Liars All by Jo Bannister Page B

lights of Crawley. They introduced themselves. The woman’s name was Hester Dale. Brodie said, ‘Are you with a patient here as well?’
    â€˜My mother. I like to stop in on the chapel when I’ve been to see her. Only a couple of minutes, sometimes. It reminds me there’s someone looking after both of us.’ Again, the embarrassed little smile. So she’d been in England long enough to know that here, while it was all right to worship anything, or nothing, it was considered faintly impolite to talk about it.
    â€˜Is she getting better?’
    Hester shook her head. She was rather older than Brodie: mid-forties, perhaps. ‘She isn’t going to. Her heart’s very weak now. You try not to give up, but…’ She sighed. ‘She is nearly eighty. The time comes you have to accept it gracefully.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Brodie softly. ‘Yes, I think it does.’
    Hester was watching her with compassion through the steam off the coffee cups. ‘You said, your baby?’
    â€˜Jonathan. He has a brain tumour. I was taking him to a clinic in Switzerland. He had a seizure on the way to the airport, that’s how we ended up here. Tomorrow I’ll take him home. And start working on the graceful acceptance.’

    â€˜It must be so much harder when it’s a child.’
    â€˜Everyone assumes that,’ said Brodie. ‘And maybe it is so. But why? I haven’t had him a fraction of the time you’ve had your mother. There’s no one depending on him, the way they would if he was the father of a young family. There’s really not that much invested in him. And yet…’
    â€˜He’s your baby,’ Hester said simply. ‘Every cell in your body is programmed to believe he’s the most important thing in the universe. If it wasn’t, no one would ever raise a child. They’re a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, and sometimes not much reward. We have to believe at a genetic level that they’re worth it.’
    Brodie found herself thinking about Margaret Carson. About the baby that had been the centre of her world. About how her hormones had insisted he was worth any effort, any sacrifice, to protect and nurture. And how history had proved she should have drowned him in the bath.
    â€˜I just feel so angry , all the time,’ she whispered.
    â€˜Of course you do,’ murmured Hester Dale. ‘It isn’t fair. It isn’t reasonable.’
    Brodie had been wrong about one thing: she was glad of some company. And Hester was easy to be with – a quiet, gentle, unassuming woman who had mastered the knack of being there without invading other people’s space.
    Brodie said, ‘Back there, at the chapel. How did you know I needed someone to talk to?’
    Hester’s smile reminded her of Daniel’s. ‘Most people who go into a hospital chapel are having a hard time. They don’t all want to talk. But it doesn’t do any harm to ask.’

    Brodie was taken aback. ‘You’ve done this before?’
    â€˜Yes. Quite often.’ That trace of wryness again. ‘It’s something we do. In a prayer group I belong to. We keep an eye open for people who might need a friendly word. And we really don’t mind if they don’t.’
    Automatically, Brodie gave a disparaging sniff. ‘I haven’t a lot of time for religion.’
    â€˜That’s all right. There are people who don’t believe in gravity. That doesn’t mean their apples fly upwards when they drop them.’
    Brodie laughed out loud. ‘Just then, you sounded exactly like a friend of mine!’
    â€˜Is she a God-botherer too?’
    â€˜No. Exactly the opposite. And it’s a he. And he has this way of…surprising you with the things he says. The way he thinks.’
    Hester appeared to give that some thought. Then she said, ‘Can I risk surprising you again?’
    Deacon did what