Peter James - Perfect People

He spooned more Rice Krispies into his mouth and chewed slowly, and for a moment the crunching of the cereal was the only sound in the room.

John and Naomi exchanged a glance. John was signalling, Hey, at least they’re talking, this is a breakthrough, this is progress! Some kind of progress, anyhow…

Harriet turned the page. ‘Why don’t you sleep, Luke?’

‘Coz only dead things sleep,’ he said.

This time John avoided catching Naomi’s eye. He forked a slice of mango and ate it without tasting it, his eyes now on Harriet, watching her reaction.

‘I slept last night,’ Harriet said. ‘But I don’t think I’m dead!’

‘I slept, too,’ Luke’s grandmother said. ‘But that doesn’t make me dead, darling, does it?’

Luke dug his spoon into his cereal, then said nonchalantly, ‘You will be soon, Granny.’

Naomi’s Diary

Am I wrong, making constant comparisons between L and P and Halley? My poor, darling, sweet, innocent Halley. OK, everyone knows that children say strange things, and Mum took it in good humour. But

… thank God neither she nor Harriet noticed the guinea pigs had gone. What a really observant family I come from!

Halley, my little darling, I miss you so much. This may sound crazy, but when we first went to Dr Dettore’s clinic, you know what I was hoping? That we’d get you back, but all made better. That our new baby would really be you, in a new, healthy incarnation. But there is nothing of you in Luke or Phoebe, at least, nothing that I can see. You were so gentle, so sweet, so loving. You said funny things, sometimes, but I can’t imagine, ever, you saying what Luke said to Mummy at breakfast today. I can’t imagine you ever killing anything.

You may think this sounds strange, but there are times when I really sense you around me, holding my hand, telling me not to worry. If I didn’t feel that, I really think I’d crack up. John is so much stronger than me. I wish I had the calm he has, that inner strength, that confidence about how things are going to turn out.

You were born on a Sunday and you died on a Sunday. Lots of people love Sundays, but I don’t. I feel so down, sometimes, on Sundays. I’m down today. It was such a beautiful morning, and then it was ruined by what happened to Fudge and Chocolate. Now, this afternoon, it’s raining and windy. Granny’s watching an Agatha Christie movie on television and Auntie Harriet has gone home. P is on the kitchen floor in front of me, doing a three-dimensional jigsaw, and John is playing chess with L in the living room. Four o’clock and it’s dark already. At six thirty they have evensong in the village church. Every Sunday. There are times, like now, when I feel a pull to go there. Are you pulling me?

Or am I just clutching at anything, in desperation?

John was smarting over his total annihilation at chess by his son.

Naomi said, ‘This is what you wanted, John, isn’t it? All this hot-housing you did in those months after they were born? Those hours you spent up in their room, endlessly playing them all that New Age music, all that talking to them and that tactile stuff. You wanted them to be smart, well, you’ve got what you wanted.’

It was Sunday evening and they were alone in the kitchen. Naomi’s mother, suffering a migraine, had excused herself and gone to bed early. On Sunday evenings John always made supper, mostly something light and simple, which they would eat off trays on their laps in front of the television. Tonight he was making mushroom omelettes and a Greek salad.

‘Not like this,’ he said. ‘I never intended this.’

‘You laughed at my objections at the time. Now you’re miffed because Luke beat you at chess.’

Noticing the box of guinea-pig food was on the floor, she picked it up and put it away in a cupboard.

‘Naomi, he’s three years old, for God’s sake! A lot of kids aren’t even potty trained at three! And he didn’t just beat me. He wiped the floor with me. And the speed at which he made his moves – that was awesome.’

‘A few years ago when those Rubik’s Cube things were popular, adults had big problems doing them, but small children could do them in minutes. I remember someone saying it was because no one had told them it was impossible! Do children have an aptitude for puzzles that they lose when they grow older? Chess is a kind of puzzle, at one level, right?’

Standing over the pan, he concentrated for some moments on closing up the omelette. Normally he loved the smell of grilling mushrooms, but tonight his stomach was knotted with anxiety, and he had no appetite. ‘Part of it is that kids at that age think about things less, they intellectualize about them less, they just get on and do it.’

‘Maybe the same applies to chess? Nobody told Luke it was impossible to beat you, so he did, do you think? You told me you beat your grandfather when you were seven, and he was some kind of a chess master, wasn’t he?’

‘I beat him once,’ John said. ‘And that was after months of playing him. And-’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he deliberately let me win that one time.’

He cut the omelette in two with the spatula, scooped each of the halves onto plates, removed the pan from the heat, and pulled down the hob lid of the Aga. ‘All set.’

They carried their trays into the living room; John went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of Shiraz, then they sat in silence in front of the TV while they ate. Antiques Roadshow was on, the volume low.

‘You do make the best omelettes ever,’ Naomi said, suddenly sounding cheerier. Then she added, ‘Maybe we should take the kids out more. Dr Michaelides might be right, that we’re confining them in too much of a childhood world. They enjoyed the zoo.’

‘Yep, they picked up a real love of animals from it, didn’t they?’ John retorted.

Naomi ate for some moments in silence.

‘I’m sorry, hon,’ John said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

Naomi shrugged. They watched a meek, bearded man standing in front of a tray of Victorian surgical instruments.

‘Maybe we should take them to a post-mortem,’ John said. ‘I’m sure they’d find that lot more fun than Mr Pineapple Head. Or take them to a dissection room at a medical college department of anatomy.’

‘You’re being silly.’

‘I don’t think so – that’s the problem, they might really enjoy that. I think they want to see adult things.’

‘So, you work at one of the techiest places in Britain. Why don’t you take them on a tour of Morley Park? Show them the particle accelerator, show them the cold fusion lab.’

John put his tray on the floor.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m not hungry. I can’t eat, I feel really – I don’t know – I just wonder how we’re going to cope; where we go from here.’

He stared at the television for some moments. A little old lady in a velvet hat was being told the value of a small marquetry box.

‘This is a most exquisite piece of Tunbridge Ware,’ the tweedy expert said. ‘What do you know of its history?’

‘Have you ever noticed,’ Naomi said, ‘on this programme they make a big deal about an object’s history – and its provenance? Imagine if we were on this show – what would we be able to say about Luke and Phoebe’s provenance?’

‘I think it’s more likely they’d be presenting us on the show as antiques,’ he said. ‘Relics of an extinct species. Early twenty-first-century Homo sapiens. One beautiful female, English, in mint condition. And one rather tired Swede, atrophied brain, in need of some restoration. But with a big dick. ’

Naomi giggled. Then she turned and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We will cope, we’ll find a way. We’ll make good people of them, because we are good people. You’re a good man. This whole nature-nurture thing – we will have to find ways to steer and influence them.’