Page 63 of The Life Experiment
‘Hugo,’ he whispered.
Angus might have said his brother’s name quietly but it triggered a stream of memories he hadn’t allowed himself to think of in years.
Gilly refusing to leave her bedroom, her agonised cries echoing down the hallway.
Peter telling Angus he had to be the ‘man of the house’ before he went away on business.
Coming home from boarding school to find every trace of Hugo removed from the house, as if he’d never existed at all.
Angus’s lonely childhood, even lonelier now there was no one to share the burden of expectation with.
‘Who’s Hugo?’ Saira asked gently, breaking into the chaos of Angus’s mind.
‘You know who he is. I listed my immediate family members in my application.’
‘Yes, but I’d like to hear about him from you. I get the feeling it might do you good to tell me, too.’
Angus held Saira’s gaze, waiting for her to back down, but she didn’t. ‘Hugo is… Hugo was my brother,’ he said, swallowing the betrayal he felt at referring to his brother in the past tense. ‘He drowned when he was thirteen and I was eleven.’
‘How terrible, Angus. I’m so sorry.’
‘Terrible is one word for it. Everything about that day feels like a scene in a film gone wrong. The fancy charter boat, the staff serving my parents champagne… My mother screaming when she saw Hugo facedown in the water.’ Angus shuddered as he remembered a skipper on the boat pulling Hugo’s limp body from the water. ‘My parents sued the boat company and did everything they could think of to make it better, but nothing brought Hugo back. They’ve never recovered from it.’
‘And you? Did you ever recover from it?’
Angus blinked. He’d never really thought of Hugo’s death solely in terms of himself, but of course, what happened to Hugo impacted Angus. He was his wickedly funny big brother. There one minute, gone the next.
‘I was never allowed to talk about Hugo,’ Angus admitted. ‘My family is the definition of stiff upper lip, so all thoughts of Hugo had to be pushed away. In that sense, no, I never recovered from it. How could I? You can’t recover from something if you’re made to pretend it never happened. Or, in Hugo’s case, never existed.’
‘Keeping those feelings to yourself must have put a terrible strain on you.’
Angus shrugged. ‘It’s not like I had much choice. The fallout from Hugo’s death was inevitable. Overnight, I went from being the youngest sibling to the only child. Everything my parents ever wanted fell to me.’
‘That’s a heavy load for a person to carry.’
‘Maybe, but it’s not like I carried it well.’
Saira’s eyes bored into Angus, willing him to continue pulling at this thread. He could feel the calm she exuded spreading across the room, inviting him to talk.
It’s okay,he thought.Just say it.
For once, Angus listened to himself. ‘My parents have a vision of who Hugo would have become, and it’s everything I’m not. I mean,look at me, Saira. I’ve done nothing with my life. The one time I bothered to try something, I failed in the most spectacular way. I lost so much money. Hugo would never have done that. He was strong and confident. He would never have fallen for such a stupid scheme, but I did.’ Shaking his head, Angus sank into his self-loathing. ‘With Hugo gone, I was expected to become everything he was. I tried, I really did. I became Head Boy. I joined the rugby team and made the right friends, but none of it came naturally to me. I couldn’t fit in those spaces. I couldn’t become the son my parents wanted.’ Angus winced at the shame of saying that out loud. ‘When I met Layla, I didn’t want to be a failure anymore. I wanted to be someone different. Someone who worked a nine-to-five and went for runs and had beers with his friends at the weekend. I wanted to be normal.’
‘Some people think we should remove the word “normal” from our discourse,’ Saira said. ‘They argue that “normal” can’t exist because normality is dependent on unique personal experience. One person’s normal is another’s abnormal. So, when we compare ourselves based on “normal”, we’re creating limits that don’t exist.’
‘The only limit I’ve ever tested is how badly I can mess up,’ Angus replied, picking at the skin on his thumb.
‘Listening to you is interesting, Angus. You see yourself as a directionless, unambitious failure, but I don’t see that when I look at you. I see someone who is scared to try in case they let people down, not someone whoisa letdown. They are two very different things. It seems to me you need someone to tell you that it’s okay to fail, so long as you try.’
‘That is what I need,’ Angus admitted. ‘Before I took part in this experiment, my father told me he could see I wasn’t happy. He told me to make a change. He’s never said anything like that before. I can’t stop thinking, what if he’d told me that sooner? What if he’d given me permission to find my own path instead of worrying I could never follow his or Hugo’s? Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so much time.’
‘What ifs are wonderful tools of thought, but they’re damaging ones. No one can go back, no matter how much we wish we could. All we can do is look to the future.’
‘But I don’t know what my future looks like.’
‘Well, why don’t we imagine it? What does the perfect future look like to you?’
Angus closed his eyes and turned his thoughts inward. As soon as he did, the guilt over his lies stole his breath.
