So. Your two boys. Side by side now. Leaning against the wall. Tidge slinging an arm over his brother: ‘Just try it, come on.’ Mouse flinching him off. You sigh. It’s always this. Your youngest wanting to stuff his brother’s glee back inside him, like a sleeping bag into its sack, wanting to pull the toggle tight. You worry he’ll grow into one of those men who slip through the cracks, who are lost. An adult who underlives and you dread that. He’s always lagged with so much: eye contact, smiling, sport, making friends; has never had the rescue of a best mate. Old souls, so different, from the moment they were born. You sensed it. Tidge’s theory is that all the waiting souls are hovering above the skin of the earth ready to slip into the parents they want, the flesh they need; that there’s intention in their choice. ‘I chose you to make you happy, Mummy,’ Tidge explained, aged five. Mouse: ‘I chose you for your toast.’
And when everything’s going well for Tidge he grows bouncy and sleek and full of light. Which is now. And the one thing the twins have always had is the ability to second-guess each other but Tidge’s breaking away here, going off on his own, thinking independently and they both know it. Tidge is shining as Mouse shrinks ever more glowery beside him, shining as his brother stands with his back against the wall and pushes him away. It’s heartbreaking. They’re growing up. It morphs into punching, Mouse attacking with a terrifying force and now they’re rolling on the floor and kicking and hitting like two lion cubs and now the giggling comes, the change, just like that.
‘Let’s hide from her,’ Tidge says suddenly.
Mouse looks at him sharp. Well, well, he can’t say he disapproves. Perhaps his big brother’s not completely lost to him yet.
Tidge surprises you sometimes with the shock of his nastiness. There’s a side of him that doesn’t know tenderness. He can’t do a soft tickle, a loving stroke; yet complex little Mouse brims with sensual touch. The contradictions in all of them. They never stop wrong-footing you, there’s always a next stage just as you think you’ve got them worked out.
Everyone goes about his business at the beginning of the day and sells his soul: he either frees it, or causes it to perish.