Perfect People

  But it was still there the next morning, cold and hard, like feathers glued to a small rock. Ashamed, he’d carried it into the woods, scooped out a shallow grave with his bare hands and placed a stone and leaves on top of it.

  It was normal for children to kill animals, he knew that. It was part of growing up. One of the rites of passage. Probably something to do with the exorcizing of dormant hunter-gatherer genes. But could he have ever killed a pet? Something he’d nurtured, cared for, cradled in his arms, played with, hugged and kissed goodnight, the way Luke and Phoebe had with Fudge and Chocolate?

  Something that Dr Michaelides had said was repeating over and over in his mind.

  I’m not sure that your children are able to make certain distinctions about some aspects of what constitutes normal behaviour in society.

  Was this her way telling them, in a thinly veiled way, that their children were psychopaths?

  83

  Back at home, the house was quiet. No one else up yet. Good. The children needed to be punished for what they had done, but how? What would show them that what they had done was wrong? What the hell would get through to them?

  Still in his tracksuit, sweaty and cooling down fast from his run, he made Naomi her usual Sunday morning cup of tea, toast and Marmite, and took it up to her, with the newspapers, on a tray.

  She was sitting up in bed, watching Andrew Marr interviewing the Chancellor. He picked up the remote, turned the volume down, and, reluctant to spoil her morning, told her about the guinea pigs.

  After a long silence, her face pale, she gripped his hand and said, ‘Can we not tell Harriet – or my mother? Can we keep this to ourselves?’

  He sat down on the bed beside her, glancing at the headlines of the Sunday Times. ‘I agree, I don’t want them to know.’

  ‘We could tell them that – that – they left the door open and they ran away – couldn’t we?’

  ‘I just put the hutch outside,’ he said. ‘Your mother isn’t going to notice anyway. If Harriet says anything, I’ll tell her I put them outside and didn’t shut the door properly.’

  ‘We need to speak to Luke and Phoebe. We have to explain to them that what they’ve done isn’t right. We have to get through to them, John, we have to make them understand. They have to be punished for this.’

  ‘Tell me how we do that? Because I don’t know. Dr Michaelides said—’

  ‘I remember very clearly what she said. But we’re their parents, we brought them into this world, it’s our responsibility. They’re only three years old, for Christ’s sake! What are they going to do when they’re four? Or five? Start cutting you and I open to see what our vital organs look like?’

  She went to the bathroom and closed the door. John flicked through the paper, but couldn’t concentrate on any article. Some minutes later she came out, wrapped in her dressing gown, her hair brushed and her breath smelling minty from toothpaste. Her face looked like thunder. She dug her feet into her slippers, went out into the landing along to the box room. Luke and Phoebe sat on the floor in front of the computer, in their pyjamas, close together, peering at a chess game. Without any warning, she grabbed Phoebe’s arm and started dragging her out of the room. ‘You and me are going to talk, Phoebe, if it takes us all day, you and me are going to talk. And your Daddy and Luke are going to talk. If it takes them all day. If it takes them all day and all night.’

  ‘Luke!’ John said.

  Luke, totally ignoring him, pursed his lips and moved the mouse.

  Whether it was Naomi’s fury transmitting to him, or his own pent-up anger finally bursting, John grabbed hold of Luke, more violently than he had ever done before, dragged him out of the door and followed Naomi and Phoebe down the stairs.

  He pulled his son, who was silent and like a dead weight, across the hallway, through the kitchen and out of the back door, still following Naomi, dragging him across the lawn to the dustbins.

  Naomi, still holding Phoebe with one hand, lifted the lid of a dustbin and hauled out a black bin liner. She held it up and stared at John. ‘This it? This the one?’

  He shrugged. ‘Might be.’

  Releasing Phoebe, who lay motionless and expressionless on the frosted lawn, she unknotted the top of the bag, then tipped the contents out. The carcasses of Fudge and Chocolate tumbled out and lay, among the detritus of their innards, on the grass.

  Fighting back tears, Naomi, staring at each of them in turn, said, ‘These were your pets. You loved them. You kissed them. You were meant to be looking after them. You seemed like you loved them. Why did you kill them? Why did you do this to them? Why? Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’

  Luke, speaking more lucidly and calmly than either of them had ever heard him, responded. ‘They’re a very low life form.’

  Naomi looked at John. John, astonished at his son’s sudden lucidity, but trying to keep his calm, responded, probing, ‘Why does that give you the right to kill them, Luke?’

  ‘You gave them to us, Daddy,’ he said.

  John wanted to cry and laugh. Luke was talking to them! Responding to them! This was an incredible breakthrough – and yet, it was awful. The circumstances were nothing to be happy about. He shot Naomi a look and she acknowledged it with eyes that reflected his own bewilderment. ‘Luke, we gave them to you to look after, not to kill,’ he said.

  ‘Guinea pigs only live five years anyway,’ Phoebe chipped in.

  Both John and Naomi found themselves looking at their children in a totally new light. They were communicating! That in itself was remarkable. But it didn’t lessen what they had done. It didn’t lessen the bizarre nature of what was happening here.

  ‘So, don’t you think they had a right to live for five years?’ John said. ‘You’re a human being; humans live for eighty years.’

  ‘Chokkit had a smaller liver than Fudge,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘Anyhow, Fudge would have died of kidney failure at two; he had abnormal creatinine levels,’ Luke said solemnly.

  And authoritatively.

  Quite unbelievably authoritatively.

  Naomi shivered. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘What are creatinine levels?’

  ‘It’s a metabolite that’s filtered out by the kidneys. Fudge’s creatinine levels were too high, meaning he was predisposed to kidney failure,’ Phoebe responded, staring at her as if she were a retard.

  ‘And what about Chocolate?’ Naomi asked. ‘What about her creatinine levels?’

  ‘They were OK,’ Phoebe answered simply.

  ‘So why did you kill her?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Phoebe said indignantly.

  ‘I see,’ Naomi said. ‘You cut her open and took out her insides. But you didn’t kill her. Right?’

  ‘No, she died. She was disobedient. We didn’t say she could die, we didn’t give her permission to die.’

  84

  John followed Naomi inside, went straight to the box room, unplugged the children’s computer and picked it up. He remembered when he had been naughty as a child, his father used to confiscate his bicycle, his most treasured possession. That used to hurt a lot, depriving him of his mobility, effectively confining him. Maybe taking away the computer might have an impact on Luke and Phoebe. They needed, desperately, to find something that would.

  He set the computer down on the floor of his den, then plugged it in and booted it up, curious to see what else the children had downloaded from the net.

  The command came up: ENTER PASSWORD

  You’ve set a password, you little sods! he thought, with reluctant admiration.

  He was about to go and find them and demand the password, but then he had another thought. He knelt back down and, concentrating hard, tapped a series of letters on the keyboard.

  ebohpkul

  But the message came up:

  PASSWORD NOT VALID – RETRY.

  After thinking for some moments, John reversed the order of their names.

  eklebohp

  Secon
ds after he hit the return, he was in. Yes! He grinned triumphantly. They were using their secret language, joining their names together, reversing them and omitting every fourth letter.

  Then he stopped smiling. Terrific. I’m all excited because I managed not to be outsmarted by my three-year-old children.

  He went to the internet settings, which should have been blank. But as he had half expected, they weren’t. There was a MobileMe account in Luke’s name and a Hotmail account in Phoebe’s name. They had set themselves up with free email accounts!

  A while ago, a very, very short while ago, he would have been incredulous; but not any more. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Some moments he wished desperately this was all some dream, and that he’d wake up and find that he and Naomi had normal, happy kids who crawled into their bed on Sunday mornings, and didn’t sit in front of the television set hooked on programmes about halogen gas, and didn’t murder their pets.

  Other moments he tried to think positively, and put his mind to the awesome possibilities that lay open to Luke and Phoebe. Whatever tinkering Dettore had done, their hunger for knowledge and their skills were incredible. Maybe they just needed a firmer hand, firmer guidance, better understanding? He and Naomi needed urgently to get their heads around exactly how bright the children were, and learn to see it as a positive rather than a negative.

  He double-clicked on the web browser and while he waited for it to open, he tried to cast his mind back to his own childhood, to remember if there had been some point at which he had understood it was bad to kill things. Surely it had been his conscience that made him know? The guilt over killing that sparrow that he still carried in some small way to this day. You didn’t need to teach children that killing was bad. Any normal child would instinctively know.

  Wouldn’t they?

  He opened the site history, to look at all the web pages Luke and Phoebe had been to. And now he became really incredulous. It had been just twenty-four hours since they had been given the computer, yet there were pages and pages full of records of websites they had visited. All of them educational, mostly science sites, some geared at kids, some at teenagers, some very advanced. Medicine, biology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biochemistry and, interspersed, a raft of anthropological, history and biographical sites.

  As he knelt, totally absorbed in his task, he was unaware of two solemn little faces watching him from the doorway.

  Basic Biology. The Laws of Entropy. Formations of Nucleoid Proteins. Advanced Logic. Calculus. He felt a cold, creeping sensation down his spine as he scrolled on down the list. It wasn’t possible! There was no way three-year-old children could be reading some of this stuff – in fact, any of this stuff.

  He was interrupted by Naomi calling from downstairs that breakfast was ready.

  He set a new password, to prevent them from sneaking in here and using the computer. Then he realized he was still in his damp, sweaty tracksuit. Quickly peeling it off, he went into the shower. A few minutes later, as he hurried downstairs, changed into a roll-neck jumper, jeans and his battered old leather yachting slip-ons – his comfort shoes – he was still very deep in thought.

  The rest of his family were already seated at the oak refectory table, which was laden with cereal packs, bowls of fruit salad, muesli, yoghurts, a basket of brioches and another of toast, and a heaped platter of fried eggs, bacon, sausages and tomatoes. Luke was pouring out Rice Krispies, managing the large pack with great precision. Phoebe, like a little madam, was spooning chocolate yoghurt from a pot.

  John kissed his mother-in-law good morning, then Harriet, who was engrossed in the weekend Financial Times. ‘How did you sleep?’ he said, taking his seat.

  His mother-in-law was dressed rather formally, in a two-piece, as if she was about to go to church. John had noticed over the years that she always dressed smartly on Sunday, a throwback to her strict, religious upbringing. In her timid voice, she said, ‘Well, thank you. Like a log. I always sleep so well here.’

  Harriet, in a chunky fisherman’s sweater, black hair unbrushed, looked up from the paper and tapped at the page with her finger. ‘Do you ever read Arnie Wilson’s column? He’s the best ski writer – quite a funny piece about carver skis.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ John said. He smiled absently and helped himself to some fruit salad, watching Luke spoon an obscene amount of sugar over his cereal.

  ‘I think that’s enough sugar, darling,’ Naomi said.

  Ignoring her, Luke dug the spoon into the bowl.

  Irritated, Naomi snatched the bowl away from him. ‘I said enough!’

  Luke gave her an insolent stare. There was an awkward silence.

  ‘Did you sleep well, Luke and Phoebe, darlings?’ his mother-in-law asked.

  Both of the twins ignored her.

  ‘Answer Granny,’ Naomi said, pouring milk onto Luke’s cereal.

  Phoebe licked her spoon clean, then, holding it up in front of her as if inspecting it, said, ‘Sleeping is silly.’

  Luke chewed a mouthful of cereal, then said, ‘I don’t sleep.’

  ‘Really?’ his grandmother said. ‘You don’t sleep?’

  He spooned more Rice Krispies into his mouth and chewed slowly, and for a moment the crunching of the cereal was the only sound in the room.

  John and Naomi exchanged a glance. John was signalling, Hey, at least they’re talking, this is a breakthrough, this is progress! Some kind of progress, anyhow . . .

  Harriet turned the page. ‘Why don’t you sleep, Luke?’

  ‘Coz only dead things sleep,’ he said.

  This time John avoided catching Naomi’s eye. He forked a slice of mango and ate it without tasting it, his eyes now on Harriet, watching her reaction.

  ‘I slept last night,’ Harriet said. ‘But I don’t think I’m dead!’

  ‘I slept, too,’ Luke’s grandmother said. ‘But that doesn’t make me dead, darling, does it?’

  Luke dug his spoon into his cereal, then said nonchalantly, ‘You will be soon, Granny.’

  85

  Naomi’s Diary

  Am I wrong, making constant comparisons between L and P and Halley? My poor, darling, sweet, innocent Halley. OK, everyone knows that children say strange things, and Mum took it in good humour. But . . . thank God neither she nor Harriet noticed the guinea pigs had gone. What a really observant family I come from!

  Halley, my little darling, I miss you so much. This may sound crazy, but when we first went to Dr Dettore’s clinic, you know what I was hoping? That we’d get you back, but all made better. That our new baby would really be you, in a new, healthy incarnation. But there is nothing of you in Luke or Phoebe, at least, nothing that I can see. You were so gentle, so sweet, so loving. You said funny things, sometimes, but I can’t imagine, ever, you saying what Luke said to Mummy at breakfast today. I can’t imagine you ever killing anything.

  You may think this sounds strange, but there are times when I really sense you around me, holding my hand, telling me not to worry. If I didn’t feel that, I really think I’d crack up. John is so much stronger than me. I wish I had the calm he has, that inner strength, that confidence about how things are going to turn out.

  You were born on a Sunday and you died on a Sunday. Lots of people love Sundays, but I don’t. I feel so down, sometimes, on Sundays. I’m down today. It was such a beautiful morning, and then it was ruined by what happened to Fudge and Chocolate. Now, this afternoon, it’s raining and windy. Granny’s watching an Agatha Christie movie on television and Auntie Harriet has gone home. P is on the kitchen floor in front of me, doing a three-dimensional jigsaw, and John is playing chess with L in the living room. Four o’clock and it’s dark already. At six thirty they have evensong in the village church. Every Sunday. There are times, like now, when I feel a pull to go there. Are you pulling me?

  Or am I just clutching at anything, in desperation?

  86

  John was smarting over his total annihilation at chess by his son.


  Naomi said, ‘This is what you wanted, John, isn’t it? All this hot-housing you did in those months after they were born? Those hours you spent up in their room, endlessly playing them all that New Age music, all that talking to them and that tactile stuff. You wanted them to be smart, well, you’ve got what you wanted.’

  It was Sunday evening and they were alone in the kitchen. Naomi’s mother, suffering a migraine, had excused herself and gone to bed early. On Sunday evenings John always made supper, mostly something light and simple, which they would eat off trays on their laps in front of the television. Tonight he was making mushroom omelettes and a Greek salad.

  ‘Not like this,’ he said. ‘I never intended this.’

  ‘You laughed at my objections at the time. Now you’re miffed because Luke beat you at chess.’

  Noticing the box of guinea-pig food was on the floor, she picked it up and put it away in a cupboard.

  ‘Naomi, he’s three years old, for God’s sake! A lot of kids aren’t even potty trained at three! And he didn’t just beat me. He wiped the floor with me. And the speed at which he made his moves – that was awesome.’

  ‘A few years ago when those Rubik’s Cube things were popular, adults had big problems doing them, but small children could do them in minutes. I remember someone saying it was because no one had told them it was impossible! Do children have an aptitude for puzzles that they lose when they grow older? Chess is a kind of puzzle, at one level, right?’