MerrilyMe

I whisper to Ben about Freddie sometimes. It’s a dangerous thing and something I will have to stop. Because I was, I think, whispered to about a lost child and although I grew up without knowing, I was burdened by the loss, tucked as it was into the folds of my subconscious.

Ben is the only one of us who will never meet Freddie. He is also the only one of us born to make a wrong right, or the only surviving one of us, anyway. He has all our hearts balanced, teetering, on his every blink and snuffle. He is treasure and he is a time bomb. Or, more hopefully, a slow release gift, one we will watch and enjoy, all of us.

But we six know he could break our hearts. We know little brothers can do that. And that could be an awful burden to him, one we must be careful of. One we mustn’t whisper to him about.

He’s a little prince but, if we are going to love him responsibly, we must make sure he doesn’t know that.