He had wished Jan could be with them. They had drunk a toast to him in his absence. Jan had said he would watch over the whole adoption procedure, make sure it went smoothly, hurry it along. Early in the new year, the lawyer whom Tessa had located through that droll go-between of hers, had promised. Rachel. He had liked Rachel, had reflected too, that Tessa had been so busy during her days in Prague that he wondered she had ever had time for Ted. But she had. He forced himself to acknowledge that. Didn’t want to ponder the effects of it just yet, though as he had stood in front of the equivalent of the coroner at the inquest and heard the verdict of accidental death, it had come to him that there would be some kind of primal justice in his fathering a child of Ted’s.
He had never been an absolutist about genes or believed in their wholesale determination. Oh yes, a few physical characteristics, a few diseases, a general shape and propensity. But these were just letters in a vast and still mysterious alphabet. The words formed, the language spoken, the meanings garnered were as unpredictable as life itself.
On Sunday, they had traipsed to Prague’s outermost edge to visit Amy. With Jan, who had given the little girl a thorough examination. Stephen had held the child for a moment and marvelled at how so certain a presence could be contained in such lightness. Like magic, Tessa had said. He could feel it begin to creep over him. Watching Tessa gently embrace the child, he told himself he had been a fool for too long. He would make it up to her somehow.
Later that evening Jan had taken him aside and said, ‘Stephen. I am glad you have brought your wife out of the closet at last.’
His smile had told Stephen he was fully aware of the ironies of his choice of words and Stephen had laughed and looked at his feet and noted that Tessa had come at least half way all on her own. The door had never been locked and bolted.
Jan had grown serious then and said, ‘You remember, Stephen, in the old days, before the Wall came down, we used to say in our countries that personal secrets were not bad things. We lived in a world where we were under continual observation, a surveillance aimed at killing off our autonomy, our sense of ourselves. Like laboratory rats with brain implants. And secrets - private dreams, doubts, thoughts - were a way of preserving our sense of identity, of distinguishing ourselves from others. Those same secrets shared nudged one into a sense of alliance.’
‘Why are you telling me this now, Jan?’ Stephen had asked and Jan had shrugged.
‘Maybe because now I am no longer so sure. Secrets can also leave gashes in the order of things, destroy as well as create bonds.’ Jan’s voice had hidden a tremor.
‘You mean because of you and Hanka. Or Tessa and me?’
Jan had murmured something inaudible and out of his newly and only uncertainly grasped wisdom, Stephen had added, ‘Accommodation is possible, Jan. We are no longer so very young or hot-headed.’
‘Maybe.’ Jan had grinned then. ‘Maybe I am only talking politics. You see, I am happy that in my country, whatever the occasional injustice, we have opened up the files on the past. It allows us to judge it and forget about it. To breathe more freely. In Poland, for example, where they have buried their files, the aura of secrets, of unnamed past crimes still poisons public life.’
Last night at Simone’s the conversation with Jan had come back to him. While they were sitting over coffee in the salon, Antoinette had traipsed in. With Cary. He had felt the blush creep over his neck as Simone made introductions. He hadn’t dared to look at Tessa, but he had felt her stiffening slightly at his side.
Later, when they had returned to the flat where he had lain so briefly with the girl, he had wanted to say something, but Tessa had seemed so happy, so contained, that the moment passed. But he would do it, Stephen told himself.
In the distance, a second ferry ploughed through the waters, sailing the opposite course. Their twin. Stephen followed its progress, imagined himself on its deck so few weeks ago. Funny how glad he had been to be leaving then. Leaving Tessa, too. Stealth in his steps. A childish excitement. And now? He straightened his shoulders, took a deep, moist, lungful of breath. Now he felt somehow bigger. Expansive. As if an internal border had been crossed and in the crossing obliterated.
Tessa had come up beside him. Above the whiff of salt, he could smell the new scent as her hair whipped in the wind and brushed his face. She mouthed something at him, her words disappearing into the roar of engine and elements and she laughed, her look as daring as the arm she wound round him, fingers prying under the warmth of his jacket. The excitement of it still surprised him.
He brought her into the shelter of his coat. They watched a young woman thrusting chunks of bread into the air, saw the gulls dive and wing upwards. The girl reminded him.
‘Tessa.’ He lowered his lips to her ear, forced himself into speech. ‘There’s one more thing. About Cary.’
Tessa raised her newly enigmatic face to him, assessed him for a moment. Slowly, she put a finger to his mouth.
‘I know.’ her voice reached him with a lilt.
Could she know, he wondered and then stopped wondering, tasted instead the light and salty kiss she had planted on his lips.
What Tessa knew, as they turned to make their way towards the bow of the boat, was that her travels seemed to have made her unfamiliar, even to herself. An audacious stranger who was oddly attuned to this different, rather prepossessing Stephen. A stranger who felt not in the least reproachful. Who on the contrary felt only a delicious sense of wonder. She knew that she had in some way transgressed, that he had too. They had both gambled on uncertainty, and now, now there was a kind of mellowness about them as if they had crossed into a kinder, less hostile, place.
What was it Simone had said to her on that dreadful night? Comedy came when one could relish one’s insufficiencies. Give up blame. Laugh at the creases and sags and lacks. Or Stephen’s occasional myopia. Or his self-immolation in the lab. Or his perennial shying away from speech.
And now the house would be full for Christmas. Not with Amy yet, but that was just as well. Stephen and she needed a little time to get to know each other. There was so much more of him than she had imagined to know. It tickled her. And they needed to prepare.
But Eva was flying over with Hanka. Tessa had insisted on that, had said privately to Jan that he should really come too. A surprise for Stephen. Maybe she should have invited that girl, Cary, as well. Tessa laughed, tasting her own naughtiness. A full house. But he wouldn’t have liked that.
The things we do for love.
‘Look,’ Tessa pointed, winding her arm more tightly round Stephen.
The cliffs rose before them, a single ray of pale sunlight glimmering over their white expanse.
‘We’re home.’
The End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have received considerable help with the scientific aspects of this novel, in particular from Steven Rose who welcomed me into his Open University laboratory and helped along the way to align science and story. I am also indebted to Daniela Rhodes who kindly invited me into the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and to Kiyoshi Nagai who talked to me about inventions and patents and led me to the patent lawyer, Claire Irving. In Prague, Jan Bures of the Institute of Physiology at the Academy of Sciences, was both hospitable and helpful. In the United States, Monica and Douglas Holmes kindly provided me with essential information about the field of biotechnology.
Any mistakes are my very own.
I also owe debts of gratitude to my first readers and editors: my agent, Caradoc King; Nick Sayers, my editor and Susan Opie, my copy-editor at Harper Collins; Suzette Macedo who offers encouragement and perspicacity in equal measure. I am, as always, deeply indebted to my partner, John Forrester, who fills me with scientific lore, mans the temperamental machines, gives me a patience greater than my own and imbues our daughter Katrina with just a little of it. Thank-you.
Other Books by Lisa Appignanesi
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&nb
sp; Novels
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Memory and Desire
Dreams of Innocence
A Good Woman
The Things We Do for Love
The Dead of Winter
Sanctuary
Paris Requiem
Unholy Loves
Kicking Fifty
The Memory Man
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Non-Fiction
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All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion
Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800
Freud’s Women (with John Forrester)
Losing the Dead
Simone de Beauvoir
The Cabaret
Femininity and the Creative Imagination: Proust, James and Musil
_______________
Edited Volumes
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Free Expression is No Offence
The Rushdie File (with Sarah Maitland)
Dismantling Truth (with Hilary Lawson)
Postmodernism
Ideas from France: The Legacy of French Theory
PRAISE FOR LISA APPIGNANESI
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‘Half thriller, half romance, this elegant, sophisticated story unfolds like a set of Chinese boxes, each more tantalising than the last. It is that rare thing – a quality popular novel.’
Sarah Dunant
‘Gripping’
Daily Telegraph
‘Highly entertaining’
Sunday Times
‘A rich, epic novel… A superbly plotted saga of passion and heartbreak. Appignanesi will keep you guessing until the last full stop.’
Cosmopolitan
‘A monumental novel, intelligent and well-written.’
Sunday Times
‘A darkly erotic novel, Memory and Desire lays bare the many faces of a modern Eve… An absorbing story of sexual compulsion and emotional obsession, it continued to haunt me long after the last page was turned.’
Sally Beauman
‘An erotic and deeply intelligent novel.’
Rosie Thomas
‘As subtle as it is thought-provoking…reminiscent, in some elusive way, of Willian Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.’
Chicago Tribune
‘Emotional, Freudian…fascinating.’
Booklist
About the Author
Lisa Appignanesi is the London-based author of seven best-selling novels and thrillers. She has also written prize-winning historical work, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800; and Freud’s Women with John Forrester. A Visiting Professor in English and Medical Humanities at King’s College, London, she is former President of English PEN and Chair of the Freud Museum London. She has been awarded a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She writes for The Guardian and The Telegraph and can frequently be heard on the BBC.
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