Fifty Fifty (23 page)

Gil heard what Dad said, but it was like listening to a snatch of dialogue on the television, completely unrelated to anything in Gil’s life. The photo of the embryo floated in his mind
like an image from a dream and he struggled to make a connection with it. It was the weirdest thing he’d ever had to try and understand, like discovering he was an alien life-form
.
That’s me,
he told himself.
Those blobs are me. They built me.
Even now he was a collection of microscopic blobs, but there were a hundred trillion of them, all working away
quietly to make him Gil. It made no sense.

Dad reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the photo album.

‘It was hard on Mum,’ he said. ‘It was all she thought about for a couple of years. She kept photos of every embryo at the point they were tested for Huntington’s
Disease.’

He let the album fall open and Gil looked again at the smudgy blobs that he’d assumed were something to do with Dad’s research.
Thomas. Imogen. Anna. David.
They were not mice
or rabbits or guinea pigs. They were his brothers and sisters, all the brothers and sisters he’d never had, all the children Mum and Dad had never had.

‘What happened to them?’ Gil asked.

‘They don’t exist any more. We had four failed attempts at IVF before we had you – eight embryos that were put back inside Mum but miscarried shortly afterwards. Those are the
ones she gave names to. I thought it was a bad idea, but she insisted. They were so real to her. You had a twin sister who died in the womb when she was twelve weeks old and nearly killed you too.
And the others – when you were born, we let them go. We felt you were enough.’

‘You let them die, you mean.’

‘They weren’t human beings yet, Gil. They were just cell clusters. They didn’t feel any pain. They didn’t know anything about it.’

‘But they
would
have been human beings, wouldn’t they? They would have turned out exactly like me.’

‘Not exactly like you,’ said Dad. ‘You’re unique. You’re Gil.’

Gil closed his eyes and listened to Dad breathing quietly. Was it possible to cry if you had your eyes shut? But he wasn’t going to cry, he didn’t need to cry. He thought of the
photos in Dad’s secret album.
Why me?
he wondered. Why was he here and not Thomas or Imogen or any of the dozens of others who’d been kick-started into life and then never
allowed to grow up? It was like the scene at the end of
Titanic
, the scene with hundreds of people floating frozen and dead in a dark sea. Gil was the one who was rescued, the only one who
was pulled to safety, the random survivor. Everyone else was dead.

And now Mum – Dad was telling him that Mum was – she was . . .

‘What’s going to happen to Mum?’ Gil managed to say.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Is she ill or not? Has she got this – this Huntington’s Disease or not?’

‘Gil, we don’t know. I promise you we don’t know. We made a decision not to find out. All we did was check to make sure that any child we had would be free from the
disease.’

‘But Mum could find out if she was ill?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why doesn’t she?’

‘Because she doesn’t want to know.’

‘Why not? I would!’

‘Are you sure?’ Dad’s voice was warm and strong. ‘You would risk being told that you had a disease that is completely inescapable, and that currently has no cure? Mum
felt it would be like living on death row. She decided it was better just to wait and see what happened. But of course it becomes harder and harder the older she gets, and we didn’t really
anticipate that. She’s about the same age now as her mother was when she started to show signs of illness. Whenever Mum thinks she’s getting a symptom of the disease she panics.
It’s triggered by little things, like —’

‘Like dropping a plate,’ Gil said suddenly.

‘Yes, exactly. The early symptoms of Huntington’s are things like clumsiness and forgetfulness. Every time Mum drops something or forgets something she thinks she might be getting
ill, even though it might well be nothing sinister at all.’

‘But how would she find out? Is there a test?’

‘Yes, it’s quite simple. I could even do it in my lab, if I wanted to. You just take a sample of cells and separate out the DNA, then use a technique that makes lots of copies of the
gene you want to test for, in this case gene IT- 15. Huntington’s Disease is caused when this gene is faulty and —’

‘IT-15? That was on the labels for your mice in the lab, wasn’t it?’

‘Well remembered,’ said Dad softly. ‘Now maybe you can understand what I’m trying to do there.’

There was a moment where Gil saw the shock before he felt it, the way you always see the lightning flash before you hear the rumble of thunder. Then the room heaved under him as if bombs were
exploding all around him. The mental world he had lived in for so long began to topple and collapse. His view of Dad, his view of Mum, his view of Jude, his view of himself – he watched it
all changing, shifting, falling.

Dad was researching Huntington’s Disease. He was trying to find a cure for the illness that might kill Mum, the illness that had destroyed Granny’s brain so that she no longer
recognised even her own daughter. That was what the mice were for. The mice were there to try and save Mum’s life.

‘Gil,’ said Dad after a while. ‘Talk to me. Are you all right?’

Gil didn’t reply. He sat, stunned, and listened to the explosions as they continued in his head. One thought hung clear above the debris. How long did he have to stop Jude? How was he
going to stop Jude?

‘I’ve got to tell Jude,’ Gil said. He thought he’d said it in his head, until he saw Dad’s eyebrows knot together.

‘Jude? Who’s Jude?’

‘No one,’ said Gil.

‘What do you mean,
no one
? Who is he? Is he that appalling man who nearly got you arrested?’

‘No,’ said Gil. He couldn’t really focus on what Dad was saying. The room seemed full of dust and smoke.

‘You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you? What is it? What the hell have you got involved in? I insist that you tell me.’

‘
Hiding
something,’ said Gil slowly. ‘
Hiding
something. God, Dad, that’s a joke, isn’t it, coming from you? You’ve just told me – oh my
God . . .’ Gil clenched his teeth as a sudden shuddering rage surged upwards from his belly. ‘Bloody hell. I can’t – I can’t . . . You’ve known this stuff my
whole life – my
entire life
, for God’s sake, and you’ve never told me any of it? And you call
me
a liar? You’ve lied to me about
everything
, Dad. I hate
you. You’re just a lying, selfish, smug —’

‘Stop it,’ snapped Dad. ‘Stop that right now. You have
no idea
what it’s been like for us. You have no idea how we’ve tried to protect you —’

‘Oh yeah!’ Gil leapt up from the chair, breathing hard. ‘Well, you’ve done a really great job, Dad. Because right now I wish you were dead.’

‘Grow up,’ said Dad. He didn’t move. ‘Think about other people for once in your life.’

‘Oh my God, I wish I could
kill
you. I
hate
you, Dad.’

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Dad, rising from his desk at last.

‘I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you. I HATE YOU!
’

Gil hurled his full weight at Dad. Taken by surprise, Dad staggered back against the chair by his desk. The chair rolled gently away from him and he fell, banging his shoulder on the corner of
the desk. Gil kicked the chair violently and it toppled forwards on to Dad’s head. Then Gil ran from the study, his throat aching from screaming at Dad, his head howling with pain, tears of
fury and terror and shock finally pouring down his face. Through the blur he saw Mum appear out of the kitchen door.

‘Gil,’ she said, catching his arm. ‘Gil, what on earth’s happened?’

He wrenched himself away and ran for the stairs.

She called after him. ‘Gil!’

He ran, sobbing, and slammed the bedroom door hard behind him. He grabbed at the desk and dragged it across the door. His chest heaved with a life of its own, with gasps and sobs that he could
not bring under control. Objects came into view briefly through the distortion of his tears and he picked them up at random and threw them viciously at the desk and the door. He could hear Mum
outside, knocking, trying the door, calling urgently.

‘Gil, what’s the matter? Please let me in. What’s happened? Gil?’

Gil sank to the floor at the foot of his bed. His face fell forwards on to his knees and he sat hunched up with his hands curled uselessly at his sides while the eruption inside his chest went
on and on and the tears soaked the legs of his jeans.

‘Please, Gil. Please let me help.’

But Mum’s voice was impossibly far away. There was no one to help him now.

As the storm in his head began to move away, Gil lifted his wet face, wiped his eyes with his hands and listened. There were noises coming from downstairs. After a moment he
realised Mum and Dad were talking loudly. Really loudly. No, wait a minute – they were
arguing
. Gil got up with some difficulty and crept to the door. He moved the desk a few
centimetres and opened the door a crack so he could hear.

‘I don’t believe you sometimes, Matt.’ Gil couldn’t remember ever hearing Mum sound so furious. ‘I thought we had an agreement about this.’

‘I’ve told you what happened. I didn’t
mean
to tell him. It just came out.’

‘You’re starting to sound like a bloody teenager yourself.’

‘I am not! Rachel, you forget this is just as difficult for me as it is for —’

‘Oh, don’t you dare. Don’t you
dare
. This is
not
just as difficult for you.’

‘Well, all right, I’m sorry, but —’

‘You’re the one who said we should wait till he was older. I wanted to tell him years ago.’

‘For God’s sake, Rachel, don’t start dragging up accusations like that. It’s not helpful.’

‘But that’s what you said! You did! Don’t try and deny it now!’

‘Yes, because I thought it would be too much for him. I thought it wasn’t fair.’

‘And how the hell do you think he feels now, with everything dumped on him at once? Tell me that. He’s up there, barricaded in his room, crying his bloody eyes out. He won’t
even
talk
to me.’

‘He’ll be all right. He’ll calm down. It’s just teenage hysteria.’

‘Matt, how can you
say
that? You’re totally contradicting yourself. You know damn well he must have been feeling desperately unhappy even before he found out about all this if
he’s been bunking off school and lying to us about things.’

‘He’s not unhappy. He’s trying to provoke me. God knows what he’s mixed up in, or who this Jude character is —’

‘That is just not relevant right now. Right now we have to stop him spiralling off into total despair.’

‘No, we have to bring him into line and show him we’re in charge.’

‘Oh, great. Wonderful. It’s really going to help if you’re going to go on behaving like a control freak.’

‘
What
did you just say?’

‘You heard me, Matt. You want to control everything he does and everything he thinks. Well, congratulations. You’ve made him hate you. And at the moment I’m not sure I like you
that much either.’

‘Good God. I’m not staying here to be talked to like this.’

‘Fine. Walk away from the mess. It’ll still be here when you get back, though. Someone’s going to have to deal with it.’

The front door slammed so hard that the whole house shook. Gil closed his bedroom door and pushed the desk back against it. Perhaps this was it, he thought unemotionally. Perhaps Dad had walked
out and would never come back. He had never in all his life heard his parents have a row like that.

He stood for a long time examining the surface of his desk, not thinking of much at all. There was a big new dent, he noticed, from an object he’d hurled in anger, possibly one of the
speakers for his MP3 player. He ran his fingers over the sharp edges of the dent, trying to smooth it and fill it, but it made no difference. The hole was raw and deep and irreversible.

Mum was coming up the stairs again. He heard her pause outside his room, but she didn’t try the door.

‘Gil, can I make you something to eat?’ she said. It was such a normal question he couldn’t think how to answer. Was he hungry or not?

‘Gil?’

‘No,’ Gil said at last, hoarsely. ‘No, I don’t think I’m hungry.’

‘Gil, I’m really, really sorry. You were never meant to find out like this.’

‘No,’ said Gil. The dent in the desk was really bothering him. He tried wedging his little finger in the triangular hole.

‘Can I come in and talk to you?’

‘Uh – not now. Later. I’m all right, Mum. I just want to be on my own.’

‘Oh. OK.’

She padded away down the stairs again. Gil was grateful to her for swallowing such a blatant lie. There was no way she could believe he was all right. But he really didn’t want to talk to
Mum right now. He needed to think.

Think. Think.

He curled up on his bed and fell asleep as suddenly as if someone had hit him over the head with a cricket bat.