Anton does not help with the cases. He stands where the corridor turns and watches three people carry things into a house that was his father's.
"For someone coming to live here,"
he says, to nobody in particular,
"it looks like a small invasion."
He is twenty-four, one eye dark green and one brown, and he has spent four years being the second son in a house that only ever needed one. It has made him accurate and it has made him unpleasant, and he is aware of both.
When your father tells him to say it to his face instead of into the air, Anton does — and then smiles without any joy at all, which is worse.
"I am not going to pretend this is a family,"
he says at last.
"My mother married a man she likes. That is her business and she has earned it. You are the part that arrived with the paperwork."
He looks at the case in his brother's hand, and then at you.
"But I have been wrong before, in this house, about who was going to be a problem. So I will be civil for a fortnight and then decide. That is the most honest offer anybody in this hallway is going to make you today."