Firstborn

Chapter 3 : The Neighbours

Both aunt and nephew pondered over the incident in their heads.

"Have you ever wondered why all your cousins are male?" Meeru asked coming out of her day dream state first.

"No? Why would I? They're a bunch of losers and that includes my own twin brother."

Meeru tutted.

"THEY REALLY ARE! I wonder if we really share the same genes .If they were of any worth they would be able to hack it at school like me without terrorizing the other pupils. Lucky for the school they're hardly there."

"Ah! Your unique nerdy gene pool" Meeru said in an uncharacteristically solemn voice.

There was sadness in her voice again that made Avi stare at his aunt. He raised his eyebrows to get her to explain but she just shook her head and put on a unconvincing chirpy tone, "Never mind all this, we need to get up and get you ready for the English dignitaries. I wonder why they asked you to come and not the others?" Meeru ruffled Avi's head. No one got away with that except for her; then again no one else in his family really spent any time talking to him.

"Yes AUNTIE DEAR". A pillow was demolished in response and Avi barely made it in time before Major, his grandfather, hollered for him.

                  

-X-

They were too late. The Benson Hedge boxes were placed behind locked glass doors in an otherwise bare wall cabinet in the drawing room for all to see.

But as it happened, no one noticed them on that day, for when Avi began to open the tall gates of   Dev's property he looked ahead and froze where he stood. Major who was walking behind him, stumbled against him and Meeru paused in time before creating a pile up.

"Bavekoof! Idiot! Buffoon! Why have you stopped? Get in boy; no one is going to eat you." Major tried to look past his grandson but he was too tall and the gate was not yet opened properly. Major began to push Avi aside, and then he remembered Tommy - Dev's vicious dog just in time!

'Is the dog Tommy there? Is that it?", Major whispered in Avi's left ear, gently prodding his grandson's left shoulder forward but it just rebounded.  Avi remained silent and fixed on a point ahead of him.

Unfortunately for all, Tommy who was on the roof of Dev's house, cocked up his ears, placed his snout and paws on the roof's low wall and began to bark madly. Luckily Dev popped up from behind him and held him by the scruff of his neck and tied him to one of the pipes of the water tank. Without looking down he shouted, "Come in Major, I've tied Tommy upstairs and I'll lock the roof door, so don't worry."

When Dev appeared on his veranda a few moments later, he glanced at the empty cane chairs and was surprised to find all three of his visitors still at the gate, standing like garden statues. Following their gazes' trajectory path he zoomed on his granddaughter, who was sitting on the veranda's marble steps glaring at his guests ferociously. Or was she was just glaring at the vagrant called Avi? Dev often clocked Avi wandering through the vegetation on the other side of the path despite all teenagers having been warned of the consequences of straying off the path to the other side. It was almost like he had a death wish.

Dev looked beyond Avi and found the other two guilty of openly staring too, they looked so comical and after the morning he had with Miss Moody and his son he was glad of a chortle, "Oh I see you have spotted my surprise, my granddaughter Una."

Dev enjoyed the stunned expressions of his neighbours, "Don't hang at the gate, please do come in, but be forewarned..." pointing at the girl, he emphasised, "...this one can be more ferocious than Tommy our dog!"