Flawed by Jo Bannister

patience, and ticked the little boxes and sat quietly through the meetings, and knew that his time would come.
    It came when Brodie had an ante-natal appointment at Dimmock General at ten o'clock one Friday morning in February. She considered leaving the office shut until she could get there. But Daniel's expression said that, if she did that, she could open it on her own.
    ‘What do you think?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Will you be able to manage?’
    ‘Gee, Brodie, I don't know,’ he replied. ‘What if someone comes in? I might have to talk to them.’
    She knew he was teasing, she even knew that she'd given him good reason, but to Brodie this was no laughing matter. This was her business, that she'd built from nothing against heavy odds and whose continued success depended absolutely on good judgement. Daniel was a good man but she wasn't sure he always showed good judgement. Of course, who did? And she only had two choices: entrust it to Daniel or throw it to the wolves.
    ‘I know I'm being stupid,’ she admitted. ‘But I wasn't this nervous when I lost my virginity.’
    ‘Well, if you keep lurking in the background I'll never get the chance to lose mine,’ said Daniel firmly. ‘Plus, you need to go to the clinic. I can run your business for you. What I can't do is deliver your baby.’
    She chuckled at that. ‘All right, I'll go. But…’
    ‘No buts.’
    ‘If someone asks…’ ‘If someone asks me a question I can't answer, I'll take his number and promise to get back to him. Then I'll write the question down, taking great care over spelling and punctuation, and when you've decided what we should do I'll call him back
and then I'll tick it off.
All right? Go. Keep your appointment. Lie back and think of England.’
    ‘If…’
    ‘Go!’
    So Friday morning came round, and Daniel opened the office and opened the post, and did some filing, and phoned some dealers in case anyone had something Brodie was looking for; and by then it was eleven o'clock and still there were no hordes of frustrated searchers with bulging wallets beating a path to his door. He sighed and made himself some coffee. It didn't look as though he was going to get the chance to fulfil Brodie's worst fears after all.
    He never quite knew what made him go to the door just then. There was a knocker and a bell, but neither made a sound; and the burgundy velvet curtain in the window that stopped the curious looking in stopped him looking out. But he knew there was someone there. He waited for a minute, expecting them to get up the courage to ring. When they didn't he waited another minute, wondering what he shoulddo. Perhaps nothing: when they were ready to see him they'd let him know. Brodie had warned him about twitchers -people so nervous about whatever brought them to her that they would ring the bell and run away, or phone her three or four times before managing to say a word. It wasn't a routine service she offered, and people hesitated to put themselves in her hands.
    It may have been intuition, it may only have been eagerness to see his first client, but after five minutes, with his coffee going cold and still the sensation of someone waiting just a few feet away, Daniel got up from the desk and opened the door.
    At first he thought he'd been wrong and there was no one there. Then he looked further down and saw it was a short person. Not just short but shorter than him. It was in fact a child.
    ‘Hello,’ he said.
    It was a boy of perhaps twelve years old, in the grey and red uniform of Dimmock High School, still waiting for his pubescent growth spurt and the deepening of the voice that would come with it. ‘Hello,’ he said back, warily.
    ‘I wasn't sure if I heard anyone or not,’ said Daniel.
    ‘I didn't knock,’ said the boy quickly, as if he'd been accused of something.
    ‘OK.’ But Daniel didn't go back inside and close the door. He stood on the step, hunched against the cold, looking up and down Shack Lane as if there