Parallel Life Read Free

magnolia in here, but with a bit of maroon thrown in as some kind of blessed relief; a few French Impressionist prints on the chimney breast. Oh, bugger it . . .
    The door wouldn’t slam. It owned one of those swing-slow contraptions at the top, and Harrie gave this item a baleful glance before focusing sternly on Miriam Goldberg. ‘You should have a noisy door,’ complained the new arrival. ‘A heavy slam is probably just what the doctor ordered for cases like mine.’ The anger drifted away, because she could not be ill-behaved with so pleasant a woman.
    Miriam shuffled some papers and tried not to smile. ‘Sit down, please.’
    â€˜Have you nothing I can break?’
    â€˜Not today, no. Would you like a jelly baby?’
    .Not unless it comes with a knuckleduster or a shotgun.’
    â€˜All right.’ The doctor grinned. ‘I could buy seconds from the market and you could smash crocks later in the backyard.’ She shook the jar of sweets. ‘There are black ones. I always think black ones taste best, don’t you?’
    â€˜I’m not racist, so I’m not bothered.’ Harrie chewed a nail instead. These visits were a waste of time. She had stuff to do. Waiting at the shop were two rings with suspect settings and some new stones to be sorted. ‘Ben’s at the dentist,’ she murmured. ‘This is his first time on his own, and he’ll be terrified.’
    â€˜Where’s your mother?’
    â€˜God knows. Or perhaps the devil does. She’s having dinner and bridge tonight with some of her cronies. She can’t play bridge for toffee.’
    â€˜Try her on jelly babies.’
    Harrie flopped into the chair for clients. ‘You should see someone about your fixation with those sweets.’
    â€˜Physician heal thyself?’
    â€˜Exactly. Go on, I’ll have a yellow one.’
    While Harrie chewed, Miriam Goldberg hung on to her exasperation. ‘At eighteen,’ she began eventually, ‘your brother is old enough to cope with his own teeth.’ Why should this poor girl take all the flak? ‘And, if he can’t manage by himself, shouldn’t your mother go with him?’
    Harrie raised her shoulders. ‘I have no answer to that one.’
    The psychologist reined herself in. She was here as a professional to listen to Harrie, to help her externalize her feelings and cope with daily disaster. ‘How’s your grandmother?’
    The girl swallowed the remains of her sweet and smiled broadly. ‘Utterly and dreadfully wonderful. She got Sky Plus, so she’s happy. My grandmother is now self-crowned queen of UK Drama. She watches anything and everything, though I am slightly concerned regarding her new affiliation to the crime channels.’
    â€˜And your parents?’
    Harrie sighed. ‘What good is this doing, Doc? What am I to say? I don’t know. I don’t know how they feel about anything. Dad seldom shows emotion, because he’s too busy trying to save the world from the little people. He says it will not be a neutron bomb, but a microbe that will see us all off. And as for Mother, after so much Botox, her face shows hardly any reaction, and she was never one for words.’
    Miriam shook her head slowly. The Compton-Milnes were round the twist, and Harrie was paying the price for all of them. ‘But she’s a jeweller – she has to talk to people.’
    The young client shook her head. ‘But not to me – never in depth. Anyway, don’t make the mistake of oversimplifying the dynamics within my family. It’s easy to say that my father is a boffin, my brother a genius, my mother a fool.’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you know how long it takes to make a diamond?’
    â€˜A million years?’
    â€˜And the rest.’ Harrie picked up a pencil and twisted it in her fingers. ‘To explain humanity would take the same period of evolution,