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vastly well off. Alan’s portion was never going to have been large and Sir Adam was anxious not to cut it in half. But Pamela was determined. She had some money of her own that had lain dormant with a City bank for many years. When she looked again at how much she had, it was much more than she’d believed. She insisted on adding her own money to Alan’s portion, but on condition that Sir Adam did as his son wanted.
    And in the end he agreed.
    By the end of that day, when lessons were finished, Sir Adam called Alan into his library.
    ‘Well, my boy, I’ve news for you.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’ve made certain arrangements, the upshot of which is that you and Tommy can share the farm and share the concession. Because of your mother’s generosity, there may even be a little money to go along with it as well.’
    Alan stood open-mouthed, hardly daring to believe that he’d won. ‘Really, Father?’
    ‘Really.’
    ‘With all the legals and everything?’
    Sir Adam smiled. ‘You’re ten and a half, my boy. So is Tommy. There’ll be time enough for the legal side when you’re of age. But if you mean, is my decision final, then yes it is.’
    Alan breathed out a sigh of relief. It seemed an eternity since Tom had gone.
    ‘Thank you!’
    ‘Now, it’s up to you, young man, but there may be somebody you want to go and tell about this.’
    Though it was still only spring, Sir Adam’s window was set half open. Alan paused an instant longer, as though to check that what he’d heard was real, not an illusion. Then he moved. He ran across the room, jumped through the open window, and went streaking across the lawns to find his twin.
    He wasn’t disappointed.
    Tom wasn’t simply pleased, he was ecstatic. And (from Alan’s point of view) what mattered most was that although Tom
was
delighted to have won his concession, his joy over the reunion with Alan was greater still. The twins were together again – stronger after the break, it appeared, than before it. With joint ownership of the concession, they became oil fanatics together. Oil was
their
obsession, the sign of what united them as twins. Whitcombe House welcomed Tom back.
    Life resumed its normal course, only better.

    That should have been it. Argument over. Done and dusted. Forgotten and forgiven.
    And so it was. Almost. But when emotions run so high and for so long, they leave their mark.
    Alan had learned a lesson – an almost unconscious one, perhaps, but one so deeply etched that he never forgot it. When Tom’s passions were aroused, he could be dangerous, irresponsible, uncompromising.
    And Tom too had learned his lesson. When the chips were down, Alan had proved unreliable. Given the choice between Tom and family, Alan was a compromiser, an evader, an ally of divided loyalties.
    The lessons had been learned and would never be forgotten.

    And the oil?
    Knox D’Arcy’s glorious news looked feebler and less glorious by the week. By the end of May, and despite all the efforts of the drilling team in Persia, the flow of oil dwindled and died. D’Arcy’s expenses continued to mount. The chances of finding oil anywhere – let alone in the twins’ stony stretch of mountains – seemed ever more remote. D’Arcy searched for new investors to share the strain.
    It seemed that he had gambled vastly and lost utterly.
    The two boys continued to learn their Persian and their geology. They continued to follow D’Arcy’s fortunes at the new drilling site of Masjid-i-Suleiman. Their fascination with the business continued unabated. In fact, if anything, with the oil concession now fairly and squarely shared between the two of them, their determination to explore for oil together was stronger than ever before. But, aged only ten, they’d already learned the most important lesson the oil business had to teach.
    You could drill hard. You could drill well. You could drill in a place where oil was literally seeping from the ground.
    And you could still fail.
    Lose