Inherited

Overheard

Chapter One

Undisturbed, I can swim fifty lengths of the Callicos’ twenty-metre basement pool without stopping or tiring. I surrender to instinct, letting my body take over, using a punishing freestyle, gliding back and forth, length after length.

Just me and the water and the echoes.

Albert used to say I lose myself when I swim, but he was wrong. I find myself. My mind and senses sharpen, polarise. Beyond the rapid strokes and the soft rush of water, I hear every noise, sense every shift in air pressure, and smell every scent despite the pool’s heavy chlorination.

I also register every movement in the spotlit room of white marble opulence.

Albert’s brother-in-law, Coleman, watches me sometimes. Observing from the shadow of the bamboo screen that conceals the changing room door, he thinks I don’t see him. For a time, I wondered if Coleman might not be as straight as he likes people to believe.

I told Albert. He sighed the way he always did and told me the answer was more mundane.

Coleman’s envious because he never learnt to swim, something I find not only ludicrous but sad.

At forty-one, he is known to have a fortune stashed away in bills and bonds, antiques and properties, and obscene amounts of liquid funds inherited from his grandfather.

I asked Albert why he didn’t employ an expert coach to give him private lessons.

Coleman felt he’d left some things too late in life and regarded himself as an old pedigree, too stubborn to learn new tricks.

Albert had liked Coleman. I used to see them in one room or another, heads bowed solemnly together like cathedral statues, talking earnestly about various matters, a familiarity neither shared with other members of the household.

Nobody else uses the basement pool. Not anymore. On Sundays, I enjoy this second swim in the early afternoon, my way of avoiding the possibility of bumping into Albert’s siblings. When they kick me out, I will miss this room more than anything.

After hauling myself out of the deep end, I pick up my towel and dry off before a chaise longue of wine-red leather and gold paintwork.

I always considered the seat an odd choice for a room otherwise empty of furniture.

But I like to stand there and watch reflections shimmer across the walls and ceiling until the pool’s surface calms like the death throes of a dying animal.

As I pull on my tracksuit and slippers, intending to head back to my bedroom, I hear the familiar heavy clunk of the front door and the distinctive bellow of Edward Callico announcing his arrival.

His presence can only mean one thing. A family conference.

I assume they’ll assemble in the communal living area, so I take the back stairs up to the drawing room.

If you’re rich and famous enough to be invited into Callico House, the family’s London home—a three-storey Grade II listed townhouse of Portland stone set in the heart of Mayfair—you’ll be requested, upon your arrival, to wait in the drawing room to the left of their grand front entrance.

Even in this day and age, the Callicos adhere to ludicrously strict and antiquated formalities.

Waiting guests are seated in the antechamber until summoned.

Reputedly modernised in the latter part of the twentieth century, the Persian-carpeted room is home to a horseshoe of leather sofas, bordered by oak bookcases housing scores of medical journals spanning the ages.

Crammed into a small recess stands a tall wingback chair in ripped, age-worn black leather.

No visitor willingly sits there. The seat is neither comfortable nor convenient, with a high risk of snagging clothing on the exposed edge.

But the chair holds a secret.

In the wall behind, there’s a small vent—possibly created to promote airflow, but I like to think its placement is more by design—allowing those seated to hear everything being said in the next room.

According to Albert, the seat became his grandfather’s favourite during his retirement and remained so until his death.

Albert talked fondly of the old man, about the minutes wasted searching the vast house for him, calling out his name, only to find him in this chair, long legs sticking out and crossed at the ankles, book in lap, snoring softly at the ceiling.

I have rarely used the room during my years of living here. Not until three months ago. Out of curiosity, I took to sitting cross-legged on the shabby seat to check my phone or read my well-thumbed paperback of Dickens’ complete works, which is how I discovered his grandfather’s secret.

“I don’t give a damn where Gabriel goes, Alice,” comes the cold, authoritative tone of Edward Callico, brother of Albert.

Even though Edward talks in a lowered voice, I can make out every public-school-enunciated word.

“I simply do not want to have to explain his presence. I want him gone from our lives.”

“Surely he's invited to the funeral,” says Alice. Edward’s wife is the only likeable member of the family.

Alice labels herself BBC—British-born Chinese—and is more educated and better mannered than all the Callico siblings combined.

And I include Albert in that assessment.

When we first met, Albert was a man of remarkable intelligence but little patience and even less common sense or civility.

“Why should he be?” replies Edward. “He is not a member of this family. You know how I feel about him. His mere existence in our lives is an embarrassment.”

Where Albert followed in his father’s footsteps into the field of medicine—medical research, to be precise—Edward decided to break with tradition and specialise in contemporary business and computer technology, founding his own cybersecurity company.

Most of his projects are tied up in government contracts.

Nobody’s exactly sure what the work entails.

“Albert’s friends and colleagues will expect him to be there, darling,” says Alice.

“To the best of my knowledge, Albert’s colleagues have never met him.

And the closest friends my brother had were in that minibus with him.

I am thinking of our own relatives and connections.

Imagine trying to explain Gabriel away to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

Or worse still, to Great Aunt Beatrix and Uncle Hector.

As far as I am concerned, the sooner he is gone from this house and our lives, the better. ”

“Does he have friends he can stay with?” asks Alice.

“Why are you asking us? You are the only one he ever speaks to. If you have no idea, why on earth would we? The point is, the house is legally mine now, and I want him out.”

“For pity’s sake, Ed. Can’t we wait a couple of weeks? At least give him time to find somewhere else—”

“My decision is final. It’s been over a week since the accident. He has had plenty of time to sort himself out.”

Poor Alice. Appealing to the Callico family’s sense of compassion is like signing to a visually impaired person.

Alice is flawed in their eyes. She has a heart, morals and a conscience and is therefore deemed weak.

In a moment of levity, Albert once told me she could never be a true Callico, not because of her Anglo-Asian heritage, but because she lacked a silver spoon in her mouth and an Oxbridge rowing paddle shoved up her arse.

“I’m sorry, Alice,” says Victoria, her deep voice almost masculine.

“But I have to agree with my brother. Gabriel has full-time work at the charity now and therefore has independent means. If you go soft on his type, they will take advantage, as he did with poor Bertie. And then we’ll never be rid of him. ”

Victoria’s wrong. I don’t want to keep living here, stifled by their old-world entitlement and being a party to their petty squabbles—not without Albert.

He was the one who insisted I move into this mausoleum, partly to ease his conscience by giving me somewhere to live and partly to help ground him.

The arrangement was never meant to be long-term.

His family believes us to be lovers, and although I know Albert had feelings for me, he referred to himself humorously as gay-asexual.

Aesthetically he preferred the naked male form, but he considered the act of sex messy, unhygienic and distasteful.

On the rare occasion, he would watch me masturbate to porn.

But he would not entertain the idea of oral sex, either giving or receiving.

Although we shared a bed, I was little more than a personal companion.

“Would Albert have left him anything? In his will?” comes Alice’s voice again. I like Alice and usually love her tenacity, but right now, I wish she would shut up and back down.

“A piffling sum,” says Edward. “Nothing substantial. Mrs Hammond-Clyde has arranged to see him tomorrow at her Pimlico office. Hopefully, it will be enough to see him off once and for all.”

“And if he decides to challenge the will?” asks Alice. “Have any of you considered that possibility?”

“On what grounds?” snaps Edward. “Legally, he is nothing to this family.”

“He was your brother’s partner. They were together for years. Surely that counts for something in the eyes of the law? Even if it doesn’t, I can’t believe you’re willing to toss him out like a piece of unwanted furniture.”

Alice knows more about me than most, but that’s still very little.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’d been homeless.

When I met Albert, I had just turned seventeen and was working in a gay bar on Compton Street.

Illegally, too, having skipped out of the foster system.

Back then, I lived on the streets and survived harsh winters.

None of them knows about my darker days and what I did to survive.

If they did, if I gave them all the sordid details, I think even Alice might reevaluate her opinion of me.