Florence did not agree. Eddie doesn’t know Juan, he doesn’t even know he exists, she said. Eddie doesn’t talk, Mother, but he’s not an idiot: he listens, he understands, and he perceives so much more than any of us. And you know full well what he wants: to die, after killing the one who took his place. Florence shook her head and insisted that Juan was perfectly safe: Eddie lived in the west wing of the house, where he was guarded by a small army. Stephen abandoned the argument and turned to me. She’s blind, he explained. You know how my brother escaped from the psychiatric clinic? He talked to the nurses and convinced them to inject themselves with an overdose of tranquillizers. She’s the one who trained him, and she knows what he’s capable of, it’s ridiculous that she thinks she’s in control. She owns dozens of houses in London, and Juan could go to any one of them. The arrogance, fuck. She wants to have them both in the same house, who knows why?

I hadn’t seen Eddie in months. The last time, I’d noticed he was missing a little finger. He had chewed it off himself. Eddie was progressively mutilating himself. The pain relieved him, according to Stephen. He had red hair, like his mother, and very light gray eyes; he was color-blind. Sometimes, when he walked in the garden, he saw me in the window and waved, smiling. His teeth scared me. They had been sharpened, and they were pointed and yellow.

I’ve always needed to be well dressed to have serious conversations. With the right clothes, all my insecurity vanishes. I called Sandy and Lucie for a shopping trip. Juan was going to be discharged in a matter of days, barring any complications. My back was hurting from sleeping in a hospital bed beside him. He could walk on his own now, his legs didn’t tremble, and he wasn’t in pain. Managing the pain had been the hardest part, because he could only tolerate light painkillers. It was going to be good for me, as well, to leave the hospital; I’d spent days inside those greenish walls, listening to moans and cries.