Perfect People (19 page)

Safe.

John was enthusiastic also, after she had described everything in detail over the phone. He had one month to go in Los Angeles, to work out his notice at the university, and to organize the shipping of their belongings over to England. He told her it was hard to imagine how much junk they’d accumulated in the past six years. She said to throw away anything he wasn’t passionate about keeping.

‘So, who actually owns this place?’ Harriet asked, eyeing the vast Indian carved mahogany two-poster bed.

‘I was explaining to your sister on – er – Wednesday. It is owned by the man who did the conversion, Roger Hammond. He’s just gone to Saudi Arabia on a three-year contract. They are considering moving to Australia at the end of the contract. That of course would mean an opportunity to buy this place – be a wonderful investment – the garage block could be converted into a separate dwelling. This kind of property comes up once a decade, if that.’

‘Well-designed bathroom,’ Harriet said approvingly. ‘Twin sinks. That’s good.’

The agent led them across the corridor. ‘And of course this next room would be perfect for your twins!’

After they had done all the rooms, Suzie Walker told them she would leave them to have a wander around by themselves, and went out to her car.

Sitting in front of the bright red Aga, at the ancient oak refectory table in the kitchen, Naomi looked at Harriet, then her mother. ‘So?’ she asked.

Her mother said, ‘There seems to be lots of cupboard space. Very good cupboard space.’

‘What will you do when it snows?’ her sister demanded.

‘Well – we may spend a few days trapped. I think I’d find that quite romantic!’ Naomi replied with a smile.

‘Not if you have to see a doctor urgently.’

‘What about schools?’ her mother said. ‘That’s what you need to think about.’

‘She needs to think about the isolation,’ her sister said. ‘John’s going to be at work all day. How are you going to cope with no one to talk to except sheep?’

‘I like sheep,’ Naomi said.

‘You’d need a dog, darling,’ her mother said.

‘Dogs are a pain,’ Harriet said. ‘What do you do if you want to go away?’

‘I like dogs,’ Naomi said. ‘Dogs don’t judge people.’

There was something snagging in John’s throat, tugging at it from the inside, a muscle twitching from nerves; there were muscles twitching in his guts, also. He couldn’t stay still for more than a few moments. He wanted this all to be over, yet at the same time he was truly scared. Scared for Naomi, for the babies inside her. Scared about what lay ahead.

They had given him a chair beside the operating table, and he was sitting there now, stroking Naomi’s forehead, staring at the green cloth screen that had been clipped across her chest, blocking their view of everything that was going on beyond in the operating theatre.

They were waiting for the epidural block that had been injected into Naomi’s spine to become fully effective. John glanced at the round white clock face on the theatre wall. Five minutes had passed. He smiled at Naomi.

‘How are you feeling, darling?’

She looked so vulnerable in the loose gown, with the drip line in her wrist and her plastic name tag. A tiny bubble of spittle appeared in the corner of her mouth and he dabbed it away with a tissue.

‘OK,’ she said very quietly. ‘I’ll be glad when—’ She mustered a smile back at him, then swallowed, a nervous gulp. Her eyes were wide open. Sometimes they were green, sometimes brown; right now they seemed to be both at the same time. Her smile faded and doubt flickered, like a guttering candle, in its place.

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad when—’

When what?
he wondered.
When this waiting is over? When the babies are born and we can start to find out what Dettore has really done? When we can start to discover the wisdom of what we have done?

‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘Waiting.’

John stood up. The theatre seemed crowded; it had filled with figures in green gowns, most of them just chatting through their masks as if they were at a cocktail party. He was trying to remember who they all were. The consultant obstetrician, the registrar obstetrician, the consultant paediatrician, anaesthetist, assistant anaesthetist, nurses, midwife. Harsh white light burned down from the overhead lamp onto Naomi’s exposed swollen belly. Banks of electrical equipment were giving off readings.

The anaesthetist, a cheery, thorough man called Andrew Davey, touched her belly with cotton wool. ‘Can you feel this, Naomi?’

She shook her head.

Next he gave her a tiny prick with a small pointed instrument. ‘Feel anything now?’

Again she shook her head.

He picked up a water spray and gave a hard squirt, first onto her belly, then either side of her navel. Naomi did not flinch.

‘OK,’ the anaesthetist said, turning to the obstetrician. ‘I’m happy.’

The consultant obstetrician at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Mr Des Holbein, was a solidly built, bespectacled man in his mid-forties. He had dark hair shorn to stubble, with a serious face that had the air of a benign bank manager. Like everyone else, he knew nothing about their background with Dettore. But he had done a great deal to bolster their morale, in particular Naomi’s, over the past seven months.

It seemed to John that for the past seven months, doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals had become part of the rhythm of their lives.

Naomi had had a rough pregnancy. John had made it his business to try to understand more about the double uterus, and the conversation he and Naomi had had over and over, to the point of exhaustion and then beyond, was why Dr Dettore had never told them about this abnormality – and why had he implanted two eggs?

And why hadn’t Dr Rosengarten in Los Angeles seen she was expecting twins on the scan? When they discussed this with Des Holbein, he told them that at that early stage, if he hadn’t known about her second uterus, and if the boy had been out of position, possibly screened by the girl, and if he had been rushed, as it sounded Rosengarten was, it could quite easily have happened.

John kept in regular contact with his friend, Kalle Almtorp. The FBI were still no nearer to solving who had killed Dettore, and the
Serendipity Rose
had not been sighted. It was possible, he told John, that the Disciples of the Third Millennium, if they really existed, had sunk it at the same time as they had murdered Dettore – presumably killing everyone on board. They were no closer, either, to finding the killer of Marty and Elaine Borowitz, despite the original claims that it was done by the same Disciples of the Third Millennium. Just as silently as they had surfaced and struck, the Disciples of the Third Millennium seem to have faded back into the ether.

The FBI and Interpol were baffled. His best advice, Kalle told John, was for them to keep a low profile, avoid all publicity, be ex-directory and vigilant at all times. Kalle felt that moving from the US, as they had done, was sensible.

In England they had made the decision to tell no one about their visit to the Dettore Clinic, other than Naomi’s mother and sister. Some of John’s old colleagues, and some of Naomi’s friends, had seen the press mentions when the article had been syndicated around the world, but John and Naomi had successfully played it down saying that, as usual, the press had got the wrong end of the stick and had tried to make a sensational story out of nothing.

By her eighteenth week, instead of the morning sickness having gone, as she had been told it would, it had worsened. Naomi had been vomiting all the time, unable to keep any food down, despite constant cravings for frozen peas and Marmite sandwiches. Suffering severe dehydration, with her electrolytes up the creek, short of sodium and potassium in her blood, she had been admitted to hospital four times over the next two months.

In her thirtieth week, Naomi had been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia toxaemia – pregnancy-induced hypertension – with rising blood pressure. There was protein in her urine, causing her very uncomfortable swelling of her hands and ankles, to the point where she could no longer get her shoes on.

When, at thirty-six and a half weeks, Mr Holbein advised them Naomi should have an elective lower segment caesarean section instead of going the full term, because he was worried about the function of the placenta being impaired and possibly causing death of the babies or bleeding behind the placenta, Naomi had taken little persuading; as had John.

The conversation in the operating theatre suddenly quietened and in unison the gowned medics seemed to close ranks around Naomi. John sat down and took her hand. His mouth had gone dry. He was trembling. ‘Starting now,’ he said to her.

He could hear the clatter of instruments. Saw figures leaning over the table, eyes above the masks all serious in concentration. He craned his neck around the screen and watched Mr Holbein drawing a scalpel across the base of the huge bump that took up the whole of Naomi’s abdomen. Squeamishly, he looked away.

‘What can you see?’ Naomi asked.

Then suddenly the obstetrician popped his head around the screen.

‘Would you like to see the babies delivered?’ he asked, cheerily.

John looked at Naomi, bolstered by the confident tone of Holbein’s voice. ‘How do you feel about that, darling?’

‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Would you like to?’

‘I – I would, yes,’ he said.

‘I would too.’

Moments later, the anaesthetist undid the clips and let the green sheet down.

‘You can hold up her head to give her a better view,’ Holbein said to John.

Gently, John obeyed. They could see a lumpy ocean of green sheets and the surgeons’ gowned arms.

It seemed just moments later that Phoebe Anna Klaesson, tiny, coated in the slimy curds of yellow cream of the vernix and blood, eyes open, crying, trailing her umbilical cord from her belly and gripped firmly in a rubber-gloved hand, was pulled clear of the warmth and bustle of her mother’s womb. She was lifted up into the comparative freezing cold and eerie silence of the operating theatre.

As John watched, totally mesmerized, she was turning,
right in front of his eyes
, from bluey pink to bright pink.

That crying. That sweet sound of life, their baby, their creation! He felt joy and fear at the same time. Memories of Halley’s birth swirled in his head. All the pride and hope he had had.
Please be all right, Phoebe. You will be. Oh God, yes, you will be!

The obstetrician held Phoebe up, while another gowned figure fixed the cord with two clamps, and a third figure cut it between them.

Holding the cord with the baby, Mr Holbein placed them into the green sterile sheet the midwife was holding out. Then, wrapping the sheet around Phoebe, he brought her close to Naomi.

‘Your daughter looks lovely!’

Phoebe cried lustily.

‘Listen to that!’ Holbein said. ‘That’s a healthy cry.’

John’s eyes were sodden with tears. ‘Well done, darling,’ he whispered to Naomi. But she was staring at her daughter with such exhausted rapture she didn’t even hear him.

The obstetrician handed Phoebe to the midwife, who in turn took her over to the paediatrician, who was standing by the resuscitation trolleys, two small mobile tables each with a large flat overhead lamp. ‘And now the next child,’ he said.

As the surgeon moved back down to the abdomen, he said, ‘The second baby is further back and higher up – this is not going to be quite so easy. It’s a breech presentation with the head tucked up in a corner of the womb.’

Still supporting Naomi’s head, John’s anxiety returned. He watched the obstetrician concentrating. The man was moving his hands around inside Naomi, but John could see from his face something was wrong. Sweat was glistening on the man’s brow.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to change. Every pair of eyes now looked tense. The surgeon was still moving his hands. He said something to the scrub nurse, too quietly for John to hear.

A bead of sweat fell from the obstetrician’s head onto the lens of his glasses.

Suddenly the anaesthetist said to John, ‘We’re having a little difficulty here. I think, Mr Klaesson, you should leave us now.’

Holbein nodded. ‘Yes, that’s sensible.’

‘What’s going on?’ John said, glancing anxiously at Naomi, who seemed to have lost what little colour she had in her face.

The obstetrician said, ‘This is really difficult and the baby’s heart rate from cord pulsation has gone right down. It would be better if you went out into a waiting room.’

‘I’d prefer to stay,’ John said.

The anaesthetist and obstetrician exchanged glances. John looked anxiously at Mr Holbein. Was the baby dying?

The anaesthetist pinned back the screen, blocking Naomi and John’s view. John kissed her. ‘Don’t worry, darling, it’ll be OK.’

She squeezed his hand. Then he stood up. Des Holbein came up to Naomi again. ‘I’m sorry, Naomi, I’ve been trying to restrict the incision to what we call the bikini line, but I’m going to have to cut you vertically now.’

She gave a faint nod.