He’d needed something to cheer him after the grim pronouncements of Dr Michaelides, who had just left half an hour or so ago.
He tilted the cocktail glass back and let the last drips of the drink roll into his mouth. Then reality set in. Oh Jesus, what the hell did they do now?
Wait. Wait for the psychologist to come back to them, that was all they could do.
In an attempt to cheer Naomi, he went through to the kitchen and told her the good news from Kalle Almtorp. He embellished it a little, telling her that the FBI were days away from an arrest. From scooping up the entire damned cult.
In just a few days, they would be free from their worries!
But Naomi had not just drunk an extremely large martini; she was stone cold sober. She did not share any of his joy or his alcohol-fuelled optimism
She told him life sucked.
79
Shelia Michaelides hurried to her Victorian terraced house in the centre of Brighton, her tiny umbrella useless against the gale, and she was drenched by the time she reached the sanctuary of her hallway. Changing into a dry pair of jeans and a sweater, she made herself a coffee, took a Marks amp; Spencer tuna pasta salad out of the fridge, then carried a tray up to her little study, sat down at her desk and booted up her computer.
Her mind was churning as she dug her fork in to the pasta, and her stomach felt knotted with anxiety. Haven’t eaten all day, must eat something! She chewed slowly, each mouthful a struggle, forcing herself to swallow, her throat tight and dry. Rain scratched the window, and through the darkness she could just make out the silhouette of her neighbour’s house across from her back yard.
She stood up suddenly, leaned forward and unwound the cord from the hook, letting the blinds drop.
She was shaking. Shaking from a fear she couldn’t define. Always she had been in control. Now for the first time she felt out of her depth. There was some syndrome that Luke and Phoebe Klaesson had which she had never encountered, and it spooked her, increasingly.
She began typing.
Luke and Phoebe Klaesson observations. Day Three. These are not human beings as I know it. They are manipulative, brooding, in a way that suggests the normal restraints of human existence are absent. Clear signs of sociopathic behaviour, but something beyond that…
She stopped and thought for some moments. She needed to talk to other psychologists about this, but who?
The cheese plant filling the small space between her desk and the wall looked in a sad state, badly in need of watering. She went downstairs, filled the can, came back and poured the contents into the arid soil, thinking, thinking.
Thinking.
She typed again.
Autism? How to explain this speech between themselves?
How?
Then, reluctantly, she forked another mouthful of pasta into her mouth and chewed, thinking. Thinking… there must be other case histories out there somewhere, in papers, in books, surely?
She was a member of a child psychologists’ newsgroup on the internet, that circulated a weekly summary of case histories, new treatments, new drugs and general information. It was a good group, with psychologists in over thirty countries participating, and in the past she had always received informed responses to any questions she had asked.
She typed out an email, summarizing her observations of Luke and Phoebe, asking if anyone else had ever experienced anything similar with a patient.
To her surprise, the following day she received emails from ten psychologists. Five of them in the United States, one in the United Arab Emirates, one in Brazil, one in Italy, one in Germany and one in Switzerland.
Four of the psychiatrists informed her, separately, that the twins they had seen with similar characteristics had been conceived in the offshore clinic of the murdered American geneticist, Dr Leo Dettore.
She googled the name Dr Leo Dettore.
Among the first batch of hits that came up, one was indexed:
Newspaper. USA Today. July 2007. Dr J. Klaesson.
LA PROFESSOR ADMITS, ‘WE’RE HAVING A DESIGNER BABY’.
80
Mr Pineapple Head wore striped trousers, huge shoes, a red nose and a leather hat shaped like a pineapple. He was going down a storm, at any rate for the four children who had come to Luke and Phoebe’s third birthday, who were in fits of laughter. John and Naomi, her mother and her sister, Harriet, and Rosie were also finding his antics extremely funny.
Luke and Phoebe were the only ones who didn’t. They sat on the floor, staring at the man in stony silence, rejecting all his attempts to get them to join in doing tricks with him.
It had been a struggle for John and Naomi to get any other children to come to this party. Jane Adamson, Naomi’s friend in the village, had dutifully delivered her son Charlie, who had come in with evident reluctance, clutching a present in one hand and holding on to his mother with the other, eyeing the twins nervously. Naomi had also enlisted a timid girl called Bethany, whose parents had only moved into the village this week and didn’t yet know anyone. Rosie had brought her youngest, Imogen, and a colleague of John had brought her spirited four-year-old son, Ben.
Suddenly, halfway through the performance, Luke and Phoebe stood up abruptly and walked out of the room.
Exchanging a glance with John, who was standing to one side, busily taking photographs, Naomi followed the children out into the hall and closed the door behind her. ‘Luke!’ she called. ‘Phoebe! Where are you going?’
Ignoring her, they trotted upstairs.
Louder, now. ‘Luke! Phoebe! Come back down at once! It’s very rude to leave your friends! You absolutely cannot do this!’
Angrily, she ran upstairs after them, calling their names again. She saw them entering the box room and followed them in.
The computer she and John had given them for their birthday sat on the floor, where John had temporarily set it up after they had unwrapped it this morning. Both children squatted beside it.
‘Luke!’ Naomi called.
Ignoring her, Luke touched the keyboard, and the monitor came alive with a blank Word document.
Phoebe said something to her brother, then tapped several keys in rapid succession with the competence of a touch-typist. For an instant Naomi was too amazed to be angry. Then she walked over to the wall and yanked the plug out.
Neither child looked at her.
‘It’s your party, Luke and Phoebe,’ she said. ‘You have friends here. Mummy and Daddy have got you Mr Pineapple Head as a special treat, it was very rude to walk out on him, and very rude to leave your friends. Now get up and come back down at once!’
No reaction at all.
Furious now, she grabbed Luke and Phoebe each by an arm and hauled them up onto their feet. Still there
