Perfect People (35 page)

‘Hi, Luke! Hi, Phoebe! Hi, Fudge! Hi, Chocolate!’ he said, sounding puffed. The children ignored him.

‘Good run?’ she asked.

‘Six miles! Wonderful!’ He wiped his brow and sniffed. His face was glowing red from exertion, and his hair was awry. Naomi liked him looking rough like this. ‘Fifty-two minutes, but that includes over half a mile vertical ascent.’

‘Not bad!’ she said. ‘You had three calls – one from Carson, and a couple of others from your office – I put them on your desk.’

‘Thanks.’ He glanced at his watch, then stared down at the children. ‘How’s Fudge, Phoebe?’ There was a long silence. Then, without looking at him, Luke said, ‘Fudge is my ging pig. Phoebe’s is
Chokkit.
’

‘OK, right, Daddy got muddled. So how’s Fudge, Luke?’

Luke was teasing the guinea pig with a food pellet tied to a length of cotton, constantly pulling it just beyond the creature’s reach. The frustrated guinea pig made a squeaking sound like glass being polished. Luke laughed and tugged the cotton again.

John knelt beside him, pushing aside a book that was lying on the floor. ‘You should let him have a reward sometimes, otherwise he’ll get bored and stop playing.’

The guinea pig advanced and Luke tugged the cotton again, totally ignoring his father. Then again. Phoebe wound a length of cotton around another pellet and began teasing
Chokkit
in the same way.

John felt excluded. The children had put up that damned wall between them and himself and Naomi once more.

‘Time to put them to bed now, darlings,’ Naomi said.

No reaction at all from either Luke or Phoebe.

‘Get them ready for bed, Luke and Phoebe, then you have to go to bed, too!’ Naomi said.

Phoebe reached into the hutch, took out the drinking bowl, went over to the sink, stood on a chair and ran the tap. She tested the water with her index finger, waiting until it was cold, then filled the bowl for the animals and placed it in their hutch.

Despite his anger of a few moments ago, John watched proudly. This was his daughter, caring for her pet, all by herself!

Luke picked up the box of food, and poured pellets into their plastic tray. Then he knelt down, scooped Fudge up and placed him on the straw-covered floor of their hutch. Phoebe tempted Chocolate with one more pellet of food then picked her up, kissed her on the mouth and placed her, as gently as if she were laying a priceless china ornament, on the straw inside the hutch.

Together John and Naomi bathed the children and John put them to bed.

‘Will you say g’night to Fudge?’ Luke said.

‘Sure.’

‘Will you say g’night to Chokkit?’ Phoebe asked.

‘Of course, sweetheart.’

John left the room and closed the door, beaming. They had asked him to do something! Wow! Progress!

He skipped down the stairs, went into the kitchen and knelt down in front of the hutch. Both of the creatures were curled up on the floor.

‘Luke and Phoebe said to say goodnight!’

There was a great smell of cooking. Naomi was standing over the Aga, stirring a pan. She gave him a bemused look.

‘I’m starving,’ John said. ‘What are we having?’

‘Our special today is pan-fried guinea pig on a buckwheat pancake, served with a side order of child psychologist’s sweetbreads,’ Naomi replied. ‘I had intended making a goulash of her brain, but there wasn’t enough of it to make it worthwhile.’

John put an arm around her. ‘Don’t be too harsh on her – at least she’s going to give them another chance at playschool.’

‘She was a bitch,’ Naomi said.

‘Put yourself in her position.’

She stared at him. ‘Yes?’

‘We’re keeping stuff back from her.’

‘John, she was accusing you and I of being responsible for the way they are. She didn’t tell us in so many words, but she was implying that all the problems with Luke and Phoebe stem from us being crap parents. That’s not true and you know that.’

‘They’re getting better. They are also talking a bit more as well. Maybe we don’t need a psychologist, maybe all we need is time. Look at them – you saw the way they played with their guinea pigs – how much they adored them. Right?’

‘It’s nice to see it. It would be quite nice if they showed
us
that much affection, too. I know they have got a little better as they’ve grown older. It’s a shame they don’t smile more – they have such lovely smiles.’

The Disciple spent the night in a youth hostel on the Bowery, where he kept to himself, his departure into the bitter cold morning as low-key as his arrival had been. In a few weeks’ time he would be gone from anyone’s memory there.

He breakfasted simply in a busy café, then took the subway to the West Village and emerged into a street teeming with people, heady with a hundred different smells, and the discordance of a thousand different noises. It had started snowing. Pure white flakes fell and were corrupted into dirty grey slush as they landed.

It took him only a couple of minutes to find the second internet café on his list, but all the computers were taken and he had to sit in a line. A young woman in scruffy clothes tried to engage him in conversation. Her name was Elaine, she told him, but her friends called her Ellie. She asked him where he lived and he told her New Jersey. Persisting, irritating him now, she asked him what he did. He told her he worked for the Lord.

She talked more to him, looking at him in a way that made him uncomfortable, edging closer to him, giving him signals. Tempting him. Sent by Satan, you could tell, you could always tell, sent to destroy his love for Lara.

The next computer became free and he moved away from her, saying a prayer of gratitude to the Lord, and sat down in front of it. Joel Timothy entered his username and password and logged on to his Hotmail account.

One new email sat there, waiting for him.

The Disciple deleted the email, logged off and left the café. He was smiling. Walking swiftly back to the subway, not caring about how much he breathed in, nor about the sounds, his head was filled now with more important thoughts. Travel plans. He had never travelled outside of the United States before.

Now he was going to England.

Christmas decorations were still up. On one wall hung politically correct posters of the Three Wise Men, depicting them with different ethnic origins, painted by the children. Sheila Michaelides, keeping her distance, watched Naomi help Luke and Phoebe out of their coats and hang them on the peg, then leave.

Immediately, the psychologist noticed a change in the twins. It was as if they had been energized by their mother’s departure. Luke, followed by Phoebe, went into the main playroom. Sheila moved up to the doorway so she could observe, and was instantly horrified by what she saw.

There were about a dozen children in this room, mostly in small groups, and a supervisor, a woman in her early thirties wearing jeans and some kind of woolly ethnic top. As Luke and Phoebe entered, all the activity and noise instantly stopped, as if a lever had been pulled. Not one of the children made eye contact with the twins, but instead, without actually moving from where they were, seemed to shrink away. It was like a frozen tableau.

The psychologist stared at the woman supervisor, whose eyes were tracking Luke and Phoebe with deep mistrust.

Luke walked straight over to the table where two boys had, seconds earlier, both been tugging on the little knight on horseback, and lifted it out of their hands without a word; neither boy looked at him. Luke peered at it contemptuously, then tossed it back onto the table. Phoebe knelt on the floor and peered at some dolls. Two little girls, Michaelides could see, remained frozen, immobile, shaking.

Luke then went over to the table where four children were playing Lego. His hands moved so fast that the psychologist could not keep pace with what they were doing. She just saw a blur of movement, of coloured bricks, the stare of the supervisor, the other children all motionless with fear in their faces. Then Luke stepped away.

The psychologist put a hand in front of her mouth involuntarily. She could not believe this. The Lego tower that, less than a minute ago, had been ragged and distinctly lopsided, now stood perfect, several inches taller, all the bricks rearranged into a separate colour for each of the four sides, so that it resembled a vertical Rubik’s Cube, with a perfect pitched roof.

Moments later, she had to step aside as Luke and Phoebe marched back into the corridor. Like creatures emerging from hibernation, the other children, one by one, turned their heads towards the door, as if to make quite sure they were gone.

Sheila Michaelides felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

She watched Luke and Phoebe approach the boy who was playing on the computer. They went and stood either side of him, then each turned and said something.

Instantly, the boy jumped down from his seat and ran down the hallway, shaking and bawling his eyes out. Pat Barley emerged from the kitchen. She shot the psychologist a worried glance, putting her arms around the boy.

‘What is it, Matthew? What’s the matter?’

He buried himself into her arms, as if for protection, screaming like a frightened animal.

His terror was infecting the psychologist now; goose bumps were breaking out on her skin. She listened, trying to hear what the boy said, but he was just babbling. At the same time she watched Luke and Phoebe, now totally engrossed with the computer they had commandeered.

Just what had they said to the boy?

After some minutes, Pat Barley slipped out to join the psychologist in the hall and signalled with her eyes for them to move further away from the twins.

‘What did little Matthew say?’ the psychologist asked the teacher. ‘What did Luke and Phoebe say to him that upset him quite so much?’

‘I don’t know – it’s always the same – and they upset the other children as well, just as much. I don’t think it’s so much what they say as the way they say it. And, the thing is, they
look
so much older.’

‘I’ve seen a lot of children with quite appalling behavioural problems,’ Sheila Michaelides said, keeping her voice low. ‘Violent children, out-of-control children, seriously withdrawn children – but I’ve never seen anything like – like what I’ve seen here, just in these past few minutes.’

‘I’ve never seen anything remotely like it,’ Pat Barley said. ‘And I’ve had a few terrors in my time, believe me.’

‘Are they ever physically violent? Have either of them ever actually attacked another child?’

‘No, not that any of us have seen. It’s a mental thing; they’re manipulative. If I try to talk to them they either say absolutely nothing or they spout gibberish at me.’

‘I very much appreciate your letting me come here and observe them,’ the psychologist said.

‘Perhaps now you can understand why I had to ban them?’

‘Yes.’

For some moments both watched Luke and Phoebe. From behind, they looked like any normal, happy children playing together. Then Pat Barley said, ‘God knows what they’re going to be like when they’re older.’

Naomi’s Diary

Snow! Four inches, just white as far as the eye can see! Great start to the New Year! John went out and bought a toboggan. Took L & P up on the Downs. L loved it, P grumpy. How can she not like snow? How can any child not?

They’re starting at a new, special needs playschool next week that Sheila Michaelides (SM – appropriate initials for a sadist!!) suggested.

At least – in my darker moments, when I worry about what we’ve done – or rather, what Dettore’s done – I’m able to convince myself that there really isn’t anything so great or special about the human species. All this crap about life being precious, sacrosanct. Maybe for those of us – a percentage of us, anyhow – who live in the First World, you could make out a case. But what was it Dettore said? Less than 20% of the world can read or write? Not sure how special I’d find life if I spent my days up to my ankles in water in a paddy field, and my nights in a tin hut with nine children. Don’t think I’d even call that living – I’d call it ‘existing’.

Soon they’ll be three. What to get them? Debating whether to have a party and invite local kids over. Not sure how many mums would send their kids – could be embarrassing. Especially if Luke and Phoebe ignore them.

On the living-room floor, Luke sat holding a PlayStation joystick in his hand, absorbed in concentration. Phoebe, kneeling beside him, was watching the television screen, equally absorbed, and every few moments giving an urgent command to her brother.

A man in a long cape was climbing a never-ending Gothic stairwell; oak doors opened and closed revealing strange creatures, some scary, some beautiful, some plain weird. Sometimes, at Phoebe’s urgent command, Luke pressed a button and the man ducked. Other times the man did a snap one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.