He had not expected so much of it to spill out of him the following day. "I had a very happy childhood," he said. "Well at first anyway. But Mum just upped and left when I was ten and John was nine. Dad just went off the rails really. Started drinking. There was never any food in the house, so I got myself a paper round so that I could buy food for John. Then one night, Dad had a heart attack in the pub. I went to see him in the hospital, just once, to collect his bank card so I could get money out, and with Dad not spending all his money in the pub, John and I lived like kings for a couple of weeks, until he accidentally let slip to one of his teachers."
"We got called in to the headmaster. I thought we were going to be in trouble. I was terrified they would separate us. But my Maths teacher said she'd take us both in. I always thought she was a bit of a dragon, but once we moved in, she turned out quite nice really."
"Remind you of anyone?" Rachel interrupted.
Eddie laughed. "I never thought you were a dragon!"
"I'm not so sure about that," Rachel replied.
"Well, maybe for that first day," he admitted, smiling at her.
Eddie continued his story. "She made us dinner and neither of us would eat it because it had vegetables and we hadn't seen any vegetables for a while! So she got me cooking and I found I really enjoyed it. By the time Dad got out of hospital, I was pretty good."
"I didn't really want to go home, but we had to. Dad got healthier when he started eating proper food. And we grew up and I finished my A Levels, and left school. I was desperate to get away, but I couldn't leave John on his own with Dad. I got a job and I saved as much money as I could, and we both ended up getting into the Manchester University. Different courses, John was more of a historian, but we shared a room to save money and then got a flat together. We always had people coming round for dinner, and it was a great fun few years, but soon it was over and we had to go out into the world."
"What does John do?" asked Rachel.
"Oh, he's a history teacher. Last I knew, he was head of History at a school in Oldham."
"Not far away then," commented Rachel.
"No," said Eddie, "we always wanted to be close by. We even worked at the same school to start with, but that was too much. We were still sharing a flat, and we just never had any time to ourselves. At least at uni we were on different courses. We both moved on, got different jobs, better jobs, I got married, but we always wanted to be near to each other, and a long way from Dad. Dad died anyway, about fifteen years ago. Maybe if I hadn't left, he would have kept eating better, he might still be alive."
"John loved the twins. He was a brilliant uncle. He never had his own kids, but he doted on our boys. He was as heartbroken as I was when Stephen died."
