Alex needed some sleep, realizing his mind was wandering. This thought was accompanied by a darker one: is everyone all right? This last threatened the quietude of his night hours, but he dismissed it as the product of exhaustion. His father and brother had probably quarreled over dinner, and Alex would have to turn up as usual as the peacekeeper. The sun had kept pace with the pages, and rose in an arc above the purple line of cloud before turning white. The moon just as suddenly paled, and vanished in the sky over the ocean. Is this merely the speed of the plane against the direction of time? Alex mused. He dozed briefly; read on again; and finally folded the cover with the author’s disturbing thought that people who were entrapped in a century of solitude had no second chances on this earth. Which begs the question of redemption in heaven, thought Alex.

He and Will had sometimes debated such philosophical questions when not arguing whether Gary Sobers or Ian Botham was the more complete cricketer. He had forgotten that part of their relationship. Interesting, the depth of thought they had shared when they were boys; but Alex realized he hadn’t been much help on the subject of immortality when their mother died. He could see his brother now after the funeral, a cigarette propped in his mouth while he thundered angrily through Chopin’s emotive Fantasy Impromptu. Dreadful habit that he’d resumed while their mother was ill: thankfully he’d given it up again since. And his music too, it seemed.

What had changed? Only time really—especially Alex’s absurd lack of it. Will had coaxed him to open up about the pain of his failed marriage to Anna; tried to talk a little himself about the sadness of his break with Siân. But Alex wouldn’t, couldn’t, make the time for these confidences anymore. Each of them exercised their own avoidances, though their intuition of each other was occasionally enough support. Oh, Will, I have missed you—even if you are a pain in the arse a lot of the time, Alex thought, and tried to pull his brain back to reality. He was sure this nostalgia for his younger brother’s company would fade as soon as he spilled noisily across Alex’s calm Chelsea space again. Within a week Will would have taken over his kitchen, insisting on doing the cooking and dirtying every pan in the process. He laughed quietly and stared at the back cover of the book.