Mortlock by Jon Mayhew

brother and never known? Or had she always known, deep down, in some strange way? Was he the ‘someone’ she missed when she imagined her mother?
    ‘Your twin brother? So he told you about him,’ Gimlet said quietly. ‘He should have done that years ago. Maybe I should have said something, but I didn’t think it was my place to do so.’
    ‘I have a twin ? Why didn’t he tell me sooner? How could he have kept that from me?’ Josie felt anguished and deeply betrayed. Then she thought of that last argument with Cardamom.
    ‘I don’t know why he didn’t tell you.’ Gimlet looked deep into the fire. ‘When your mother died, Cardamom decided he couldn’t look after him as well,’ Gimlet said, tapping his pipe out on the hearth. He sighed heavily. ‘So he split the two of you up. I’m not exactly sure why – he could have afforded to keep you both. I’m so sorry, Josie.’
    ‘Uncle would never have done anything to harm me,’ Josie said, putting her head in her hands and fighting back tears. ‘He must have had a good reason to separate us.’
    ‘Well.’ Gimlet looked troubled. ‘Cardamom was like most men, Josie. He’s done some good and some bad things, you have to realise that.’
    ‘What did he do with my brother?’ Josie asked, struggling to speak calmly. A twin brother, someone like her, someone who would understand how she felt.
    ‘He gave him to an upright and caring man called Wiggins, an undertaker by trade and an old friend.’
    ‘And do you know where we can find Wiggins?’ Josie’s excitement grew. Her deep-rooted feeling of loneliness began to lift. She was going to meet her brother. He could help.
    ‘He’s not too far from here – Seven Dials as I recall,’ Gimlet said, nodding his head.
    ‘Then let’s not waste any more time.’ Josie jumped up. ‘Let’s go and meet him!’

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    The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
    Your brains come snivelling down your snout.
    ‘The Hearse Song’, traditional folk song

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    CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Boy with the Toad
    The cold nipped and worried at Josie’s fingertips and cheeks, making her glad of the scarf and hat that Gimlet had made her put on before following him down the street.
    ‘Can’t be too careful if those old Aunts are a-hunting for you,’ Gimlet said, and spat into the gutter.
    Josie clung to Gimlet’s coat-tails to avoid being swallowed up by the heaving, jostling crowds that swarmed up and down the narrow, muddy street. She craned her head back and peered up at the sky. You wouldn’t think it was morning , she thought. The black buildings overshadowed everything, making the light in the street as dim as twilight.
    ‘We can’t be too far away from Mr Wiggins now, Josie,’ Gimlet said, pulling her close. ‘Stay by me. This area is troublesome and there are a great number of undesirables about.’
    Josie knew of the Seven Dials, a rough area littered with ramshackle tenements and flooded cellars, crammed with the poor and hopeless. The buildings seemed to lean in on each other like drunks at a wake. Josie thought that if one fell down, then the whole area would tumble like dominoes in a line.
    She and Cardamom had always skirted around the Dials to get to the theatre. Dark alleyways and entrances to courtyards snaked off left and right. She flinched at the ragged crowd that surged around her. These weren’t the merrymakers of the Erato. Dubious, unshaven vagabonds leaned against crumbling walls and smoked pipes, assessing Gimlet and his strange, muffled companion. Black-toothed women laughed raucously on the street corners. Here and there Josie heard raised voices, saw scuffles. She fixed her gaze forward.
    Wiggins’s funeral shop shone like a jewel in a dung heap. Its windows were bright and clean, the paintwork all black and shining, unscathed by the passing multitudes or the mud from the street.
    ‘How does he keep it so clean?’ Josie marvelled, staring at the sooty shopfronts that sagged on either side of Mr