Under the heading VOLUNTARY in the Festal Evensong programme were the words ‘Toccata in B Minor (Gigout), arrangement for chamber organ (E. Bellwether).’ There was no applause when Eden took his place at the modest-looking instrument at the far end of the chapel—the awkward etiquette of the occasion demanded it. He stretched his fingers, straightened out his back, and carefully set his hands upon the keys. The music came fast out of the pipes like greyhounds breaking the traps—a hard-sounding, impatient melody. Powerful chords blasted through the chapel, and layer upon layer of frenzied notes clambered for the ceiling. Half the congregation took the organ voluntary as their cue to leave, gathering their coats and heading for the exits, but the people who stayed behind kept their eyes trained on Eden. As his fingers sprawled across the keys, the music began to thicken. It flooded the cavernous building like a mist.
Oscar searched the last of the crowd, looking for the Bellwethers. It had been a long, dreary service, and Iris had given him the impression that her parents would be there. ‘If I can’t go myself, I at least want to experience it vicariously,’ she’d told him. ‘God knows I can’t rely on my father to describe it. You’re the only person who understands why I love that choir so much.’ In fact, the choir was the only thing that had made the service bearable, until the moment Eden took to the organ.
Oscar tried to focus on the music and forget about who was making it. He tried to detach himself from everything and enjoy the sound. But he couldn’t. The more the music came surging towards him, the sadder he felt—because as surely as he could picture Eden as an organist at a magnificent cathedral like St Paul’s or Notre-Dame, he could also picture him as a patient in some white-walled psychiatric wing, playing silent toccatas on the windowsill.
After a while, Eden held down the final chord like he was damming some great power below his fingertips. He released the pressure with a flourish and the chapel fell silent. What was left of the congregation rose to its feet, applauding. Eden hardly smiled. He stepped away from the organ, gave the slightest of bows towards the pews, and walked along the aisle, into a private room near the choir stalls. The ovation subsided, and Oscar filed out with everybody else.
Rain was slanting steadily across the Front Court. People were sheltering in the vestibule, waiting for it to ease, but Oscar headed straight out into the downpour. His umbrella was cheap and water ran down onto his shoes. He was relieved that the others weren’t around to ask what he thought of the performance. If Jane had been there to tug at his sleeve and say, ‘Scale of one to ten: how good was Edie tonight?’ he would’ve had to admit what he’d left the chapel feeling—that, despite it all, Eden Bellwether was a genius.
He made it as far as King’s Parade before he noticed Mrs Bellwether on the roadside. All around her, the rain was tinged blue by the old-fashioned streetlamps. There was no way to get by without her seeing him, so he made a point of calling out to her. She turned around, curious. ‘Oh, hello there. Theo’s just bringing the car. Can we give you a lift?’
‘No, it’s alright. I don’t live too far from here.’
‘Okay. Well, do keep dry.’ She turned away, seeing a spray of headlights in the distance, but when she realised they didn’t belong to Theo, she looked back at him, lifting her eyebrows. There was an awkward moment of quiet.
‘I didn’t see you in there,’ Oscar said. ‘Did you enjoy the service?’
‘No. I’m afraid I didn’t.’
‘Oh?’
‘Much too secular for my taste. It felt like a concert in there, not worship. When I go to church, I expect people to be reverent. But there was so much chattering I could hardly hear the lessons.’
‘Well, I’m not really qualified to judge any of that.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’ And she turned away again, staring down at the slick cobbles. ‘Eden was wonderful, of course. He plays so well.’
‘You didn’t want to stay and talk to him?’
‘He’s always so busy after a service. No point in waiting. And, oh, perhaps I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud, but a chapel is really no place for a standing ovation. I can’t understand how the vergers allow that kind of rowdiness. My old uncle Charles would’ve been appalled.’
Oscar didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry you didn’t have a good time.’
‘I’m sure I’ll get over it.’
They stood there quietly as two giggling women sharing a golf umbrella emerged from the Gatehouse, heading for Market Square. Then Mrs Bellwether looked his way again and said: ‘Do you mind if I ask you something, Oscar?’
‘Not at all.’
She waited, drawing in the corner of her mouth. ‘Would you say that my son is liked by people? I don’t mean popular exactly, just, you know, liked.’
He wasn’t sure how to respond.
‘Oh, look,’ she went on briskly, ‘I know he has friends—but Jane, Marcus, Yin, they were raised in the same sort of environment. Prep school, boarding school, Cambridge. You know what I mean. Sometimes I wonder how the average person sees him. I wonder how he’s going to cope in the outside world. I look at other boys his age—boys like you—and I can’t see him ever fitting in.’
‘Everyone’s trying to fit in somewhere, Mrs Bellwether. Me included.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure that’s the case. But sometimes I worry that it’s all been handed to him much too easily.’ She didn’t seem interested in his answer to her question any more. The tension was easing from her voice. ‘The only trouble he’s ever had was being born, and heaven knows he was a difficult birth. But all we’ve done since then is try to keep him comfortable. No stresses or struggles. We’ve sheltered him, indulged him. I don’t think he’s learned to cope with disappointment.’
She paused, switching her umbrella into her other hand. ‘Oh, I’m getting myself into bother here. I shouldn’t be saying any of this. You don’t want to hear it, I know. It’s just that everyone in my family went to boarding school, then Oxbridge, and there’s an assumption that it didn’t do any of us any harm. That we’re all somehow better off. But I wonder about that. I look at my son in there and I think, have I raised someone exceptional or someone abnormal?’
She let her words hang in the air. It occurred to Oscar that this was the first time he’d ever thought that Iris and her mother were similar. There was something about the way she looked as she waited under the streetlight: she had the same shallow slope to her face as Iris, the same straight hairline that bent when she frowned. But hers was a beauty that had aged into something ordinary. ‘You know,’ he started to say, and she squared her eyes at him eagerly, ‘I’m not sure it’s possible to be exceptional without being a bit abnormal too. Goes with the territory.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I really don’t know why I brought it up.’ Right then, Theo’s Alfa Romeo rolled up to the kerb. The passenger door swung open. She collapsed her umbrella, calling: ‘Goodness, Theo, what kept you? My shoes are ruined.’
Iris was discharged from Madigan Hall on Easter Monday. She phoned Oscar from her parents’ house that afternoon, sounding less than enthusiastic about the prospect of spending the whole of the exam term in the company of her father. ‘You have to come over for dinner tonight,’ she said. ‘Dad’s roasting a lamb—he’s driving me spare. It’s supposed to be family only, but that means Eden will be coming and I don’t think I can face him on my own right now. Please tell me you can make it.’ He took the call in the front garden at Cedarbrook. Inside, the residents were tucking into their own lunch, and the smell of lamb and mint sauce had pervaded the corridors all morning, making him nauseous. But he told her he’d be there.
It was Theo who answered the door. Everything he had on was white—his trousers, his shirt, his shoes—apart from a red cooking apron, which was so shiny that it seemed to strobe when he moved. ‘Ah, Oscar, good,’ he said, ‘do you like your lamb pink or brown? Say brown and you’ll break my heart.’ He took Oscar’s umbrella before he had a chance to reply, dumping it into a large ceramic pot by the door. ‘Go on through, why don’t you? I’ve got to run upstairs quickly and change.’ He gestured to the blots of oil on his shirtsleeves. ‘Chef’s prerogative.’
Oscar found Iris reclining on the sofa in the drawing room, her leg braced in the foam and metal contraption she hated so much, elevated on a velvet cushion. She had on a pair of jogging bottoms with one leg snipped off above the knee, and a hooded varsity sweater. Eden wasn’t in the room, but Jane and Mrs Bellwether were there, and he could see that a light was on in the organ house outside—a simple glow behind the misted-up glass of the French windows. ‘Hey, there you are—finally,’ Iris said. ‘I was starting to worry.’
‘Sorry. Held up at work.’
Mrs Bellwether opened her palm out towards the furniture. ‘Sit yourself down, Oscar. Can I get you something to drink?’
‘No thank you, Mrs Bellwether.’
‘Please. Call me Ruth.’ She smiled at him.
Jane waved hello. ‘Eden’s out in the O. H., in case you’re wondering.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Tinkering,’ she said. ‘Like always.’
He bent to kiss Iris on the cheek and took a seat beside her. Ruth picked up the conversation they’d been having when he came into the room—something about a certain style of property that you only ever saw in a certain region of France called the Auvergne, where she was taking a trip with Theo next week; they were going out there to look at some holiday houses.
Soon, Theo came bounding through the drawing room in a clean shirt, retying the cord of his apron. ‘Alright, I hope you’re all hungry.’ He went into the kitchen and they heard him opening and closing the oven. After a moment, he popped his head back around the door. ‘Another few minutes for the potatoes,’ he said. ‘How about some sherry to get things going?’ He brought out six little glasses on a silver tray and handed them out, one by one. ‘Where’s Eden? Will somebody bring him in, please? I want to make a toast.’
‘I’ll go,’ Jane said.
It was noticeably quieter in the room without Jane. Even when she wasn’t talking, she had a way of making noise, and now there was an unbearable hush amongst them. Theo sat down on the arm of the couch next to his wife. ‘So, Oscar, how’s that patient of yours doing? Dr Poulter, wasn’t it? Dr Pointer?’
‘That’s right. How’s the old fellow doing?’
‘Not good, actually.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘He had a stroke a few weeks ago. A bad one.’
Theo shook his head in consternation with the world. ‘I suppose it comes to us all in the end,’ he said, as if this platitude really got to the heart of the matter.
‘How old is he?’ Ruth asked.
‘Eighty-six.’
‘Hm,’ she said. ‘My father had his first stroke at fifty-seven. Terrible thing.’
There was a noise from the kitchen as Jane and Eden came in through the back door, arriving into the room with damp hair and shoulders dotted with rain.
‘Oh, good, we’re all here,’ Theo said. He dinged the sherry glass with his fingernail and stood up. ‘This is what you might call a multifarious toast, so I’ll try to keep to the bullet points, but I make no guarantees of brevity. You all know how much I like to make a speech.’
‘We do,’ Eden said. ‘So get on with it.’
‘First, I’d like to drink to Iris.’ He raised his glass by its spindly neck. ‘To her steady and lasting recovery.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Oscar said.
Eden shuffled his feet in the doorway.
‘Second of all, to Eden, who put on a heck of a show yesterday. It brought to mind that old Wordsworth poem—does anyone recall it?—Where light and shade repose, where music dwells and so on and so on … It’s been a trying year so far, and, yes, we seem to have had a few setbacks lately, but I’d like to think we can have a successful exam term now to make up for it.’ Theo sipped at his sherry, and everyone presumed the toast was over, setting their glasses down. ‘Wait, wait, I’m not finished. Let’s not forget it’s Easter Monday. We must give our thanks to God, who gave His only begotten son to die on the cross for our sins. May we live by the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ on this day and always, in his name and memory. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Ruth said, sipping. ‘That was lovely, darling.’
‘Amen,’ the rest of them murmured.
Oscar just pursed his lips and nodded. Even if he didn’t believe in the prayer, he had to respect the sentiment of it. Then Theo clapped his hands—one loud buckshot. ‘Okay, everyone, if you’ll please make your way to the table.’
Oscar helped Iris onto her crutches. She struggled towards the dining room, one movement of her arms and one swing of her heel at a time. She took her place at the end of the table that was usually reserved for her mother, and Oscar sat adjacent, a buffer between her and Eden. The tablecloth shifted as she lifted herself slowly down onto her chair, and he had to reach out and stop it being drawn away from underneath the tableware like some disastrous magic trick.
Iris didn’t say a word to her brother at dinner. After dessert, Theo pinged his glass, and everyone groaned at the prospect of another toast. ‘Alright, enough. I have an announcement to make. Actually, it’s not just my announcement—your mother’s involved in this, too.’ He reached for his wife’s hand across the table.
‘Please don’t say you’re pregnant,’ Eden said. ‘I don’t think I could bear it.’
His father cleared his throat, undeterred. ‘Your mother and I will be going to the Auvergne next week, as you know, to look at some properties.’
Eden said: ‘You told us already. So what?’
‘Well, there’s a particularly good-looking gîte out there that’s frankly a steal at the price, and really it has so much potential—more acreage than we have here—and if we can do some work on it in the next few years, it will really turn out to be quite an investment. It’ll be a lovely place to live and something to pass down to the pair of you in the future when you’re raising children of your own.’ He stopped, drinking his wine.
‘I don’t understand,’ Iris said. ‘It sounds like you’re thinking of staying there permanently.’
Theo raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath, ready to continue, but his wife leapt in: ‘What your father’s trying to say is—what we’ve decided is—after giving it some serious thought, and considering all the factors—’
‘Look, it’s simple,’ Theo said. ‘If this place we’ve got our hearts set on measures up, we’re going to buy it and move out there.’
There was a palpable tension in the room now. Iris sat there with her mouth ajar, and her brother’s face was screwed up with shock.
‘But—but what about your work?’ Eden said.
‘Well, that’s the good thing about consultancy. It’s a moveable feast.’
‘What about your work, Mother?’
‘Oh, I can always keep in touch by email.’
‘You can’t just emigrate. Not just like that. You don’t even speak French.’ Eden’s anger was rising. The skin of his neck was dappled red.
‘Of course we can emigrate. That’s the joy of the EU. And anyway,’ Theo said, ‘if everything goes well, I’ll probably retire. I’ll have plenty of time to learn the language.’
‘Well, I think it sounds wonderful,’ Jane said, stroking Eden’s forearm. ‘My parents have never been happier since they left for Italy.’
‘Yes, but—but—’ Eden pulled his arm away and stood up. His chair scraped on the marble and his napkin clung to the front of his trousers with static. ‘What will we do? I’ll be starting my Master’s in the autumn and Iris still has a year of the Tripos left. And the house—what will you do with the house?’
‘We’ll sell it,’ Theo said flatly. ‘That’s what we’ve decided.’
‘Oh, you’ve got to be joking.’
‘It’s not exactly going to happen overnight, Eden. I can’t imagine we’ll be moving for at least six months, maybe even a year.’
Eden balled up his napkin and threw it at the table so hard it knocked over his wine glass. Burgundy oozed across the white linen and Ruth leaned over to dab it dry. She said: ‘Will you calm down please, Eden. You’re behaving like a child.’
That’s when Iris finally decided to speak up. She gazed at her brother. ‘You should just be glad for them.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re happy about this,’ Eden said.
‘I’m not thrilled about the idea, but I’ll get used to it.’
Ruth was still padding the stain on the tablecloth, pouring salt onto the fabric. ‘Your father’s worked hard for you all his life,’ she said. ‘He deserves his retirement. You’re not children any more, and both of you are just going to have to live with our decision.’ She didn’t lift her gaze from the table. The stain was now a sickly brown colour.
Her words only seemed to make Eden more indignant. His glossy eyes swelled. ‘And what about the organ house? Have you even thought about that? Or are you just going to go away on your little jaunt and leave me to deal with having no organ to practise on next year?’
‘We’ll sort something out for you,’ Theo said. ‘You’ll manage.’
‘I don’t want to manage. I love that organ. I want things to stay just as they are. Why can’t you just move out there and keep the house? What if—?’ His face brightened. ‘What if Iris and I stay here next year? Together. What about that? We’ll make sure the place doesn’t go to ruin.’
Iris folded her arms. ‘No chance. I’m moving back into halls next year.’
‘Don’t talk stupid.’
‘I am. I’m moving out of Harvey Road.’ She looked at Oscar for support, taking his hand. ‘I’ve already put my name into the lottery.’
Eden glared at Theo. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘Yes. In light of our own plans, we’re okay with it.’
‘Oh, I see, so you’re all abandoning me. I suppose you’ve all been plotting this for ages behind my back. What about you, Janey? Did you know about this?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Theo said. ‘Sit down. Nobody’s been plotting anything. You’re being paranoid. Things change. People move on.’
But Eden didn’t sit down. He stared right at Oscar. ‘I bet he knew.’
Oscar stayed quiet. There was no point making things any more tense than they needed to be. Eden was chewing on his bottom lip so hard it looked like it might come apart under his teeth. His lungs heaved in his chest, up and down, like two great accordions trapped behind his ribcage. He had the same dazed look about him that he’d had at the hospital, weeks ago, and Oscar could tell that whatever thoughts were running through Eden’s head now, he wouldn’t let them settle.
‘Eden, come on, sit down,’ Theo said.
But Eden wouldn’t listen to his father. He shoved hard at the table. It slid and lifted up slightly on its legs, but somehow none of the glasses toppled over; they teetered and came to rest again without a drop being spilled. Turning fast, Eden kicked his chair out of the way, his force so strong that it hit the floor with a crack. He rushed out to the kitchen, slamming every door behind him, and soon they could hear the stutter of his feet on the path outside. A pale light came on in the garden, illuminating the rainspots on the windowpanes and making the dining room seem smaller, barer.
‘Excuse me, I’m sorry,’ Theo said, and made to go after him, but Ruth stopped him: ‘Let him cool off,’ she said.
Nobody said anything for a while. Theo leaned his elbows on the table and knuckled his beard. Iris ran her fingers through the crown of her hair. Oscar rolled the last bead of liquid around in his wine glass. No matter how many of them he went to, he thought, he’d never get used to these Bellwether family dinners.
It was Jane who found a way to break the gloom: ‘So will you keep horses at this gîte of yours?’ she asked. ‘Because if you keep horses I’ll come out to visit you all the time.’
Theo smiled, then began to laugh, and the heaviness in the room seemed to lift. ‘Jane,’ he said, the colour rushing back in his cheeks again, ‘we’ll keep a stable full of them just for you, I promise.’
Still, when they all went back out into the drawing room, Theo seemed to be in a downcast mood. He poured cognac for everyone, apologising to Oscar for Eden’s behaviour—’I just don’t know what gets into that boy sometimes, I really don’t’—and sat there, warming his expensive brandy, taking no part in their discussion about the French way of life and what Ruth called ‘the liberal stance’ the country had taken over the invasion of Iraq, though Oscar supposed he had plenty to say on the issue. As the conversation drifted into silence, Theo said tiredly: ‘Okay, everyone. I think we should call it a night.’
‘Yes, I’m exhausted,’ said Jane. ‘Back to the library tomorrow.’
They all gave each other polite hugs and handshakes. Ruth told Oscar there was no sense in ordering a taxi—he could stay in one of the guest rooms upstairs—and Jane volunteered to give him a lift back to Cambridge in the morning. Everyone went off to their rooms.
A bed had been set up for Iris in the sitting room. ‘Can’t handle stairs or flagstones at the moment,’ she said to Oscar. ‘I need more practice on the crutches.’ They lay together, kissing and holding each other, until her leg got too uncomfortable. He sat on the floor with his neck against the mattress and her fingers combing softly through his hair. She was wide awake and talkative, and seemed pragmatic about the idea of her parents moving away. ‘It was bound to happen sooner or later. Dad’s always talked about buying somewhere in Nice or Cannes, so I’m a little surprised they’re looking around in the Auvergne, but it doesn’t matter much to me. So long as they’re happy. And besides, they spend most of their time away from this house, anyway. I suppose it makes sense to sell it. Can you believe the way Eden was acting?’ She checked herself. ‘Wait, what am I saying? Of course you can.’
They talked about the prospect of Crest coming back to the house again. Oscar told her he’d been wondering why Eden had put the old man off for three weeks, but tonight, after the drama at dinner, he’d realised why—because Eden was waiting for his parents to leave town. ‘It’s almost like an admission that he’s doing something he shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘If your dad found out what was going on here next week, he’d go ballistic.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’ Iris’s fingers stopped moving, settling on his head. ‘You saw him tonight—he’s too soft on him. Put it this way: what would your dad have done if you’d kicked up a big scene like that at the dinner table?’
Oscar knew exactly what his father would’ve done, but he didn’t want to tell her about it. ‘We never really ate at the dinner table much.’
‘What about if you slammed a door?’
He wanted to change the subject. It was in his mind now: that horrible banging of the back door latch, loud as a gunshot; a gust sweeping right through the house as his father arrived home. Then the urgent thump of his father’s feet on the stairs: ‘Oscar! What’ve I told you about leaving the back door open. You’re gonna take that fucking door off its fucking hinges. Where are you?’ This wasn’t something he ever wanted Iris to hear. ‘I never slammed any doors,’ he said.
‘Well, you know what I mean. Eden’s just allowed to make a big scene then go away somewhere without anybody telling him off. Everybody in this house just hides and pretends there’s nothing the matter. Maybe I’m expecting too much of people, I don’t know.’ She sighed, pushing her head deeper into her pillow. ‘I just wish this whole thing was over. I’m so tired of my brother, the way he talks to me like he’s so superior, when he’s the one who’s crazy. I just wish somebody would take him off in a white van.’
‘I know you don’t mean that,’ he said.
‘You’re right, I probably don’t, it’s just—I’m so exhausted with it all. I’m not sure how much longer I can go on living like this. I feel like he’s swallowing up my whole life. And Herbert was supposed to help him, but he only seems to be encouraging him.’
‘That’s not how it is.’
‘Well, it just seems like he’s getting what he needs for his book and then that’s it—he’s going to leave us all in the lurch.’
‘It’s not like that. I told you, he’s going to speak to some people he knows, get Eden some proper help.’
‘Why do you trust him so much anyway?’
‘Who? Crest?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I just do. I’ve got to know him quite well lately. He’s a good man.’
‘Well, I hope he’s going to come through for me.’
‘For us.’
‘Yeah.’ She smiled and pulled his hair lightly. ‘For us.’
That night, the air in the guest room was stuffy and Oscar couldn’t sleep. Rain was still coming down behind the drawn curtains, rapping on the glass with every gust of wind, and all he could think about was Herbert Crest and the question Iris had asked: why did he trust the old man so much? That faded dust-jacket photo from The Girl With the God Complex was stuck in his mind—the image of a young, broad-nosed man with a head of dark hair and features not so different from his own. He’d trusted Herbert Crest the moment he’d seen him. He had no doubt that Herbert Crest was a good man, somebody to aspire to—somebody his father would’ve called a butterfly catcher because his brain was too active, too ambitious to settle for doing the same work day in, day out, when it could be exploring the deeper facets of the world.
The wind blew another shiver of rain against the house. Oscar opened the window and the fresh air began to pacify him. Soon, he drifted into a restless dream in which he was swimming in a quiet brown lake where old women were washing cotton nappies and a pack of horses had come to ford. He woke abruptly, feeling tense and thirsty, and went across the hallway into the bathroom to get some water. But when he turned on the light, his eye caught the bleary reflection of something in the mirror, and his heart shook. There on the floor tiles, shivering against the bath panel, was Eden. His hair and clothes were sodden, and he’d removed his shoes and socks; they were drying in the bidet. His fingers were stained black with something: mud, or ink, or oil.
Oscar was breathless with shock. ‘Jesus,’ he said, trying to steady himself, ‘how long have you been in here?’
Eden didn’t answer. He leaned his head against the lip of the tub.
Oscar took a towel from the rack and handed it over. Eden didn’t say thank you, didn’t even unfurl it from its neat little quarter-fold, just began dabbing his face. The extractor fan whirled above them for a moment, then Eden said: ‘When all of this is over, you know what I’m going to do?’ He was slurring his words, either too drunk or too worn out to speak.
‘When all what is over?’ Oscar said, staring down at him.
Eden wiped a bead of water from his nose. ‘I’m going to build myself the most incredible organ you’ve ever seen. That’s what I’m going to do. Better than the one I have here, better than the one at King’s. Look—’ He got to his feet gingerly, clutching the sink. He opened his left hand and revealed a tiny scroll of paper, rolled up as tight as a cigarette. He unravelled it, spreading it over the counter, holding it flat.
Oscar was expecting a refined sort of drawing, as precise as something an architect had drafted. But it was a fairly awkward sketch in spotted, smudged ink—not exactly child-like, but not remotely skilled. The lines of the organ pipes were loose, wobbly, and the keys and stops of the organ console looked more like the fixtures of a gingerbread house.
Eden stood beside him now, dripping. ‘I based it on the St Michael’s organ, but the registration will be different. It’ll have German pipes, but I’ll probably get them zinc-lined over here. And I’ll have a Claribel Flute stop as velvety as the Harrison at King’s. It doesn’t need to be big, it just needs to be pure. And if I get the specs right, it’ll rattle your bones when you hear it. I’ll be able to do anything with it. Whatever I want.’
Oscar was still half-asleep, but he couldn’t help noticing the change in Eden’s eyes: they weren’t so pearly any more; the pupils were dilated. ‘What are you doing in here, Eden? You’re soaking.’
‘Raining out there,’ he replied. And he went over to sit down on the floor again, on the same little patch of wet tiles. ‘I came here looking for something.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t remember.’ He smiled dreamily. ‘But I found my sister’s tablets.’ He laid himself down flat. ‘If you take two at once, you get a nice giddy feeling.’
Oscar took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. ‘Drink this,’ he said.
Eden pushed it away. ‘I don’t need a nursemaid.’
‘Drink it or you’re going to get sick.’
‘What do you care?’
‘I don’t.’
Eden took the glass, but didn’t even sip at it. ‘He’ll have to make an appointment like the rest of us.’
‘Who will?’
‘Dr Crest. If he wants to meet my parents.’
‘Okay.’
‘Why is it so hot in here?’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Then I must be getting a fever, because it feels like I’m on fire.’ Eden gulped down the water in one long mouthful. He exhaled and dropped the glass. It broke against the tiles in a few clean pieces. ‘Oops.’
‘You better go to bed, Eden. Sleep it off.’
‘Don’t tell me how to behave.’
‘You’re going to wake everyone.’
‘Tssh. They don’t care what I do. Nobody bats an eyelid.’ He lifted himself to his feet again, clutching onto the washbasin. ‘But that’s okay. I’m going to build my own organ. And then I can do anything, and everyone will listen.’ He staggered towards the door. ‘Get out my way,’ he said, pushing at Oscar’s chest weakly. ‘Everyone’s always in my way.’ And out he went along the dark hall, down the stairs, through the atrium.
Oscar hurried to the window in the guest room. The rain was still driving across the garden. He saw Eden come out through the kitchen door below, stumbling over the patio, along the path. He stayed there at the window, watching, until the light went off in the organ house and the night began to settle.