he had become agitated. He bit down on his bottom lip then drank. On the tabletop, the coaster lay in frayed pieces. ‘So later, when no one was looking, I took his teddy bear from his room and put it in the compost heap. I dug down and put it in with all the smelly rotten vegetable peelings, and I covered it over and thought: there, take that.’
He raised his eyebrows and smiled, as if to say: See? I’m not as nice as you think. But it didn’t change my opinion of him. As I said, I loved him.
* * *
But I digress. Christopher was on his way to Leeds, wasn’t he, after his parents had told him the truth of his origins. He recalled nothing of that journey, could not remember how he got from the train station to Devonshire halls of residence. That was the shock, I think, erasing his thoughts, or refusing even to form them in that moment of pure suspended animation. His world had stopped on its axis. And now that very world was waiting for presence of mind to return so it could go on spinning. The next memory he had was sitting on his bed in the room he shared with Adam, although of course he didn’t know Adam yet.
He was sitting on his bed staring at his open hands, he said. He was studying the way the creases arched across his palms, tracing, some believed, his destiny. He had seen a palm reader once, he told me, on Morecambe pier. He’d have been around sixteen, had gone in for a dare. An old gypsy woman, with a headscarf with thin silver coins sewn into the hem, had held his hand and studied it.
‘Here, that’s a shock,’ she’d said after a few moments, pushing her forefinger to the middle of his hand. The thick black kohl under her eyes had smudged, crumbed in the corners of her bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s coming soon. It will change your destiny.’
He’d dismissed her words within seconds of leaving the booth, but they came back to him now, dissolving, re-forming as another damn sense, yet more invisible particles floating in the air. He was not, no longer at least, the simple, shy eighteen-year-old history student he had anticipated being. That much was certain. Rather, he was a trembling boy scout, no older than twelve, who had been given a penny and a candle and told to get from Land’s End to John O’Groats. He could almost feel the chill wind on some distant hilltop blowing into his face. He was not equal to the task. He was but a child.
It was a daydream from which he knew he had to wake up, and that this waking up had something to do with being or becoming the man he had now to be. Man. For a couple of years now, people had been referring to him that way. He had left home, which was what men did, but the rite of passage had been marked by a revelation too big to hold in his aching head. And the rope? The rope was still there. Only now he had a diagnosis, and the diagnosis cast a shadow as astonishing as a superpower. Footsteps rang louder on the pavements, strangers’ clothes separated into threads before his eyes, and on the station platform, on the train, on the university campus, people everywhere seemed to stare only at him, as if to ask: Are you family? Are you blood?
Somehow, in that terrible trance, he had made his way to this twin room, sat down on this worn bed and stared at his open hands.
‘Well, well, well!’
Christopher looked up to see a smiling ginger-haired man bounding into the room. He swung his suitcase onto the other bed, put his hands on his hips and, seeing Christopher, threw back his head. ‘I say, shall we go in search of a hostelry, my good man?’ Northern vowels infiltrated his attempt at a Home Counties accent. He laughed and gave in to them. ‘Just kidding, man. I’m Adam. First man on earth. Never touch apples.’ With two long strides, he was in front of Christopher, one arm out, apparently intent on shaking hands. ‘Pleased to meet you. Hey, do you like T. Rex, man?’
He wore tight blue flared jeans, a black polo-neck sweater and a black leather jacket with square pockets. He was studying electronic engineering. He was from Newcastle. Outskirts. (That explained his accent.) His mother was Irish. He had family in Liverpool – his auntie on his mother’s side. He liked women. He loved women! He liked T. Rex – did he already say that? Fleetwood Mac, ELO and Queen. Hated ABBA. They were crap, but his sister liked them. His sister was eight – a mistake; his mother had thought it was the menopause. She got on his nerves – his sister, not his mother. His second name was Wells. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in. To what Christopher didn’t ask.
‘Thought we could take a wander,’ Adam continued, ‘see if there’s a pub sells beer? See if we can find ourselves a couple of birds? We should stick together, I reckon. Us grammar lads. What do you think, man?’
Christopher saw his belongings through Adam’s eyes. His peeling case tied with rope, his donkey jacket. No gold-monogrammed luggage where he came from, no woollen coat, no tweed.
‘I need to unpack,’ he said.
‘You can unpack tomorrow.’ Adam pushed out his bottom lip. ‘You’ve just got out of jail free. Live a little, man.’ He leant in closer and patted the pocket at his hip. ‘Besides, I’ve got some fine weed.’
A flare of panic. Weed? That meant marijuana, Christopher was pretty sure.
‘Don’t freak, man,’ said Adam. ‘It’s not purple hearts, only a bit of grass.’
Christopher feigned the best laugh he could manage. ‘N-No, really,’ he stammered. ‘You go on. I’m fine. Next time.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Adam shrugged, turned away and loped towards the door, leaving his bed with his luggage still closed upon it. ‘See you later then.’ He left, whistling his way along the corridor. A door hinge squeaked and squeaked again, the whistling faded; his carrot-topped room-mate was no more.
Before Christopher had time to think about anything else, more chatter echoed in the corridor – two or three boys, he thought, maybe four – arriving to other rooms. One of them could be his brother. His twin, why not? The one his birth mother had kept, perhaps, or given to another family. Was that it? Was that his story? A twin, a brother, who would look like him and like the same things and have his mannerisms even though they’d never met. What a thought.