The Story of Silence (Book 3)

Chapter 8

Thursday, March 9th:

'Wow, Silence, you look like you had a bad night last night! What did you do?' exclaimed Brian the moment he saw Silence walk through the door of his office. Brian, as per-usual, was sitting in Silence's seat at his desk. Brian liked Silence's office. It was strange; Brian's office looked exactly the same, just slightly more cluttered.

Silence gave him a look which told him to get out of his seat and Brian obeyed, and quickly. Sometimes Silence could give a look which made you happy he could only give a look and not speak.

'So who died?' Brian asked as he sat down on a corner of Silence's desk and fiddled with one of the desk ornaments.

Silence sat down, wrote a note and passed it to Brian. Brian read it and sucked in the side of his cheek and nodded.

'Gotcha, I'll see you at coffee break then.' With that he hopped off the corner of the desk and walked back to his own office.

Silence and Brian could, and did, get along well with each other. And they both knew that if one of them didn't want to talk, and asked them not to ask questions, then they respected that and didn't look into it any more. Today was one of those days, Silence just didn't want to talk with Brian about last night, or about Susan.

Silence had a business meeting upstairs at 9, which ended up lasting three hour so he ended up missing his cup of coffee with Brian.

At twelve he returned to his desk and sent Brian a quick message apologising for the morning's bad mood. Brian sent a reply back almost immediately telling him not to worry about it. Business proceeded at usual then until twelve-thirty, when Susan showed up.

Silence was kind of thankful that she had shown up, mainly because he didn't have her number and didn't know where she was to contact her should he need to. He felt knowing how to contact her would be a good idea, it would be useful. He wanted to be able to contact her in case she started finding out too many things. He wanted to stop her, and not knowing where she is would make that hard.

'I was looking you up yesterday,' Susan told him as they sat at the burger place they had eaten at the day before. They had finished lunch, and discussing the fine weather and a few other things about their growing up and moving off into the real world, and now the subject had turned to where Silence had wanted to go since the beginning but had been afraid of pulling up.

'A lot came up,' she continued. 'It told me everything I need to know about you, but I look up your parents, and nothing comes up. Don't you find that strange? They would have been older than you are now when they died and so lots should have come up about them. When they were born, what their names and family were. Where they used to live as kids, the names of the schools they went to, but no, all that came up is nothing. Oh, well it did come up with the day they died, but that was it!'

This was new to Silence, he had never looked up his parents, why would he? It had never occurred to him to do so, but then, why should he? There were lots of reasons why he should have looked them up. He didn't know them, well he couldn't remember knowing, all he had were what people had told him and some pictures.

His aunt, she knew his mother, but she never talked to him about her. They hadn't got on well together, that was why it had taken so long for them to find out that they were dead and for them to adopt Silence. Silence wasn't quite sure how they had heard about the news and found him. There were so many things he should ask about. So why hadn't he?

Why were you looking them up? He asked.

'A good journalist has got to know her facts! I need to know about your family to write about their deaths.'