The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

What absolute rot. My mother wasn’t a stupid woman; she wouldn’t have given Edward the right to remain in the family home because of some perceived hereditary weakness. I concede that she often treated Edward like a tortured artistic genius who needed to be shielded from the harsh realities of existence, but in her heart she knew he was just a chancer who was after an easy life. We all have the ability to control our own destinies. It was apparent to anyone that Edward was a waste of space not because he was genetically preprogrammed to be, but because he’d decided to wallow in a mire of self-pity and self-indulgence rather than to clamber out, brush himself down and strive to become a hardworking, responsible citizen. And anyway, as my mother would have been fully aware, if Edward was biologically preprogrammed to have a weakness of character then so was I. After all, we have the same parents. My brother is nothing like my father, in any case. My father, on the occasions when he was sober, was intelligent, cultured and witty. Edward is none of these things. Further, and most crucially, my mother loved Edward and me equally.