“It’s not – that’s not – that’s not what I’m talking about. You know it’s not. I thought this was our house, you know? You should have asked me.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. You sound like the old man. It’s only Veronica, you know, not some random psycho I’ve invited in off the street.”

Jake lapsed into frustrated silence. It wasn’t that he was opposed to the change in principle, but God, it annoyed him when Carl just rode roughshod over a decision that should have been made by both of them. And what was with Carl wanting to live with his girlfriend, anyway? He’d always gone on about his need for space and independence and emotional detachment, for God’s sake – what had happened to all that?

“What about all that stuff you kept telling me?” said Jake.

“What stuff?” Carl upended the can and swallowed. Jake watched the Adam’s apple in his throat bob uneasily.

“You know, your need for space and independence and emotional attachment. That stuff.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, little bro. You must have been hearing things. Now, are you going to accept that V’s going to be living here or do I have to take you out the back and beat in into you?”

Jake grinned despite himself. “Yeah, you and who’s army?”

“Watch it…”

They wrestled briefly by the sink, until Carl’s beer can fell onto the floor and spurted brown foam everywhere. Giggling helplessly, Jake groped for the tea towel and dabbed at the spillage.

Carl hadn’t mentioned it again until they were sprawled in the front room, washed in the dim bluish glow of the television. Jake was slumped sideways in his armchair, legs dangling over one arm, his favourite red cushion squashed behind his head. Carl favoured the sofa, laying his long body out amongst the fusty upholstery. Both of them had lain silent for a while, glazed into immobility by the flickering pictures on the screen before them. The end of a joint smouldered into extinction in the ashtray on the coffee table between them.

“Sorry mate.”

Jake looked up in dopey surprise. Carl wasn’t looking at him but, even tired and befuddled, he could hear the sincerity in his brother’s voice.

“What?”

“Sorry. For not telling you about Veronica. You’re right, I should have asked.”

“Oh forget it.” Jake waved a hand. “It’ll be cool. You’re right, I do like her. Be good to have a woman in the house.”

Carl grinned. “As long as you don’t have her.”

“Dude!” Jake threw the red cushion at him. “What do you take me for?”

That was one of the conversations that would haunt him, later, one of the remembered verbal exchanges that convulsed him with horror. The terrible irony – the lost innocence – I was happy then, Jake thought. He addressed his questions to some careless, unheeding deity. Why can’t I turn back time and go back to those days? Why me? Why did you pick me to be there, at that party? Do I have to atone for the rest of my life? How long will I have to live this way? How long will I have to be punished?

Chapter Nineteen

Jake looked forward to Veronica’s arrival with an uneasy mixture of gloom and excitement. He wanted the vicarious thrill of knowing she was in the flat, seeing her every day, talking to her, watching her move about the place. Surely, he'd be able to catch a glimpse of her naked, or semi-clad, scuttling from bathroom to bedroom in her underwear? He’d been surprised to find out that she wanted her own room, with her own bed, and wondered at the strength of her attachment to his brother. But he soon came to realise that it was a quintessential part of her personality; this need for a bolthole, her desperation for a totally private place. In some ways, she was feline; a shy feral creature that tolerated affection but withdraw when the petting became too exuberant. During the first week she fitted a lock on her bedroom door, just a simple brass bolt, but Carl had sulked about in a way that amazed his younger brother.  With lowered brow, he’d stood outside the bathroom while Veronica showered, his arms folded, waiting until she unlocked the door and stepped out, swathed in a white towel, flushed and dewy from the steam. She’d smiled at her lover and pushed past him, lightly but dismissively.

“Why have you put a lock on your door?”

Carl said it in a low tone but Jake, standing awkwardly at the top of the stairs, heard him clearly. The two of them went into her new room and shut the door behind them. Jake hesitated for a moment, wrestling with his conscience. Then, the battle lost, he crept up to the door and pressed his ear against the cold paint of its surface.

He could hear the bass rumble of Carl’s voice and, less audible, Veronica’s softer tone. But what they were saying was muffled, as if he were listening to them underwater. After a moment, he stood back from the door, disgusted with himself. What was he hoping to hear? What was he trying to prove to himself?

In that house, though, it was too easy. Whispers rose from the hallway to the ceiling, coiling like smoke to the high ceilings, drifting up through the banisters. Raised voices bounced off the hard ceramic tiles of the kitchen. Lying in bed, Jake could hear blurred gasps and whimpers through the tiny holes of the ventilation bricks near the ceiling and would turn himself face down into his pillow, rigid against the sheets, shutting out the thought of what his brother was doing to Veronica in the room next door. Once, he’d not been able to stop himself from moving his hand to the rhythm of her gasps, his own climax reached as she cried out in orgasm. When his heart rate had slowed, he’d buried himself under the duvet, wincing at the feel of the cooling semen on the sheet, red with shame.

It wasn’t always like that, of course. Most of the time, it was just as it had been when it had been a bachelor flat, messy, cosy, a place to kick back and relax. Veronica did not fill the place with scented candles, cushions and flowers. She did only as much cleaning as he and Carl did – very little. With Veronica’s contribution, the already minimal rent had shrunk to something almost ridiculous. Occasionally Jake would feel guilty, especially when confronted with Mark’s moans about the state of the housing market. But he never felt guilty enough to move. Why would he move anywhere else when all he wanted was right here in this house?

They had a lot of fun, the three of them. They were young, comfortably off, good looking and healthy. They were nearly always out; beers after work in the old Victorian boozer three streets away; cocktails in Mayfair on a Friday night; languid, alcoholic Sunday afternoons in the gastro pub a tube stop away. There were parties, gatherings, summer barbeques; they spent hours slumped in cinema seats, lifting handfuls of popcorn to their mouths. They slouched around the Heath, smoked joints and, lying on a big tartan picnic rug, drank cans of sweet, fizzy cider.

They didn’t often have people round to Fever Street – they seemed to have an unspoken agreement that the house was just for the three of them. Sometimes, when Jake was home, and Carl was too, and they heard the click and thud of the door as Veronica walked in, there was almost a tangible, just-heard sigh of relief breathed by the house. Whenever they came through the front door, each one of them turned back to flip the lock before they moved away. World stay out. Carl, Jake and Veronica, stay in.

Before Veronica had moved in, Jake had allowed himself myriad fantasies. Veronica, surprised in the shower, glittering with water drops. Veronica, stumbling from her room on a Sunday morning, flushed and sleepy in her brushed cotton pyjamas and curling up on his bed to regale him with tales of her Saturday night. Veronica, swinging her narrow hips to Motown, as she prepared their dinner. None of these came to pass. The closest he got was when she was sitting next to him on the sofa, curled into the armrest, her legs tucked neatly beneath her. Carl was working late, immersed in some immeasurably boring finance deal. Jake was watching some piece of inanity of TV, pleasantly conscious of Veronica’s presence in the cosy, intimate warmth of the living room. He almost jumped as she suddenly shifted position, bringing her long narrow feet over to his legs. Disbelievingly, he felt her toes push under his thighs and flex themselves luxuriously against his jeans. He was almost immediately hard. He flicked a glance across to Veronica, not knowing what he was going to say.