Read Online Requiem for a Dealer by Jo Bannister - Free Book Online

being Saturday, Brodie had brought Paddy for what Daniel had come to think of as family lunch, when he did Proper Cooking instead of getting something from the freezer. But now the food was gone the child was on the gallery, looking out to sea and pretending the wooden house was a ship. Daniel took as deep a breath as he could manage with his chest constricted and said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
    Brodie had started clearing away the pots. ‘Something urgent?’
    â€˜No, not urgent,’ he said. ‘In fact, it’s been on my mind for a while.’
    â€˜Important, then?’
    That was harder. ‘Not history-book important. Not even front page of The Sentinel important.’
    There was a but implicit in that, but she was in too much of a hurry to hear it. ‘Well, if it isn’t important and it isn’t urgent, could it wait? Paddy and me are doing the antique fair in Eastbourne this afternoon. Do you mind if I leave you the washing-up? Pop round tonight if you want a natter.’
    She had the front door open and in a moment she would call her daughter and be away. And he’d never pluck up the courage to start again, and she would never know.
    â€˜Brodie,’ he said, his voice taking on the stridency of desperation, ‘the other day. When I said I love you? I meant it. In every way.’
    She turned in the doorway with a smile as brilliant as starfire. She took a quick step back into the room and dropped a kiss on top of his yellow head. ‘Of course you did, sweetie.’ Then she was gone.

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    Daniel not only hadn’t got the response he wanted, he hadn’t even got the response he expected. It was, he conceded as he reviewed the exchange in his mind, entirely predictable that when he finally took the plunge and said that to someone he would be so cack-handed as to give the impression she was right there on the list of “Things I Love” with shaggy dogs and home cooking and a nice bottle of Chianti. When it came to the life of the heart he was a disaster area.
    He once told Brodie his whole family were emotional cripples, but that wasn’t quite it. He was not lacking in emotions. He was not without sensitivities. His feelings were, he imagined, similar to everyone else’s. It was in giving expression to them that he failed so comprehensively. You could blame lack of practice, but he was articulate enough when it came to finding words for other people’s hopes and fears. Yet when he tried to describe his own he ended up getting a motherly kiss from the woman of his desires!
    In spite of which, and curiously, he felt better for having said it. The fact that Brodie had misunderstood altered very little. Indeed, if she’d taken him up correctly she would have been embarrassed and unsure what to say next time they met. It was probably better that she hadn’t followed his meaning. There was still a degree of satisfaction in having got it out, however incoherently. When he was an old man, and still alone, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that, just once, he tried to break the mould. That he may never have won the race but he did, at least once, get as far as the starting-blocks. It took some of the burden of failure off him, left him oddly cheered.
    He was in the kitchen, washing the pots – which Brodie always left for him – when the phone rang. It was the hospital.
    They didn’t have a next-of-kin for Alison Barker, and she’d received only two visitors. One was a woman none of the staff knew or knew how to reach. The other was a young man whose contact details were on the computer and whose blood type they knew by heart.
    Alison was awake, groggy and disorientated, distressed and
confused. What she needed was someone she knew to come and sit with her and talk to her and help her to sort through the maelstrom that was her mind. ‘But we couldn’t find one,’ said