Free The Carrier by Sophie Hannah

what they think of him to his face apart from you.’
    Simon cleared his throat. ‘How do you know I’ve done it?’
    ‘Dad talks about you a lot,’ said Regan. ‘Mainly to Mum, but also to me, sometimes. He always says the same thing: that he’s only ever been loyal and supportive and encouraging to you. That you throw it back in his face every day, betraying and insulting him whenever you can.’
    ‘That’s not how it is. Or how it’s ever been,’ Simon said woodenly. Charlie wanted to help him, but she could hardly advise on how best to conduct the conversation while it was still in progress, and once it was over it would be too late. He needed to decide: either not to engage at all, or to immerse himself wholeheartedly and in the manner of a human being.
    ‘He doesn’t understand why you’re so ungrateful,’ Regan said. ‘He thinks he couldn’t possibly have been a more nurturing, fairer boss.’
    ‘He’s lying.’
    ‘No,’ Regan said vehemently. ‘It’s what he believes. He also believes he couldn’t have been a better father to me. Want to hear what his idea of good fathering involved?’
    ‘No.’ Simon’s voice was uneven. ‘I want you to leave and not come back.’
    Charlie watched the colour drain from Regan’s face. ‘Simon, don’t be a twat,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t worry, Charlie. I’m not going to fall to pieces. One good thing about being Giles Proust’s daughter is that, when someone
else
savages me, it has next to no effect. It seems so . . . watered down.’
    ‘He doesn’t mean to be so . . .’ Nasty wasn’t the right word, not when Simon was frozen solid with shock and embarrassment. There was no right word.
    ‘I meant what I said before,’ Charlie told Regan. ‘I’d be suspicious of any shrink who thinks that changing your name every time you reach a psychological milestone is a good idea. If you call yourself something stupid for no other reason than to spite your dad, he’s winning.’
    Looking at Simon but speaking mainly to her own ego, she added, ‘I
do
know a bit about this kind of thing. I’m part of a regional suicide prevention forum. I talk to a lot of counsellors and therapists.’ Charlie remembered too late that many of these people had, at one time or another, stressed the importance of never uttering the word ‘suicide’, not unless an at-risk nominal said it first. The word ‘nominal’ was overused in the suicide prevention literature that Charlie frequently had to plough through. It meant ‘person’.
    To Regan she said, ‘I understand that you admire Simon because he stands up to Proust, but what do you want from him, other than to tell him that?’
    ‘Only to talk. About what we’ve both been through, if that doesn’t sound too dramatic.’ She made it sound like the humblest request in the world. Poor woman. She wasn’t to know that Simon would rather hand over all of his vital organs and his much-loved and much-Sellotaped copy of
Moby-Dick
than admit to a stranger that he had ‘been through’ anything.
    ‘I’m still at the stage where I need to prove to myself every day that I’m not an evil defector,’ Regan said. ‘It would really help me to hear you describe what working with my dad is like – both of you. Maybe it would help you too. We’ve all been bullied by the same bully, right? For years.’
    ‘I don’t mind swapping Proust horror stories,’ said Charlie, wondering if her willingness would make any difference to Simon. It might be fun, she thought, though she knew Regan was seeking a far less frivolous commodity: confirmation of the most important truth in her universe.
    ‘It’s not happening,’ Simon said. ‘You’ve got twenty seconds to get out.’
    To Charlie’s surprise, Regan nodded. ‘That’s the reaction I was expecting,’ she said. ‘If you change your mind, you can contact me at work: Focus Reprographics in Rawndesley.’
    ‘He won’t change his mind,’ Charlie told her.
    ‘He might once