Sykes did not come out of his room for three days after Fabulina’s birthday party. When she knocked on his door, he said that he had a cold and was going to sleep it off. She left food for him on a tray on the hall table but he barely touched it. When Sykes emerged he was as white as milk. He was limping slightly. His skin was drawn taut over his skull and his eyes were pale and empty. He smelt feral, a sweet, animal odour underlaid with a metallic chemical bitterness.
‘Whew, you smell like you’ve been rooting a gang of billy-goats.’ said Fabulina, bustling to warm the teapot.
‘Have you got anything stronger?’ he said, and smiled wanly. ‘For medicinal purposes.’ Fabulina filled two teacups from her bottle of emergency brandy.
‘Here’s to a swift recovery, doll face. Your mother’s missed you.’
Sykes didn’t tell Fabulina what had happened to him that night when he went back to the twins’ apartment but Fabulina knew that something had changed, something was missing. Sykes began to disappear for long periods and even when he was there, sitting in her kitchen, smoking and drinking tea, he often seemed to drift away to a place where Fabulina couldn’t quite reach him. It was like a deteriorating telephone connection. And they both knew that eventually they were going to be cut off.
It was not as though Fabulina would be shocked or even surprised at what had happened. In her long career as a professional transvestite, she had experienced just about everything there was to experience in the boudoir. In fact, she had once told him that her darling Winny liked to be handcuffed to the bedstead occasionally, and smacked for being a naughty boy.
‘Nothing like a bit of emphasis to get the gonads going,’ she had laughed.
What disturbed Sykes was his own reaction to what had been done to him. The craving that had been unleashed. He felt as though his whole personality had been peeled back to reveal somebody he did not recognise. Another self that he had never suspected. His subversive twin.