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The car Sirius has bought is a beige Vauxhall Nova that’s done a hundred and twelve thousand miles and smells, faintly, of wet dog. It’s parked at the bottom of the drive, where it’s been parked all week. Walburga and Orion hate it, especially because the neighbours have begun to look at it. Sirius doesn’t care. It cost him a hundred pounds out of the seven thousand Alphard left him, which means he has six thousand nine hundred pounds left, which means he is rich, in a manner of speaking; in a manner he doesn’t yet quite trust.
The seven thousand had taken six years and four months to reach him. Alphard had died when Sirius was eleven, had left him most of his money—all of it, really, save a small bequest to a Calvinist charity Walburga loathed, which Alphard had thrown in for spite. The family solicitor had spent six years trying to find ways to overturn the will. Orion had spent six years standing behind him with crossed arms. Walburga had spent six years praying about it loudly enough to be heard in the entire house.
They hadn’t found a way. The cheque had arrived in February, and Sirius had cashed it the same afternoon. He had told James, Remus and Peter. He had told nobody else.
He’s been packing for six weeks, very slowly, one shirt at a time, so that no one would notice his drawers emptying. The packed bag is downstairs by the door. His coat is over the bag. His keys are in his pocket. It’s half past five in the morning; the house is asleep.
Sirius is standing in his brother’s bedroom.
The lamp is on; Regulus is sitting up with a book open on his lap. He doesn’t look surprised when the door opens. He has the school edition of Brideshead Revisited, which Sirius is fairly sure he has been pretending to read since about two o’clock.
“Reg.”
“What time is it?”
“Half five.”
Regulus nods. He looks down at the book. His mouth is doing something he is trying to keep it from doing.
“I’m leaving,” Sirius says.
“I know.”
“Come with me.”
The book closes, and Regulus looks up. His face has gone the colour it goes when their mother walks into a room.
“Sirius.”
“I mean it. I’ve got room. I’ve got the money. I can sort school—there are sixth forms in London, there’s everything in London. You don’t have to do anything but get in the car.”
“Sirius, I can’t.”
“You can. That’s the point. You can.”
“I can’t.”
“Reg—”
“Sirius, please.”
Sirius stops. Regulus is looking at the cover of the closed book on his lap. Sirius cannot see his eyes; he wishes he could.
He should push. He knows he should push. He has practised this conversation for weeks in his head, and in every version of it, he pushes. He says: Reg, listen to me. He says: Reg, look at me. He says: Reg, I am not leaving without you. In the practised versions, he is patient and certain, and Regulus comes.
In the actual version, his brother is fifteen years old and saying please in a voice Sirius hasn’t heard for a long time, and Sirius’s nerve goes.
“Okay,” he finally says, deflated.
“Okay,” Regulus echoes.
“I’ll—I’ll write. As soon as I have an address.”
“Don’t write.”
“What?”
“They open the post. I’d rather you didn’t write.”
“Right.”
“Maybe you can write to James or Remus. They’ll pass it along.”
“Right. Yeah. I’ll—yeah.”
“Sirius.”
“Yeah?”
“Go.”
So he goes—he goes downstairs. He picks up the bag. He puts on the coat. He opens the front door. The morning is cold and grey-blue and smells like the river.
He walks down the drive to the car; the gravel crunches. He puts the bag in the boot. He gets in.
He doesn’t look up at the house.
This is the part he’s been most afraid of. He’d thought leaving Regulus would be the worst thing he ever did; as it turns out, the worst thing he ever does is the next thing—the keeping his eyes on the dashboard, on the gear stick, on the road in front, while he turns the key and starts the engine, while the engine catches, while he reverses out of the drive, while he straightens the car on the lane, while everything he has ever known is in his peripheral vision and he doesn’t let himself look.
If he looks, he will go back. And he can’t go back.
The lane meets the main road at the chapel. The chapel is shut; the car park is empty. He’s been thinking, the whole way down the lane, about not turning right past the chapel, because turning right leads through the village, and through the village leads past the Lupin house.
He turns right.
He doesn’t stop; he drives past. The house has its curtains drawn. There is a light on in the kitchen, because Hope is always up first. Sirius doesn’t slow.
He had been to the Lupin house three nights ago. He hadn’t said. He had sat on the floor of Remus’s bedroom with his head against Remus’s shoulder for two hours and not said. They hadn’t kissed—they hadn’t kissed since January, wouldn’t until Sirius asked, and Sirius couldn’t ask—but Remus’s arm had been around him as they laid in the dark, and Remus’s hand had been on the back of his head, and they had stayed like that until the lamp burned low. Sirius had said nothing about leaving. He had said I should go at the door, and Remus had said yes, alright, and that had been it.
Sirius is fairly certain Remus had known.
He is very certain.
He is very certain that yes, alright hadn’t been yes, you should get back to your house before they notice you’re gone. It had been yes, alright, go where you have to go, I am letting you. Remus had known and Remus had let him.
And Sirius cannot decide which is worse, that, or the other thing—the thing he is more afraid of, which is that Remus had known and Remus had not fought for him. He hadn’t said don’t. He hadn’t said please. He hadn’t said let me come with you or don’t leave me or any of the things Sirius had been waiting for him to say. He had said yes, alright.
And Sirius would’ve stayed—that is the unbearable thing. Sirius would’ve stayed if Remus had asked him to stay. He would’ve stayed and stayed and stayed. He would’ve stayed.
The car passes the post office, and then the car passes the bus stop where they all used to wait when they were thirteen. The car passes the field where they had drunk Lagavulin in August. The car passes the lane to the Potters’ house, where James is still asleep, where Peter is probably asleep on the floor of James’s room because Peter has been staying over, and where Sirius hasn’t said anything to either of them in a week.
He had been at the Potters’ on Tuesday and hadn’t said. James had thrown an arm around his shoulders in the kitchen and called him a tit, and Sirius had punched him in the ribs softly and not said. Mrs Potter had pressed a bowl of stew into his hands and asked him about his weekend, and he had told her about a film he had not seen and not said.
His friends are going to wake up this morning and find that he has gone. James will know first. Peter will know second. Dorcas will hear from James, and then it will go round in an hour. They will know he didn’t say. They will know he didn’t trust them with the goodbye. They will know—and this is the worst part—that he was capable of leaving without saying goodbye to them. He has done it to Remus. He has done it to James. He has done it to Peter. He has done it to the Potters and the Lupins who have always been nothing but kind to him. He has done it to Regulus. He has done it.
The car keeps going.
The road opens out onto the bypass as the signs for the M25 begin. The sun is just up now, clean and pink, lighting the underside of the clouds. Sirius has the radio on very quietly. He doesn’t recognise the song.
He thinks about Regulus alone in that house. He thinks about Walburga at breakfast, going through the morning post with her butter knife. He thinks about Orion in his study. He thinks about Regulus in his school uniform, going down the stairs at the bell, having to absorb all the things Sirius used to absorb being the worst at—Walburga’s eye finding the new target, the new disappointment, the new subject of her prayers, the new pair of shoulders to land her hands on.
Sirius hopes, in a small, hidden place inside himself that he is going to have to look at sometime soon, that Regulus will fail.
He hopes Regulus will be unable to bear it. He hopes Walburga will turn on him properly—turn on him as she used to turn on Sirius—and that Regulus will crack, that he will run, that he will leave that house, that he will get on a bus to London and find Sirius and let Sirius take him in. He hopes the perfect-student face slips. He hopes the piety stops working. He hopes the marks slip and the grace gets fumbled, and Walburga sees what she has built, and Regulus has no choice but to break out of it.
Sirius hopes for it. Sirius prays for it, almost, in a vocabulary that is not his—please, please.
He hates himself for hoping.
He keeps hoping.
He doesn’t look back.
Regulus has been awake all night.
He’s known for a week. He’s known since the lawyer’s letter came in February. He hasn’t known the exact day, but he’s known that the days are running out, and on Monday, Sirius had spent half the afternoon in his bedroom packing things into a small army-surplus rucksack and not putting them back, and Regulus had stood in the corridor with his school bag on his shoulder watching him through the cracked door, and he had known then that it would be this week, and probably the end of this week.
So Regulus has been awake every night since Monday. He hasn’t been doing very much with the waking. He’s read parts of Brideshead Revisited over and over without taking anything in. He’s prayed twice every night. He’s rehearsed conversations he’s not going to be in, in case he is in them. He’s practised the things he might say if Sirius came to his room and asked him to come.
The things he has practised include:
Yes.
Take me with you.
Don’t leave me here.
Please.
I’ll come, just give me five minutes.
I packed a bag already, it’s under the bed.
The bag is under the bed; Regulus packed it on Wednesday. It contains his confirmation Bible, two jumpers, six pairs of socks, an envelope of birthday money, Uncle Alphard’s wristwatch (which his mother doesn’t know he has) and the photograph of him and Sirius at his christening, which his mother does know he has but hasn’t looked at in some years.
The door opens. The lamp catches the side of Sirius’s face. He is dressed; he has his coat over his arm.
“Reg.”
Regulus has been told, all his life, that he is the good one. He’s been told this by his mother in her gentlest voice, by his father in his coldest, by Father Macnair in his blandly approving one, by his teachers, his cousins, everyone in the village. He has been told it so often and so consistently that he’s long since accepted it as a sort of weather: this is the climate of his life, he is the good one, he can no more change it than he can change the date. The good one gets praised. The good one gets things bought. The good one is allowed to take Communion. The good one is not slapped across the mouth for laughing at the wrong moment. The good one is the one their parents say we love this one about, when they think nobody is listening, even though they would never actually say we love this one using those words.
Regulus has spent his entire conscious life maintaining this. He’s spent his entire conscious life knowing that the maintenance is the love, and that if the maintenance falters, the love stops, because that’s the deal. That’s how it’s always been in their house. Sirius forgot the deal. Sirius decided, somewhere around age nine or ten, that he did not want the deal. Regulus doesn’t have the bravery for that. Regulus has only ever had the discipline.
So he sits up in bed. So he picks up Brideshead Revisited and pretends he has been reading it. So he looks at the cover of it when his brother walks into the room, even though every cell inside him is on its feet running across the room and out of the door and into the car and away. He looks at the cover. He keeps the cover steady.
“What time is it?”
“Half five.”
The book closes by itself; he didn’t even mean to close it. His mouth wants to do all the things he practised. His mouth doesn’t do any of them.
“I’m leaving.”
“I know.”
“Come with me.”
The bag is under the bed, three feet from where Sirius is standing. Regulus could reach it without standing up. He could say yes and reach down and pull it out, and they could be in the car in five minutes.
He says nothing for so long that his own silence frightens him.
Inside him, the voice that’s been forming for eight days, come with me come with me come with me come with me, has finally arrived in the room. Inside him, the answer that’s been forming for eight days, yes yes yes yes, is sitting at the top of his throat, ready to be spoken.
His mouth says, instead, the thing it has been trained to say: “Sirius, I can’t.”
“You can. That’s the point. You can.”
“I can’t.”
He is begging now, in a way only he can hear. He is begging Sirius to push. He is begging Sirius to be the older brother, to be the version of Sirius who used to make Regulus do things he was afraid of by sheer insistence, who used to drag him into the freezing river in August, who used to make him jump off the high wall behind the church. Regulus is begging him to do that now. To drag him out of this bed. To be insistent. Not to take no for an answer. To push. Not to believe him.
“Reg—”
“Sirius, please.”
He means: please push.
He means: please don’t believe me.
Sirius stops.
Regulus closes his eyes. He looks at the cover of the book. He cannot let Sirius see his face, because if Sirius sees his face, Sirius will know.
“Okay,” Sirius says.
No. No, you idiot. No. Not okay.
“Okay,” Regulus says.
He tells Sirius not to write. He keeps his voice the small quiet voice he uses with people who don’t have his trust. He keeps his face the face of someone who hasn’t been waiting at the window for a week. He sends his brother out of his room.
“Sirius.”
“Yeah.”
“Go.”
The door closes.
He sits in the lamplight for a long time. He hears Sirius’s footsteps go down the corridor and down the stairs. He hears them go quietly because Sirius doesn’t want their parents to wake. He hears the front door open and close. He hears the gravel under Sirius’s feet on the drive.
He gets out of bed and goes to the window. He pulls back the heavy curtain by half an inch and stands there.
The car is on the road now; the boot has been closed. Sirius is in the driver’s seat. The brake lights come on red against the pale lane. The car begins to reverse. Then it straightens. Then it begins to move away.
Regulus presses his ear up to the windowpane like a small child listening for something. He doesn’t really know what he is listening for. The sound of the car going. The sound of his brother changing his mind. The sound of the door downstairs opening again, and Sirius coming back, and saying he could not do it after all, and asking him again.
Regulus listens.
The car keeps going.
Regulus is waiting for Sirius to look up at the house. He is waiting for Sirius to look up at his window. He is waiting for Sirius’s eyes to meet his, even from this distance, because Regulus will know, even through the gap in the curtain. After all, Sirius has always known where Regulus is in any room. Sirius will look. Sirius will look. Sirius will look up.
Sirius doesn’t look up.
The car turns at the chapel. The car is gone.
Regulus stands at the window for a long time after the car has gone. The sun is coming up. The drive is empty. The morning is empty. The house is empty in a way it’s never been empty before, even when their parents are out for a weekend, even when the whole place stands shut and dark—Sirius has always been in it somewhere, two floors down, three rooms away, audible through walls. Now he is not. The house is the shape of a house missing one of its corners.
Regulus thinks about waking his mother and telling her. He thinks about not telling her, and letting her find out for herself when Sirius doesn’t appear at breakfast. He thinks about letting her think for as long as possible that Sirius is just sleeping in. He thinks about the moment she discovers him gone—the noises that will come out of her, the words she will use. He thinks about how the words will be his now, too. They are the words that get said when one of the boys fails. He has only ever been the other one. He has only ever been the one she comes to afterwards, to say thank God for you, my Reg, and to touch his hair and to praise him for being the one she didn’t have to grieve.
He thinks about what happens when there is only one boy.
He thinks about it for a long time.
He is not stupid. He knows what he is doing. He knows what he is about to do.
He goes back to his bed. He pulls the bag out from under it. He looks at it for a long moment, then he pushes it back, deeper, where it cannot be seen.
He kneels at the side of the bed. This is what he does when he wants to think clearly, because it’s what he’s been taught to do when he wants to think at all. He folds his hands and shuts his eyes. He says the first part of the Lord’s Prayer in his head out of habit, without meaning, the way another boy might count to ten.
Then he begins to pray for things he’s not supposed to pray for.
He prays for his brother to be cold in London. He prays for his brother’s car to break down on the motorway. He prays for his flat to be too small, the upstairs neighbour to play loud music, and the windows to be ill-fitting. He prays for the food to be bad. He prays for Sirius to be friendless there, for the people he meets to be unkind, for whatever Sirius has been building with Remus—because he knows about them, even though he’d never tell on them, even if it’s not right—to come apart without Sirius being able to fix it. He prays for the inheritance to run out. He prays for the boredom to set in. He prays for London to fail Sirius.
He prays for Sirius to come home.
He prays for Sirius to come back through the front door, walk up the stairs, and stand at Regulus’s bedroom door and say Reg, you were right, I shouldn’t have gone, this was a stupid idea, I’m here now, we can go back to before. He prays for the return like a small, normal child would pray for a Christmas present. He prays for it as Walburga had prayed for Sirius in the hall at thirteen with her cross against his chin.
The shame of the prayer is so total that Regulus has to open his eyes against it.
He says, quietly, into the bedroom: I am sorry. He doesn’t know who he’s saying it to. He says it again anyway. I am sorry.
He shuts his eyes; he keeps praying.
He prays. He prays. He prays. He keeps his ear up to the doorframe.
He is going to keep his ear up to the doorframe for years.
