The Crooked Letter Read Online Free

Reflections. My hair parts on the right; Hadrian’s on the left.’

    ‘How do you tell?’ she asked, glancing at Seth’s scalp then Hadrian’s. Their hair was jet black; both of them preferred to keep their heads shaved.

    ‘We just can.’ Hadrian remembered long nights as a child spent checking for details that had been reversed: this crooked toenail, this eye slightly lower than the other, that weak knee. There was no doubt about it. They were like the butterfly paintings they’d made in kindergarten by blobbing paint on one side of a piece of paper then folding it over to create a reversed image on the other side. It had been disconcerting to realise that, were this analogy true, he constituted half a painting, not a whole.

    ‘How deep does it go?’

    ‘All the way,’ Seth said, his tone boastful. ‘Hadrian’s heart is on the wrong side of his chest. His stomach and liver are reversed too. That’s what it means to be situs invertus. He’s a reflection of me right down to the bone.’

    ‘We’re reflections of each other,’ Hadrian corrected.

    ‘Even your brains?’

    ‘Not our brains. That’s impossible.’

    ‘Have they checked?’

    ‘No.’ Seth looked irritated for a second, although it was a question that had often fascinated Hadrian. ‘It just couldn’t happen.’

    Hadrian leaned in close to her, relishing Ellis’s rich, spicy smell. He still couldn’t quite believe that they were all getting along so well. He supposed he had her natural confidence to thank for that.

    ‘Go on,’ Ellis Quick had said on coming up to them and introducing herself. ‘Get them out of your system. Quick and the dead. Quick off the mark. Quick tempered.’

    ‘Never occurred to me,’ said Seth, the oldest and always the fastest to react to social situations. ‘Honest.’

    ‘I think you’re lying, but thanks all the same. I guess you can sympathise. You must get people trying to be funny all the time. You’re twins, obviously.’

    ‘That’s right.’ Hadrian found his voice, then took a sip of his beer to cover the slight waver he heard in it.

    ‘Identical twins, even,’ she persisted. ‘People must always be telling you that you look the same, as if you didn’t already know it. Well, I won’t ask you any questions about being twins if you don’t give me any grief about my name. Deal?’

    She held out her hand and Hadrian shook it. Her fingertips were damp from the glass she’d been holding, but her skin was warm.

    ‘Deal,’ said Seth, and she gripped Seth’s hand in turn.

    She had forgotten her end of the bargain within the hour.

    ‘Which of you is the original,’ she asked next, slurring only slightly, ‘and which the reflection?’

    ‘Hadrian is the invert,’ Seth said. ‘His heart is on the right side.’

    ‘If it’s on the right side, how can he be the invert?’

    ‘Not the right side: the right side of his body.’ Seth patted his left breast. ‘Want to check? Take a listen.’

    ‘I don’t need to press up against your manly chest to prove anything.’ She laughed happily. ‘With lines like that, boys, it’s lucky you’ve got plenty of beer money.’

    Hadrian could have kicked his brother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He didn’t mean to —’

    ‘I know what he meant.’ Ellis’s good humour was direct and frank. ‘It’s okay, really. I’ve heard a lot worse in the last few weeks.’

    ‘I’ll bet you have,’ said Seth.

    ‘Do you do this often?’ she asked. ‘Chat up strange girls in bars together?’

    ‘Never,’ said Hadrian, although they had fantasised about it in the past — of sharing one woman while she, in effect, experienced the same man reflected. It was an engaging dream, if an unlikely reality.

    Her gaze danced between them. ‘Do you swap girlfriends, then? If you’re exactly the same, you could trade places without them knowing.’

    ‘We’re not exactly the same,’ said Seth, unable to hide another flash of irritation.