by Gill Mather
It hit Orielle like a sledgehammer that her brothers, both of them, had made a special effort to be there and not leave her wandering about the lovely Grade 1 listed building as the crowds dispersed to their buses, taxis and lifts, and on foot to their flats and houses, to pubs and restaurants and appointments, which is what would normally have happened. Would, she wondered, her parents too spring out at any second from behind a stanchion or out of one of the new shops or coffee houses? If so, she would appreciate the gesture of a full family welcome and the support it would demonstrate but it would be too much just the same. Over the top for someone trying to get over a deep and desperate loss and keep it together. Most of the time.
But no parents materialised and Orielle breathed a sigh of relief. It would be bad enough when she actually got home without having to negotiate the emotional tightrope of a reunion at the railway station. Arriving back at this regional hub after a time away always usually caused her to experience a frisson of excitement. This city where she had grown up and felt more connection with than anywhere else in the world. This city near the border with Scotland, another country really, near to the lush and hilly Northumberland countryside, had about it to her a slight foreignness from the rest of England, a sort of mystery even though she knew it so well. Many was the time that she had stood on this platform for many seconds as the crowd milled around her with or without anyone to meet her and experienced something spiritual and basic. Once she had felt the same thing standing in a remote stone circle. She had imagined to herself that maybe the station was on an ancient lay-line, invested with mystical qualities beyond her ken, beyond anyone’s rational appreciation. But now she felt only bleakness to be here for this second Christmas back with her family since moving to Colchester and her first Christmas since losing Tristram.
But Will and Ben had made her out amongst the crowd and were hurrying towards her to take her case and hug her and tell her in as restrained a manner for them as was possible how wonderful it was to have her back. She clocked the concern in their eyes belying their boisterous facade, catching a glimpse of the same desolation she herself felt. They were her brothers, from the same mould, carrying the same genes, feeling her pain probably almost as acutely as she felt it, wishing quite likely in fact that some of it could be transferred over to themselves to bear so as to lighten her burden. They were good brothers. She felt that she should tell them what Triss had done for Will approximately a year before and would do so when she got the chance.
“How’s mum?” she said lightly having almost perfected over the last few months the veneer of normality and unconcern that she had to cloak herself with to get through daily life.
Will and Ben as one looked confused, aghast almost. There being fifteen months only between them, they looked the same age and were very much alike in appearance. At that moment she couldn't have told them apart. They were wondering how she could appear so matter-of-fact though actually her mother’s condition was of deep concern to her. Since her wonderful bank holiday weekend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Triss last May, it became obvious that her mother and father had somehow bonded deeply with Triss. On the flimsiest of bases and despite or possibly even because of the difference of opinion over religion, they had found that they felt huge affection for him. She had asked Triss if he had subliminally influenced them but he said that he hadn't. Merely his attachment to her and something about him had been enough for them. They had continued to ask questions about him but receiving only evasion and vagueness from Orielle they had nevertheless made it clear that he was the partner they would have wanted her to have in every possible way. It had merely amazed Orielle to begin with but after Triss’s illness was diagnosed she had felt incredibly comforted by her parents’ support albeit expressed from a distance. But after Triss had disappeared completely, her mother had seemingly been unable to cope at all. She had given up her small part-time job and was receiving counselling. It was for this as much as any other reason that Orielle had stayed away so far. She fully understood her mother’s position, robbed of a real prospective son-in-law whom she apparently adored, a fatherer of potential grandchildren and an affectionate and considerate lover for her daughter (something her mother had come out with on the telephone soon after the bank holiday weekend much to Orielle’s embarrassment leaving her to wonder just how much of their nocturnal activities had been as obvious to her parents as to her brothers), but she didn't want to have to be a tower of strength for someone else. She had enough trouble maintaining her own surface calm.
“She’ll probably be in bed when we get back,” said Ben looking at Will. “She gets tired these days. They wanted to form a welcoming committee but….well….she gets a bit depressed about….you know.”
“Yes,” said Orielle. “How’s dad then?”
“Bearing up,” said Will. He was looking over at a poster of a pretty girl modelling a skimpy dress but Orielle knew he wasn't seeing it. He looked so sad. His eyes dropped to the hard concrete surface of the platform and he sniffed. “We’re all so sad,” he said at last.
A natural reaction would have been for Orielle to burst into tears and her brothers looked to her to do so but she didn't. In fact she felt a little irritated that this was what they anticipated. What did they expect? She was a professional woman having to get along in a world that was still so male oriented. She was only just over half way through a training contract that she intended to complete. She had shed her tears in front of Georgie and Hugh and Amanda and she had decided at a certain point that enough was enough. She wasn't about to crack up now. If her mother saw that she was coping all right, then perhaps her mother would be able to pull herself out of her own morass. Orielle wanted no-one to see that she had started to live two lives. The surface life of a legal professional was what she portrayed. Indeed her loss had made it possible for her to start to be a tough advocate and certainly not to let the police and others run rings around her. If deep inside there remained the old, sweet, soft Orielle, she didn't particularly want people to see it any more and she was now able to hide it very well. Later she might in her old room which she had last occupied with Triss give way to her anguish, but even then she wouldn't shed tears. She had learned to cry without tears and without noisy sobs. The dry, silent shrieking of her heart and soul to the heavens for hours on end provided a release as complete as any overt and obvious weeping and wailing.
“Let’s go home anyway,” she said.
AS PREDICTED Orielle’s mother was in bed. Her father stood subdued in the hallway of their home waiting for Orielle. He looked smaller than she remembered him. It was as though he had started to prepare himself to give way to the next generation, to her and Triss in fact and the children they would have. But sadly he wasn't going to get the chance. He stood there diminished, his expression full of anguish, watching his daughter who should have had her partner for life by her side on what should have been a happy homecoming.
Orielle was now finding this bare exposure of emotions more than irritating. Her brothers, now her father and no doubt soon her mother, her mother especially, making apparently no effort to hide their sorrow. Not even for her benefit. She wanted to scream that surely they could pull themselves together for just the few days that she would be here. But clearly they were just reacting to the Orielle they knew, behaving as the former Orielle, an emotional wreck in times of stress, would have expected them to behave. She felt she would have somehow during this Christmas stay to get away from this cloying grief for some of the time, perhaps look up old friends who might not know about Triss and his strange and precipitate disappearance. She would go through the old address book once she was in her room and make some calls. Whether her family thought it was showing the necessary respect or not.
So she embraced her father and felt him shudder a little but he put his head up and said words of welcome and some commiseration and they went into the kitchen where the dinner things were laid while Will and Ben took her case up to her room. Why it took two
of them made her mouth form a thin line but she said nothing. She sat down and looked around. When she and Triss had been to stay, her parents had been about to embark on a facelift for this room. They had wanted to change the tiles and the work surface and paint the doors of the units and also take down some of the wall units to give an impression of more space. From the point of view of conservation, Triss had expressed his approval of the modest improvements as opposed to a ripping out of perfectly good fixtures to be replaced by expensive new ones. Orielle saw that they had only got about half way through their planned refurbishment and it looked as though they had abandoned it for the time being and the room looked a mess with tiles removed in some places and the doors off some of the units. Yet another signal reminder of what had happened. Exasperation coursed through her pitted against her natural sympathy for her parents.
“Will mum come and eat with us?” asked Orielle as brightly as she could.
“I don't know,” said her father.
“No I doubt it,” said Will from the doorway.
Orielle got up. “Well I’ll go and see her and try to get her to come down.” But as she walked past Will he lightly took her arm.
“No don't,” he said.
“Whyever not?”
“Orie, she’s taken a sleeping pill. You’d best let her have a night’s sleep and then see her in the morning.”
“What? She’s taking sleeping pills? I don't believe it!”
“Yes. And she sometimes takes other things during the day,” said her father from his chair. Will rolled his eyes and Ben came into the kitchen too.
Orielle’s patience finally snapped.
“This is ridiculous! Don't you realise? It should be me,” she pointed for emphasis at her chest, “me who should be feeling these things and behaving like this. I don't know if I can stand it. This pace is like a morgue! If you’d wanted, all of you, to rub it in, you couldn't have done any better! How could you do this to me? I’m going up to my room.”
She walked out and up the stairs knowing what she had to do for her own sanity. In her room, resisting the temptation to stare at the spot where Triss had kneeled and kissed the floor, she pulled her `phone out and checked the trains back to London. She wasn't sure Will or Ben would help her and she therefore called a minicab. She could just about make the last train back. She hurriedly booked a seat on it and pulled back the curtain to watch and wait for the cab. When it arrived she grabbed her case, rushed downstairs ignoring shouted enquiries from the kitchen and was out of the front door and down the front garden path in seconds.
The cab let her stop off at a small shop where she bought some small bottles of wine, gin and vodka and a bottle of water. And a large box of Thornton’s chocolates to soak up some of the booze. Bugger the fact that you weren’t supposed to drink alcohol on trains. Most likely there would be no-one else on the train anyway and if a guard or ticket collector came along, she’d secrete the bottles quickly in her handbag.
Thus she spent the worst pre-Christmas period of her life. Unplanned solitary late night journeys with nothing worth having at the other end had a tendency to be surreal at best and make one feel suicidal at worst, especially when drunk on unaccustomed quantities of spirits. On arrival in London it was too late to get a train to Colchester so she booked herself into an hotel not far from the station too late realising that it hired rooms out by the hour. Her slurred speech at the desk in the foyer didn't seem to be a cause for concern. She tried to sleep. God knows she’d sunk enough booze for her anyway, but the din in the place was considerable and at one point had become overwhelming so that she had got dressed again just in case she had to make a hasty exit. And clothes might keep out some of the bed bugs. But eventually it had quietened down and she had dropped off only to be awoken far earlier than she would have chosen by her `phone alarm which didn't realise it was a Saturday on the weekend before Christmas and that although she normally went into work on Saturday mornings these days, she hadn't of course intended to do so today. The ruddy alarm went off even though she had turned the mobile itself off to avoid calls from her parents and brothers. However it gave her an idea and she called a few members of the Chambers who’d drawn short straws and were expecting to have to act as duty Solicitors over the Christmas period and said she’d take all their shifts once she got back to Colchester in a few hours. No-one tried to argue with her. They’d owe her they said. She didn't bother to tell them that it was she who would owe them to stop her from spending an alcohol sodden Christmas all on her own at home. Georgie had already flown off to one of the Gulf states to spend a week with Jack where his ship was moored up. Georgie had been monumentally excited about it as there’d be parties on board and sight-seeing and posh dinners at the captain’s table.
Orielle found her services much in demand over that Christmas and she really felt that it had saved her life. On arrival at home she had texted her brothers and told them she was home safely and not to keep trying to contact her, that she was working anyway and would probably be at the nick a lot of the time. The family must have known that they’d made a mistake since they held back showing unusual restraint for them.
On 30th December, a couple of the cousins came round. They had they said been round a few times before and found her out. Matter-of-factly they asked her round for dinner that night and said no-one would make an issue of her situation and she accepted. Clearly the Newcastle end had imparted their unfortunate unwelcome approach and misreading of the situation and the effect that it had had.
Though very like Orielle’s mother, the cousins' mother hadn't met Triss and was just normal and natural about everything as were the cousins. To be frank anyway they cared mostly about their own comings and goings and other people’s problems made almost no impact. So Orielle was able to have a satisfactory time not quite in the bosom of her family but getting in that direction. And as luck would have it, she got no calls from the station that night.
She carried on dealing with call outs and soon it was 1st January and Georgie would be back tomorrow and everything would return to something like normal. Lacking of course the one element that would have made it perfect, but far better than a collective wringing of hands and wailing up in Newcastle.
CHAPTER 23
THE NEW YEAR Orielle decided should open up new avenues and new opportunities. She started an Open University degree in criminal psychology. She devoured scientific papers and case histories, studied in detail the complicated rules of evidence, some almost incomprehensible, and criminal law. Without necessarily intending to she nonetheless started to be an expert on criminal law, rather than just a competent practitioner.
While many people felt it was a shame that her soft sweet personality seemed to have faded away to be replaced by a tough and determined single-mindedness, Hugh for one was glad to see it happening. He had worried for her before that she was simply too fragile to ever become a good criminal lawyer, or indeed a good lawyer of any kind. One needed to be a little tough to do the work and see through and deflect the crap that was thrown at one from so many directions. Police and prosecutors would simply run rings around anyone who showed weakness or lack of confidence and Judges’ put-downs could be acutely scathing. Clients would take advantage if they saw the slightest chink in a Solicitor’s armour, or they would doubt a Solicitor’s ability and competence and go elsewhere. Orielle he saw was shaping up well and although it was sad that she’d had to lose her boyfriend, he doubted she’d have made it in the criminal law if she hadn't. The worried frown which often used to crease her brow had cleared away and her expression was now assured, bold and positive, her manner authoritative.
Hugh wasn't by any means convinced about Triss’s origins from some other dimension. In fact he gave the idea almost no credence whatsoever. It was completely beyond the realms of possibility. Everything that had happened that he knew about could be explained away. Quite conceivably the apparent dematerialization of Triss in the MRI scanner might instead have been achi
eved by some sort of artifice. After Triss’s disappearance, a small media industry had grown up throwing all sorts of doubts and interpretations on what had happened. One freelance journalist trying to make a name for himself had carried out a full-blown investigation and had seemingly managed to get some of the hospital staff to say that the lights in the scanning unit had actually been off for ten to twenty seconds giving enough time for someone young and agile to have wriggled out of the scanner and make an escape, especially if he had accomplices. No staffs’ names however were given and Hugh knew quite well that journalists desperate for a story were quite ready to make things up and attribute them to “sources”. Still you couldn't rule out something like that having occurred.
Why was another matter but then on the other hand why not, especially if Triss’s brain tumour had been around for some time unrecognised. That alone could have accounted for the odd behaviour, for turning up with no background he was willing to admit to, for being prepared to be homeless until two women had taken him in, for then disappearing without apparently a trace. After all, con-men had for centuries been taking people in, preying on the vulnerable and taking advantage of them. Perhaps indeed he was some sort of savant with exceptional gifts and abilities in some areas. In fact according to Seb Ferguson he was one in a trillion. But none of it added up to actually coming from another dimension even supposing other dimensions existed at all. Hugh was a confirmed sceptic about things that could not be proved or demonstrated reasonably openly. One didn't usually say so for fear of causing offence, but he found it incredibly foolish that so many people felt able to immerse themselves in various organised religions and actually believe in the trappings of organised religion such as miracles, an after-life, the soul, God for goodness sake, that hymns and psalms and chanting and praying would make the least difference to anything, let alone the more outlandish beliefs and activities such as druids communing with and worshipping the earth, “spiritualists” who kidded people that they could hear from their deceased loved ones, faith-healing, ghosts, exorcisms, sympathetic magic, crystals, lay lines, the power of stone circles, the messages to be found in the Bible if you knew how, etc, etc. You name it. The list went on and on. They were all just made up things manufactured to give people comfort at best or gain power over people or financial gain or worse. That, had he known it, his opinions coincided in most respects with Tristram’s own expressed views would have made no difference to his disbelief about Tristram’s supposed origins.
