Free The Depths of Solitude by Jo Bannister

I know. He’s never had many friends and I suppose it’s something you tend not to do on your own.”
    “Well, he has friends now,” Brodie said tartly, “and we’re worried about him. What he’s been through this last year, God knows what’s going on in his mind. But he shouldn’t be dealing with it alone.”
    Simon looked unsure. “Losing his job?”
    Brodie felt her jaw drop and was powerless to stop it. “You don’t know!”
    “Know what?”
    She was having trouble stringing the words together. “He didn’t lose his job, he left it. And you don’t know why.”

    Simon Hood was becoming irritated. “All right then – why?”
    She could explain in a few words or half a day but nothing in between. Or she could not explain at all. If Daniel had wanted his family to know he’d have told them. But Brodie itched to shake Simon Hood’s complacency. “He almost died. Someone thought he was involved in something he wasn’t and brutalised him because of it. His body’s a mass of scars, and I think his mind must be too. Mr Hood – what kind of a family are you that you didn’t know this?”
    She’d succeeded in shocking him. He shook his head, little side to side movements she thought he was unaware of. His eyes were appalled. “I didn’t know. He never said.”
    “Did you ask why he wasn’t teaching any more?”
    “I assumed … cutbacks …”
    “He gets panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It may pass in time. But whenever he tries to take his life back, something happens to slap him down. Now his house is for sale, and I can’t get hold of him, and he may be fine but I don’t think so. I think he’s in trouble, and if I can’t find him I can’t help him. I met him in a hospital – I don’t want to say goodbye in a morgue!”
    Simon passed a hand across his face. His voice was hollow. “What are you saying? That he’s suicidal?”
    “I never thought so, before now. But then, he never tried to disappear before. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s his privilege – but only once I’m satisfied it’s a rational decision. I have to find him. You’ve talked to him recently: did he tell you he was moving? Did he tell you where?”
    In an unconscious echo of his brother, Simon thought so hard it twisted up his face. Before, he’d dismissed Brodie’s
concerns as trivial. Now he was worried too. But it didn’t help if there was nothing to remember. He ran his hand distractedly through his hair. “No.”
    “So what did you talk about?”
    “He just said it had been a while, he wanted to know how everyone was. He asked after my children, and James’s children, and Ben’s job, and our mother. I told him. We had lunch. We said we shouldn’t leave it so long next time and I dropped him at the station. That’s about it.”
    Brodie was watching him carefully. “So long as what?”
    “Sorry?”
    “When did you see him last?”
    “A couple of years ago.”
    “A couple of years? ” The gears of her mind meshed. “At your grandfather’s funeral.”
    “Yes.”
    Her breath hissed through tight lips. “And how long since you went to any trouble to see him?”
    Simon might have been unsettled by her visit, but not enough to let that pass. His tone hardened. “Mrs Farrell, I’m not sure what gives you the right to criticise my family. No, we’re not close. But it’s none of your business.”
    “It’s my business,” she snapped back, “because if I didn’t make it my business Daniel would have no one in the world to confide in, to look out for him, to know or care if he’s facing meltdown. I was amazed when I found he had family he’d never mentioned, but I’m not now. Now I wonder why he thought it was worth the train-fare to come and see you at all.”
    Startled by her anger, Simon struggled to defend himself. “You don’t understand. There are reasons –”
    “I don’t care about your reasons!” yelled Brodie. “I don’t care who got the best trainers and