Parallel Life Read Free Page B

‘Stop being a martyr.’
    â€˜I can’t leave him. Anyway, there’s always the Open University, though they do seem to offer a whole bundle of Mickey Mouse subjects. But Ben needs me. He’s the one who’ll do really well at university.’
    â€˜No. I think Ben needs me .’
    â€˜You’d never get through to him. He’s closed down.’
    â€˜Like your parents?’
    Harrie nodded. ‘He works hard, never plays, talks only to me. At school, he keeps his head down and carries on with his work, gets bullied, comes home, fears doctors, dentists, fears most people. He has me and only me. And I am forbidden to discuss him.’
    â€˜And you will dedicate the rest of your life to him?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    Miriam glanced at the wall clock. It was plain that Miss Harriet Compton-Milne had set herself in reinforced concrete. A clever and capable girl, she had denied herself the chance of a future because she dared not leave her brother in the care of his own parents. ‘They’d still take you at Oxford.’
    â€˜I’m past it.’
    â€˜At twenty-one?’
    Harrie shrugged. ‘I may go yet, I suppose. But it would have to be—’
    â€˜It would have to be with Ben. You are your brother’s keeper.’
    No reply was forthcoming. No matter what, Harrie would keep the promise she had made to her brother. She was to tell ‘them’ nothing about him.
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜No comment.’
    Miriam sighed and settled back into her chair. This was promising to be a waste of tremendous talent, but the girl was fixed into her own claw setting, and the person whose talons held her there was a beloved brother. Harrie was clearly bent on hiding all that cried to be released from her troubled mind. ‘You tell me nothing,’ grumbled the therapist.
    â€˜It’s stopped raining. There’s a bit of information for you.’ Harrie rose to her feet and walked to the door. Turning, she delivered a beaming smile that almost failed to reach her eyes. ‘I’d try liquorice allsorts if I were you,’ she pronounced before leaving the room. ‘You might get somewhere with those.’
    â€˜In truth, you are not ill,’ said Miriam. ‘You have a difficult life – and that’s different.’
    Ben was wet through because of the recent downpour. He watched his sister as she descended steps cut into a hilly part of Wigan Road during the building of several terraces of Edwardian houses. She was beautiful and clever, and he was holding her back.
    â€˜You’ll catch your death,’ Harrie warned. ‘Get into the bloody car.’ She sat in the driving seat and hid her exasperation when he spread his own towel across the passenger side before climbing in. He was getting worse, and she was probably keeping pace with him. At three years of age, Harrie had fed Ben his bottle – under the watchful eye of Woebetide, of course. Even now, she remembered how he had stared at her, how he had chosen her as his sole ally before he could even sit up without cushions.
    â€˜I didn’t go,’ he said now.
    She wasn’t going to ask for a reason, as she already knew the answers. It wasn’t the pain, wasn’t the smell of mouthwash or the whirr of a drill; he didn’t like to be touched by anyone. Life, for Ben, was about not making contact. ‘You’ll have to phone and apologize.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I can’t always be there, Ben.’ Terrified eyes. If she closed her own, she could still see fear burning in his; it had burnt for many years. But, as long as he could keep Harrie with him, he could manage within certain boundaries. Was he mentally ill, and were such diseases communicable? Had her poor little brother made her sick?
    â€˜What did your shrink have to say for herself?’
    â€˜Nothing much. Too interested in jelly babies and a calm atmosphere.’ She