“I’ll admit no such fucking thing,” snapped Christopher. It didn’t seem like either of them were in much of a mood to let the other finish a sentence. “You moved out two years before I did, you were financially independent before I was, you didn’t have them micromanaging your wedding and your marriage and making your wife feel like shit for—”
“I’m sorry,” Oliver gave his brother the politest of smiles. “Were you about to lecture your gay brother on how hard it has been for you to put up with our parents’ opinions about your romantic relationships?”
For a moment Christopher didn’t have a reply, probably because there was no good way to answer. “That was low.”
“Oh, was it? Did the impact of our parents’ constant low-key homophobia on me somehow inconvenience you?”
“Fuck off, Ollie, I never… I always… Just fuck off.”
At last, Mia caught up with us. She hadn’t actually been that far away, but given the raised voices and intense body language, she hadn’t been in a major hurry to join the party. “Cleared the air yet?”
she asked.
“Christopher has just told me to fuck off,” said Oliver. “So no.”
Mia sighed. “Christopher, you promised.”
“He played the gay card,” Christopher protested.
I winced. “Can we maybe not say ‘gay card’？ It’s kind of a right-wing talking point that needs to die in a fire.”
Somehow, it always seemed easier for the Blackwood brothers to be conciliatory with each other’s partners than each other, and Christopher continued the tradition. “Sorry, Luc. I meant…let’s stop playing the who-had-it-worst game and accept that there’s an outside chance growing up was shit for both of us.”
“Didn’t I just do that,” said Oliver, archly.
Christopher scowled. “You just made a whole speech about how crap your childhood was.”
“And yours as well,” Oliver pointed out with a level of pedantry I didn’t think was totally well judged in the circumstances. “I didn’t think it was fair to speak on your behalf.”
“You could have consulted me?”
“Again, it wasn’t planned.”
“Or”—for a moment the look in Christopher’s eyes was a lot like the one Oliver got when I was being particularly difficult with him —“you could have talked to me at any time in the last thirty years?”
“I would have, but you were in…” Oliver began. Then he stopped. Then he tried again. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to be reasonable but”—he took a deep I-am-going-to-articulate-a-complex-thought breath—“it wasn’t easy for me when we were younger. Nothing I did was ever good enough for our parents, whereas you—”
“Whereas I what?” demanded Christopher.
“Come on, you were always the golden boy.”
At that, Christopher gave a hollow, single-shot laugh, like a bark.
“Oh, was I? ”
“Do you know how long they kept reminding me that you got better A-level grades than I did?”
“Well, I did.” Christopher gave a near-defiant near-smirk.
“That’s because the A-star grade didn’t exist when I did mine. I got the best grades I could at the time.”
The near-smirk vanished, but the defiance got more defiant.
“And I didn’t. They had a go at me for only getting an A in maths until I was three years into my medical degree.”
Mia took half a step forward. She looked like she was about to pull out one of the last six pins in a game of KerPlunk. “Is it possible,”
she asked, “just possible that they might have made you both think they liked the other one more?”
“Nonsense,” said Christopher and Oliver at once.
“Every time I spoke to them,” Oliver went on, slightly faster than his brother, “it was Christopher is going to be a doctor, Christopher has the loveliest girlfriend, Christopher said the most interesting thing to us the last time we spoke to him.”
“Oliver wouldn’t be out so late on a school night,” Christopher shot back, “Oliver knows how to do what he’s told, Oliver makes time for us.”
“Well, I did,” Oliver snapped back. “Instead of spending all my time backpacking and sightseeing and running around with my friends. Friends, by the way, who they made very certain to tell me all about.” He lapsed back into his parents voice. “We don’t see nearly as much of Christopher as we’d like, but then you have to give young boys their freedom and he’s so very popular.”