He led me over to one of the large circular tables, taking the seat opposite me. He then took a long, preparatory breath before starting. “Our mother…She wasn’t a mom to Jared, Sam. To understand why, you have to understand what she was like. Ever met a narcissist before? I mean a true narcissist.”

“No.”

He smiled sadly. “That’s the thing, you probably have; you just hadn’t known it. Narcissists have two faces. They’re one person in public, but a completely different person behind closed doors. Of course, no one other than the people living behind those doors with them will have any inkling there is more than one side to them.

“Lorna Michaels was totally obsessed with herself, had a sense of entitlement, couldn’t empathise with another person, used and manipulated everyone around her. Her needs always came first. In some ways, she was like a spoilt child. And the vanity…she was so superficial; all about looks and appearances.”

When he hesitated to continue, I knew he was debating whether to send me to Jared. “Please, Evan. I need to know.”

Sighing, he nodded. “Because she was so nice to everyone else, they all thought she was amazing; a regular martyr who would do anything for anybody. Some kids even used to say that they wished they had my mom. They didn’t know about the outbursts, the emotional abuse, or the physical abuse. But we did. Or, more specifically, Jared did, because it was only really him who suffered from it. Occasionally I was the focus of an outburst, but that was only if I’d tried to defend Jared or disobey her. Lorna Michaels had to be obeyed, and that was that.”

Already I wished I’d been at the funeral just to do a celebratory dance around the headstone, singing ‘Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead’. “And your dad?”

“I don’t remember him being home all that much – he was either at work, or out drinking with his friends. He was a ‘woe is me’ person, too wrapped up in his own misery to give a shit about anybody else. I think that was why their marriage was so bad – they were both attention seekers, and neither liked it when the other was getting all the attention. It was almost like sibling rivalry. But my mother would never have given him a divorce. No, other people weren’t allowed to know that we were anything but the perfect little family. She let him have his work affairs as long as he was discreet about it. After all, she had secrets of her own, didn’t she?”

“Why did she hone in on Jared?”

“When she gave birth to us, I popped out easily enough. But he hadn’t turned, so she’d needed a C-section. And she was sure to tell him on a regular basis that she wished she’d never had him because she hated the scar. I think she would always have chosen just one of us to dote on. Apparently, it’s typical of narcissists to, on a subconscious level, pick a golden child and a scapegoat. The golden child can do no wrong; the scapegoat can do no right.”

Weird. “And she chose Jared to be the scapegoat because of the scar?”

“I don’t think so. I think it was because she couldn’t mould him into the person she wanted him to be. She tried to make us both extensions of her. Tried to control us – our every move, our every feeling, our every thought. With me, it worked in some ways. I wanted her attention, and the best way to get it was to agree with her, mirror her, do whatever she wanted. But Jared wouldn’t let her control him.”

And didn’t that make me proud as hell.

“No matter how much she punished him, she couldn’t break him. She couldn’t get into his head and take control. Personally, I think it was because of the hurtful comments she made. Instead of trying to seek her approval, he’d rejected her in his mind as some kind of defence mechanism. Because of that, she simply couldn’t get in. She actually made the job harder for herself, it was like a vicious cycle – the more she demeaned him to try to weaken him and take over, the more he rejected her and the tougher his defences against her became.”

“You said there’d been physical abuse.” A part of me didn’t want to hear it, but this was Jared, and I couldn’t help if I didn’t understand.

Evan swallowed hard. “It was more about control, wanting us to fear her enough that we’d be easier to control. Oh she was nice to me, but she still terrified me. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t help Jared in the beginning. It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to. Sometimes, I’d get an urge to pull her away from him, but then I’d feel guilty because she was my mom and she was always good to me.”

With a disbelieving look on his face, he continued, “See, I thought she was great, because she thought I was great, and she’d tell me how I was her best boy, and that we were so alike and special. But with Jared, she was cold, aloof, distant, and abusive…except when people came around. Then she’d talk about her ‘two best boys’ and put him on display. And he’d have to perform. The punishment was so severe when he didn’t that he learned it was easier to act the perfect family when people were around.”

“What kind of punishments?”

He inhaled deeply. “One of her favourites was to lock him in our tiny shed – this was after she’d beaten the shit out of him. Even when it was winter and ice cold, she’d lock him in there, not even bothering to give him a coat. Yeah, she did lots of cruel crap like that. Other times, it would be mind games. She’d ask him to imagine what it would be like if she let ‘The Bad Man’ take him away and keep him, to imagine what that man would do to him. Or she’d pretend that she couldn’t hear or see him, would act as if he wasn’t there, like he didn’t exist.”

It was hard speaking while there was a big, fat lump in my throat. Just imagining him as a little boy being huddled in the corner of a cold shed, or repeatedly talking to his mother only to be completely ignored and made to feel like a ghost…Twisted bitch. “Didn’t he ever tell anyone?” I couldn’t imagine Jared ever suffering anything in silence.

“He told our aunt, but she didn’t believe him. Why would she? Lorna was so nice to everyone, and she made him out to be ‘troubled’ and an ‘attention seeker’ with a ‘vivid imagination’. She was cunning like that.”

As he went on, Evan grinned; it was all pride. “He managed to get his revenge in subtle ways. He’d realised that she liked it when he flinched or cried, so he never did it for her. No matter what she did to him, he wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t ask her to stop, wouldn’t even wince. Nothing. That got to her, because it was a reminder that she might be able to physically overpower him, but she still hadn’t got in here.” He tapped his temple, still grinning. “And denying that to someone who fed off misery and pain…it was probably the best form of revenge.”