by Jo Bannister
Daniel could hardly have been more stunned if someone had told him he was pregnant. Of course, for a lot of his life surprises had been something that happened to other people. That had changed rather since their orbits crossed, but spontaneity still wasn't his strong suit. And then, he'd had two minutes to absorb the idea. Brodie had had six weeks.
He was still stumbling round for the right thing to say, and still getting it wrong. ‘What are you going to do?’
The firelight in her eyes flared as if someone had added petrol. ‘Do you mean, am I planning to get an abortion?’
‘No!’ he exclaimed, horrified. And then, because telling the truth was important to him, he amended that. T suppose it's an option. For some people. I don't know if it's one for you.’
‘Then I'll tell you,’ she said fiercely. ‘It isn't. It's damned inconvenient, it couldn't have come at a worse time, but that's not a good enough reason to kill it. I'm not sure it would be if it was a puppy, let alone a baby. Of course I'll have it, and of course I'll raise it. Just, right now, I have no idea how.’
At last Daniel was getting to grips with the situation. He knew he hadn't distinguished himself, wished he could have slipped more smoothly into support mode. But perhaps having reason to snap at him made it easier for Brodie. ‘We'll find a way,’ he said firmly, ‘or make one. Whatever you want, whatever decisions you take, you're not on your own. You have me. You also have Jack.’
‘I had Jack,’ she corrected him, not without a hint of bitterness. ‘I let him get away.’
Daniel smiled at that. However things between them rested, it was impossible to imagine Brodie Farrell as the hunter and Jack Deacon as her elusive prey. So it was a joke. It was a good sign, that she was up to even a rather sour little joke. ‘I don't think he'll have gone far. I take it you haven't told him yet?’
Her wide brow furrowed. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because if you had you'd have a different set of problems.’
Brodie snorted a rough little laugh. ‘I'm going to tell him, of course. He's entitled to know. I kept putting it off, trying to decide how to handle it. I don't want him talking me into something I don't want to do. But I'm going to have to tackle it. I called him this morning, asked him to pop round when he has the time.’
‘What are you afraid he'll try to talk you into?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘For one thing, marrying him to give the child a name.’
It took an effort for Daniel to keep his tone even. ‘Is that such a bad thing?’
She nodded emphatically. ‘If we'd wanted to marry we'd have done it. We wouldn't just have split up. It's not much of a kindness to a child, that he pops into the world and you hand him the job of patching up his parents’ relationship.’
‘Nevertheless, he'll need a name.’
‘He'll have a name,’ said Brodie sharply. ‘He'll have my name.’
‘John's name,’ Daniel reminded her.
‘Then he can have two – mine and Jack's. Daniel, it's not about names. It's about…expectations. Jack's going to be over the moon when he finds out. But the coming of a baby doesn't alter the fact that we as a couple had been failing for months. We'd reached the point of hurting one another. You can't go on like that. It was better to draw a line under it before we ended up hating each other.’
‘You could try again,’ murmured Daniel, watching covertly to see if he needed to duck. ‘Try harder.’
But Brodie had had six weeks to review everything she and Jack Deacon had done, everything they could have done differently, and what were realistic options and what weren't. If they'd had this conversation a fortnight ago she might well have bitten Daniel's head off, but not now. It was one reason she'd delayed telling him.
She shook her head, the dark curls tumbling on her shoulder. If there was regret in her voice there was also acceptance. ‘We did that already. It didn't help. It was time for a strategic withdrawal. We both felt the same way. We didn't storm out in a temper: we talked about it and thought about it, and reached a mature and mutual decision. The right decision. That doesn't change because there's a baby on the way.’
‘And yet,’ said Daniel quietly, ‘it will change things. It'll change your life, and Jack's. It'll create a whole new set of circumstances. Would it be so unreasonable to review the situation in the light of that?’
Logically, he may well have been right. But Brodie's instincts told her he was wrong. ‘You shouldn't use a child as glue. He – or she, I don't know it's a boy – will have a full set of parents whether or not they live together, whether or not they're married. I've no intentions of robbing Jack of his child. But I don't think he and I can make a go of things now, and we'd only make ourselves – and Paddy, and the baby -unhappy trying.’ She shrugged in that way she had when she was trying to look tougher than she felt. ‘I've been a single parent before, I can do it again.’
‘Then why are you so worried?’ asked Daniel softly.
She never could get things past him. She looked around her. On the face of it, it wasn't much – a small office, mostly filled with filing-cabinets, a miniature kitchen and cloakroom behind, a slate on the wall. It wasn't what it was so much as what it represented. Three years of hard work. Two years of success. Two years of people she'd known, and one she'd been married to, looking at her differently because they hadn't guessed she had it in her.
‘Mostly, about this,’ she admitted. ‘Babies take a lot of time. I can put the business on hold while the baby grows a bit, but I'm not sure it'll be here to come back to if I do. So much of my stock-in-trade is confidence. If I'm not here when people need me, they'll find someone else. I've worked so hard, Daniel! And I think I'm going to lose it.’
‘You need someone to keep it ticking over until you're ready to come back.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Brodie retorted sarcastically. Not because it was a stupid idea but because she'd already considered and dismissed it. ‘The job centres are bursting with people qualified, competent and trustworthy enough to do this job! And kind enough to do it for a year or two and then hand it back because I ask them to. Who wouldn't think of using what they've learnt here to set up in competition. Tell you what: you put together a shortlist and I'll interview them.’
They'd known one another too long now, and too well, for Daniel not to recognise her waspishness as a guise for fear. He reached across the desk and took her hand. ‘There'll be an answer,’ he promised. ‘We'll find it.’
She appreciated that more than she could say, or would have done if she could. Of everything he meant to her, everything he'd done for her, this uncritical faithfulness was the thing for which she'd been most grateful. She held onto his fingers as if she was teetering on the edge of an abyss.
‘Maybe. I hope so. But that's not it. It just isn't practical. I could afford to employ someone, but who? I could spend months finding a suitable person, and then I'd have to train them. This isn't wholesale grocery: you know, better than most, there are complex issues to negotiate. You couldn't expect someone who'd only been doing the job a few weeks to make the right calls. To see the problems coming and steer round them. To know when to walk away, and when to run.’
‘How long have you got?’
‘The baby's due at the end of May. Training someone to a level where both they and the business would be reasonably safe would take a minimum of six months. It's a non-starter.’
‘Could you run it from home if you had someone to do the legwork?’
She'd dismissed that too. ‘I wouldn't want to hire anyone who'd be prepared to work like that. Think about it, Daniel. Who's going to leave a responsible job for a short-term contract with questionable security, some personal risk and a back-seat driver for a boss? The only people who'd apply would be cowboys, and they'd ruin the business even faster than me neglecting it. I don't think I have a choice. I have to go on as long as I can, then shut up shop and start from scratch in a few years’ time. And just hope there's some goodwill left to draw on.�
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Every time she'd thought about it, and she'd thought about it a lot in the last six weeks, she'd come to the same conclusion. This was the least worst option. It might take her years to get back to where she was today, but she saw no alternative.
Daniel said nothing, and finally it struck Brodie that this wasn't the conversation he'd bounced in here expecting to have with her. She squeezed his hand. ‘Sorry. I didn't mean to dump all this on you. Just – the opportunity was there and I went for it. I've been needing to talk to someone, and you're always my first choice. But there was something you wanted to tell me. What was it?’
There was a stillness in his face that meant the cogs were working overtime, spinning and meshing and producing something intricate and valuable. When he had all the pieces in place he blinked and came back to her. ‘What? Oh – yes. Sorry – just thinking.’ He smiled. ‘I'm going back to work. It's time, and I'm ready.’
To her credit, all her own worries were not enough to sully her delight. He'd thought she might be hurt that he hadn't discussed it with her first. Of course, sitting on an enormous secret of her own for the last six weeks rather limited her scope for indignation. Delight painted her face like sunrise. ‘Daniel! That's terrific. When? Where? How long have you been planning this?’
‘As soon as possible,’ he said. ‘And, for a little while. I've known I was ready, I just needed to do something about it. This is it.’
‘What is?’
Daniel met her eyes as if he'd been a liar all his life. ‘Actually, it's quite a coincidence. Because obviously I'd no idea what you were going to say when I got here. But what I came to say was, can I work for you?’
Des Chalmers understood. Or he understood that this was what Daniel needed to do, even if he didn't entirely understand why. ‘The offer's there, any time you want to take it up.’
Daniel hoped the man didn't know how close he was to tears. ‘Des, that's too generous. You can't keep a place for me.’
‘I don't intend to,’ said the Principal. T have an adequate maths department now. But when you change your mind, or your circumstances change, I will expand it by one. You're a fine teacher, Daniel. Quite apart from anything that's happened, any school with its pupils’ interests at heart will always have a vacancy for a good maths teacher. There aren't that many around.’
Daniel made himself meet the older man's gaze. It wasn't that he expected to see contempt there, or pity, or any of the tacit criticisms he felt were due. Experience had taught him that usually people treated him better than seemed altogether reasonable. Of course, every so often someone levelled the score, but still on the whole he found the world was good to him. He just wished he understood it better. Understood why people who owed him nothing went out of their way to help him. He said levelly, ‘You think I'm making a mistake, don't you?’
Chalmers shrugged. ‘I think you're doing what you feel is best. I just wish I thought it was you you felt it was best for.’
‘I owe her so much…’
Whatever he hoped, Chalmers could hear his heart breaking in the plangent note of his voice.
‘You're a young man, Daniel,’ he said firmly. ‘This is not your last chance. I will see you again.’
They shook hands and Daniel left, closing the door quickly behind him so Chalmers wouldn't hear him sniff. There were things he'd confided in Des Chalmers that he wouldn't have told even Brodie, but he didn't want anyone to know the pain this was giving him.
He could do it. He could put his body and soul into being Brodie Farrell's gopher, because she needed him and that mattered more than anything else. But no effort of will that he was capable of would stop him regretting the turn events had taken, or feeling trapped by the solution he'd found. What he wanted almost more than anything else had been within his grasp, and he'd thrown it away because of the one thing he wanted more.
And it wasn't that he thought of it as an investment – that when she realised what he'd sacrificed for her Brodie's fondness for him would turn to love. He knew as he hurried down the school corridor, busily polishing his glasses as displacement activity, that she must never find out. That she would never forgive him if she did.
CHAPTER FOUR
Deacon was still thinking about Alix Hyde when he went to meet Brodie. On mature reflection he decided this was probably not a good idea. One of the few things he reckoned to know about women was that they could read your mind. He made a point of clearing his before rapping on the burgundy door in Shack Lane.
When she'd called, for a minute they couldn't think where to meet. Lunch didn't feel appropriate for two people who'd split up, so that ruled out the French restaurant which was Deacon's preferred venue. His office was too public, her home too personal, a park bench too absurd. There was baggage associated with Brodie's office too, but it was the least worst option. It was private if they ended up arguing, and small enough to facilitate a swift departure. Deacon had slammed that burgundy door behind him a few times in the last six months. Once Brodie had stalked out, and had to come back later to lock up.
She met him at the door. He could read nothing from her expression, but she ushered him in with a kind of careful politeness, as if he were a wealthy but unpredictable client. Inside his own head Deacon gave an ironic snort. One out of two ain't bad.
‘Jack.’
‘Brodie.’
‘You're looking well.’
‘You too.’ He thought that was probably safe enough.
‘I'm fine,’ she agreed. ‘Well – in the circumstances.’
He didn't know what circumstances she meant, except that he didn't think for a moment she was pining for him. If she had been she'd have died rather than admit it. He wouldn't have told her how losing her had felt like having his legs hacked off, and he wouldn't have asked precisely what she meant except that this appeared to be why she'd brought him here. ‘What circumstances?’
In the tiny kitchen the kettle was boiling. Brodie made coffee and put a cup – he noted the use of the good china -into his hands before answering. Even then she built her reply carefully, foundations first then one brick at a time.
‘The first thing I want to say is, I don't see this as changing how things are between us. I don't expect you to do anything. I don't want anything and I don't consider that you owe me anything. At the same time, if there are things you want we can discuss them. You have certain rights and I've no wish to deny them.’
She saw the puzzlement in his craggy face but didn't stop to explain. If she kept going, a minute from now he'd know all there was to know. ‘I hope we can handle this in a civilised fashion, because whatever we decided two months ago, what it means in practice is that we're going to remain part of one another's lives for the foreseeable future. How big a part is for us to decide – mainly, for you to decide. I'm fine on my own, I don't need any help, but the child I'm carrying is yours as well and if you want to be involved with it you can be. We'll work out how.’ She watched him over the safety barrier of two coffee cups, waiting for him to react.
For most of Jack Deacon's career the police had been considered a Force rather than a Service. Perhaps that coloured his attitude. Perhaps if he'd been a young PC today he'd have learnt an entirely different approach. Or perhaps he'd have been rejected as unsuitable and the many strengths he brought to the job would have been lost. He wasn't tactful, courteous or in any obvious way caring. Old ladies never asked him to see them across busy roads and small children would rather stay lost than seek his help. He was not a people person.
But though he didn't like people very much, he took his professional obligations to them seriously. Several times in the course of his career he'd put his life on the line for them. Much more frequently he'd worked himself to exhaustion in their interests. He routinely gave everything he had in the way of physical strength, intellectual commitment and sheer bloody-minded persistence to keep them safe. But anyone asking him the time would get told to buy a watch.
So Brodie had a pre
tty good idea how he was likely to take the news. She knew it was totally unexpected, that it would take time to absorb. Part of him would be thrilled. But a big part, possibly the majority shareholder, would feel that it was a damned nuisance, an unnecessary complication in an already full life. Something that had never been part of the deal. She didn't expect to hear his reproaches, but she did expect to feel them.
But she also expected that he'd shoulder his responsibilities, not because she needed him to and not because she'd ask him to but because what he lacked in grace he made up for in honour. He cared about doing the right thing, and not letting people down. It was almost the only thing he had in common with Daniel. Jack Deacon was a good man. He just wasn't a very nice one.
She expected to have to repeat her news, maybe a couple of times, before she got any reaction at all. Or else that he'd respond angrily, before he had time to think, and be forever haunted by how badly he'd handled this first encounter with his child.
What she didn't expect was that his body would react to her news quicker than his mind, as if somewhere deep in his genes he'd been waiting for it all his life and the details of how and why and what next were exactly that – details. His eyes filled with wonder and then tears.
‘Jack?’ murmured Brodie, amazed and touched.
He didn't even pretend to have a smut in his eye. His voice was hoarse. ‘You're not joking?’
‘Of course I'm not. You think it's something…?’ She stopped herself from snapping at him. ‘Look,’ she said quietly, T think you need some time to take this in. Why don't we talk again later? Tonight, or tomorrow if you like?’
But Deacon shook his head roughly. ‘Just…stay where you are. You say that, and then try to throw me out? I don't think so.’ His breathing was unsteady, as if he'd been running.