The Club(29)

And then occasionally, the way some comment landed, the mood he was in that day, he really did mind. And minding about that comment meant he suddenly also minded about all the other comments, over the years, all at once. Or it could be days later, or even weeks later, and suddenly he would remember some snide remark, and he would suddenly be able to hear his breath whistling in his flared nostrils, suddenly feel himself gripped with real anger.

And the point Laura would always remind him of, when he had one of those moments, when he started brooding and frowning and snapping at her, was that he did not have to put up with it. He did not have to confront Ned, he did not need to lose his temper or start a fight. All Adam needed to do was calmly tell Ned what he had decided, and make it clear this was serious.

‘I know it’s scary,’ Laura had texted him that morning. ‘But I trust you and I know you can do it.’

He hadn’t texted back. There was no point, not until he’d done what he’d promised. He knew Laura. They had been married a long time. She’d made herself absolutely clear on the phone the day before. She loved him. She would always love him. She believed in him. But what she was not able to do was to stick around and watch him destroy himself, to stay in this marriage and watch him making himself so unhappy. Just like the clients she coached, she said, once he had taken the decision to make a change, she could help him. Every inch of the way, she would be there to help him. But Adam had to take this first step alone.

It was scary. All his life, everywhere he went, he had always been Ned Groom’s little brother. At school, where the first question every teacher asked him, year after year, the first time they took the register, was whether he was any relation. As a teenager, when he started noticing the way people’s manner immediately shifted once they knew who he was – or rather whose little brother he was. It was hard to convey, to someone who had not been there, to Laura, just how big a deal Ned had been, even while they were growing up. His brother had always been magnetic, one of those people everyone seemed to know, everyone wanted to know. Not just at school. Every party Adam went to, someone would recognize his brother in him. Get on a bus and the driver would give him some message to pass on to Ned. The guy in the corner shop would ask how his brother was doing. Wherever he went, whoever he spoke to, Ned seemed to find a way of connecting with people, remembering something about them, leaving an impression.

Adam had probably been about twelve when someone had first asked him if it was weird for him, all that.

His answer had been: ‘I dunno really.’

It was not just that his life would have been different, if he had not been Ned’s brother. He would have been different. Ever since he was a child, it had partly been Ned’s eyes and ears he had been looking at and listening to the world with. Ned didn’t like the taste of carrots? Adam wasn’t going to eat them either. Ned hated swimming? For years, Adam had refused to learn too. He had absolutely idolized Ned, as a teenager. He could still recall how it used to thrill him when someone commented on how much he looked like his brother – more of a compliment then than it would be now. When Ned had gone off to study law at university, Adam had literally moved into his bedroom, started wearing his clothes. With music, books, even people, Ned’s taste was his touchstone, Ned’s imagined opinion the one he found himself triangulating his own against. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he had proved so consistently useful to his big brother, that ability to anticipate what Ned would think about something, what was going to excite or annoy him, how he was likely to react.

One of the things he had looked forward to most, going away to university, was not the chance to reinvent himself, but to meet people who would not realize quite how many of his mannerisms and interests and even turns of phrase were borrowed from someone else.

This was the sort of thing he had not really discussed with anyone, before he met Laura.

That his wife and his brother did not get on better had always pained him. The problem was, he supposed, that they both had very different perceptions of who Adam was, of what he could be, of what he was capable.

Adam was pretty sure he knew how Ned was going to react to the news that he was leaving. As for the idea that he wanted Ned to buy him out so he could be free of the place entirely? This was the part of the conversation Adam had been dreading. He was one of the few who knew how the whole operation functioned, because he was one of the few who had been with Ned right from the start. Extracting his share would be like unmaking an omelette.

The main thing was to choose his moment.

Kicking off Friday with a leisurely sail around the island on a 1930s motor yacht, bought and restored at astonishing expense, had always been part of Ned’s plan for this weekend. It was an unrivalled opportunity to show off the size of the place, to underline the scale of what he had achieved. There was the old water tower, at the top of which was now an Italian restaurant, Torre dell’acqua. There was the little bay on the sheltered side of the island that, come summer, you’d be able to paddleboard around. There was the private jetty near The Manor, reserved for Ned himself.

It felt like as good an opportunity as he would have, this weekend, to get Ned on his own.

Nor would Adam ever be likely to catch Ned in a better mood.

‘We did it,’ he kept muttering to Adam, every time they were the only people in earshot. ‘We actually fucking did it.’

And for a moment it would feel like they were a team again, as it had in the old days.