Page 93 of How to Fan the Flames

“The good article?”

“No.” I rub a hand over my face. “Or yes. I don’t know. It was a good article in the technical sense. Clean structure. Strong angle. Enough tension to keep people reading. Nothing I couldn’t defend.”

“But?”

“But it put the wrong spotlight on a woman. And I should have known better.”

Another pause.

“Ah,” Graham says.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Diplomatic ah.”

“It was a normal ah.”

“There is no normal ah from you. There are only categories.”

“Fine. Concerned ah.”

“That’s worse.”

“What happened?”

I lean back against the headboard. The room smells faintly of rain, old wood and the lavender sachet Rose seems determined to hide in every drawer.

I tell him not all the details but I give him enough that my brilliant older brother, the diplomat, the man who speaks three languages well and two more well enough to be dangerous, the man who once turned a university debate into an internship offer, the man who can find the weakest point in a sentence without raising his voice, understands exactly what I did.

Another failure, presented neatly for Graham’s review.

There should be a loyalty card by now.

When I finish, he is quiet for a moment.

Not in the way he goes quiet when he is judging a sentence into submission. Not even in the way he goes quiet before saying something wise and irritating.

This is different.

“I’m not sure I’d have seen it either,” he says.

I blink. “What?”

“The connection. Not at first. Not if the article was technically sound and the angle worked.” He pauses. “I’d like to think I would, obviously, because I enjoy being morally superior to you.”

“Obviously.”

“But I don’t know that I would have. Not if I wasn’t looking for it.”

That catches me off guard.

I was ready for a lecture. Not a brutal one. Graham is not brutal. He is too careful for that. But I have spent most of my life being the younger brother with the messier path, the less impressive job title, the louder mistakes.

“Did you apologise to her?”

“Yes.”