The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  Her first thought was that dismissal suited him. His clothes might have been bought in his general manager days and recently dry-cleaned, but they looked both new and expensive. He’d gained a little weight since she saw him last, and that suited him too. He had a briefcase open on his knee and was riffling through the papers when he felt her gaze. She watched expressions chase across his face: curiosity (does someone want me?), puzzlement (I’ve seen her before somewhere), shock (I know where I’ve seen her before!) and finally anger. It was exactly the sequence you’d expect, and far from making her doubtful only convinced Brodie he’d been practising in the mirror.

  She quit her seat and was at his side in a couple of swift strides, looming over him as only a tall woman can. “Why, Mr Parker,” she said tightly, “fancy seeing you here.”

  “Mrs Farrell,” he gritted. “Well, these days I’m a commuter. I used to work in Dimmock until someone told my firm I was defrauding them – but of course you know that.”

  The people in the seats around him had picked up the combative tones and were looking uneasy. When Brodie offered to swap with one of them, all three vied for the privilege. She sat facing Parker and the other men subsided nervously.

  “You mean you’re on this train every morning?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I haven’t seen you on it before.”

  “This train? At this time?”

  “Yes. Why?” He snorted a bitter little chuckle. “Unearthed another non-existent crime to accuse me of?”

  There was no mistaking the rancour in his manner. Of course, he was entitled to be bitter. What he wasn’t entitled to do was take out his frustrations on her. “Are you following me, Mr Parker?”

  “That’s right,” he nodded immediately. “It’s a particularly cunning form of following. You buy a season ticket for a train, ride it at the same time every day and wait for the person you’re following to get on. It might take a couple of years but sooner or later she will. Then, in case she doesn’t notice, you find a seat close to hers. Anybody can follow someone. Making this much of a dog’s dinner of it takes real genius!”

  She breathed heavily at him, unsure what to think. “Are you saying you’re not following me?”

  “No,” said Trevor Parker. “I’m not saying anything to you, Mrs Farrell. I don’t want to talk to you, Mrs Farrell. If you continue to harass me I’ll have you arrested by the British Transport Police.”

  “Fine,” she snapped back. “Perhaps they’d like to hear about my interesting week as well.”

  They glared at one another like two dogs on leashes, pulling and pulling and hoping like hell that nobody lets go.

  One of the other men said diffidently, “If it’s any help, I see this gentleman on this train most mornings.”

  Brodie turned on him so quickly he recoiled. Belatedly she adjusted her expression. “Really? Then perhaps I’m mistaken. Thank you for your help.”

  “You were mistaken before, too,” said Parker shortly.

  Brodie regarded him without speaking for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  “I wasn’t defrauding anyone. I was giving a key supplier time to get back on his feet. He’d have repaid the loan. It would have been best for everyone.”

  “I know. But it wasn’t your call.”

  “If I’d gone through the channels he’d have folded and we’d have taken damage.”

  “He did fold, and everyone took damage,” Brodie reminded him. “I’m sorry if your motives were misinterpreted. But your actions were exactly as I reported them to the people who hired me. You’ve no one to blame for your situation but yourself.”

  “You reckon?” He thought about it, then sniffed. “I want you to know I’m making more money today than I ever did in Dimmock. Perhaps I should thank you. I just can’t quite bring myself to.”

  Which explained the new suit. The man undoubtedly had talents: if he’d found someone to appreciate them better than his previous employers Brodie could be happy for him. Assuming, of course, that he hadn’t tried to kill her. “Mr Parker, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. This time. But if I bump into you again any time soon I could get really suspicious really quickly.”

  “Yes? And you’re usually such a good judge of character,” sneered Trevor Parker.

  Brodie got up, curled her lip at him and moved to another carriage. The way her luck was running, it came as no surprise that she had to stand most of the way to London.

  Parker left the train before she did. He didn’t look back at her, which proved nothing.

  She was still fretting over the encounter as she caught the Nottingham train, but then she made a deliberate decision to put it out of her mind and concentrate on what she was making this journey for. She would need all her wits about her to get what she wanted out of it.

  From Nottingham station she phoned Simon Hood’s home. A woman answered. Lying fluently, Brodie said she was updating pension records and asked for his office number. That was almost a mistake: it transpired Hood worked for an insurance company. But unsuspecting, his wife gave Brodie the number and the useful information that he’d be in his office all day.

  When Brodie dialled his number, though, she didn’t ask for Hood: she told the switchboard she had a delivery to make and needed directions. She didn’t want to give Simon the chance to avoid her. Once there, while his secretary was checking if Mr Hood could see someone about a family reunion, Brodie sailed through his door quicker than anyone could stop her.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but this is too important for you to fob me off again.”

  She’d been expecting someone of the same general appearance as Daniel. But Simon was taller, broader, darker and perhaps fifteen years older. “You’re Mrs Farrell.” His tone was devoid of expression.

  “Yes. And I have to tell you, I’m worried sick.”

  Simon frowned. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know that anything’s happened,” said Brodie impatiently. “But I can’t find Daniel. You said he left here a week ago. But he hasn’t come home, and I can’t think where else he could be.”

  “He could be anywhere,” said Simon reasonably. “He may have taken a few days’ holiday.”

  “All right,” nodded Brodie, “maybe he did. Where would he go?”

  The man gave a surprised laugh. “I don’t know! He didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Well, where has he been before?”

  Simon shrugged. “He’s never been a big one for holidays. A couple of school trips when he was teaching, and he went down to Cornwall for the solar eclipse a few years ago. That’s about all, as far as I know. He’s never had many friends and I suppose it’s something you tend not to do on your own.”

  “Well, he has friends now,” Brodie said tartly, “and we’re worried about him. What he’s been through this last year, God knows what’s going on in his mind. But he shouldn’t be dealing with it alone.”

  Simon looked unsure. “Losing his job?”

  Brodie felt her jaw drop and was powerless to stop it. “You don’t know!”

  “Know what?”

  She was having trouble stringing the words together. “He didn’t lose his job, he left it. And you don’t know why.”

  Simon Hood was becoming irritated. “All right then – why?”

  She could explain in a few words or half a day but nothing in between. Or she could not explain at all. If Daniel had wanted his family to know he’d have told them. But Brodie itched to shake Simon Hood’s complacency. “He almost died. Someone thought he was involved in something he wasn’t and brutalised him because of it. His body’s a mass of scars, and I think his mind must be too. Mr Hood – what kind of a family are you that you didn’t know this?”

  She’d succeeded in shocking him. He shook his head, little side to side movements she thought he was unaware of. His eyes were appalled. “I didn’t know. He never said.”

  “Did you ask why he wasn’t teaching any more?”


  “I assumed … cutbacks …”

  “He gets panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It may pass in time. But whenever he tries to take his life back, something happens to slap him down. Now his house is for sale, and I can’t get hold of him, and he may be fine but I don’t think so. I think he’s in trouble, and if I can’t find him I can’t help him. I met him in a hospital – I don’t want to say goodbye in a morgue!”

  Simon passed a hand across his face. His voice was hollow. “What are you saying? That he’s suicidal?”

  “I never thought so, before now. But then, he never tried to disappear before. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s his privilege – but only once I’m satisfied it’s a rational decision. I have to find him. You’ve talked to him recently: did he tell you he was moving? Did he tell you where?”

  In an unconscious echo of his brother, Simon thought so hard it twisted up his face. Before, he’d dismissed Brodie’s concerns as trivial. Now he was worried too. But it didn’t help if there was nothing to remember. He ran his hand distractedly through his hair. “No.”

  “So what did you talk about?”

  “He just said it had been a while, he wanted to know how everyone was. He asked after my children, and James’s children, and Ben’s job, and our mother. I told him. We had lunch. We said we shouldn’t leave it so long next time and I dropped him at the station. That’s about it.”

  Brodie was watching him carefully. “So long as what?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “A couple of years ago.”

  “A couple of years?” The gears of her mind meshed. “At your grandfather’s funeral.”

  “Yes.”

  Her breath hissed through tight lips. “And how long since you went to any trouble to see him?”

  Simon might have been unsettled by her visit, but not enough to let that pass. His tone hardened. “Mrs Farrell, I’m not sure what gives you the right to criticise my family. No, we’re not close. But it’s none of your business.”

  “It’s my business,” she snapped back, “because if I didn’t make it my business Daniel would have no one in the world to confide in, to look out for him, to know or care if he’s facing meltdown. I was amazed when I found he had family he’d never mentioned, but I’m not now. Now I wonder why he thought it was worth the train-fare to come and see you at all.”

  Startled by her anger, Simon struggled to defend himself. “You don’t understand. There are reasons –”

  “I don’t care about your reasons!” yelled Brodie. “I don’t care who got the best trainers and who got the new bike. I don’t care if your mother never came to your sports day because she always went to his. Do you understand? I don’t care! While you’re raking over old scores, I’m scared my friend is so tired battling his demons alone that he’s dug a hole, crawled in and pulled the earth back on top of him.

  “Don’t you see why he came here? To say goodbye. Except for your grandfather’s funeral he hadn’t seen any of you in years. Whatever caused that rift, he wanted one last chance to heal it. And you took him for lunch. And hey, you gave him a lift back to the station, so that’s your conscience clear! Simon, if the reason I can’t find your brother is that he’s slit his wrists in a cheap hotel somewhere, because he tried to tell you how desperate he was and you weren’t listening, however little he meant to you you’re going to find that hard to live with.”

  She snatched her bag and headed for the door. Her trip had told her nothing, except perhaps why. Perhaps she had no right to be angry. Families do drift apart: she had no way of knowing who was to blame, or if Daniel could have resolved matters if he’d tried harder or sooner. In any event, it wasn’t his family who let him down because he had no reason to think he could rely on them. That was her job, and her fault.

  She was halfway through the door, drawing startled glances from the front office, when Simon Hood stood up behind his desk and said, just loud enough to reach her: “You’re right, Mrs Farrell. My family has treated Daniel badly. You want to know why? Because it would have been better all round if he’d never been born.”

  8

  “She wanted a daughter,” said Brodie. Her voice was dull and empty. “She had three sons and was desperate for a little girl. She gambled everything she had, and she lost.”

  Marta refilled the coffee-mugs but said nothing. She was almost as anxious about Brodie as Brodie was about Daniel.

  She’d got back home in the middle of the evening. The moment Marta saw her face she evicted the pupil from her piano with the promise of a free lesson next week, sat her down and put on the kettle. “Tell me.”

  “It’s Daniel.”

  “Of course Daniel. What about him?”

  “I know why he lived with his grandfather.”

  Brodie’s face was the grey of old concrete. Of course she was tired, it had been a long and trying day, but it was more than that. Marta had seen her go all day, all through the night and all the next day without losing the spring in her step or the glow from her cheek. This wasn’t weariness, it was shock.

  “Yes?”

  Brodie drew a deep, unsteady breath. She hoped that telling the story would help her to understand it in a way that thinking about it non-stop for the last six hours hadn’t. “They were married at twenty. Mr and Mrs Gerry Hood: they grew up in the same street, they were childhood sweethearts. They got married, got a little house, Elaine got pregnant. She wanted a boy first and she got one – that was Simon. Next she wanted a little girl but she got James. Then she got Ben. Gerry reckoned three healthy sons were enough but Elaine had her heart set on a daughter, couldn’t accept that her family was complete without one. She threatened to leave Gerry and try with someone else – she blamed him for giving her sons. He agreed to one more try.

  “By now Elaine was in her thirties and didn’t conceive as easily as she had in her twenties. More time passed. She got all the medical advice then available – spent money they really didn’t have getting it – to no avail. Her mental condition began to deteriorate. When it seemed she’d begun an early menopause there were fears for her sanity.

  “But she wasn’t menopausal – she was pregnant. Twins this time: one of each.”

  Marta searched her eyes without finding any sign of a happy ending. “Daniel has a sister?”

  “No. It was a difficult pregnancy. In the eighth month, with the babies struggling, it was decided to induce them. Both were born alive, but Samantha died after ten days in an incubator.”

  Marta sighed. “So Elaine had another son after all.”

  “Yes,” said Brodie levelly, “and no. She blamed Daniel for the loss of her daughter. She believed Samantha would have gone to term and lived if Daniel hadn’t been in there too. She refused to have him home. Gerry’s parents took him, so Gerry could see his baby and Elaine didn’t have to. Six months on she wanted to try again. Gerry refused and she cut her wrists.

  “She recovered physically but her mental condition went steadily downhill. She’s been in and out of psychiatric units for twenty years. She was never reconciled to Daniel. If his name’s mentioned she goes into fits of rage that last days.

  “Gerry died in his mid-forties. Simon reckons it was the stress that killed him. Two years later Daniel’s grandmother died, leaving an old man to raise a little boy whose mother never acknowledged him. And I,” said Brodie, drained of emotion, “had the temerity to be offended that Daniel didn’t tell us about his family. How the hell do you tell someone all that?”

  Marta was staring into her mug. She had no idea if it was full or empty; there could have been a mouse in there and she wouldn’t have known. She’d never had children, didn’t envy those who had. Her life had been full enough in other ways. But the idea of rejecting a child made her blood run cold. Now she understood Brodie’s mood.

  “You know the saddest thing about all this?” she murmured. “A woman who wanted a daughter would have loved having Daniel.”r />
  Brodie barked a little brittle laugh. Simon’s revelations had done nothing to ease her sense of impending disaster. They cast no light on the real and immediate issue, which was where Daniel was and whether he was safe. Unless they did.

  “He hadn’t been back for years,” she gritted. “Then he turned up without warning, for no apparent reason, and caught up on everyone’s news, and then he got back on the train. But not to come home. He never meant to come home, Marta – that’s why he put the shed up for sale. He never meant to call me. The estate agent gave him my message but he has nothing left to say to me. I think he’s tying up loose ends. Saying goodbye to his family, disposing of his property, packing his traps. He’s … leaving.” Her voice was reedy with loss.

  “Leaving Dimmock?” said Marta, who wasn’t sure she understood.

  “Oh dear God, Marta,” moaned Brodie, “I hope that’s all.”

  The Polish woman followed that well enough. “Daniel? Nonsense,” she snorted indignantly. “Never. That’s a coward thing, and you say what you like about Daniel but he’s never coward.” As always when her emotions were involved her command of the English language slipped a notch. Her Ys came out as Js, her Ws as Vs, and she dealt with grammar by the simple expedient of slinging some at a sentence and seeing where it stuck.

  “But he’s hurting and it’s my fault! I let him down, and there is no one else. He has nothing left. Nothing to go on for.”

  Marta shook her head. She wore her greying hair in a tight bun that made her look like a dyspeptic stork. “You know him better than that. He’s stronger than he looks. And stubborn – oh yes. If Daniel was going to kill himself he’d have done it months ago, when his nights were full of horrors and his days were full of fear. He didn’t get through that only to slit his throat because you say harsh things to him. Your opinion means a lot to him, Brodie, but I think not that much.”

  Brodie so wanted to believe her. Uncertainty sank its claws in her. “What Simon told me alters things. We didn’t know Daniel before he was hurt, we assumed he was fine. But he wasn’t – he couldn’t have been. His childhood was a nightmare. His mother rejected him, his father died, so did his grandmother. Everyone he needed to trust abandoned him. Anybody would be damaged by that.