‘You find the truth,’ said Josef, confidently.
‘There’s nothing in my job description about finding the truth,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s about helping my patient to cope.’
Frieda looked down at the route instructions she had printed out. It was all very simple. After another half- hour on the M11 they turned off and drove to a small village a few miles from Cambridge.
‘It must be here,’ she said.
Josef turned into a short gravel drive that led to a large Georgian house. The drive was lined with gleaming cars, so it was difficult for the van to squeeze through. ‘They look expensive,’ he said.
‘Try not to scrape them,’ said Frieda. She stepped out of the van and felt her feet sink into the gravel. ‘Do you want to come in? I could say you were my assistant.’
‘I listen to the radio,’ said Josef. ‘It makes my English better.’
‘This is great of you,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you.’
‘You will pay me by cooking a meal,’ he said. ‘An English Christmas meal.’
‘I think it would be better if I paid you, probably,’ she said.
‘Go in,’ he said. ‘Why are you waiting?’
Frieda turned and waded through the gravel to the front door. There was an elaborate Christmas garland on it. She pressed the bell but couldn’t hear anything, so she rapped on the door with the large brass knocker. The house shook with it. The door was opened by a woman wearing a long, elaborate dress. She had a welcoming smile on her face that faded as soon as she saw Frieda.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.
‘Is Professor Boundy here?’ said Frieda.
‘I’ll get him,’ said the woman. ‘He’s with our lunch guests.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
Frieda stepped into the large hallway. She could hear a murmur of voices. The woman walked across the hall, her heels echoing on the wooden floor. She opened a door and Frieda glimpsed a group of people, men in suits, women in smart dresses. She looked around the large hall – on one side an ornate staircase curved upwards. In a niche in the wall there was a bonsai tree. She heard footsteps and turned to see a man coming towards her. He had grey hair swept back from his face and rimless spectacles. He was wearing a dark suit with a brightly patterned tie.
‘We’re about to sit down to lunch,’ he said. ‘Was there any reason we couldn’t have talked on the phone?’
‘Five minutes,’ said Frieda. ‘That’s all we need.’
He looked ostentatiously at his watch. Frieda found it almost amusing to be treated so rudely.
‘You’d better come into my study,’ he said.
He led her across the hallway to a room at the far end. It was lined with bookshelves except for a wall of french windows giving out on to a large lawn. A path led away from the house and culminated in a gazebo with a stone seat. He sat down behind a wooden desk. ‘Dick Lacey spoke very highly of you,’ he said. ‘He said you needed to see me urgently and that it wouldn’t wait. Even though it’s Christmas and I’m with my family. So I agreed to see you.’ He unfastened his watch and laid it on the desk. ‘Briefly.’
He gestured at an armchair but Frieda ignored him. She walked towards the window and looked out, considering how to begin. She turned round. ‘I’ve just had a strange experience,’ she said. ‘A patient of mine has certain family issues. One factor is that he was adopted. He was abandoned as a baby and knows nothing whatever about his adoptive family. He’s never made any attempt to find them. I don’t think he’d know even how to begin going about it.’
She paused for a moment.
‘Look,’ said Professor Boundy. ‘If this is about tracing relatives…’
Frieda interrupted him: ‘Certain things happened and I got the address of someone I thought might be connected to him. This isn’t the sort of thing that I do but I visited the house, unannounced.’ Suddenly Frieda felt almost embarrassed. ‘I find this bit difficult to explain. When I went inside the house, it was like being in a dream. I should say that I’ve been to Alan’s house. Alan’s my patient. When I went into this other house, I had this feeling: “I’ve been here before.” They weren’t identical, but there was something about one that reminded you of the other.’
She looked at Professor Boundy. Would he think she was insane? Would he laugh?
‘In what way?’ he said.
‘Some of it was just a feeling,’ said Frieda. ‘Both houses felt closed-up. Alan’s house was cosy, full of small rooms. The other house was like that but even more so, almost claustrophobic. It seemed to be shutting the light out. But there were other, odder, things in common. Both of them keep things in neat little drawers with labels on the front. There were even the strangest things in common. For example, I was startled to find that both of them had a stuffed bird on display. Alan had a poor little stuffed kingfisher and Dean had a stuffed hawk. It was uncanny. I didn’t know what to make of it.’
She looked at Professor Boundy. He was now leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed, staring at the ceiling. Was he just waiting for her to finish?
‘It was more than that,’ said Frieda. ‘It was like a dream. When I stepped into Dean Reeve’s house, it was like somewhere I’d been before, like going back somewhere you lived as a small child. You know you’ve been there but you don’t know why. It was a feeling both houses had, a hot, closed-in feeling. Anyway, I was there with his partner, or wife, and then he – Dean – arrived. For a moment I thought it was Alan and that he was leading a double life. Then I realized that Alan wasn’t just abandoned as a baby. He had a twin he didn’t know about.’
‘Abandoned
‘What?’
There was a knock and the door opened. It was the woman who had let Frieda in. ‘We’re just sitting down, dear,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell them you’re about to arrive?’
‘No,’ said Professor Boundy, without looking round at her. ‘Start without me.’
‘We can wait.’
‘Go away.’
The woman – evidently Boundy’s wife – looked at Frieda with an expression of suspicion. She turned and left without a word.
‘And close the door,’ said Boundy, in a loud voice. The door to the study closed gently.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Can I get you something? We’ve got some champagne open.’ Frieda shook her head. ‘What I was about to explain is that mothers would have twins that they were unable to deal with, so they would put up one for adoption. Or sometimes just abandon one.’ Boundy looked up at the ceiling again, then fixed Frieda with a gaze that was almost fierce. ‘So why did you drive all the way up to Cambridge to see me?’
‘Because of what I told you. I’ve been thinking about what it was that I saw when I went into the house. It felt a bit like magic, and I don’t believe in magic. I talked to Dick Lacey and I checked up on you and I learned that you’re specifically interested in twins who have been reared separately. Of course I know that’s a subject of considerable interest for the debate about nature and nurture. I’ve read papers about it. But what I encountered seemed beyond the range of science and reason. It felt more like an elaborate charade, some kind of mind trick being played on me. So I needed to talk to an expert.’
Boundy leaned back once more. ‘I’m certainly an expert,’ he said. ‘This is the issue: I’m interested in the role genetic factors play in the development of personality. Researchers have always been interested in twins, but the problem is that they generally share the same environment as well as the same genes. What we’d really like to do is to take two identical children, bring them up in different environments and see what the effect is. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to do that. But sometimes, just sometimes, people do it for us by separating their twins at birth. These identical twins are perfect for us. Their genetic makeup is identical, so any variation must be environmental. So we’ve been looking for these twins, and when we found them, we looked in great detail at their life histories. We gave them personality tests, medical examinations.’
‘And what did you find?’
Boundy got up, walked to the bookshelf and took out a book. ‘I wrote this,’ he said. ‘Well, co-wrote it. The ideas are mine. You should read it.’
‘But in the meantime,’ said Frieda.
