Next Of Kin (Unnatural Selection #3)

by Somerville, Ann

  Next Of Kin

  (Unnatural Selection #3)

  Ann Somerville

  ‘Next Of Kin’ Copyright © 2012 by Ann Somerville

  Cover image © Natutik - Fotolia.com.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  For more information please visit my website at http://logophilos.net

  Smashwords Edition 1, June 2012

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Ann Somerville

  Chapter 1

  The lump next to me stirred and revealed a sleepy face from under the covers. “What’cha reading?”

  I stroked Nick’s messy hair. “Story on the BBC site. Why are you awake?” My poor husband hadn’t come home until nearly three in the morning and it wasn’t even eight yet. I had to get up soon but there was no need for him to.

  “Just am.” He rubbed his head against my side, and draped an arm across my stomach. “You’re frowning. What is it?”

  “A new study about ISH. Apparently a new study published in Science posits that ISH-positive people age less rapidly than non-ISH positive people.”

  Nick groaned and put his arm across his eyes. “Fuck. Not again.”

  Even knowing his sensitivity on the whole vee thing, his reaction took me aback. “What?”

  “Remember the weight loss vampires?”

  I screwed up my face, trying to remember. “Umm?”

  “The weight loss fanatics, trying to get ISH treatment for obesity. You remember—they sued the NHS over it in 2009. They lost, and then a bunch of private specialists were prosecuted for deliberately infecting patients with HIV so the ISH would take.”

  “I was away a lot that year with our first natural history series. I didn’t get much of a chance to look at UK news. Sorry.”

  “I forgive you. Anyway, it was a nightmare. Vees being asked to bite complete strangers, HIV and hepatitis parties held to infect people. Absolute madness. The government finally had to make it illegal to use ISH for non-therapeutic purposes and weight loss, and brought in licensing for private doctors to use it at all.”

  “I knew they’d done that, yes. I was a bit surprised it had taken them so long.”

  “This’ll be the same, only worse. Anti-aging is a multi-billion dollar business. ISH will be the fountain of youth, and you’ll have people fighting in the streets trying to get clinics to treat them.”

  I thought that was a bit pessimistic. “It’s only one study.”

  “Bet you ten quid.”

  “You’re on. I’ll take it out in trade.”

  He grinned up at me. “Here or in Sweden? You’ll lose, you know. Give it two months. One month. Even by the time we get back. Do you think it’s true?”

  I blinked at the sudden change of tack. “I don’t know. They’re measuring telomere shortening. Apparently vee morphs show the—”

  “Remind me what telomeres are?”

  “The ends of chromosomes. Short telomeres are linked to aging and age-related diseases, but it’s not clear that lengthening them will increase life span. It’s possible the longer your telomeres are, that you’ll age less rapidly, but no one’s proved that conclusively.” That was a seriously shortened version of a terribly complicated subject that I only understood at undergraduate level myself. I’m not a cell biologist or a geneticist, after all. “Anyway, this study suggests that ISH positive individuals have longer telomeres than a comparable group in the wider population. It’s a long jump from that to saying this proves they won’t age as fast. That’s the BBC’s putting a spin on it.”

  “They won’t be the only ones.” He threw back the covers and got up, leaning in for a kiss and a hug. “Need a pee, then I should try to go back to sleep. Are you getting up?”

  “Yes. Want some tea before you go back to bed?”

  He shook his head. “No, thanks. Lunch?”

  “You’re on. I think you’re worrying about nothing, love.”

  “Hope so. But I bet I’m not.”

  ~~~~~

  Our Swedish holiday had become our own private tradition. The first visit, in the middle of summer, had been to escape a particularly nasty situation with a stalker here in Britain. Four months later, we stayed in the same stuga owned by my friend, Laurens, as our honeymoon. This year’s visit was to celebrate our second anniversary. It had been a big two years for us, especially Nick. He’d passed his sergeant’s exam and had won promotion to a post at Richmond. His former partner Andy McDiamond had also moved up in the world and now worked in north London. Nick missed the Murder Team, but we were still close to Andy and his sharp-witted wife, Michelle. Nick’s new job was pretty stressful now he was a middle manager, but he enjoyed it, even if his immediate boss was a bit of a prat.

  I’d backed off most of the presenting opportunities Karl had offered me, but I’d done more film narration for him, as well as writing scripts and completing a book for his new series on human sexuality. He’d offered the presenting job for that to an actor with an asbestos reputation and hide—someone a lot more used to crazy fans than I ever wanted to be. The series was due to start showing just after we came back from Sweden. The reaction would be interesting.

  Laurens and his family greeted us with hugs and squeals—from the girls, at least—and insisted on giving us supper before we settled down in the stuga. Nick had relaxed beautifully over the food issue, and Mia had once again gone to a lot of trouble to make meals he could eat, and the rest of us would enjoy. Lauren’s daughters had fallen madly in love with Nick the first time we’d visited, and for a man who claimed he was no good with children, he held his own in the rapid fire chatter with them throughout the meal, while Laurens, Mia and I talked film business. Over the sorbet, Mia turned to Nick and looked him up and down with exaggerated care.

  “What?” Nick said, grinning at me.

  “It’s true,” Mia said. “You are aging backwards, just like they say.”

  Nick shook his head disgustedly and held out his palm to me. “Pay up.”

  “Hang on,” I said. I wasn’t paying until I was sure. After all, ten pounds is ten pounds. “Mia, what are you talking about?”

  “The scientists are saying ISH can reverse aging. I’ll find the paper—”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, sighing as I pulled out my wallet. I slapped the ten quid into Nick’s smug hand.

  Laurens smiled in bewilderment at us. “What’s going on?”

  “Just the latest reason why being a vee is going to um, not be very good in the next year or so.” I smirked at Nick’s self-censoring out of respect for our young audience. He smacked my leg. “There are already enough myths about us.”

  “But Mia is right. You do look younger, Nick.”

  “Married life agrees with me, that’s all.”

  Mia, sensing it was a bit of a so
re point, wisely changed the subject. But what she and Laurens said stayed with me, and lying in bed after celebrating our return to the stuga, I couldn’t help looking at Nick’s face and thinking he did look younger than he did when we got married. Like a lot of pale-skinned redheads, his age was hard to gauge, but a full head of hair and his general good health meant, to me at least, he looked barely thirty. He saw me staring, and raised an eyebrow.

  “I found my first gray hair this morning,” I said.

  “So what? You’ve got a couple of gray pubic hairs too. You’re thirty-six, Anton. Everyone changes as they get older.”

  I clutched reflexively at my groin. “I have gray pubes? It’s not fair. You haven’t aged a minute since I met you. In fact you look younger than you did then.”

  He rolled over and gently gripped my chin. “Look, you nit, this whole business is a load of crap.”

  “But the study—”

  “You said yourself it was a small sample size. I read up some more on that study and all they said was the telomeres were longer. Nothing about aging, cancer, nothing.”

  “I know that.”

  “So, it’s crap. You will always be the child bride in this relationship, Sherlock.”

  “That makes you the cradle snatcher, you realize.”

  He kissed me and tangled his fingers possessively in my hair. “And proud of it. Now can we get some sleep because I’m really looking forward to another round before breakfast.”

  I’d never be too old to refuse that offer.

  ~~~~~

  We flew back into Heathrow, and boarded the Tube to South Kensington. As passengers boarded at each station, more and more carried magazines and newspapers. Nick’s scowl deepened as his gaze fell on the Daily Mail screaming “‘Fountain of Youth’ treatment to send UK broke”. Behind the woman reading that, a bloke clutched a copy of the Sun. I winced at the “Vampires sucking us dry” headline his hand unfortunately failed to conceal. Obviously the conservative establishment had made its opinion clear about ISH to the editors, and this was the result.

  “Five minute wonder,” I said as Nick looked at me with disgust clear in his expression.

  “You wish.”

  “It won’t make a difference to me, you know.”

  He looked into my eyes. “It already has.”

  I wanted to argue, but a crowded Tube carriage was hardly the place. “No,” I said quietly, staring intently back.

  In my head, I knew Nick was right to dismiss this latest ISH sensationalism, and two right-wing rags were hardly convincing evidence of a sound scientific finding. But my heart understood the appeal of living younger, for longer. I felt the twinge of jealousy—but more than that, of fear—that Nick, through pure chance, might outlive me, or enjoy a long old age in good health, while I would face the threats of dementia, cancer, and frailty, and become a burden on him.

  We travelled the rest of the way to South Ken in silence, and waited for the bus in the same uneasy quiet. But after we’d found a seat, and the bus set off, I said firmly, “It won’t make a difference, even if it’s true. I won’t let it.”

  “I believe you, Sherlock.” The nickname was as much apology as affection. I quickly brushed my hand against his to acknowledge it. “It’s all bollocks anyway. Let’s forget about it.”

  “Let’s.”

  We didn’t mention it again. It wasn’t simply that we’d agreed to drop it. Nick’s return from leave coincided with an unseasonably early flu outbreak and his station, as many others, was short-staffed for a good month and a half. Though I avoided the flu, I had research papers to write and student materials to prepare. Our free time together became rare, and too precious to spend arguing about a scientific finding.

  But just because we weren’t talking about it, didn’t mean the rest of the country—or the world—had gone silent. Neither of us could fail to see the headlines that continued to yell from the newspaper stands and magazine covers, or miss the stories on the news sites about another study apparently confirming the initial studies on vee morphs. It looked as if ISH really did slow down the aging process in some way, though since the effect was limited to vee morphs, I—and other interested commentators—wondered if it was more to do with the restricted diet than the actual virus.

  The public response was a mixture of envy and desire. It seemed like every other day, the Sun was ‘outing’ a celebrity who had managed to finagle ISH treatment without discernable medical cause, and promoting both hypocritical anger at someone getting what was denied to others. They offered not the slightest evidence, naturally, that the celebrity was ISH positive, had no genuine medical need, or that anyone else had been turfed off a mythical waiting list for the treatment—and stoking up the idea that ISH was the magic cure for all that ailed you. Hello did a lavish spread on a late middle-aged actress who had become a vee morph as a result of treatment for leukaemia. I doubted the poor woman expected the backlash she received, or being named in Parliament by a Tory MP as an example of why he was going to move a private member’s bill to withhold the state pension from vee morphs until the age of eighty.

  Watching the discussion of that charming proposal on Newsnight provoked the first reaction from Nick that I’d seen since we’d flown back from Sweden. As a Treasury spokesman tried to justify such an outrageous piece of discrimination on the grounds of fiscal responsibility, Nick gently took the remote from my hand and turned the television off.

  “Arseholes.” He got off the sofa and went up to the bedroom.

  I followed him and sat on the bed, where he was lying, glaring at the ceiling.

  “Typical Conservative crap,” I said.

  “They’re just pissed off that ISH couldn’t help their precious Maggie. I'm sick of this, Anton. The jokes at work aren’t even slightly funny.”

  “Is it actual harassment?”

  He made a face. “Not yet. The shit about being gay is probably getting closer. Thorpe is a dickhead. Still a dickhead, I mean.”

  I rubbed his foot. “If it’s that bad, you could transfer?”

  “Nah. I can handle him, and he knows not to go too far. I can’t always have bosses as good as Phil, but bugger, I miss working with him and Andy some days.”

  “You could move to North London with Andy.”

  “Doesn’t work like that. I’m all right. Just that crap on the TV. Annoys the hell out of me. It reminds me when people first became aware of AIDS. Couldn’t get away from it and all the garbage being spewed about gay men.”

  I nodded. “I remember. I’m sorry, love. It should die down as soon as the next big thing comes along.”

  “Mum’s always going on about it when I ring home. Keeps telling me how lucky I am. Like she’s forgotten why I’m positive in the first place.” I made a sympathetic sound, but he waved the sympathy away. “I’m not angry at her. She doesn’t know what to make of it.”

  He looked at me, and I answered the unasked question. “I’m still processing. Mostly I worry about you.”

  “Me?”

  “If I die before you. Leaving you alone. You’ll probably be fine. I’m being ridiculous.”

  He held out his arms, and I slid into his embrace. He kissed my hair. “I’d be a wreck. I was counting on your long-lived genes.”

  “So maybe it all evens out.”

  “If the research isn’t bollocks.”

  “Who knows what they’ll discover next week?” I rubbed his bristly cheek. “I’m not jealous of you but I sometimes wish I was a vee so we could grow old together.”

  “We will. And I’m glad you’re not a vee. You make it easier, but it’s not the same as normality.”

  It had been a while since Nick had been so negative about his ISH status. His relationship with the immuno-stimulant haemovirus that had saved his life but changed his physiognomy and diet forever had been hate-hate when I met him, but he had learned to accept it—and his altered self—very much better since then. The ‘jokes’ at work must have been getting to him. “Yo
u know, it’s our fifth anniversary in March.”

  “Of what?”

  “Me being beaten up and saved by my ever so gorgeous copper.” I kissed him and he grinned. “We should do something.”

  “What, like arrange for you to be beaten up again?”

  “Don’t be a prat. I was thinking of that play with Arthur Darvill in the lead. It’s opening in March.”

  “Sure. Sounds great. My treat. It’ll be nice to use the overtime for something positive.”

  “Then I’ll buy the champagne.”

  “I’ll try and get the next day off. Don’t like my chances though. Daffyd’s gone off injured again, and this time I think he’ll be off until April.”

  “Oh hell. You’re working ridiculous overtime as it is.”

  He patted my stomach. “No whining. I did warn you about being married to a cop.”

  “Yes, you did. Oh well. We’ll manage. Are you having a shower?”

  “Yeah, better had.” I moved so he could sit up, but before he stood, he hugged me and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry about me, Anton. You’re the best thing to ever happen to me, and I don’t plan to lose you.”

  “Me either. Bugger the Tories.”

  “Not even with Jeremy Paxman’s dick.” I laughed as he stood. “They’ll never bring it in. Too many of the sods in the Lords are ISH positive.”

  Which turned out to be an accurate prediction. Despite constant rumblings in the Murdoch press, there was no serious attempt to bring legislation forward to discriminate against ISH positive individuals. The attention given to those who had somehow, possibly, gained access to the ‘fountain of youth’ continued in a rather ugly way, but that was the limit of its disturbing aspect.

  Or so I thought until we met Harry and Angus for a drink one unusually pleasant March Sunday afternoon. As we sat soaking up the spring sunshine on the banks of the Thames, Harry told us about stories he’d heard of vees being recruited to give blood to private clinics, and of certain members of the gay community popping off overseas for ‘plastic surgery’ and coming back with very particular dietary requirements.