And the two weeks before the finals, which I have since had described to me by all three boys and which I would pay money to have watched.
The rosters went up on a Tuesday in the April. Real names, schools, ages.
Cai saw it first, at about eleven at night, and did not say anything to his brother until the morning, which for those two is an extraordinary act of restraint.
And what they did — and I want this on the record, because everybody assumes teenagers handle these things badly — is that they did nothing for four days.
Then they wrote to Rafe. Not on the squad chat, where the others would see. A direct message, from Idris’s account, and they drafted it together, and Cai has shown me the drafts because he keeps everything.
There are eleven versions of that message.
Version one is four paragraphs and begins We think we might be related to you, which Idris says he read back and decided sounded like a scam about an inheritance.
Version eleven, the one they sent, is two lines.
***Mate — is your dad Dominic Farrow? Don’t panic. We think we’ve got the same one. No stress either way.***
