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‘Yes, I did. I went over to the hospital yesterday and saw him.’ Anna bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Jon know that Jamie was so close, or that it had been more than twenty-four hours since Jamie had heard that his brother was here. But Jon just nodded.
‘I’m not gonna ask you what he said.’ Jon shifted fitfully in his seat. ‘You think we’re alike?’
The question came right out of the blue, and it was a difficult one. The two brothers looked alike, but... Jamie was Jamie. He was unique.
‘You resemble each other. You seem different to me.’
Jon laughed suddenly. ‘Good answer. We used to hate it when we were kids and people reckoned we were just two versions of the same. We had this aunt who always bought identical Christmas presents for us, even when I was on the road, touring, and Jamie was at medical school.’
There was regret in Jon’s face. He obviously missed his brother, and Anna wondered again what had torn them apart. Neither of them seemed to want to talk about it, and in that they were identical.
‘I guess that’s o
ne of the hazards of being a twin.’
‘Yeah. Jamie was always the one who said less but had more going on in his head.’
Anna smiled. ‘I can’t imagine that the person who wrote “Everywhere” doesn’t have something going on in his head.’
‘You like that song?’
‘Yes, I love it. It got me through a bit of a rocky patch in my life. It’s so...optimistic about the future.’
‘It’s a great song.’ Jon’s lip quivered. ‘Jamie wrote it, you know. I imagine he probably hasn’t told you that.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Like I said. Jamie has a lot more going on in his head than I do. I generally used to write the music and he wrote the words, but “Everywhere” was all his own work.’
They must have been close once. If writing songs together wasn’t proof enough, then she had only to look at the regret in Jon’s face. Maybe she should change the subject, even if the words to ‘Everywhere’ were now running insistently through her head. The hope for the future and the determination not to give up made so much more sense now that she knew they were Jamie’s words.
‘What are you listening to?’
Jon took the headphones from around his neck, detaching the earpieces from their mounting and handing one to her. She pressed it against her ear, leaning forward so that Jon could listen through the other one, and he traced his thumb across the screen of the phone he’d taken out of his pocket.
‘Bach! Really...?’
Jon laughed. ‘Both Jamie and I had music lessons when we were kids and we played all the classics. Bach was always my favourite. Don’t you think this has a lot in common with all song structures?’
‘Now you mention it, I suppose...’ Anna put the earpiece against her ear again, and Jon began to trace the precise tempo with his finger in the air, like a conductor. When the complex strands of the melody wove together to draw the music to a close, he made a concluding flourish and Anna laughed.
‘I see it now...’ Anna looked over her shoulder as Jon’s gaze suddenly left her face. Jamie was standing by the door that led from the stairs to the roof garden, watching them.
Something about the look on Jamie’s face made her quickly give the earpiece back to Jon and lean away from him. She was just talking to a patient, wasn’t she? Maybe Jamie thought that she was taking sides, because he shot her an injured look.
‘Jon, I...’ She turned back to Jon, whose face was moulded into a look of stony shock. ‘I didn’t know he was coming.’
Jon didn’t reply. His attention was all on Jamie, who was walking towards them, and the closer his brother got, the more agitated Jon looked. This whole situation was turning into a nightmare. Something was about to explode...
‘I heard you were here.’ Jamie’s voice was quiet, his face impassive.
‘Yeah. I’m here.’
Jamie sat down, without even looking at Anna. The two brothers regarded each other steadily. It would be good to leave right now, but Anna wasn’t going anywhere until she knew that they weren’t going to start arguing as soon as she turned her back.
‘Let’s take a look at your arm, little brother.’
Jamie’s quiet words seemed familiar to Jon, and he gave a stiff smile as he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to expose the bottom half of the burn scar. Jamie turned the edges of his mouth down.
