Wronged Sons, The by John Marrs Page A

legacy was in tact, but orphaned and with no owners to trace, the manager at the time retained the hotel as his own. Upon his death, its fate lay in the hands of a succession of distant relatives who cumulatively did little to prevent it from falling into rack and ruin.
    I was dismayed at how something once so treasured could have been wilfully abandoned, before recognising the irony. But I related more to buildings than to people. If you gave structures time, detail and attention, they would protect you. You would be safe beneath their roofs. People never truly offered such guarantees. So I made it my mission to give it the help it had given me.
    Bradley put me in contact with its entrepreneurial Dutch owner who admitted he’d blindly purchased it through auction on description alone. I wrote him a detailed, twelve-page proposition, explaining who I was, my feelings towards his property, my qualifications and skills that would enable me to resuscitate it.
    I listed the work it so fiercely required and an approximate timescale and costing. Then I crossed my fingers and waited. A fortnight later, Bradley approached me over breakfast.
    “I don’t know what you said but the tight fisted bastard’s on board,” he smiled, and offered me a congratulatory handshake.
    “Really?” I replied, genuinely surprised I’d been taken seriously.
    “Yep. He’s wiring the money into the hostel’s bank account on Monday so you can get started when you like. He’ll probably sell it once you’re done though.”
    At that point, I did not care. The news delighted and excited me in equal measures as for the first time in months I had something to focus my attention on other than myself.
     
    August 13, 3.15pm
    Few people have a greater impact on shaping you than the friends you cultivate when you’re a child.
    Every boy needs reliable peers to offer him a reflection on the journey into manhood. With each acquaintance I made at the Routard International, I reflected more on the ones I’d cast aside; specifically my best friend, Dougie Reynolds, who arrived in the eighth year of my previous life.
    He’d moved to Northamptonshire with his family from Inverness. His policeman father had accepted a transfer to take charge of a new unit and uprooted to the street next to mine.
    Our friendship wasn’t instant. Roger, Steven and I glared at the lanky, sapling-armed boy ambling into the classroom with his auburn hair and a coarse, unintelligible accent, like he’d just alighted a space ship. And during his first few days in our territory, he was given a wide, discerning berth. But he paid frustratingly little heed to our feigned disinterest.
    I’d just reached a personal best of twenty-five keepie-uppies on the village green when he wandered over to me.
    “Bet you I can do more,” he grinned, and struck a defiant comic book superhero pose with his hands on his hips.
    “Go on then,” I sniffed and deliberately threw the ball too hard at his chest. By the time he’d reached fifty with ease, he’d claimed victory and headed it back to me. A little humiliated, I began to walk away.
    “Arch your back a little,” he said suddenly. “Put your arms out for balance and focus on the centre of the ball.”
    I reluctantly followed his advice, and it was only when my bare thigh smarted from the repetition of skin against leather that I stopped at fifty-one. I concealed my smile. That was all it took to cement the foundations of a friendship spanning two decades.
    But I was unsure whether it was his affable personality or his stable family life that captivated me the most. Dougie belonged to the perfect family, compared to mine at least. A mother, a father, a brother and a sister - everything I’d have killed for.
    Dougie Senior greeted his wife Elaine with a kiss to the cheek on his arrival home each evening. And she’d respond with an infinite supply of hotpot dishes and mouth-watering casseroles. Their family banter filled the dining room as