The Iron in Blood

I decided to move my base of operations to a nearby hotel for a few days. Oxford was too far away to be driving back and forth each day. I also needed to discuss a few issues with both of my brothers. It had been blind luck that I had been in the same country as this girl, but things needed organising now. I had considered various options for surreptitiously inserting myself into Rebecca's life, and becoming a neighbour seemed the most practical solution. It would mean that I would be able to keep an eye on her too. Fergus would have to buy one of these neighbouring houses for me. It wasn't likely to be difficult to persuade him to do it. He would relish the challenge.

I booked myself into a generic hotel above a pub a few miles from Rebecca's home, and phoned Marcus and Fergus at the lab, where I knew they would be at this time, and most other times too. Marcus was and had always been obsessed with his lab and his research, and Fergus had set up a wall of computers inside it so he could keep an eye on his brother, or so he said. I reckon he liked the company, though he'd never admit it.

"Angus!" Hearing my name always came as a bit of a jolt for me. I often wondered why my father had named us as he had, besides the fact that we'd all been born in Scotland over half a century ago. He had told us that he wanted our names to be similar, so that we could have a kind of collective identity. Pretty bloody ironic under the circumstances, really. Being fundamentally and extraordinarily different to everyone else and alike only to each other was a given for us. It was our affliction.