Flawed (12 page)

Marianne Selkirk was waiting with coffee and homemade buns when Daniel arrived at the big house on River Drive at seven o'clock. She showed him into the sitting room. There was no sign of her husband.

‘This is very good of you, Mr Hood,’ said Noah's mother. ‘I'm afraid I rather hijacked you this morning. We still have to come to a proper arrangement.’ She meant talk about his fees.

Daniel shook his head. ‘This one's on me. If you want to do it again, I can quote you some figures. I'm not expensive. I love maths and I love teaching. Events have conspired to keep me from doing it at the moment but I hope to get back to it. In the meantime, I'm glad of the chance to keep my hand in. And please, call me Daniel.’

She did the bird-like tip of the head again. ‘Not Dan?’

He shrugged, self-conscious. ‘No one's ever thought I
looked
like a Dan. All the others are six feet tall with Army boots and tattoos.’

She laughed, a light sound like the tinkling of little silver bells. ‘Danny, then.’

Daniel restrained himself. ‘Do you know what it was that set Napoleon on the path of world domination? It was people calling him Nappy.’

Half-hidden behind a blueberry muffin, Noah was starting to relax. His nerves had been screwed as tight as wire when Daniel arrived. But these easy, friendly exchanges were reassuring him. Daniel thought he'd been dreading this all day, and now he was beginning to enjoy it.

‘Did you mind?’ asked Daniel when they were alone. ‘Being button-holed outside the junk shop? If you did, if you want me to mind my own business, I will. But I thought I saw a chance to help so I went for it.
Did
you mind?’

Noah had closed the study door as soon as they'd gone in, shutting out the rest of the house. It was his father's study: the boy had permission to use it for serious purposes only. And you can't get more serious than doing extra maths on your own time.

‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘I did at first. I thought you were going to get me into trouble.’

‘That's the last thing I want,’ Daniel said quietly.

‘I know. I figured it out. You made friends with my mother so you could talk to her without it seeming like it came from me.’

Daniel nodded, impressed. ‘That's pretty sophisticated thinking for a twelve-year-old.’

Noah gave a solemn smile. ‘My dad says I'm only twelve on the outside.’

Daniel laughed. ‘Do you want to know something? I'm
still
twelve on the inside.’

He wanted to ask about the bruises but knew it was the last thing he must mention, that there was no surer way of making the boy clam up and never trust him again. ‘Is your dad still working?’

‘A client needed him.’ The reply was at once so grown-up and so wistful that Daniel felt the words in his heart.

‘I suppose it goes with the job,’ he said. ‘Clients who
don't
need their solicitor won't pay many bills.’

This was not a stupid boy. He looked up from the desk, his eyes both surprised and wary. ‘How do you know he's a solicitor?’

‘Didn't you tell me?’ would be the easy way out, for someone who didn't mind bending the truth. ‘My friend – the one I work for – knows him. She was married to a solicitor.’

Noah's brown eyes flared with concern. ‘Were you talking about me?’

‘No,’ Daniel said immediately. ‘We saw you in the cafe. Brodie said she knew your father, slightly. I said I'd taught you in a class once. That's all.’

Noah believed him. The habit of honesty hung about him like the smell of old books, worthy if a little fusty. ‘OK.’

Daniel had brought some books with him, piled them on the desk. ‘What does your mother do?’

‘She makes money.’ When Daniel laughed the boy looked taken aback. For a bright child he hadn't much sense of humour. ‘No, really. For a charity. African Sunrise. It's her job
to raise lots of money for them so that they can give it out where it's needed. She's very good at it. Her bosses say she saves a million lives every year. Imagine that. Doctors save a patient and everyone's impressed. Firemen save a family and they're heroes. But my mum saves a million lives every year, by raising money.’

‘You must be very proud of her,’ said Daniel.

‘Oh yes,’ said Noah enthusiastically. Then his face fell. ‘Only…’

Daniel waited a moment before prompting him. ‘Only?’

‘I wish she was home more. I know what she does is important. I know people would die if she stopped doing it. But it takes a lot of time, and when she gets home she's tired. I wish…’ He let the sentence peter out as if embarrassed to finish it.

Daniel said quietly, ‘What do you wish, Noah?’

There was a lot of guilt and a note of defiance in the boy's voice. ‘I wish she'd save half a million people a year and spend more time with me!’

Daniel's heart gave a little twist within him. He nodded sympathetically. ‘I bet you do. Noah, it's all right to feel like that. She's your mum: of course you want her here. And I'd bet every penny I own – which, admittedly, wouldn't take you much further than Bognor – that she'd rather be here than working. That if it came to a straight choice between those million people and you, a lot of people would be in an awful lot of trouble.

‘But we all end up making compromises. A million people in Africa with not enough to eat
do
matter, and people like your mum give them the hope of a better future. She doesn't want to let them down. So she tries to do both – to be an
effective fundraiser
and
an ace mum. I don't suppose she manages to do both all the time. Which of us could?’

Noah cast him a grateful look. It wasn't that he was being told anything he hadn't heard before. It was that Daniel understood. Understood and didn't judge: neither him nor his mother.

‘At least your dad works in Dimmock,’ said Daniel casually. ‘Maybe you see more of him than some kids do.’

‘Mm,’ said Noah pensively.

‘Or does he work late a lot and come home tired too?’

‘It works both ways,’ the boy said honestly. ‘Sometimes he's home when other fathers are working. If my mother's up in town he tries to work from home.’

‘That's nice,’ said Daniel. ‘Isn't it?’

‘He can be pretty grumpy when he's working,’ admitted Noah.

Daniel nodded and kept his tone light. They were getting close to the heart of the problem and he didn't want to scare the boy off by pouncing. ‘Lots of people are. They don't mean to be. They get tired and frustrated, then they snap at the person closest to them. In an office that's a colleague, at home it's their family.’

‘I don't mind,’ said Noah stoutly. ‘He does lots for me too.’

‘I'm sure he does. What do you like doing together?’

But Noah couldn't think of anything. ‘Whatever he wants to, really.’

Daniel felt he'd pushed far enough. He opened a book. ‘Well, today you get to choose what we do. But what I'm really
good
at – and I may have mentioned this – is anything to do with space.’

*  *  *

Brodie tried Daniel's number but there was no reply. She gritted her teeth. Whatever his personal inclination, now he was working for her he was going to have to carry a mobile phone. She waited for the tone to leave a message but then couldn't think what to say. So she rang off.

She might have called Deacon then. After all, it was more his business than Daniel's. But she didn't want an interrogation and she didn't want an argument, and he'd already made it pretty clear that this scrap of life within her provoked about as much paternal feeling in him as a house-brick.

So when Paddy was settled for the night – at least ostensibly settled, in fact reading a book about monster trucks – she went upstairs and tapped on Marta's door. ‘Fancy coming down for a coffee?’

She struck lucky. In spite of being a tall and bony Polish piano teacher in her mid-fifties with a hit-and-miss approach to the English language, Marta Szarabeijka could not be counted on to be at home on a Saturday night. She had a long-term, casual, undemanding but mutually satisfying relationship with a jazz trumpeter and corner-shop keeper called Duncan in Littlehampton, and together they made music that – if not always sweet – was reliably loud.

Tonight Duncan must have had other plans, because Marta answered the door in her dressing-gown, her hair turbaned in a towel and nothing on her feet. Five minutes later she was folded into Brodie's armchair like a stork sitting on a nest, drying her long grey hair.

‘So what's the problem?’ she asked, the accent thick in her mouth warring for
Lebensraum
with Brodie's gingerbread.

Brodie shook her head decisively. ‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Marta, with the air of someone who'd been here before. ‘You just couldn't do without my company a minute longer.’

Brodie smiled slowly. ‘Something like that.’

‘Come on.’ The older woman helped herself to more gingerbread. ‘Tell your Aunty Marta.’

They'd known one another for three years, since Brodie bought the flat under Marta's in the big Victorian house on Chiffney Road. It was not, on the face of it, a friendship made in heaven. They were of different generations, different backgrounds. One had a young child, the other had never wanted children. One needed her home as a quiet retreat, the other gave lessons to some of England's least talented pianists. Neither woman was particularly good at making friends, and for the same reason: neither had any reserves of tolerance.

Yet, unpredictably, they'd clicked. As a good-looking woman Brodie had always had more male admirers than women friends: for her it was a new and invigorating experience. And Marta found she enjoyed being a substitute granny to Paddy. She didn't mind children as long as she could give them back when she'd had enough of them.

There are things women say to their women friends that they couldn't say even to close family. Brodie said quietly, ‘I think there's something wrong.’

Fertile, sterile, empty-nester or cover-girl for the contraceptives industry, it doesn't matter. Some things are built in at a genetic level. When a woman with a bump out front says that, any other woman knows instantly what's on her mind. Marta put her cup down and held Brodie's eyes with her own. ‘With the baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Brodie shook her head. ‘No reason. Just a feeling.’

‘They said something at the hospital?’

‘Not a thing. All the tests came back fine.’

‘So…what? You think the tests were wrong? You think something's gone wrong since?’

‘I suppose not.’ But her eyes were clouded, her voice doubtful. ‘Does everything show up on the tests?’

Marta raised an angular eyebrow. ‘You're asking me? What I know about babies is they're noisy at one end and messy at the other. But maybe there wouldn't be much point doing all those tests if they missed things like the baby has two heads!’

A shade uneasily, Brodie chuckled. ‘I think even I'd have seen two heads on the ultrasound.’

She was making a joke of it but Marta knew it wasn't funny. Not to Brodie, not right now. ‘But something has you worried. You think maybe it's just a phase of the pregnancy, like morning sickness? That it's hormones?’

‘Could be,’ allowed Brodie. ‘But I didn't feel…’

‘…This way with Paddy,’ finished Marta, her voice a mocking sing-song as she picked up her coffee again. ‘Brodie, how many times you got to be told? You're older now, and you're on your own. You got no one to share the responsibility with. Naturally you worry more.’

Brodie was regarding her with a mixture of irony and affection. ‘No, don't spare my feelings,’ she murmured, ‘tell it like it is.’

Marta snorted a laugh into her cup. ‘You're waiting for me to feel sorry for you, you gonna wait a while. You could have
had Jack – you could have married him if you'd wanted. You could have had someone else. You're doing this alone because this is what you chose.’

‘I didn't choose to split with Jack,’ objected Brodie.

‘You chose your independence, which comes to the same thing. You could have him back tomorrow. You know that. You go to him and say, “I'm scared about the future, I need help raising this child, will you marry me?” and you and me both know he would. Are you going to?’

‘No,’ said Brodie in a low voice.

‘Of course no,’ nodded Marta. ‘Nobody thought yes. Not me, not Jack. But there's a price to pay for independence: it's called Loneliness. I don't think there's anything wrong with your baby. I think you're just feeling lonely.’

Brodie would have walked barefoot over hot coals rather than admit it. ‘I don't think so!’

Marta nodded, complacently spraying crumbs. ‘Of course lonely. Everyone feels lonely sometimes. The only difference between single people and married people is single people got the time to think how they feel. All you need, girl, is a good night out.’

‘Oh sure,’ growled Brodie. ‘Let's fix a date. About six months from now, when I can get back into any dress I'd be seen dead in.’

‘You look fine. And you don't need to get rendered to have a good night out.’ She meant plastered. ‘You and me've had some damn good nights when neither of us could
afford
to get rendered. What about it? Ask Daniel to babysit one night and you and me'll go paint the town.’

It was a tempting offer. And maybe Marta was right.
Maybe she was doing too much navel-gazing. ‘Red,’ she added absently.

‘What?’

‘We could paint the town red.’

Marta looked puzzled. ‘Why would we do that? I don't
really
mean we should paint anything. I mean, we should hang out in bars and flutter our eyelashes a lot.’

Brodie laughed. She really
had
had some good nights out with Marta, mainly because the woman was incapable of being embarrassed. And there was this to be said for it. However unlikely it was that a pregnant woman in a little black sack was going to pull, at least she wouldn't suffer the indignity of having all the talent in the place cluster around her friend. Probably not, anyway.

She grinned. ‘You could try your luck as a Pole dancer.’

On Monday morning Charlie Voss was at the office before eight. He still found Detective Inspector Hyde waiting for him. It wasn't an entirely new experience: when there was a push on Deacon often looked as if he'd slept at his desk. At least Alix Hyde looked as though she'd been home for a shower.