The Only Brother Read Online Free Page A

to talking about Will, and all the wonderful things Will had done. His college degree and his work, and how he lost all this weight, and… well, so on, and so on. Fortunately, I only had to take another half-hour of this before we arrived at my brother’s old flat in Amersham. Not bad, as far as places go: two bedrooms, an assortment of other small rooms and the remains of a mess we’d finally made a dent in over the past few months.
    We could finally see the floor, with many things already boxed up and readyto go. My brother had paid a few months in advance so we had another month before we needed to get everything out of the flat. It was my job to ship out everything my brother had sold on eBay before he died. All of that sat in my room – boxes and boxes of coins and books and whatever other junk Will sold off when he’d got bored with it. Hours of sending boxes out by post, fighting with my parents to get the money back for the postage, fighting with people because their auctions were late. Look,
I didn’t kill my brother just so that your auction would be late. I need your address again.
    At least Will kept records, so I could get into his accounts. For a rampant slob who once got a whole block of butter into the top of his video cassette recorder, he was meticulous when it came to his auctions. Cheques and bank transfers right into the estate account and right back out as fast as we could; no sense in his credit card debts eating up the money. And we had to pay the medical bills somehow…
    ‘Andrew!’
    ‘What?’
    I must have zoned out. I held a picture frame in my hand, polished steel. It was Will and me on Christmas morning, three years ago. We were just coming down from the top of the stairs and my dad decided he just had to take a picture. My brother was in his hat phase, covering the scars and his bald head from his – fifth? – lot of surgery. Yeah, fifth brain operation, this time to take out a shunt that drained spinal fluid from the base of his brain stem into his stomach. Will’s hat was silly, with a stuffed lobster sticking out of the front.
    And me, bleary-eyed – I’d been up all night working on a picture – barely awake and barely able to stand after the flash went off in my face. My brother thought this was as funny as ever, just like Mum and Dad did. They always thought it was ‘fun’ to take my picture when I didn’t want it, to keep on touching me, to keep talking whenI just wanted to work. I only ever talked when I had something to say.
    ‘Andrew!’
    Dad hovered over me, and I wasn’t able to cover the picture in time. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked.
    ‘That was a great Christmas,’ he said.
    I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. How can he call that a great Christmas when William smacked me around, when I got screamed at for hitting him back, when my own brother called me a fag for drawing, and for dressing how I wanted? I have no idea how he could think I’d call it ‘great’ when Will just acted up, but they would insist that it was my fault every time something crap happened…
    ‘I guess,’ was the best I could push out of my mouth. I threw the picture into a box with piles of old clothing, putting it from my mind as best I could. All this would end up on eBay. I’d scan the pic atleast, and save it. Every picture needed to be scanned now, all so that no one would ever forget William and his wondrous achievements.
    More packing, more loading, more junk. I can’t even imagine what the place looked like the first time Dad got here to get Will’s suit for the funeral. Probably takeaway containers as far as the eye could see, porn, and catalogues for theatre lighting equipment. Dad stayed at the apartment overnight that time; probably cleaned the place up as much as he could, so Mum didn’t have to see it all. She certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle the porn.
    Every once in a while, Dad stopped and stared at something: book, a shirt, a