Peter James - Perfect People

‘Thank God,’ Naomi said.

‘The same intelligence, the same advanced looks, the same behavioural problems with all the twins – how can that be?’ John asked. ‘We only selected a specific number of options – other parents will have made different choices – some a lot more radical than ours. How can the children all be so similar?’

‘Maybe for the same reason that you all wanted one child and ended up having twins?’ the psychologist suggested, with a quizzical expression.

Naomi stared back at her. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘That perhaps Dr Dettore had an agenda of his own, is what Dr Michaelides is implying,’ John said.

Naomi nodded. ‘You know, deep down I have felt that ever since they were born.’

‘Your Dr Dettore seems to have a pretty ruthless reputation among scientists,’ Sheila Michaelides said. ‘You just have to read some of his press interviews over the years to see a man with complete tunnel vision and no regard for medical ethics, nor any of his critics.’

‘You think he used Naomi – and dozens of other mothers – as a kind of unwitting host womb for an experiment?’

‘It is a distinct possibility, I’m afraid.’

John and Naomi looked at each other, both momentarily lost for words.

‘But this shouldn’t affect your relationship with your children,’ Dr Michaelides went on. ‘Even if their genetic make-up isn’t how you ordered it, they are still your children, your flesh and blood.’

‘Where do we go from here?’ Naomi asked grimly. ‘Into some tunnel of perpetual social experiments? Are Luke and Phoebe going to become lab rats to a global bunch of shrinks and scientists?’

‘What about the whole nature versus nurture argument?’ John said. ‘Dr Dettore told us that whatever we did with the genes of our child – children – that would only ever be a small element of it. He said the major part of shaping a child would always be down to us as parents. If we love them enough and care for them enough, can’t we in time influence them and shape them? Won’t it be my wife and I who matter more to them, in the long run, than anything Dr Dettore has done?’

‘Under normal circumstances I would agree with you to a considerable extent. I talked to you last week about epistemic boundedness, the way that humans are hardwired, and the limits of normal human brainpower. But the manipulative behavioural patterns of your children suggest that normal restraints of human existence are just not there. Your children at the age of three are showing characteristics I would expect to find in adolescents five times their age.’

She twisted the cap on a bottle of mineral water and filled a glass on her desk. ‘The most important thing for any parent is to connect with their child. To establish a bond. It seems to me that’s what you don’t have and it’s what you’re seeking. Is that a fair comment?’

‘Yes,’ Naomi said. ‘Absolutely. I’m their servant, that’s all. I wash them, feed them, clean up after them. That’s all I’m able to do – and it’s all they seem to want me to do. The other day Luke cut himself – but he didn’t come to me for a cuddle, he went and showed it to Phoebe. He never thanked me when I put a plaster on it.’

‘I think it might be helpful for you to speak to some of these other parents, very definitely, if they are willing.’

‘Are there any others in England?’ Naomi asked.

‘Not that I have discovered so far. But there must be quite a lot more out there that I haven’t heard about.’

‘I’ll speak to any parent, anywhere in the world,’ Naomi said. ‘Willingly.’

The psychologist drank some water. ‘I’ll see what I can arrange – but I must warn you, don’t set your hopes too high on getting any magical answers. All the people I have spoken to tell me the parents are in the same situation as yourselves.’

‘Have any of these children killed their pets, like Luke and Phoebe did?’ John asked.

‘I haven’t had in-depth discussions with many of them,’ she said. ‘But a pair of twins in La Jolla, Southern California, strangled the family’s pet spaniel after their father had complained about its incessant barking. They thought their father would be pleased that they had solved a problem for him. A pair of twins in Krefeld in Germany cut the throat of their family cat after their mother had screamed when it brought a mouse into the kitchen. I’m afraid it seems that the inability to distinguish between what is alive and dead may be a common trait. It’s not that they are wicked in any sense – more that they have a wholly different value system. What you and I think is normal, they can’t see.’

‘But we must be able to educate them, surely?’ Naomi said. ‘There must be ways we can deal with them as parents. That’s what you have to show us.’

‘I think it would be very helpful to speak with other parents,’ John said. ‘We should take her offer up, hon. I think we should talk to as many as possible.’

‘You obviously have happy, successful children, Dr Michaelides,’ Naomi said. ‘You probably can’t appreciate how – so – so bloody inadequate. That’s what I feel. So empty. It’s like I’m just some discarded container they hitched a ride in. I want the babies I gave birth to back, Dr Michaelides, that’s what I want. I want my children back, not as freaks, but as children. That’s what I want from you.’

The psychologist smiled at her sympathetically. ‘I understand; it’s what any mother would want. But I don’t know that I can give you that. Before you can move forward in your relationship with Luke and Phoebe, your goals are going to have to change. We’re going to have to do some redefining.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In the first instance, it might help for you to stop thinking of them so much as children, and more as people. You hired a children’s entertainer for their birthday party, right?’ She stared at them.

‘You think that was a mistake?’ John asked.

‘I think you are going to have to change your mindsets totally. If you want to connect to them, it may be that you’ve got to start treating them as if they are teenagers, because that’s how old they are intellectually.’

‘What about their childhood?’ Naomi said. ‘And what teenager is going to be interested in them? This is just – I mean-’ She shook her head in despair. ‘OK, I know there have been child prodigies who have gone to university as young as twelve, but you read about them years later, and they’re usually burnt out by thirty. What you are telling us is that we should tear up the rule books.’

‘Mrs Klaesson,’ the psychologist said, gently but insistently, ‘there are no rule books to tear up. I’m afraid you and your husband threw them all out of the window the day you went to Dr Dettore.’

Staring through the car windscreen at the sodden countryside, Naomi thought, glumly, January. Those flat weeks after the Christmas decorations had come down, when all the joy seemed to have gone from winter, and you still had February ahead of you, and much of March before the weather started to relent.

Two o’clock; already the light was starting to fade. In a couple hours of it would be almost dark. As John swung into their drive, the Saab splashed through a deep puddle and water burst over the windscreen. The wipers clouted it away. Naomi stared at the stark, bare hedgerows. A hen pheasant scuttled forlornly along the grass verge, as if it was a toy with a battery that was running down.

The cattle grid clattered, then the tyres scrunched on the gravel. John halted the car in front of the house, between Naomi’s grimy white Subaru and her mother’s little Nissan Micra.