Ken McClure - Hypocrite's Isle

Gavin made a face and started to examine his beer.

‘What Frank says is scientifically sound and sensible.’

Gavin continued examining his beer.

‘Don’t tell me I’m actually getting through to you?’ asked Caroline with an amused smile.

‘Look, I agree there’s a lot in what you say...’

‘Good. That’s a start.’

‘Okay, look, I’ll make a start on the biochemistry, but I’m not giving up on Valdevan and I’m definitely going to work on it over the Christmas break.’

‘As long as you make a start on the biochemistry...’ said Caroline, deciding to be satisfied with one concession. ‘Right,’ she announced. ‘No more beer. Let’s go see the Christmas lights.’

Although Gavin would have preferred to continue sitting in the warm, drinking lager and munching his favourite bacon-flavoured crisps, he agreed without argument, and seeing the look on Caroline’s face as they walked down the Mound and along Princes Street made it worthwhile.

‘You’re like a kid,’ he laughed as he watched her try to keep walking straight while looking up at the lights, occasionally pirouetting to enhance the effect.

‘I love Christmas and everything about it... people change for the better... it’s like the way it should be all the time... I want it to snow... I want to build a snowman... I want to drink mulled wine and sing “Hark the Herald Angels”... I want to go to see a school nativity play where Joseph forgets his lines and Mary drops the baby Jesus... I want to waken at three in the morning and smell a Christmas tree in the house... I love all these things... At least I used to...’ she added, suddenly coming down to earth. ‘But God, it’s going to be so different this time...’

‘Just take it one day at a time,’ said Gavin. ‘Christ! I sound like a Country and Western singer. Are any of the rest of your family coming?’

‘My aunt and uncle usually come up from Manchester, but they’ve decided it would be inappropriate this year. What a prissy little word. Makes me think of town hall officials.’ Caroline stopped walking and looked to the other side of Princes Street where the shops were. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘What d’you fancy?’

‘Something bad for me... a burger with heaps of chips and lashings of relish and fizzy Coke with lots of sugar and caffeine...’

Gavin grabbed her hand and they ran laughing across the broad street to McDonald’s on the corner of Castle Street.

They found a table by the window where they could look out and up at the floodlit castle while they ate.

‘Now I’m filled with remorse,’ said Caroline, putting both hands on her stomach and pushing her empty tray away.

‘Sin followed by remorse, the unending circle of life,’ said Gavin.

‘I am absolutely stuffed.’

‘C’mon, let’s walk it off.’

‘I’d have to walk to Birmingham.’

They dumped the detritus of their feast in the waste bin and left the warmth of the restaurant to hit the cold air again.

‘Frank’s asked me to Christmas dinner at his place,’ said Gavin.

‘That’s nice. Will you go?’

‘I made a right arse of myself the first time I went there. I think his wife, Jenny, hates me.’ Gavin told her about the episode with the cat. Caroline closed her eyes as it unfolded.

‘I’d never drunk malt whisky before...’

‘I’m surprised they’ve asked you back.’

‘Maybe they’re hoping I’ll say no? I said I’d let him know by Monday.’

‘Your call,’ said Caroline.

‘It might seem rude if I don’t go.’

Caroline’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did I hear that correctly? Gavin Donnelly is worried about appearing rude?’

‘Give me a break...’

Caroline moved in front of Gavin, smiling, and held both his arms at the elbows while she looked up into his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Gavin, still with his arms pinned, brought his mouth down on hers in a long, hungry kiss. She didn’t pull away, although there was a degree of uncertainty in her response. ‘We agreed this was a bad idea,’ she said when they finally parted.

‘You agreed.’

‘This is entirely the wrong time...’

‘There’s never a right time or a wrong time to fall in love with someone.’

‘Please, Gavin, spare me the Christmas cracker philosophy. You’re a fortnight early and my head’s too full of other things right now.’

‘Right.’

‘And don’t put on that hurt expression.’

‘Right.’

‘And don’t agree with me so readily!’

Later, as Gavin lay in his bed looking at the moon, he wondered just how he was going to start a new investigation of Valdevan. Caroline’s earlier assertion that even if the drug was reaching the tumours and was still active when it got there, it still didn’t work, was finally getting through to him. She was right. He had made a breakthrough but it was an academic breakthrough, very satisfying but it wouldn’t change anything for the patients who’d been treated with it. They would still be dead. But why? The drug should have destroyed their tumours. The more he wrestled with this, the more he understood Caroline’s point that he had left himself with an even bigger problem than Grumman Schalk. They thought they knew what the problem was. He hadn’t a clue.

The photographs in the company report had definitely shown an effect that could only have been caused by the drug affecting the S16 gene in the tumour cells, but this made him wonder about the photographs of healthy cells in the original papers he’d consulted about the drug: they hadn’t shown any membrane aberration. Why not? Healthy cells and tumour cells were identical in terms of genetic make-up. Surely the drug should have affected the S16 gene in them too and caused the tell-tale pinching?

Gavin switched on the bedside lamp and got out of bed to start rummaging in the cardboard box he kept his reprints in. He started to shiver. A clear sky outside meant falling temperatures and the heating in the flat had been off for ages. Single glazing and the original, ill-fitting sash windows meant that the inside temperature became the outside one very quickly.

He found what he was looking for. It was a poor photocopy but the one he’d made on his first meeting with Caroline, when she’d loaned him her card. He searched in the pockets of his rucksack for his magnifying lens — which he’d bought the day before from Tom Brown’s Stamp Shop in Merchiston Avenue — and then put the relevant page into the pool of light provided by his bedside lamp. The pictures hadn’t improved any with the keeping but he was still pretty sure that there was no membrane alteration to the healthy cells.

Feeling mentally exhausted, he got back into bed, switched out the light and drew his knees up to his chest in an effort to get warm. The difference between tumour cells and healthy tissue cells was... division control. The tumour cells were undergoing uncontrolled cell division while the healthy cells were not... the tumour cells were showing membrane change but the healthy cells were not. There had to be a link — something that tied in with why Grumman Schalk had thought they had a specific drug against tumour cells. They must have seen tumour cells dying in the lab but healthy cells surviving. He would have to check out the effects of Valdevan on normal cells for himself. He couldn’t just rely on old photographs. He would set up that experiment at the same time as running the last of the Valdevan concentration tests. He would go down to the tissue culture suite first thing in the morning and see about getting some healthy cell cultures.

He could hear tuneless singing coming from outside on the front street and echoing up over the tenement roofs as some night straggler from an office Christmas party informed the world that he had done it his way. It brought a smile to Gavin’s lips. ‘Sure you did,’ he whispered, ‘Thirty years with Standard Life and you did it your way...’