Blood Ties (17 page)

My heart sank. Somehow Elijah’s words had sounded so powerful I’d almost imagined I would look in the glass and see Rebecca. But it was just me.

A clone.

I let the word sink in.

What did it mean? That I was a copy of another life? Second-hand? Yes. I was a replacement for my dead sister – never wanted in my own right.

It was hard to feel those things. And yet, they made sense. They made sense of my life up to now. The way I was always being compared to Rebecca. The way I didn’t really fit in at home. Or anywhere.

There was a soft rap at the door. Mel appeared. She smiled sympathetically. ‘You okay?’ she said.

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say.

‘This isn’t easy stuff to deal with,’ she said hesitantly. ‘For either of you.’ She paused. ‘I think Theo’s having a hard time with it, too.’

I nodded. ‘It
is
hard. But in a funny kind of way it’s like, somehow, I’ve always known too.’

Mel came over and put her arm round me. She was holding a piece of thin white card in her hand.

‘Elijah’s an amazing man,’ she said. ‘He found me on the streets. He turned everything around for me.’

There was something hollow in her voice, but I was too preocupied to think about it. She turned the card in her hand round. On the other side was a photograph of Rebecca – a copy of the one on our kitchen wall at home. In it Rebecca looked smiling and glamorous, with all her hair swept back.

‘Elijah gave me this to show you. Here.’ Mel handed me the photo. I held it under my chin so that it was reflected in the mirror, next to my own face.

Then Mel stood behind me and pulled my hair away from my head, like Rebecca’s was in the picture. ‘Smile,’ she said.

I forced my mouth into a curve. I stared at our faces. Mine and Rebecca’s.

Mel tilted her head to one side. ‘Mmmn,’ she said. ‘Your face is a little fuller, of course, and your eyes are greener, though that could be the top you’ve got on, and the different light. Maybe you just look prettier because you’re alive and she’s only in a photo.’

I stared at her. She thought
I
was prettier than
Rebecca
?

Mel let go of my hair. ‘You should wear it off your face more,’ she said. ‘You have great bone structure.’

She grinned at me, then walked out of the room.

I turned back to the mirror and stood there staring for a long time.

It was like the world was spinning round and round and my feet couldn’t find the ground. Mel came into the bedroom. Tried to talk to me. But I couldn’t focus on what she was saying. I pushed past her and went downstairs. I could hear Elijah and Lewis in the kitchen. No sign of Rachel. She must be as freaked out as I was.

Man.

I sat on the sofa for a minute, but the living room was closing in on me. I had to get out of the house.

The front door was no longer bolted shut. I guessed there was no need. I’d seen at least three security guards staked outside the house. I opened it and stepped outside. It was freezing. My breath rose in a mist around my face.

This was what I needed. Cold, clear air. One of Elijah’s security guards was standing beside the front door. He looked at me suspiciously. I could hear him talking in his radio, asking for orders, as I stomped off across the gravel.

I hadn’t been out of the house all day – and now it was night time again. Away from the house, tramping across the nearest field, the darkness closed down around me like a net. I could hear footsteps behind me.

‘Go away,’ I yelled.

The footsteps stopped. More muttering into a radio.

I sank down onto the damp ground. What was the point in walking any further? I didn’t know where I was or where I was going.

I put my head in my hands.

My dad was not my dad.

I had no dad.

My mum had lied to me all my life. My heart clenched up like a fist when I thought of how often I’d stared at that photo of James Lawson – the face of my made-up father. A man who didn’t even exist. Or maybe did exist, but who had nothing to do with me.

And then another thought struck me like a blow, almost winding me. My mother wasn’t really my mother. If I was a clone of Elijah, then I wasn’t even related to her. Was I? I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. It was too much. Everything I thought I knew was being taken away from me.

More footsteps behind me.

‘Theodore.’ Elijah’s voice was low and calm.

I ignored him.

‘Theodore. Please come inside. I do not want to talk in the freezing cold.’

‘Tough,’ I muttered. ‘And it’s
Theo
.’

Elijah gave a heavy sigh. ‘You have questions, no? Well, ask.’

I turned round. He was standing a few metres away from me, silhouetted against the lights from the cottage. There was no sign of the security guard who’d followed me.

‘Why did you do it?’ I got up and walked over to him.

Elijah looked surprised. ‘Because I could,’ he said. ‘And because it is beautiful science.’ He paused. ‘You know, RAGE and many people think I am a monster because I play God. And in some ways I like this. I play along. Like with the code names. Did you work those out?’

I stared at him.

‘I am Zeus, the father of heaven. Apollo and Artemis are two of Zeus’s children. My creations. But it is a joke. What I do, really, is not so different from any fertility treatment. It is to—’

‘How can you say that? I don’t know who I am any more. My mother isn’t even my mother.’ My voice cracked.

‘Of course she is your mother,’ Elijah said crossly. ‘You saw in the email – Leto, Apollo’s mother.’

I stared at him blankly. He rolled his eyes.

‘For what am I paying out all that money on your education if you do not have the most basic knowledge of classical culture?’

I looked away. ‘I still don’t see how she’s my mother,’ I said stubbornly.

Elijah sighed. ‘Because she cares for you. And because she bore you in her womb – gave birth to you. What did you think? That I grew you in some sort of bell-jar?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t even know who that man is in the picture that I thought was my dad for fifteen years.’

Fury boiled in my stomach. Mum had lied to me. Lied and lied. And it was this man’s fault.

I clenched my fists, barely containing the impulse to hit out at him.

Elijah waved his hand dismissively. ‘A man from a magazine. Some photo agency. A nobody your mother and I picked to—’

‘Did you care about her?’ I said, suddenly gripped by a new thought. ‘I mean, was she just a . . . a place to put me, or . . . or . . .?’

Since Mum had told me my dad was alive I’d imagined them as a couple. Kept apart by forces outside their control, maybe, but still a couple.

I ground my teeth.
Man
, how stupid was I?

Elijah sighed again. ‘Your mother and I were something,’ he said evasively. ‘I think maybe she loved me once. Women do. Like they will you.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

The wind whistled through the small copse of trees at the far end of the field. It pierced through the jumper and jeans I was wearing – new stuff that Lewis had bought me.

‘I know how you do at school.’ Elijah folded his arms. ‘That you are particularly good at math and science. Like I was. It is interesting to see how far the genetics take root. How far environment makes a difference.’

‘What do you mean?’
Jesus
. I clenched my fists harder. He was talking about me like I was some kind of science experiment.

‘When I knew I could not keep you with me, that I had to hide both of us from the murderers who would hunt us down and kill us like animals, I decided to give you an upbringing as close to my own as possible until you were old enough to join me. That meant a single mother. A good education, but being poorer than the other boys.’ Elijah smiled. ‘My parents – who, in a genetic sense, are your parents too – were victims of the war. The Second World War. I assume you know about this from your history lessons?’

I nodded, curtly, but inside my head was spinning almost out of control. How the hell could I have parents who’d been alive during the Second World War?

‘They escaped from Germany in 1944,’ Elijah said. ‘I was born soon after. But my father killed himself when I was very young. We were extremely poor for a while. But we survived. And I was hungry to better myself. To be rich. To be successful.’

My mind somehow twisted away from the impossibility of such parents, to what Elijah had just said.

‘I don’t care about being rich and successful,’ I said.

Elijah narrowed his eyes. He took a step towards me.

‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But I recognise things in you that were in me when I was your age. Like your temper. Your recklessness. Your lack of fear. The way you don’t let people in too close.’

‘What?’ My hands were freezing now. I shoved them in my pockets. ‘I’m not like that.’

‘No?’ Elijah ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You bullied your mother to tell you I was alive. You ran away from school to find Rachel. You took risks to find me. You didn’t think how any of it would worry or hurt your mother.’

‘I did . . . I . . .’

Elijah held up his hands in surrender. ‘Very well. Maybe you do care about your mother. But you can’t deny you behaved selfishly when you ran away, can you?’

I said nothing.

‘Then you pick friends who make you look good – who show you the image of yourself that you like – like Jake and Max. Yes, I know about these friends. Jake with his hopeless girl-obsession. Max with her computers. You, Theodore, would never let yourself become so out-of-control as to let a girl or a hobby take over your life. No. Like I say, you let no one in too close. You stay in control. Looking down on the rest. No one is allowed in. Not even your mother. Not even that girl inside the cottage who clearly likes you so much. You make sure you feel superior to everyone.’

I stared at him. Well,
that
wasn’t true. Jake might be a bit of a loser with girls and Max was a total nerd, but I liked them. They were my friends. I certainly didn’t look down on them. Or Rachel. And I loved my mum. If anyone looked down on people it was Elijah.

‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

Elijah smiled, which really pissed me off. I opened my mouth to point out one thing he was definitely wrong about. Rachel. No way did she ‘like’ me in the way he meant. Anyway, he’d met her about five minutes ago. How could he know?

Then another thought struck me. Part of what he said – the earlier bit –
was
true. I had to admit it.

I didn’t let anyone get too close. Not really.

I felt sick. Numb. All the anger was draining out of me.

‘Come inside.’ Elijah put his hand on my shoulder. It felt warm through the jumper. ‘We will talk more while my beautiful Mel is preparing our meal.’

I didn’t have the heart to resist any longer.

Without speaking, I let him guide me back to the house.

When I came downstairs they were all sitting round the kitchen table. Elijah was telling some story, his arm round Mel’s shoulders.

Were they an item?
Ew.
He was old enough to be her grandfather. And what about how she’d been with Lewis last night?

Lewis himself sat opposite. He was smiling with his mouth, but his eyes kept flickering to where Elijah’s hand was stroking Mel’s arm.

Theo was slumped in a chair at the end of the table, slightly turned away from the others. He was the only one who didn’t look up when I walked in.

‘Wow, Rachel. You look real nice,’ Mel beamed.

I gave an embarrassed shrug. After she’d gone, I’d got my little arrow-shaped, diamante hairgrip and experimented with ways of pinning back my hair. Right now a long strand was holding back most of the rest of my hair on the left side of my head.

Elijah pointed to the hairgrip. ‘Artemis the hunter.’ He smiled. ‘You know I see a lot of your father in you.’

I wanted to ask him more, like how well he knew Dad. But there were too many people in the room.

‘Would you like to speak to your parents?’ Elijah said.

‘Yes.’ I nodded eagerly.

Elijah glanced at Lewis, who sprang to his feet and herded me back out to the living room. He bent over a bulky cordless receiver.

‘It’s a safe line.’ He handed me the phone. ‘Go on. It’s your dad.’

Lewis went back into the kitchen. I held the phone to my ear. My palms were sweaty against the plastic.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Rachel?’ I could almost feel the relief in his voice. ‘Oh, Rachel, are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ I hesitated.

‘Oh, Ro.’ Dad’s voice broke. ‘I thought . . . we were so afraid . . . let me get Mum. She’ll—’

‘Wait.’ I stared at the empty fireplace. ‘I know, Dad. About . . . about everything.’

I let the words hang in the air.

‘I know you do,’ Dad said finally. ‘Elijah told me he was going to have to tell you.’ He took in a shuddering breath. ‘I’m so sorry, Ro. I’m so sorry if it feels like we were lying to you. So sorry that you’ve been through all this. It wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. But once we’re together again I promise we’ll make it up to you . . .’

There was another long pause. I sat down and leaned back against the armchair.

‘Ro?’

‘Why?’ I said. This lump lodged itself in my throat. ‘Why did you do it?’ I knew the answer. I just needed to hear him say it.

Dad’s breath quickened.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you can understand this, Rachel, but when Rebecca died it nearly killed us, your mother and me. And, maybe it sounds crazy, but we both thought that if we could just have another baby, it would help. It wasn’t that we wanted to replace her . . .’

Yeah, right
.

‘. . . but your mother was too old to conceive naturally, so I talked to Elijah. I mean, I knew about his work on the methylation of DNA in adult cells – not that I understood the half of it – so I knew how far he’d come to getting over the problem of genetic disabilities. And I knew about his . . . about Apollo. Not details. Just that he existed. Anyway, Elijah persuaded us he was ready to clone again – and what more perfect scenario than ours? I think he thought the public would be sympathetic to our situation. We were planning on making an announcement once you were born, but . . .’