Parallel Lives

When psychotherapist Marjorie Nielson unexpectedly dies, she leaves behind not only the intimate details of her clients’ lives, nestling cheek by jowl in the cabinet in her office, but also the mystery of her own life and death.

Her funeral brings together three of her clients, unknown to one another but united by the indignation of suddenly being deserted and by the shock of realising how little they knew about the woman who shared their intimate secrets.

Toby Browning, Perdita Landberg and Peter Harrington, their days darkened in different ways by forces they could not understand.

In the quest to find out about his lost therapist, Toby Browning is forced to confront his own past and to discover the shocking truth about Marjorie Nielson. Along the way he is compelled to embrace, for the first time, the lives of others. What is it that Toby cannot face, that so disables Major Harrington and causes Perdita Landberg to doubt herself so much?

And who, or what, killed Marjorie Nielson?

The events that lie inside each of these people, unconsciously corroding them, are eventually brought to the surface. And the mystery of Marjorie Nielson, catalyst to their souls, is finally uncovered as her clients become detectives to her history and their own demons.

How these three individuals learn to see is at the root of Parallel Lives. It is a story of how apparently ordinary events can cripple the unwary and how major trauma can reverberate down the years.

How much do we really know about each other? Do our lives really touch, or are we happy to lead lives in parallel, like bodies in a graveyard?

John reading from Parallel Lives.

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