Parallel Life (40 page)

Hope smiled prettily. Then she threw the second duck.

Ben was on his way up the M6. Studying maths and computer science at St Anne's College, Oxford, his intention was to gain an MSc before moving into a job involving the police, the government and, almost certainly, the Official Secrets Act. Like several others on the course, he was determined to make some contribution towards stemming Internet crime, and the road ahead promised not to provide easy travelling. Nor did the M6, since the world and his wife had decided to come out and enjoy a weekend of decent weather.

But Internet highways were a lot worse than he had first imagined, because fraud, pornography, paedophilia and many other diseases thrived healthily in the ether. Like hospitals, the Internet housed some very ill patients and some extremely robust bacteria, which trawled, hacked into and ate people's lives on a daily basis. He was more like his father than he had imagined, since he, too, was fighting the almost invisible and the potentially invincible.

On the positive side, he had discovered that it was possible to live in close contact with others and for that, he thanked Angelina. Angelina was the battered camper he now drove homeward, because tonight was Harrie's night. His sister remained the one person in the world who was truly deserving of admiration, though several others vied for second place. Ben had discovered girls. Like the first man to top Everest, he wanted to plant a flag to mark the spot, because he was turning out to be what most would term normal. He accepted now the concept that he had taken a long time to grow up, that his intellect had been a burden which could soon be put to good use in his career.

Angelina had started to struggle of late. As he intended to keep her for the rest of his life, Ben would have her hospitalized in Bolton under the care of a master mechanic on whom his family had depended for at least two generations. She required careful handling and was deserving of only the best.

As he drove, he remembered the momentous summer of 2006, when he had literally taken his life into his own hands after watching that webcam suicide. Living with travelling folk? Fishing, chopping wood, helping to settle a horse after a traumatic journey down from Appleby? He remembered feeling truly alive for the first time ever, remembered with great affection Josh, his close friend, face tanned and lined, hands strong enough to defy the excesses of the most unbroken of stallions. Ben had fought, that summer, for his very existence, as he had determined to use as little money as possible. So, it had been Ben versus the elements, and he could not have succeeded alone.

He thanked God for Gran and her generosity, as it was she who had provided the cash for Angelina and, indirectly, for the travellers. How reluctant Josh had been when receiving the money from Ben. Travellers' pride was beyond measure, but Ben had won in the end – they would have been more comfortable for several months after his exit from their lives.

How far he had come, thanks to Harrie. It was she who had watched over him, she who had tried to understand, she who had walked away. Like an alcoholic, Ben had been left to come to terms with his own misbehaviours, and the miracle had happened. He tried and failed to remember how it felt to worry about a scratched kettle, ordered shelves, sanitized kitchen. The house he currently inhabited would have driven his father wild, as it had probably not been cleaned for months. It didn't matter. Only the bigger picture mattered now.

He wished he'd known his father better, wished he could remember more than a few occasions on which they had talked. The man had been intuitive; when he had indulged in conversation, it was clear that he understood and took an interest in whatever was going on around him, that he cared enough to give advice. Too late now. ‘No, no,' Ben told himself. ‘Never too late, and never give up hope.'

Hope. He was an uncle. The minute those tiny fingers had closed around his thumb, the child had clutched at his heart like a steel vice. So small, so perfect. Unfortunately, she would deteriorate into a human adult, but he would never stop loving her. He had found her first tooth, had been present for the inevitable ‘da-da' that was always presumed to be a baby's first word.

Ben found himself grinning. It was he who had sung to her, and, at eight weeks of age, she had joined in with ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful'. She sang some of the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, putting him in mind of a famous Morecambe and Wise sketch involving Andre Previn, a piano concerto, and a lot of jumping about. Soon, he would see Hope again. She was walking now, so perhaps she could do the jumping about bit as well.

He drove into his home town, wondering whether he would ever live here again. The job he wanted might take him just about anywhere – even across the Atlantic. But Bolton would always be home. It was a great town, a proud town in which his family had established mills, then shops. It had given birth to several notable people among which number his father was counted.

They had watched their father die alone, behind the glass, because he would not allow them to enter his room. In the end, the cancer was not his murderer; he was killed by
Clostridium difficile
, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that spreads in dirty hospitals. It was an ironic death, for a man whose whole life had been devoted to cleanliness, who'd been an expert on superbugs and how to combat them.

Tonight, in the Albert Hall, the Gustav Compton-Milne Memorial Lecture was to be delivered by Harrie. She had given up the idea of becoming a teacher and had decided to pick up the baton dropped by her father in August 2006. It seemed inevitable that she would gain a first from Liverpool, that she would go on to PhD level, that she would study for the rest of her life, just as Father had. She had decided, Ben thought, to see that no one else would die, as their father had, of an infection that should have been preventable.

There had been no religious ceremony for Gus, as he had not believed in anything that was not completely proven. Had he been able to find God under a microscope, perhaps he might have relaxed his view. Father would have approved of the lecture. Harrie was not yet the professional her male parent had been, but she had fire in her belly and faith in her subject. Tonight, Harrie would burn bright.