Mark Edwards - Catch Your Death

‘Until now?’

‘Until now,’ she echoed, thinking how strange it was that you could summarise a life so quickly and painlessly, missing out all the important facts. Of how she went to Harvard, still in a state of shock, only weeks after Stephen’s death. The years she spent in the graduate research programme. Meeting and marrying Vernon Maddox – a man who could not have been more different to Stephen – and having Jack. The glorious day she became Professor Kate Maddox. Work, and Jack, had both continued to be fulfilling and enjoyable, but the rot had well and truly started to set in with Vernon by then. His fuse had grown shorter and shorter over the years, seemingly in inverse proportions to his nasal hair. What Kate had initially thought was passionate and forthright about him soon became perceived as merely hectoring and unpleasant.

She didn’t tell Paul all this, though.

‘And what do you do?’ she asked.

‘You might not believe this, but I chase viruses too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes – but a different kind to you. Computer viruses. Or I should say, the scum who create them and send them out across the internet.’

‘You’re a cop?’

‘No. Not really. I work for an internet security firm. It’s a very exciting business.’

She smiled. ‘Sounds a bit geeky to me.’

‘Er, says the professor of – what was it? – immunology and infectious diseases?’

‘Touché.’

Paul laughed. ‘Actually, a lot of people think it’s a geeky job, and I do spend a lot of time staring at computer screens. But so must you.’

‘You’re right. Too much time.’

‘Except now you’re moving to London. Are you moving to a university over here? Kissing the Ivy League goodbye?’

He asked a lot of questions. Stephen had been curious like that too, interested in others.

Their food arrived, the waiter plonking it down on the table, shoving their glasses out of the way then stomping off. Kate was too busy trying to decide how honest to be to feel aggrieved by the waiter’s rudeness. Should she tell Paul that she had no idea about what she was going to do professionally; furthermore, that she didn’t care right now?

She said, ‘I’m considering my options at the moment.’

‘I see.’

They emptied their beer bottles and Paul put his hand up to order more. Kate licked her lips. She hardly drank at all these days and the beer tasted good: sweet and mood-changing. Tongue-loosening.

‘Tell me about Stephen,’ she said. ‘What was he like as a kid?’

Paul dipped a spring roll in sweet chilli sauce, and took a bite. ‘He was the leader, at first. He was born second – five minutes after me – and after that he spent his, I mean our, childhoods making up for it. He was the first to say “Daddy”, the first to walk across the living room instead of bum-shuffling, the first to climb the tree at the end of our garden. He was the first to get a girlfriend. Melissa, that was her name. She lived just down the road. A ponytail and freckles. We had a camp, which was really just a space between some bushes, and he took her in there and snogged her. I was so jealous.’

He laughed, rather awkwardly. ‘I suppose I was jealous of him in a lot of ways. We were competitive, always wanting to get the best marks at school or win at football. For once, I was better at that than him – he was hopeless – but he was better academically. Being good at football won me more points at school, but getting good grades went down better with my parents.’

‘Go on,’ Kate said softly. She felt as though she could listen to him talking about Stephen all night.

‘I don’t know what to tell you next. There’s so much.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘There was a period when we were in our early teens when we didn’t want to be twins any more. We wanted to be individuals. I took the lead in this – Stephen really was an academic, always buried in a book, or carrying out experiments with this chemistry kit he had, which he upgraded every year. By the time he was a teenager it seemed to take over his whole bedroom. We called it his Gaseous Empire.’

He smiled at the memory, then continued. ‘Stephen lived in a dream world – a world of the mind – so he barely noticed when I went out of my way to look as different from him as I could. I cut my hair really short, got into hip-hop.’ He grinned again. ‘Break-dancing was big around that time.’

‘I remember it well.’

‘Stephen wouldn’t, if he was here. He didn’t know anything about what was going on in the street. I used to take the piss out of him for it. So did my friends. They all thought he was the world’s biggest nerd, and couldn’t believe he was my brother. I used to bring my mates round when my parents were out and we, my little gang, would rip the piss out of Stephen, call him the Prof, all this stupid stuff. We were gits.’

Kate didn’t say anything. My poor baby, she thought, and for a second she felt angry with Paul. Neither of them had eaten anything for several minutes. Paul was staring into the middle distance; into the past.

‘There was this kid that I used to hang around with called Terry. I didn’t really like him but he decided he wanted to join our group because he liked the same kind of music as we did. And everyone else was terrified of him. He was a little psycho, the kind of boy who tortured frogs for a laugh and terrorised the younger kids with demands for money. The kind of person I’d do anything to avoid these days.

‘He waged war against Stephen. Every day, in the playground, or on the way home, he’d be there, taunting him. It was never physical, but Stephen was the kind of kid who despised confrontation. Terry would go up to him and say something like, “I heard you called me a wanker,” and Stephen’s voice would break as he denied it. Stephen clearly did think Terry was a wanker, but he would never have dared say it, even to me.’

Kate wanted to reach into the past and hug Stephen. And slap this Terry. A vision rose up of herself stepping in, defending her boyfriend.

But she understood what it felt like to be bullied. She’d allowed it to happen to her for a long time. It was only recently that she’d had the courage to stand up for herself.

She said, ‘Didn’t you do anything?’

Paul pushed his noodles around his plate with a chopstick. ‘No. I mean, I’d say, kind of weakly, “Come on Terry, leave him alone,” but that was about it. I was scared of Terry too – he was so unpredictable – and I suppose there was a part of me that was glad. Glad that it wasn’t me. That I was the cool brother. It’s awful, isn’t it?’

Kate didn’t respond. She wondered what kind of teenager Jack would grow into. A cruel one? Or a soft one like Stephen? She prayed neither.

Paul said, ‘Then one day, Stephen totally surprised me. Terry was doing the old “You called me a wanker” routine, and “Do you want a fight?” and Stephen put down his school bag – I can picture him dropping it – and said, “OK, then.” And he stepped forward and punched Terry right in the mouth. Knocked him over.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘That’s what I thought. I felt like cheering. And Stephen coolly picked up his bag, stepped over Terry – who was too shocked to move – and walked off. I’d like to say Terry learned the error of his ways, but the next day he started bullying someone else, someone younger and more timid, but he never bothered Stephen again.’

Paul sighed. ‘I still felt ashamed that I hadn’t done anything to help. Eventually we became friends again. We had to be, really, we were brothers. Sometimes, usually at four in the morning, I wake up and start thinking about it. I wish there was some way I could make it up to Stephen. I’d ask for forgiveness, if he was here now.’