"He's my brother's monkey," Bellamy said in response, as though this was an answer. In fairness, if Bellamy had a pet monkey he probably wouldn't have named him William Shakespeare. He didn't know what he would have named a monkey (and he had no particular desire to own a monkey, anyway), but probably not Shakespeare. Maybe Oscar Wilde or Dorian Grey, he thought, but he immediately discarded the idea. For one thing, he hadn't known anything about Oscar Wilde's work before he'd come back to England, so it wasn't as though he could have named a monkey after him two years earlier (assuming he obtained a monkey at the same time Val had). Secondly, it seemed mildly irreverent to use the names of people — er, one person and one fictional character — he actually liked and respected to refer to a monkey. Not that he didn't like William Shakespeare, but — he was a monkey. And this train of thought was getting away from him.

"Hold your head a little higher," Bellamy instructed as he slid in behind the canvas. "The light's better that way."

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