Peter James - Perfect People

There’s a part of me that hopes that the latter is the truth, but my conscience tells me differently. This, as Luke and Phoebe told us, is one of the flaws of us Parent People. A flaw that defines our species. They told us that we have failed emotionally to keep pace with our advances in technology. We’re a species that is on the verge of being able to travel faster than the speed of light and so much else our ancestors could never even imagine, yet hasn’t learned how to deal with the hatred in our hearts. A species that can still only resolve problems by throwing rocks at each other. How can I argue against that? How can I download copies of the morning newspapers and read all the terrible stuff going on in so many places in the world and persuade my kids that no, they are wrong, we have learned to do things differently now?

This is my first diary entry in a long, long time. I just lost enthusiasm for writing it. I lost enthusiasm for everything. After years of therapy, I feel a little stronger now. Perhaps I’m slowly getting better. John and I rarely talk about it any more, as if we’ve made an unspoken decision to put the past behind us and concentrate only on the future.

You are taught as a child that your parents are right, that you must learn from them, and pass on that stuff, in turn, to your own children. It’s a strange moment when you realize that the world is no longer as you understood it.

None of us knows what the future holds. Perhaps we’d go mad if we did. We have dreams into which we escape. Dreams that we hold in our hearts. In my dreams Halley is alive and well and growing up, and John and Halley and I do things together and are happy. We go on holidays and we visit theme parks and museums and we play in soft white sand by the ocean and we fool around and laugh a lot. And then I wake.

Sometimes when my memory is being kind to me, the rock I threw at Dr Dettore feels like a dream. But mostly I live it, every hour of every day. I take pills at night and sometimes they’re my friends and they let me sleep, and if they are being really good friends to me, they let me sleep all through the night without dreaming.

Those are the rare days when I wake refreshed. When I feel there is something to look forward to. I’m sure that’s when you really know you are happy – when you wake up wanting to embrace your future, rather than trying to squirm away from your past.

From time to time I Google Dr Dettore, and the names of Luke and Phoebe Klaesson. But nothing new ever comes up. To the outside world, Dr Dettore died in a helicopter crash, end of story. The mystery place that we went to remains a secret. After we returned, John spent months at his computer, on Google Earth, trying to find the island, but he never did.

The police tried, too, but they had no success either. Not that we gave them much help. We never told them Dettore was still alive. We felt that if that got out, sooner or later some fanatic group would track him down – and the lives of everyone on the island would be in danger. Despite everything, John and I do love our children. We’re their parents, we always will love them. I worry about them all the time. About how they are getting on, their health, and I have this constant fear, which never goes away, that if anything were to happen to them, we would probably never know.

We made a decision not to have more children. John immersed himself in his work. I’ve become involved in a number of local children’s charities. We have two dogs, black Labradors called Brutus and Nero. They’re adorable, and good guard dogs, too. We don’t feel in danger any longer, but we are still careful over security. I expect we always will be.

It is one of those rare days today, when I feel happy. Not for any reason I can define except, perhaps, because of how far the past has now receded. I came across a quotation from a book of the wisdom of American Indians, which in so many ways now sums up where John and I are, regarding Luke and Phoebe.

‘Although we are in different vessels, you in your boat and we in our canoe, we share the same river of life.’

Mixing his drink had become John’s ritual every evening when he arrived home from work. Alcohol helped him numb the pain. The heartache of the loss of his children was constantly with him, but so was another loss of something else, almost equally important to him: the passion he had once held for his work. The truth was that since leaving Dettore’s island he felt, in ways he could not define, a changed man.

He kissed Naomi, poured himself a large whisky on the rocks, then went into his den and logged on to check his emails. Outside he could hear the bleating of sheep in the fields around them. Spring. New life starting over. The air was warm this evening, and the forecast was fine for the weekend. He would get the barbecue and the garden chairs and table out of the garage. Maybe this year, for a change, they would have a good summer.

Then he froze. He read the first of the new emails that had just downloaded in disbelief. Then he read it over again, before running to the door and yelling for Naomi to come in and see this.

She stood with her hands on his shoulders as he sat down in front of his computer, and they both stared silently at the words on the screen:

Arriving 15.30 tomorrow, Saturday, Gatwick Airport, North Terminal, British Airways Flt 225 from Rome. Please meet us. Your children, Luke and Phoebe.

Naomi clutched John. Her eyes danced with happiness, but also with a thousand questions. ‘Is this real, darling? It’s not a hoax?’

‘It’s a real email,’ he replied. ‘But I can’t tell who sent it.’

‘Can’t you find out where it’s from? Its source or something?’

‘It’s a Hotmail account. You can set one up in a couple of minutes from any internet cafe in the world. It won’t be traceable.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows if it is real – but it would be a pretty sick practical joke.’

‘Do you think they’re coming home? Permanently?’ she asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’ He stared at the email again, reading the short message carefully. ‘They’ll be coming up to their twelfth birthdays. Who knows what their mindsets will be. Maybe they’ve outgrown the island, or perhaps they want to go to university here. Perhaps they’re just curious to see us. Or maybe they’ve been sent to teach us some lessons about how we should be shaping the world.’

‘I’ll have to make the spare beds up – they’ll have way outgrown their original little beds. What about food? What shall we get them?’

‘We could ask them when we see them. Maybe they’d like a treat, something different to the wholesome food they’d be getting on the island. McDonald’s or something?’

She kissed him on the cheek and put her arms around him and clung to him tightly. ‘God, oh God! I sooooo hope they are coming back to live with us. That we can be a family again. Wouldn’t that be incredible?’

John squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, we have no idea what they will be like nor what their agenda is. It’s a pretty cold email. No love or kisses.’

‘We never have had love of that kind, from them.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But I think they do love us, in their own weird way.’

John said nothing.

‘Please don’t let this be a hoax, John. I couldn’t bear it. I’m so excited. I just can’t believe it, I really can’t!

‘Let’s see.’

She stroked his forehead. ‘Aren’t you just a teeny bit excited?’

‘Of course I am! I guess I’m in shock. And at the same time, you know, I-’

He hesitated.

‘You what?’ she asked.

‘I’m nervous. I don’t know what to expect. Maybe they need money – isn’t that why kids go and see their parents most of the time? They’re getting to an age now where they probably want to start buying stuff. You know, music, clothes.’