Page 84 of Playing to Win

The oven timer gave a reminder beep. “Shut up,” he told it, jabbing his thumb against the Off button. Then he picked up his tea mug and moved into the dining area, hoping the aquarium would work its magic calming spell upon him.

Staring at the fish didn’t help, so Colin began to pace. His knee still ached, but his simmering rage wouldn’t let him rest. He wanted to smash everything in that kitchen—the four-hundred-quid blender that made Andrew’s precious smoothies, the ceramic dish-soap dispenser, those pretentious stemless brandy glasses.

Brandy. That would help.

He hurried over to the place where Andrew kept the booze, whipped open the cupboard door—

—and smacked it against the side of his sore knee.

“Fuck!” Colin jerked back, spilling tea all over himself. He cursed again. The liquid was no longer scalding hot, but it had left a giant red-brown stain down the front of his shirt and jeans.

He set down the mug, wanting to shatter it against the worktop, then headed back to the main bedroom. Before Andrew had left, he’d invited Colin to help himself to a clean T-shirt and pair of shorts, as the warm day in the tower blocks had left them pure sweaty.

As Colin changed his clothes, he had a look around Andrew’s bedroom. It was the first time he’d been in here alone. When the two of them were here together, the decor was the last thing on their minds.

His gaze settled upon the four-foot-wide, rustic-looking family tree hanging above the chest of drawers. The piece was made of pale linen, its lines and letters a dark, earthy brown. As far as he knew, this hanging was the flat’s only nod to Andrew’s heritage.

Colin examined the hanging as he pulled on a pair of cotton shorts. The tree’s staggering number of branches each bore a name—some with titles, some without. Near the top, at the culmination of six generations, were three names: George, Elizabeth, and Andrew.

Above George and Elizabeth were two names each—their children, Colin assumed. And there Andrew was, the end of his line.

If Andrew married a man, Colin wondered, would the rest of his family consider his sons and daughters legitimate? Would those names ever be added to this tree? Technically they’d be bastards, because even a biological child would be the offspring of either Andrew or his husband, not both.

Colin’s gaze drifted down the tree, over the names of men and women who’d done their sacred duty to continue the bloodline. How many of them were in love with the people they married? It didn’t matter. The aristocracy was built entirely on genes. Love was literally irrelevant.

He was just now beginning to grasp the depth of Andrew’s courage. Being gay—and more importantly beingout, with no intention of taking a wife and impregnating her—upset the allegedly natural order of things. Even without a title to pass on, Andrew must have had the notion of marriage and children drilled into his head from an early age. Yet here he was, standing up to his archaic society and telling them what the modern world already understood—that the future meant more than the past, and that love was thicker than blood.

In the upper right corner of the hanging was the family crest, a shield flanked by two rearing white horses that looked like hornless unicorns. Beneath the shield, a pair of fish swam past each other, head to tail.

Colin froze, remembering something he’d seen in the aquarium a few minutes ago. Or rather, something he’dnotseen.

He hurried out to the reception room. Walking around the tank, he peered within, examining every visible inch.

Oh no.

Out in the hallway, the front door opened with a rattle of keys.

“Sorry that took so long.” Andrew swept into the reception room and set a pair of paper bags on the dining table. “Usual Sunday crowd, I guess. Everyone’s talking about the YouGov poll, of course. I even overheard what sounded like an indyref-induced breakup. Not sure that couple even stayed for the main course.” He pulled a bottle of red wine from one of the bags. “How’s your knee? Better? That tea is amazing, isn’t it?”

Colin touched the corner of the aquarium. “Where’s Cristiano?”

Andrew’s face went soft and sad. “He died while I was on holiday. It’s kind of you to notice he’s gone.”

Colin could barely breathe for the ache in his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. He was my favorite.” Andrew fetched a corkscrew and started opening the wine. After half a minute he said, “The fish caretaker I hired said Cristiano wouldn’t eat for her, which wasn’t surprising, as he wouldn’t eat for me at first either. He nearly died the first week I had him.” He wrenched the cork from the bottle. “Perhaps it was a kindness to me that he died now. If Cristiano had somehow survived and I’d come home to learn he’d languished without me, I would’ve stopped traveling, for his sake.” Andrew looked into the distance out the window as he untwisted the cork from the corkscrew. “He was quite the bother, but he was worth it.”

Colin nearly wept at the sound of those words, so like his mother’s and yet the opposite.

“We’ll let that breathe.” Andrew pushed the bottle away, then turned to face him. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” Colin managed to say, though his jaw was too tight to open his mouth. Perhaps after a long ponder alone, Andrew had come to the conclusion they were too far apart for this to last.

Andrew stood back against the worktop, holding onto its edge with both hands. “Until today, I’d no true grasp of what you faced growing up.” His gaze lowered, then flicked up again to Colin’s face. “I knew about the bullying, of course, and your mum’s illness. But I didn’t appreciate the—the challenges which lay beneath all that.”

“Okay.” Colin felt like he was under the glare of a spotlight and the peer of a microscope at the same time.

“While I was waiting for our dinner, I used my phone to look up some of what you told me. About people not getting what they need, about how hard it is to climb out of—of poverty.” His tongue swiped his lips, as if thepword tasted foul. “I know you love statistics, but I won’t quote them. How pupils from your background rarely attend uni. How deprivation can affect one’s ability to learn. How my neighbor’s new baby is likely to live two decades longer than Lexi’s son, Jack.”

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