“I've no idea,” said Peter glancing at his watch. “Well the kids are in school of course and Abigail, I don't know. You know what she's like. We don't talk so much these days.”
“Peter, I've been missing you!” she said with a sudden sense of urgency.
“Well, yes, I've been missing you too my dear, I'm sorry I haven't been in touch more over the last couple of weeks – just been a bit busy.”
There was another short silence. “Listen, I'm going to be down in your neighbourhood for a couple of days for some lectures by the Royal Horticultural Society.”
“That sounds great! Will you have time to pop round for lunch or dinner?”
“Well – err – I've booked myself into a hotel in Ascot.”
“Ascot? But that's just down the road.”
“I know!”
“Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay here with us. I'm sure Abi wouldn't mind.”
“I just thought it might be ... easier ... if I got a hotel room!”
“Well of course, whatever works for you.”
“I booked the room over the Internet – you'd have been proud of me.”
“Congratulations!”
“It's a lovely big room with an enormous four-poster bed...” she said, letting the words linger peculiarly in the air.
“Must have been expensive in Ascot,” said Peter, wondering why she was sharing such details.
“Maybe you'd like to come over and see it!” she said, her voice once again carrying an oddly unfamiliar tone.
“I'm sure it's lovely - I can imagine the sort of place. I still think it would make more sense for you to stay here though.”
There was a long silence. “Are you still there?” he finally asked.
“Peter, are you doing this on purpose? Have I offended you in some way?”
“What? No, of course not! Why would you think such a thing?”
“If you have a problem with us seeing each other, then just say so!”
“Isabelle, of course I don't have a problem with seeing you. Why would you think that?”
“Look never mind. I'm sorry to have bothered you.”
“Bother? You haven't bothered me in the slightest, I always love hearing from you. You know on second thoughts, I'd love to see your hotel. Maybe I could pop over for dinner or a quick drink if you're not too busy.”
“Really?”
“Of course, when do you arrive?”
“Tomorrow evening. Should I call you when I get there or should I just send a text?”
“Either, whichever you prefer.”
“I was thinking more of your circumstances.”
“Mine? It makes no difference either way.”
“Peter, are you okay?”
“Me, yes I'm fine – a little frustrated with the hoops these scientific journals are making me jump through right now, but otherwise, yes I'm great thanks.”
“O...kay – well – see you tomorrow evening then.”
“Looking forward to it.” What a strange conversation, thought Peter, as he replaced the handset. He was usually so well in tune with Isabelle, but this time they had obviously been on different wavelengths.
The front door opened and closed downstairs. Peter waited for the usual clamour of the children rushing into the kitchen to get snacks and then arguing over what to watch on TV, but the house remained silent. He left the study and went downstairs.
“Hello!” he called. “Anybody there?”
Abigail stood silently in the kitchen sorting through some papers and turned to face him as he entered.
“Where are Sam and Kate?” he asked.
“They're round at my mum's,” she replied curtly.
“Oh – I didn't realise they were...”
“We need to talk!” she said, placing her hands on her hips and giving a long sigh.
“What about?”
“Do you seriously not know what this is about?”
“How would I? I'm not a mind reader,” he said, “at least not usually,” he added with a wry smile.
“This may be some big joke to you, but to me and the kids, it's hell on earth.”
“How is that? What have I done now?”
“Ever since Martin's funeral you've been like a different person – rude – neglectful...”
“Welcome to my world!”
“And what's that supposed to mean?” she shouted, turning red.
“What do you think it means? I've managed to put up with your manic depression all these years. Your mood has always swung between these two extremes and the end result is that for at least half the time, you're a bitch to live with!”
“Is that what this is – some childish payback for an illness which I've acknowledged and sought help with?”
“Sought help, my arse! The doctor once gave you a prescription for Prozac, but you never took them long enough to have any effect.”
“I didn't like the way they made me feel,” she said, starting to cry.
“And what about the way you make everyone else feel – including the kids?”
“Stop deflecting your own issues onto me,” she said in defiance.
“You don't even know what that means,” he replied.
“Just stop it!” she shrieked. “Why are you doing this?”
“You're the one who started it.”
“Yes that's right,” she sniffed, “I was. And now I'm going to end it!”
“Good! So how long are the kids staying at their Grandma's?”
“You still don't get it do you? I'm leaving you, Peter. You obviously have no time for me or the kids anymore anyway, so we're going away for awhile. You can play on your damned laptop all fucking day long if you like – from now on, you'll have no one to distract you. That's what you want isn't it?”
Peter stared at her for a moment in disbelief. For years he had made allowances for her histrionics - walking on eggshells in often vain attempts to keep her on the right side of reasonable – excusing her behaviour to family and friends - and now, after just a few weeks of selfish devotion to his own life for once, she was walking out on him?
“Well - aren't you going to say something?” she demanded, plumping up her feathers in anticipation of another rebuttal.
“No, I think we've both said enough - now I'm just waiting for you to leave.”
She stood there a moment longer, fuming at having been cheated out of a good fight. “That's just so typical!” she said finally and stormed out.
CHAPTER 24
“I think I've just about seen enough of this place,” said Doug, as Nadia pulled on her jeans for the first time in two weeks.
“I'm just happy to be getting out of this bloody gown,” she replied. “I'm sick of padding around these corridors with my arse hanging out.”
“In your case, that's its one redeeming feature, but otherwise I agree, it's not the most flattering of garments.” He ran his fingers over the scars on her back, kissing her lightly on the neck. It had taken three operations over as many days for the surgeons to remove all the lead pellets. Most had lodged in the flesh and muscles of her back, but three had penetrated her kidneys and one had made it through to her right lung. Had the range been any closer, the doctors had said gravely, she might not have been so lucky. As it was, within a few days she had been deemed stable and moved to a non-critical ward, where she had lain, alternating uncomfortably between her front and side, feeling not the slightest bit lucky.
Since then, visits from police officers had almost outnumbered those from doctors. The sorry tale of her six-year association with Markov had been recounted again and again – though without actually owning up to much more than bad judgement. Their stubborn insistence that the kidnapping had related, not to a computer file, but to the home-grown cannabis factory discovered behind the cottage, had in the end, proven partially correct. As it turned out, Markov had already invested over two hundred thousand pounds in the ambitious horticultural operation and sadly for him, it was money he
didn't have. Wong's payment for Dream-Zone was to have covered a good part of it, but with Dmitri's sudden attack of conscience, that source of income had been thrown into jeopardy. There had been a time when raising a couple of hundred grand wouldn't have presented too much of a problem to Markov, but times were hard – even for the sleaze industry. Recent losses from the clubs and other ventures had taken their toll, and his whole shady empire had been tottering on the brink of financial ruin.
As far as the police were concerned, the matter was now closed, the troubling little issue of Dream-Zone having been conveniently swept under the constabulary carpet and forgotten. They had a high profile “drugs raid” to boast about to the press, as well as the removal of a “dangerous and prominent figure from London's criminal underworld.” The reluctant oriental henchman, who had turned out to be one of Wong’s men, sent over to keep an eye on Markov, had been picked up wandering aimlessly through the woods, “as if in a dream,” according to the police.
Nadia was now looking forward to rebuilding her life on the less exciting, though considerably safer career of legitimate accountancy. Exactly what role the handsome young man currently fumbling with the clasp on her bra strap would play in that life, was still unclear, but she felt sure one existed.
“You know, it's not much easier putting these things on than it is taking them off,” he said, finally succeeding, and giving the elastic a painful little twang.
“Ouch, careful there!” she said, pushing him away playfully and grabbing her sweater. There was a knock on the door. “Is everyone decent in there?” came the voice of a woman, followed by a head of auburn hair.
“Ah!” said Doug. “Nadia, this is Susan. Susan – Nadia.”
The girl looked familiar, though from where, Nadia couldn't recall.
“So pleased to finally meet you properly,” said Susan with a friendly smile. “I think we may have met briefly at Kal's party last month, but I've heard so much about you since then, I've been dying for us to meet.”
Nadia frowned at Doug. “Whatever you've heard, I can assure you it's all lies.”
Susan laughed nervously. “You must have been terrified!” she continued.
“Yeah, pretty much!” said Nadia, wondering what the girl was doing here.
“Susan's a radiographer here at the hospital,” said Doug, by way of explanation. “She's the one who MRI'd my head after our first encounter with Markov. Anyway, she's kindly offered to run us back to your place.”
“It's my lunch break, and I needed to pop into town anyway,” she added bashfully.
Nadia thanked her and gathered up her things.
“Oh and by the way,” whispered Doug, as Susan disappeared through the doorway, “she and Brian are now an item, but she doesn't know about that first night you spent with him.” He winked at her. “Just so you know.”
“So what's happened to this Dream-Zone file now?” asked Susan, as they pulled out of the hospital car park.
“Well,” said Doug, “I think we can assume that Wong's copy would have been deleted by the same virus that wiped Markov's disk at the cottage, which means the only working version is with Peter in Bracknell.”
“So you don't have a copy yourself?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“Peter sent me something, but it doesn't seem to work - although he assures me it's the same file he's been using all along.”
“What about that other girl – the one who cracked the encryption code?”
“Becky!” said Doug. “Luckily, she ran it on a virtual machine within her computer, so it didn't wipe her whole disk, but it deleted the Dream-Zone file from hers too.”
“How did she manage to crack the code?” asked Nadia, wondering who this Becky character was, and suddenly feeling unjustifiably jealous of all these other women in Doug's life.
“Well, I'd told her that Dmitri had named his car after some video game hottie, but when we first ran a search, the name Kaileena didn't come up. It was only after I'd jumped into a taxi to go and find you, that she thought of looking on the guy's Facebook pages again. Apparently there was a link to the website of a game called 'Prince of Persia' in which this eye-poppingly curvaceous character of Kaileena features – how should I say - prominently.”
“Wait a minute!” said Susan suddenly. “You told me the other day that Dream-Zone had triggered a seizure during your EEG with Singh.”
“Yeah, that's right,” said Doug.
“And since then, you've been on Gabapentin.”
“Yes. What of it?”
“There's nothing wrong with your copy of Dream-Zone!” Susan exclaimed excitedly. “The anti-epilepsy medication was just preventing it from working.”
“Are you saying the way Dream-Zone works is by inducing epileptic seizures?” asked Nadia doubtfully.
“It fits perfectly!” said Susan. “All those strange hypnotic effects you described would be consistent with some of the partial seizures experienced by sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy.”
“What about Peter's claim to have discovered the theory of everything?” asked Doug.
“That's classic TLE. Usually the epiphanies are religious, but the perception of profound meaning in everything around them is a common side-effect. His theory is probably just a load of crap.”
“Wait a moment though,” said Nadia, struggling to keep up. “Susan, you're talking about people with a history of epilepsy. Assuming for now that Doug here really has developed the condition after various knocks to that thick skull of his...”
“Oy!” he said from the back, tousling her hair. “Actually, based on that scarring in my hippocampus, Singh said I probably had an existing condition.”
“Exactly, “ she continued, “you had a propensity to epilepsy and Dream-Zone triggered the seizures. It doesn't explain how it would affect non-sufferers like Martin, Kal and Peter.”
“Unless I didn't have any underlying condition at all - and the whole thing was actually caused by Dream-Zone,” said Doug. “Singh said that the seizures might actually cause the sclerosis in some cases.”
“Do you think that's possible,” asked Nadia, turning to Susan, “that Dream-Zone can trigger seizures in non-sufferers?”
“It's not inconceivable,” she replied. “There's a technique called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation which has been shown to do something similar, and there's this one guy in Canada who claimed that when he focused it on certain parts of the right temporal lobe, otherwise healthy subjects would report having deep religious experiences. If that's true, then it would suggest that you don't necessarily need a pre-existing condition to experience seizures. I've never heard of a video being able to do it, but I guess that if it stimulated the right clusters of neurons...”
“Shit, if that's true then we need to tell Peter he's frying his brain every time he runs Dream-Zone – which, judging by his latest contributions to Twitter, is pretty much continually.”
The car stopped at a set of lights, while everyone pondered the implications.
“But it still doesn't explain how Peter knew I was being held in a wooden shed close to a sewage treatment plant,” said Nadia.
They were silent for a few moments.
“That is a bit freaky, I admit,” said Susan, “but there has to be a rational explanation. Everything else fits so perfectly.”
“Here we are!” said Nadia, as the mini approached the apartment block. “The last time I left this place, I was tied up in the back of a van, with a sack over my head!“
“Are you going to be okay?” asked Susan.
“Don't worry,” said Doug, getting out and running round to open Nadia's door, “I'll be taking better care of her from now on.”
CHAPTER 25
The hotel was a splendid red brick, Queen Anne mansion of the original English Baroque style and nestled in fifteen acres of parkland landscaped by none other than Capability Brown himself. Although still some twenty miles from the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens at Wisley, where the Or
chid exhibition and lectures would be taking place, it seemed to Isabelle the perfect base for her little jaunt down south. It was also, conveniently, just ten minutes from Bracknell.
It had been a surprisingly smooth journey down from the lakes with very little traffic and almost continuous sunshine - except for the short passage through Birmingham, which for some reason, seemed always to be shrouded in grey. Now, as she wandered the hotel grounds, the sun was dipping towards the horizon and filtering through the trees, creating a dappled vista reminiscent of some early impressionist landscape. She imagined herself dressed in late Victorian chic, and twirling a fine lace parasol, while one of her great countrymen – Claude Monet perhaps – immortalised her on canvas. As if to complete the scene, as she circumvented the ornamental pond and started back towards the main building, the distant chordal melodies of Debussy's 'Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune' began to drift through the still evening air.
She had intended to take a quick shower before dinner, but the temptation to make use of the free-standing cast-iron bath tub with complementary salts, had been irresistible. As she lay back, letting the hot fragrant water caress her body, she ruminated on the night ahead.
On arrival at the hotel, she had telephoned Peter and agreed to meet him for dinner. She had always been fond of her brother-in-law, but since the funeral, their relationship had unexpectedly deepened. While lacking the artistic genius so abundant in her husband, Peter was possessed of a solidity and rationality she found immensely comforting. Although at times a little forthright, she greatly admired the confidence and level-headedness he maintained, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Nowhere was this more apparent that in his patience with Abigail. Certainly no Frenchman would ever have tolerated such abhorrent behaviour for so long. His capacity for abuse seemed almost limitless. It wasn't so much the highly charged emotional outbursts, for which Isabelle had pitied him, but the gradual and continual denigration. This slow and painful erosion of a man's dignity and resolve seemed to Isabelle one of the most heinous examples of emotional abuse she had ever witnessed, and yet Peter had rarely had a harsh word to say about it. Instead he would stoically endure the blatant injustice, and politely excuse his wife on grounds of fatigue or ill health. For some time, she had wondered whether this passive acceptance was also part of the problem, and had once suggested to Martin that he confront his brother about it. Perhaps, she had ventured, if Peter were to stand up to her once in a while, Abigail would learn to treat him with more respect, but Martin had remained unconvinced, assuring her that his brother would have already tried this.
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