A Death Displaced Read Free

the door and sat down. Nick envied how she never rushed about or huffed and puffed.
    ‘How have you been this week?’
    ‘Err, okay mostly.’ It was true, he’d felt good for a few days after he saw her last week.
    ‘Okay.’ She nodded gently, making it apparent she expected him to expand on his answer. If anyone else had done that, he would have been annoyed.
    ‘Well, I got a bit angry last night,’ he said. ‘I feel like I’m trying so hard to succeed at something but I don’t know what I even want to succeed at. I’ve tried out so many self-help books and other new things that surely I deserve to be happy about something . I see other people who don’t even seem to try, yet they have everything they want and they are happier than me.’
    There was no judgement here in the safe-bubble the therapist had created, which helped Nick understand himself.
    ‘You’re feeling lost?’
    ‘Yeah … I am.’ Trying to hold it in, he quietly cried. His therapist waited patiently and placed a box of tissues on the nearby desk.
    The room was too clinical; a spare office in the surgery, full of doctors’ tools and posters. It was cold and unwelcoming, but, seeing as Nick received therapy free on the NHS, he couldn’t exactly complain.
    When he’d originally been referred, he told the doctor, ‘I’ve been crying frequently, at least once a week for a long time now.’ He was glad it never led to being officially diagnosed as depressed, but he was more pleased that he was taken seriously and sent on for therapy.
     He stopped crying, realising he’d become accustomed to shedding tears in front of his counsellor. Overall, though, he became upset less frequently nowadays. It was a steady climb.
    ‘I feel a bit better now. I don’t really know what else to say about it. I’m going to see how this week goes really.’ He grabbed a tissue, dabbed his eyes.
    Having cleared some emotional baggage, his mind went on a tangent. If his therapist was closer to his age, he’d probably find her be attractive, and the session so wouldn’t work. She was nearing fifty, looked fit as a fiddle, good teeth, excellent figure, and Nick doubted her blonde hair had even thought of greying. There was a genuine aura about her; each facial expression was puppeted by real emotions, not by a need for approval. Her name was Caroline. Nicolas and Caroline Crystan … hmm …
    ‘How are things with your father?’ she asked without preamble. Nick shook away the odd thoughts.
    ‘Same as always, really; he’s not changed much for the past eight years, and it’s still awkward around him.’
    ‘Do you think he knows how awkward you feel?’
    ‘I doubt it. It’s like he’s on pause or something. It’s been so long now that I can’t imagine opening up to him.’
    ‘What if you did talk to him about it?’
    ‘I just don’t know. I don’t want to lay out my feelings if he’s never going to come out of his own little bubble. It would be even more awkward if I did.’
    She nodded and asked, ‘But is it a risk worth taking?’
    He thought about it, remembering when his dad was different: when he was chatty, smiled more, laughed more. But that was all before Nick’s mother disappeared eight years ago.
    Nick was sixteen when it happened, and his brothers only ten. Their mother simply wasn’t home when they got back from school. They waited and waited for her to return, but found out that she’d withdrawn a few thousand pounds the same day she vanished. Her car was missing too.
    As far as anyone could tell, she’d gone off and started a new life. With Lansin Island in the Celtic Sea, fifteen miles off the coast of Bude, Cornwall, it would have been easy for her to get a ferry across from Amiton, same as the tourists did. And if she had caught a ferry to Cornwall, then who knows where she went from there?
    Nick sure as hell didn’t know.
    He didn’t want to think about it anymore. All he knew was that she left with the worst possible