‘The truth is that, for so many years, I think Francis was an embarrassment to our father. He was a constant, living reminder of the kind of indiscretions the other party members were able to tuck away in closets and drawers. He began to attribute all his failures to having him as a son; Francis was the great impediment to his progress into parliament. He’s not a bad sort, and I know he never consciously took it out on him, but I don’t think he could quite forget it either. Then things began to change and I think Francis became, well, useful, I suppose, in some horrible way. Papa’s politics strayed further and further to the right, particularly on issues like immigration, and he kept a lot of the Little England voters for the Conservatives who might otherwise have been snaffled up by something more extremist. No one else in the party could get away with it, but I remember every time he made some outrageous speech or comment, he’d go down to Farleigh, and the next day there’d be a picture in the Telegraph of Francis and him having scones with cream and jam at the tea rooms in Red Rice, and you wouldn’t hear a peep against him after that. It made him . . . valuable – to the party, I mean. He was their double champion, invincible against accusations of prejudice, a living embodiment of Conservative commitment to multi-cultural Britain, but still rooting for England, England. I’ve never been as clever as Francis, but I can live with that. Cleverness isn’t everything; in fact I think it can put the kibosh on many a promising career. But I do wish he couldn’t do that for Papa. I can’t, you see. I can’t be useful to him like that. It makes me quite angry, because I don’t think my brother appreciates it at all. To tell you the truth, I think he rather resents it. If I could do it, I would be thrilled. I’d love to be an asset to him instead of a worry.’

It occurred to me as I listened to him that our arrangement had in it something of the confessional. We both sat on the wooden pew, staring forward and away from one another towards our drinks, and the upright of the carved oaken arm between us served as a divide. It made me wonder if Jeremy had ever had the courage to articulate these thoughts before, or whether the presence of a stranger asking questions had acted as the catalyst to years of unformed guilt, veiled from his consciousness by a lack of immediacy. I felt, as a priest must feel, sympathy and disgust in equal measure. Sympathy for his pain, for his not being Francis, a pain that I could empathize with all too well, and which must be greatly exaggerated by their genetic proximity. His lack of intelligence was something of a mercy, as he would never fully appreciate how cruel the hand of nature had been. But there was disgust too, for his passive part in this conspiracy, for his stupidity, and most of all for the aspects of myself I saw in him.