Page 6 of Gideon
“Fuck!”
“Yes, I thought you’d say that. He’s even more worked up than normal because as well as your little PR present to him of a threesome with drugs and – even worse in Frankie’s eyes – men, I then barred him from your hospital room and wouldn’t let him see you.”
“Youdid?”
Niall nods and shoots my brother an affectionate and proud look. “Yep. Told him to fuck off and said as he wasn’t family he wasn’t coming in. He’s been cooling his heels in the waiting room and winding the nurses up ever since.”
“I really don’t know why you don’t like him,” I say to Milo, coughing and shifting as my ribs protest.
He instantly rises and plumps my pillows up. I slide back against them and he shakes his head.
“You don’t know why I don’t like him? Let’s see. He’s a terrible old fossil of a homophobe who took advantage of my brother’s yearning for family when he persuaded him to leave school at seventeen to make him famous, and incidentally make Frankie a lot of money. Then he proceeded to remake you, telling you that people would never accept a gay actor and that the idea of you with a man would send the world into mourning.”
“He’s alright,” I say slowly. “He’s looked after me all these years. I need him.”
“He’s looked after himself more,” my brother argues. “Look at his house and the car he drives. Look at the women who hang around him. You pay for all that.”
“I pay him a wage.”
“You pay him to tell you that an integral part of you is wrong and disgusting. He’s told you it so often that I’m sure you half believe him. As a consequence we’ve had to watch you get wilder and wilder over the years and not give a shit about yourself.”
“Do we need Frankie?” I say faintly. “You’re doing a good enough job of character assassination without getting a member of paid staff to help.”
“Shut up,” he says sharply, and I subside obediently back against the pillow.
“Can I have some more water?” I ask meekly.
“You do it,” he huffs at Niall. “I’ll drown him in it if I get too close.”
“Don’t judge yourself too harshly. It’s his personality,” Niall assures him. “Most people embrace murder as a valid interaction with him after knowing him for just a few minutes.”
“This is really lovely,” I say faintly. “Aren’t people in hospital supposed to get Lucozade and grapes and members of their families weeping on them, or is that just stereotyping? Ow!” My brother retracts his fingers from where he just pinched me. “What did you do that for?”
“Because I love you.”
“Can’t you buy me a card like normal people?”
“No, because Hallmark doesn’t have anything to rhyme with ‘you’re behaving like a total wanker,’” he says firmly. Niall snorts and I glare at him as Milo carries on talking. “You need to clean up your act. No more drugs, no more hook-ups with random men and women.”
“But what on earth will I do on set?Knit?”
“You’re not going on set.”
“What? I’ve got a film starting in a week.”
“Gideon, you’ve had pneumonia. I don’t think you know how serious that is.”
“I thought only old people and young ladies in eighteenth century novels got that.”
“Well, add thirty-nine-year-old dissolute actors and you’d be right.” He shakes his head. “You can’t work for a few months. We told the director and he’s replacing you.”
“Who iswe?” My voice is icy and Niall shifts, ready and able to come to Milo’s defence. My brother shakes his head at him and he subsides.
“Me as your next of kin, which believe me was needed as you nearly died, and Niall as my boyfriend and your best friend,” he says defiantly.
“Frankie would never have gone along with that.”
He smiles and it’s slightly evil. “Frankie has no authority here.”
