Shadow in the North

Chapter One - What is Real and What is Not

Isabel Darrow sat across from Dr Lyndhurst, watching him as he stared back at her. He waited for her to speak - as was his wont - but she seldom uttered a word. She did not like to speak of her feelings; she had no wish to dwell on them, let alone share them with another, and yet she could not but ruminate on all that she had seen and felt; all that she had lost and failed. The thoughts filled her mind until she felt she did not truly know herself. Her head felt heavy and fuggy, her limbs numb and cumbersome, despite her compact, lithe frame, which combined a wily mix of strength and agility for one so small as she.

She had kept to her usual appointment - a Thursday afternoon - as she had for the past four months, and still she did not speak. Dr Lyndhurst sighed, and crossed one long leg over the other, his brow tugging downwards into a contemplative frown.

'Isabel? We have only another twenty minutes, and you are yet to speak more than a dozen words to me.'

'What do you wish me to say?' asked she, her expression clearing; her eyes shining with the hint of a sardonic smile. The doctor could not help but smile at her in return. She was a pretty thing, he thought; one who would be full of life and laughter if given half the chance, but she had never had such a chance - he knew that from her notes. He sighed and quirked his eyebrows in challenge.

'Is it not what I wish to discuss which is important, but what you should like to talk of.' She scowled at him; she did not wish to share her inner thoughts. Biting his lip to mask his frustration, Dr Lyndhurst cast his eyes over the blank page in his notebook. He could almost laugh at the shameful waste of paper. Every week he would write her name in the top right-hand corner of the page, date it, and wait expectantly for something to record in ink, but she offered nothing; she was caged and impenetrable. Of course, he had notes on her past; on what had happened earlier that year - the army had provided those - and he had a crude history of sorts, which told him of her troubled early years. From these papers - written by another's hand - full of another's suppositions and incites - he could infer a certain malady; a weakness of the mind, but how to heal that weakness; how it would show itself - that, he could not predict or suppose.

'Are you happy, Isabel?'

'Happy!' cried she; her tone incredulous. 'Why ever should I be happy?'

'You are alive; is that not something to be grateful for?' came his passive reply. Her lip curled and she shook her head a fraction. He could almost say that she was laughing at him, but he knew her not to laugh; he knew her to feel no warm feelings or moments of light relief, for surely, she would speak if she did. The warmth within her would be enough to burn through her icy cage and words would slip out; answers and secrets trickling from her like droplets of melting snow.

'Grateful, indeed -' she mused under her own breath, but Dr Lyndhurst's ears were attuned to such low-spoken admissions, and he had his first honest reply in some sixteen weeks' of meetings.

'You are not glad to be alive? To have been able to return home? Surely you feel the privilege, where others close to you did not?' He was trying to provoke her, for now he had found her weakness; a crack in her façade.

'Am I alive? Is this home?' she asked, her hazel eyes meeting his own green ones; piercing in their intent. Dr Lyndhurst shifted in his seat; his excitement rising.

'You do not call Kent "home"?' asked he, tackling the question he knew would be easy for her to answer.

'I call nowhere home. What is home? Where one rests one's head? Surely not, for the word "home" says, to me, far more than any meagre surface - soft or hard - upon which one may place their skull. It says to me a place where one belongs; where one is free to be oneself. Where one is known and knows, has ties to life and is happy to be tied. I do not call that Kent!'