Something dreadful is coming. Alex has felt it ever since that moment on the cliffs; watching, powerless, as Daniel sinks ever deeper into depression – their psychic connection now so strong that Alex is dragged down with him, copied in to each step he takes closer to the precipice.
Daniel’s mood swings have become wilder, the drinking more determined, the listlessness and insomnia more debilitating, the refusal to eat more self-harming. Towards evening on their third day back from Devon, his behaviour worsens dramatically. Something he keeps slipping into his drink from a bottle in the medicine drawer is derailing him far more drastically than alcohol. Balance, coordination, his whole personality is sent haywire. And again, Alex’s own body is obliged to mimic it. He falls several times in the night, by morning his head feels woolly, his vision bizarrely impaired.
Sunday first thing, Daniel orders him to spend the day out of sight in his room. It doesn’t take telepathy to tell Alex the reason. Gulnaz is coming over. It angers him; Daniel should be willing to take him into his confidence. He would have understood; he wouldn’t have minded; he’d have kept out of trouble – more than can be said for Daniel right now, as he clatters about from room to room, shouting at the air, shaking the flat with bumps and bangs in his desperation to knock it into some sort of shape.
And then everything falls silent. The stillness is eerie. Not a whisper for over half an hour. Unable to bear the tension any longer, Alex feels compelled to break curfew.
When he peers from his door Daniel is right there before him, with back turned, preoccupied. All looks to be in order, but Alex’s eyesight still bothers him and he ventures a step forward to look closer. He’s not even reached the table when something white-hot slashes violently at his abdomen. He bites his lip and screws up his eyes to stifle a cry. When he opens them again his view has shifted. Now he is at the cooker, staring down through rising steam into a saucepan of boiling water. Another shift, and he is lifting the pan in slow motion from the ring and turning towards the sink. A blackout – a kind of edit – and somehow the water is all down his front. He’s not even aware of calling out as the blistering agony strikes a second time, but clearly he must do, for Daniel’s reaction to the sudden noise is instant and cataclysmic. Their places are swapped again. Back at the table, Alex can do nothing but stand paralysed with disbelief and take in the vile replay; the howling and swearing, his brother stripped naked, the terrible sight of those burns.