by Jo Bannister
Deacon didn't doubt she was right. He'd always been better at doing the job than working the room. He should probably have put more effort into the politics. If he had…
…It still wouldn't have been a good use of his time exchanging insults with Detective Inspector Hyde in front of a board at Division. Once she left here, his only abiding regret would be the damage done to Voss's career.
He said, ‘I don't need to tell anyone anything. Charlie's going to figure it out all by himself. You put on a good act -smart, glamorous. But he's pretty smart too, and he's not going to be dazzled by glamour for long. He'll work out what you did and how you did it, and he won't need my help.
‘In a way it's a shame. It's like seeing a child realise that Father Christmas is actually their dad in their mum's dressing-gown. It's a loss of innocence. But hell, he's a Detective Sergeant, innocence isn't necessarily a survival strategy. Next time he meets someone like you, all the alarms will go off at once and he won't end up paying for someone else's promotion. Maybe, all in all, that lesson has been worth what it cost him.’
Deacon lifted the cardboard box off the desk. ‘Let me help you down to your car,’ he said. ‘I wouldn't like you to have to come back.’
They headed down through the building in silence. And the building was silent around them. It's impossible to say how -Deacon hadn't been shouting – but something of what had passed between them had leached out through the walls or through the floor, and men and women who had time for DS Voss, and even a certain amount for Superintendent Deacon, registered their disapproval of DI Hyde with three minutes of wintry silence. None of those they passed in the corridors or on the stairs wished her well, or even a safe journey home. Those three minutes were among the longest of her life. There was never any danger of her bursting into tears, but she had to clench her jaw to keep from saying something that might come back to haunt her.
When she pushed through the back door that opened onto the car park the fresh air cooled her blazing cheeks, and also her head. She could make a gesture without conceding much. She turned at the top of the steps.
Deacon put the cardboard box into her arms, turned himself and went back inside without another word.
In times of stress the brain acts like a camera, taking shots and filing them for scrutiny at a better moment. When the door closed between him and Alix Hyde, and Deacon was congratulating himself on the extent to which he'd managed to bridle his anger and say everything he wanted to and nothing more, by degrees he grew aware that one of those he'd passed in the corridor had no obvious reason for being there. He looked round. ‘Daniel?’
He had one arm in a sling and he looked pale; otherwise there was little to show for his adventure. ‘Have you got five minutes, Jack?’
Deacon glowered. This was the perfect end to a perfect day. The fact that he'd managed to get rid of DI Hyde without resorting to violence could not be taken to guarantee Daniel's safety. ‘I suppose,’ he said ungraciously.
There was an empty interview room: they went in there. ‘Well?’
Daniel didn't want to do this with both of them standing in a grubby little room with a video camera and a tape-recorder. But it was important to get it done. He took a deep breath and came straight to the point. ‘Brodie's had the baby. It's a boy. You have a son, Jack.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was the end of a busy day. Busy for him; busier for her. Deacon wasn't sure what protocol demanded. Which would have troubled him not at all if he'd known what he wanted to do, or what Brodie would welcome. He drove out to the ring road, then twice round the roundabout before heading back into town and going home. He thought he'd sleep on it. But he didn't.
Exhausted as she was, Brodie didn't sleep much either. She drowsed, going over events in her mind, waking with a start at each unfamiliar sound. She was caught in a kind of limbo. None of it seemed entirely real.
They'd told Daniel before they told her, so he wouldn't be too stunned to offer the support she was going to need. Then, in the privacy of her room, with Daniel holding her hand, the doctor explained the nature of the problem. Once very simply, and then again with more detail. She gripped Daniel's left hand so tightly her nails drew blood, but he never complained.
‘Don't think you have to take all this in right now,’ said the doctor. ‘We'll go through it again as many times as you need to when you're feeling a bit stronger. For now, all you need to focus on is that your son's in no immediate danger – he's a bit premature but he's doing well and I've no doubt you'll be taking him home before long. There'll be plenty of time to discuss what we do next. You have a lovely baby, Mrs Farrell – enjoy him.’
After they were alone Daniel prised his hand out of Brodie's grip and put it round her shoulders, drawing her to him. She wept, and then she slept.
Or dozed more than slept, waking every hour or so as her body told her to check the baby, to check that he was warm and safe. Awake, though, she knew that while he was both of those things, he wasn't here with her: he was in an incubator in the nursery. But the reproductive process was hammered out millions of years before the maternity ward was ever thought of, and her hormones wouldn't be convinced that right now the baby was better off with the experts caring for him.
It left her without much of a function here now. Apart from feeling sore, and shell-shocked, she was fine. She wanted to be at home. She wanted Paddy more than the baby. Perhaps that wouldn't last. Perhaps when she was able to hold him and feed him, and spend time with him away from the necessarily intrusive trappings of high-tech perinatals, she would feel differently.
The baby. She'd have to give him a name now – he'd earned it. He'd beaten massive odds just getting conceived. Then he'd hung on in there for seven and a half months, and when he couldn't hold on any longer his mother had been busy with the needs of somebody else's child. It wasn't the best start in life. He hadn't been wanted, he hadn't been expected, and his mother had been so ill-prepared for his arrival that he'd had second thoughts about being born at all.
But he was his father's son: the mere fact of not being welcome was never going to stop him going anywhere. He was here now and the world had better get used to the idea. And it would need something to call him.
Brodie drowsed again, and the next time she woke there was someone standing in the doorway. She only knew one person who eclipsed light like that. ‘Jack?’
He neither came forward nor retreated, nor even acknowledged his name, just went on standing there, watching her from across the room. With his back to the light she couldn't see his expression. She waited for him to say something. But the slow seconds mounted into minutes and the silence set like concrete.
Finally Brodie decided life was too short to watch any more of it pass away like this. ‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘it was nice of you to call in for a chat.’
Deacon gave a gruff little snort of the kind usually associated with retired colonels and written as ‘Harrumph!’ It was half a laugh. It was impossible to say what the other half was.
What it wasn't was the sound of a man delirious with joy over the birth of his son. Brodie nodded slowly. ‘Who told you? Daniel?’
Deacon shrugged massively. ‘Who else?’ It wasn't much of a conversation, but at least he'd graduated to words.
‘I was going to call you this morning. I was too zonked last night.’
For a moment she saw something of the old regard in his eyes. ‘You're all right?’
‘I'm fine,’ she assured him. ‘For someone who's just had a baby. It was a perfectly normal birth. Early, but normal.’
Deacon was looking round the little room uncertainly, as if embarrassed to ask. ‘Er – where…?’
Brodie gestured with her head. ‘Down the corridor. I'll take you in a minute. Jack – did Daniel tell you there's a problem?’ She knew he would have done. She knew he wouldn't have left it to her.
‘I didn't understand most of it,’ he said, and his deep voice was soft and rough at the same
time.
‘Join the club,’ said Brodie, heartfelt. ‘I think the doctor was a bit taken aback as well – it's a rare condition, and even rarer when it's present at birth.
‘Jack, we always knew something like this was a possibility. Before I even knew I was pregnant I was exposed to enough veterinary tranquilliser to kill me and two other people – and a developing baby's at its most vulnerable around eight weeks’ gestation. When all the tests they did failed to show a problem I started hoping maybe everything would be all right. But I never counted on it. I'm sorry it's worked out this way, but I can't honestly say I'm surprised. I think, deep down, I knew there was something wrong.’
‘You never said.’
‘I said something to Marta. She said it was pregnancy neurosis.’
‘You never said anything to me!’ His eyes kindled at her with a characteristic touch of anger. It was getting to be a while since she'd seen that. They hadn't been close enough recently to make one another angry.
‘We haven't talked much about anything,’ she reminded him. ‘If I'd known there was a problem I'd have told you. I didn't know – it was just something I felt.’
Deacon's anger subsided as quickly as it had flared. Finally he came into the room, pulled up the chair and sat down. He breathed out a gusty sigh. ‘And how do you feel now?’
‘A bit stunned,’ she admitted. ‘Every rational instinct was telling me I was wrong. I was just about ready to believe I was imagining things. It's like…you try to prepare for the worst, but in your heart you really expect that everything will be fine. You keep thinking, As long as I'm expecting a problem there won't be one. If I'm psychologically prepared to lose this baby, I'm going to be over the moon if all that happens is it comes out with a hare lip.’
‘And has he?’ Deacon had to clear a frog from his throat. ‘A hare lip?’
‘No. He's very pretty. Except…’
Brodie saw the dread in his face and wished she hadn't paused. ‘Except?’
‘He has white eyes.’
‘He's blind?’ She heard the crack in his voice, wasn't sure if Deacon had heard it himself. Then his heavy brows gathered in a frown. ‘How do you know? They don't open their eyes for the first two weeks.’
‘I think that's puppies,’ murmured Brodie. ‘He has retinoblastoma. It's a cancer, and he has it in both eyes. They're going to try to save one of them, but it's hard to know how much vision he'll have. The other one, the safest thing is to remove it.’ She managed a mournful smile. ‘Don't think he's going to be a freak, Jack. He isn't – he's beautiful. He just rooted around in the genes of one of us and pulled out a short straw. The good news is, ninety per cent of children born with this condition in the UK survive. Ninety per cent in the world as a whole die.’
She'd never seen Deacon look so shocked. She resisted the urge to keep talking, waited for what she'd said already to sink in. Waited for a response.
Finally he said, ‘He could die?’ His voice was hollow, barely his own.
‘It's possible,’ she acknowledged, ‘but unlikely. He's a racehorse with a ten-to-one chance of winning. Wouldn't you put money on him?’
Distractedly, Deacon ran his big blunt fingers through his hair. He hardly knew what to say. ‘And they want to take one eye out?’
‘It's a matter of balancing risk against benefit.’ Brodie had had fifteen hours to get her head round some of this, to start to understand the implications, for the child and for herself. She found herself in a strange place, knowing this was something to grieve for and not being ready to grieve. She had a live child who had every chance of surviving – for now that seemed enough. She felt no urge to shriek and beat her head against the wall.
She was aware that this sense of unnatural calm might not last, that the diagnosis would bring immutable problems and difficult decisions soon enough. But the rational part of her brain reckoned that was all the more reason to use this quiet time, when even looking after the new baby was being done by other people, to get done those things she most needed calmness for. Like telling the child's father as much as she knew, so he'd know what they were dealing with before he spoke to the doctors, so he could deal with the grief in privacy.
Oddly enough, telling him about it, having to explain carefully, was helping her too. Was making it real for her by manageable degrees, climbing the mountain one rock at a time.
‘By removing the worst eye they limit the risk of cancer spreading to the central nervous system. Then they treat the cancer in the other eye in the hope of giving him some vision. He's never going to be a pilot. But he might have some sight. He might at least be able to distinguish between light and dark well enough to avoid walking into things.’
It wasn't a joke. But he looked at her as if she was joking, and the levity was a knife in his heart. His eyes were swimming. She'd never seen that before. With all they'd been through – with all she'd done to him – she'd never seen him cry. In a single movement she swung her legs out of the bed and put her arms around him. They hadn't held one another for maybe seven months. This child was the product of almost the last time they were that comfortable together. So she was amazed at how right it felt to be holding him again. And almost equally amazed that he let her.
‘Jack, there are worse things thaxi being blind. It's rotten luck and it's going to make his life difficult – but there's still a whole host of things he'll be able to do if he wants to. He'll learn to read through his fingertips, and if he's smart enough he can go to university. He can be a businessman, a lawyer, a musician, a politician, a teacher. He can be anything that demands more of his brain than his hand-eye coordination. He can't be a surgeon. He'll never be a professional sportsman, but if he enjoys sports there'll be lots open to him. He can enjoy the company of friends as much as you do -well, as much as I do. He can travel, he'll be able to live independently, he'll be able to marry and raise a family. That's a rich life I'm describing, Jack. Don't feel too sorry for him until you see what he can accomplish.’
To an extent she was whistling in the wind. No amount of positive thinking altered the fact that this baby was unlike the vast majority of babies in that his life, and the life of his family, would get harder and more complicated the more he grew. As an infant his needs wouldn't be very different from any other's: food, warmth, keeping clean, being loved. You expect a lot of work, and a lot of sleepless nights, with a new baby. It's what new babies are for. But by degrees they start fitting in with your routine, and when you slot them into the school system you get a bit of your own life back.
But this baby, and therefore also his mother, had extra hurdles to negotiate. There would be hospital visits, and the anxiety that went with them. There could be repeated surgery. There could be vital decisions to take regarding how much risk was justified by how much benefit.
Even if all went well, this child was never going to get what he needed at his neighbourhood primary school. There would be decisions to make about that too – does a child with special needs get a better overall deal at a specialist school or with extra support in the mainstream? Whatever she decided, there would always be extra time, extra work and extra worry involved.
Which held implications for her other child. Perhaps the hardest thing she'd have to do was stop the baby monopolising her, somehow make the space in which her relationship with Paddy, which had been the chief treasure of her life, could go on flourishing. She wasn't yet sure how but she knew she would do that. She had to do that. But she sure as hell couldn't do a full-time job as well.
Deacon was looking at her with raw, glistening, astonished, above all respectful eyes. As if he didn't know her; as if they'd just met. He wasn't a fool – he knew what this meant, to her and to her future. He knew that being positive in the face of tragedy – because it was a tragedy, however bravely she faced it and however well she coped – took real, genuine, accept-no-substitutes courage. And he'd forgotten that was the one thing she had in abundance. She could be sharp to the point of shrewish, s
he could be selfish, she could be arrogant. She could be stubborn and demanding, quick to anger, quick to take offence. She could make massive, world-stopping mistakes and yet be devastatingly intolerant of other people's flaws.
But with all that, she had the heart of a lion. Where the interests of anyone close to her were involved she seemed to have infinite reserves of physical and moral courage. She would not be beaten. She refused point-blank to even consider the possibility of defeat. She would hurl herself against a brick wall until the bricks fell.
Deacon swallowed. He said, ‘Marry me.’
Brodie was so surprised she all but recoiled. ‘No!’
‘Marry me,’ he said again, more forcefully.
He watched emotions flicker across her face like aurorae flickering across a polar sky. He identified amazement, and amusement, and puzzlement, and for a moment something that could almost have been affection. Each came and went without settling in her expression. She knelt on the bed peering into his craggy tearstained face as if seeking an answer there. ‘No,’ she said again.
‘This is going to be hard work, Brodie. You don't have to do it alone.’
‘I won't be doing it alone,’ she said. ‘Of course I'm going to need you. Of course I'm going to count on you. I don't need a piece of paper to tell me that I can.’
‘Raising a child – any child, let alone this one – is a job for a couple. I can help – I want to help. Financially, emotionally, practically. This is something we should do together. I'll buy a bigger house – a family house. We should have done it before. We owe it to this baby to do it now.’