Deep Water

by Christine Poulson

  Minnie nodded. “Because it’s still not working, is it? We know that for sure. So there’s something else wrong. Something that isn’t the E.coli or the cell-line.”

  “If I wanted to play mind games,” Will said, “I wouldn’t just go for the things you’d test first, the DNA cloning, the cell-line. I’d choose something that it’d take you ages to tumble to.”

  Katie thought about that. “Maybe I’ve been asking myself the wrong question. Not what’s the most likely thing to go wrong, but what’s the most unlikely?”

  For a few moments no one spoke, then Minnie said, “I know what I’d do – I’d pour out one of the antibodies that you added to the western blot and I’d replace it with water.”

  “You’ve got a nasty, devious mind, young Minnie,” Will said appreciatively. “That’s about the last thing anyone would think of. No antibody to bind to the protein, no result.”

  Katie said, “That would be a rotten thing to do. That antibody – it cost a couple of thousand quid – and I had to have it especially made. It took months – I haven’t got the time or the money to replace it. If it is that, I’m royally screwed.”

  “That’s not all,” Will said. “It would mean that the experiment might have worked, you might have got it right, but you wouldn’t know you’d got it right. As an act of sabotage, it’s elegant; warped, mind you, but elegant. There’s only one way to find out. Have you got archived samples which you know have got the protein?”

  “I have.”

  “Try your antibody – or what you think is your antibody – on one of them and you’ll soon know if it’s been tampered with.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Rachel put down her burnisher. It was hopeless. She couldn’t settle to her gilding. That morning Chloe had asked innocently, “When is Daddy coming back?” She’d thought he was away on business. Those were usually the only circumstances in which they were apart. Rachel had said vaguely, “Oh, not long,” and the next question had been, “Can I speak to Daddy on the phone?”

  Rachel knew she’d have to reach a decision soon. She’d been away from home two nights now.

  She needed to get out of the studio and get some fresh air, so she put on her coat and went outside. It was a fresh day, with a breeze that ruffled her hair, but it was warm in the sunshine.

  Last night, talking to Katie about embryo selection, she had really been thinking about Harry. How terribly she was tempted to agree with Daniel that the chance of Harry being a match for Chloe was a heaven-sent opportunity. To give up the possibility of Chloe being free of overnight infusions and blood transfusions, and of being free of fear for the future: could that really be right? And yet, and yet…

  She walked on, lost in thought, and found that her feet had taken her automatically to the cathedral. “Come unto me all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The words came unbidden to her mind. Yes, that’s what I need, she thought: rest from these incessant circling thoughts, rest from the agony of uncertainty and indecision. She went inside, slipped into the first row of seats and sat down.

  Instruments were being tuned and musicians were seated in the transept. The acoustics in this huge, empty space were always strange. Today she could hear the chatter of children, with no idea where it was coming from. Her thoughts floated free too, though they were scarcely thoughts, these drifting impressions that mingled the memories of the many times she’d been here, and a yearning for peace. She tried to rest on the stillness and let it absorb her fretfulness and uncertainty.

  She became aware of a murmuring behind her. She turned her head and saw a small group of ten or eleven people standing by the ticket desk. Someone said, “Yes, this is for the tour of the Octagon.” The group moved away from the desk and passed her as they made their way down the centre aisle.

  In all the years she’d been coming here, she’d never been up the Octagon. She’d always meant to. On an impulse she got up, hurried over to the desk, and bought a ticket. She caught up with the others where they stood in the middle of the transept. Brilliant light fell diagonally through the tall stained-glass windows. Rachel craned her neck, taking in the soaring space and, high overhead, the octagonal lantern.

  The guide, a man in his sixties, was telling the story, already familiar to Rachel, of how on the night of 12 February 1322, with a noise so loud that the monks thought there had been an earthquake, the original Norman tower had collapsed in a heap of timber and rubble. The sacristan, Alan of Walsingham, had at first despaired, but out of the disaster had come a work of architectural genius and a symbol of the resurrection – of how God could take what was broken and restore it. At the very centre, hundreds of feet above their heads, the guide explained, was the carved image of the Risen Christ; below that, paintings of the heavenly host, cherubim and seraphim; and then a series of wooden panels depicting angels and archangels ran round the circumference of the lantern.

  “We’re going to climb right up to those panels,” he promised. “They open outwards and we can look down on the spot where we’re standing now.”

  He led them to a corner of the north transept where a spiral staircase curled round in the thickness of the wall. They toiled up the steep and narrow steps and emerged onto a landing that was used as a storage space. The models of the nativity, the sheep and the donkey, Mary and Joseph, rubbed shoulders with more domestic detritus: an old kitchen sink, a roll of carpet. Rachel had the sense of seeing behind the scenes, of exploring the secret places of the cathedral.

  The tuning of the instruments below resolved itself into the opening bars of a piece of music that Rachel recognized and loved: Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor.

  “They’re rehearsing for a concert this evening,” the guide explained.

  A second stairway led to an outside walkway. They came blinking out of the dimness into brilliant light. The wind tugged at their clothes and hair.

  The sky was huge, dotted with scudding clouds. There was a view to the east and the flat landscape stretched out for miles and miles. Rachel tried to get a glimpse of the Matilda Jane, but she was out of sight round the bend in the river. Down into the precinct, figures were walking about and – her heart gave a leap; for a moment she wasn’t sure – but, yes, there was Daniel, sitting on a bench. It shouldn’t be a surprise; he preferred to get out of the office at lunchtime, even if only for half an hour – but somehow it gave her a jolt, spotting him like that. As she watched, he got to his feet, and crumpled up the bag from which he’d been eating his sandwich. He set off across the grass. Something in the set of his shoulders touched her – he seemed a lonely figure – and she had the urge to call to him, though she knew he wouldn’t be able to hear.

  There was a hand on her arm.

  “Could you take a photograph of us, please?” said a voice with an Australian accent. By the time she’d done that, and the couple had explained that they had arrived from Perth only the day before, Daniel had disappeared.

  The tour continued. The group moved in single file along the walkway to the base of the lantern, where they gathered round the guide in the dimness and gazed at huge wooden beams – some nearly one thousand years old, he told them. Then it was time for the third and final climb. The spiral staircase was so narrow that Rachel’s coat brushed against the walls. The rope handrail was greasy from the thousands of other people who had hauled themselves up on it, and cool air emanated from the stone walls.

  They reached the passageway that led around the lantern. The sound of Albinoni’s Adagio was distant and muted until the guide opened one of the panels and the music flowed in. He indicated that they should each choose a panel. Rachel opened one, leaned out and looked down. Her fingers closed on the sill. She seemed to be fantastically high up. The figures in the nave were tiny, the whole pattern of the chequered and diapered floor was visible, stretching right down the nave to the door. There was no danger of falling – the sill was chest-high – but she was gripped by vertigo, her fear less for herself than for the little
people below who might be injured if someone dropped a camera – or – she put her hands to her glasses, afraid that they might slide off her nose and disappear into the void. And all the time the wonderful music, so sad, but so measured and stately, was swelling and falling, slowly rising to its soaring climax, filling Rachel’s head so that there was no room for anything else.

  She had no idea how much time had passed when there was a touch on her shoulder. It was time to go down.

  The music had taken her so far away that she was scarcely conscious of making her way back down with the others. It wasn’t until she was walking out of the cathedral and her phone rang that she came back to herself.

  It was Katie.

  “Hi,” Rachel said. “How did it go, the western blot – ”

  “It didn’t. Nothing showed up on it.”

  “Oh, no – ”

  “Complete and utter bummer. But I’ve got an idea what might have gone wrong, and I need to try something out. But that’s not why I’m ringing. Will offered to cook for me tonight and I’ve said yes. So I won’t be back until later.” As an afterthought she added, “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine. See you later.”

  As Rachel closed up the phone and put it away, she realized with a little shock of surprise that yes, actually, she was fine. She wasn’t quite sure how or when it had happened, but at some point during her tour of the Octagon she had made a decision. There was only one possible course of action. She saw that clearly now.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Night-night, love.”

  “Night-night, Daddy.”

  Daniel kissed Chloe’s smooth cheek, inhaling the scent of shampoo and clean skin. How he’d missed her!

  Rachel had asked him to come over and eat with them. They’d done Chloe’s infusion together and eaten dinner. Of course, they hadn’t talked about Harry in front of Chloe. But Rachel seemed calm and they’d exchanged smiles over something Chloe had said. He was beginning to think that she’d adjusted to the idea that Harry might be his child and what that could mean for Chloe. But still it wasn’t going to be easy to tell her what was on his mind.

  Rachel had gone up to the wheelhouse and he joined her there. She was craning her neck at the sky.

  “It’s so clear tonight,” she remarked.

  He said, “I had a look through the telescope earlier and the central part of the Orion Nebula is coming into view.”

  “It’s ages since we looked at the night sky.”

  It was something they used to do all the time in the early days.

  “Shall we have a look now?” he asked, happy to buy himself some time and prolong the period of accord, though he couldn’t delay too long. He had to catch his night flight to New York.

  She nodded and got her coat. He hunted for the binoculars. They went out onto the deck.

  Daniel had loved star-gazing since he was a small boy and his father had taught him to identify the constellations. He’d started to teach Chloe. As he looked up at the sky, the stars seemed to exert an attraction – almost as though he could be pulled towards them into the vastness of deep space. His head swam.

  Rachel shivered beside him. He put his arm round her.

  “Where’s Jupiter?” she asked.

  He located the planet and held the binoculars steady while she slipped in between his arms. She took the binoculars.

  “Yes, I see it,” she said. “And the moons too. The biggest ones, anyway. Io, Europa, Ganymede and – what is it?”

  “Callisto.”

  “I love those names.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” she said, turning to face him.

  They were silent for a few moments, then Rachel said, “Do you think Nick did that? Do you think he was in the car and just went off and left her? The papers are even implying that he might have had something to do with the accident.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have believed the man I knew was capable of that, but then…”

  He didn’t need to complete the sentence: the man he thought he knew wouldn’t have stolen his best friend’s wife.

  “That poor little boy,” Rachel said.

  “Rachel, I’ve been thinking about Harry…”

  “Me, too.”

  “Look, it’s cold out here. Shall we go inside?”

  They went down to the galley and sat opposite each other at the dining table. Each waited for the other to start.

  Rachel’s cheeks were flushed with the cold and her eyes were bright. Daniel leaned forward and took her hands. They were chilly and he chafed them to warm them up.

  He said, “You and Chloe mean the world to me, you know that.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. She just nodded.

  He went on, “All we want is what’s best for Chloe. We’re agreed on that, aren’t we?”

  “Of course.” She sat calmly waiting for him to go on. He was still holding her hands, but he couldn’t read her expression.

  He plunged on. “Rachel, listen. Suppose Nick goes on trial and ends up in prison. I’ve been looking into the legal position. If Harry’s my son, he would have been conceived while I was still married to Jennifer and that makes him a legitimate child of the marriage. I could seek custody of him.”

  Rachel said nothing. He gazed at her, trying to gauge her response.

  When she spoke, her voice was full of wonder. “What are you thinking, Dan? As far as Harry is concerned, we are complete strangers. He thinks Nick is his father. No, to all intents and purposes, Nick is his father, whatever the results of the DNA test may say. He is the only father this child – who has just lost his mother, let me remind you – has ever known. Are you seriously suggesting that we seek custody of him so that we can transplant his DNA into Chloe?”

  He understood then that her calmness was not because she had come round to his point of view. It was because she had already made up her mind.

  He felt a flash of anger. “Not just because of that, no!”

  “Oh, not just because of that?” She pulled her hands away. “What, then?”

  “Rachel, he could be my son. I can’t ignore that. It has to count for something. It’s not just about the DNA. And if he is my son, I want to be part of his life.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t said them. He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t even known that he thought it.

  “Your son?” Rachel said. “Think about this. Jennifer must have known there was a chance that she hadn’t conceived Harry with Nick. She could have had an abortion. She didn’t. After Harry was born, she could have tested his DNA to see if it matched Nick’s – and maybe she did exactly that, we’ll never know – but what we do know is that she decided to bring him up as Nick’s. And he is Nick’s.”

  “But Rachel, don’t you see – ”

  She put up her hand to stop him. “It is too late, Dan. Can’t you see that? If you’d known when Jennifer was pregnant or Harry was a baby, that might have been different, but you didn’t.” She enunciated the words one by one. “It. Is. Too. Late.”

  “But if Nick goes to jail – that alters everything.”

  She stared at him, disbelief written all over her face.

  “Have you listened to a single word I’ve said? You’re a lawyer. Do you think there’s a court in the land that would award you custody? There must be relatives. In fact there is a sister, isn’t there? She was quoted in the newspaper – ”

  “But Rachel, think what it means for Chloe. Leave aside the question of custody just for the moment – if there is a DNA match, we can’t just do nothing.”

  “Yes, we can. That’s exactly it. Nothing is what we can do, what we ought to do.”

  He saw the effort with which she was reining herself in.

  “But Rachel – Chloe – ”

  “What effect is it going to have on Nick, finding out that Harry’s not bio
logically his? We can’t risk him losing his father when he’s just lost his mother.”

  “It might be Chloe’s only chance of a cure!”

  “Don’t raise your voice. You’ll wake Chloe. They’re working on it all the time. Katie’ll get there in the end, I know she will. And if she doesn’t, well, we’ll just have to go on as we are.”

  Daniel caught sight of the kitchen clock. He’d have to go soon. He had to get her to see sense.

  He shook his head. “I can’t let this go, Rachel.”

  Her face was stony. “And I can’t go along with it. I adore Chloe. I’d sacrifice my own life for her in a heartbeat, but I can’t do this, Dan. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  “Rachel!” He slammed his hand on the table.

  “Be quiet!” she hissed.

  “OK. OK.” He would have to leave it for now, or he would miss his plane. Best anyway to try to lower the temperature, leave the door open for more discussion. He made an effort to lower his voice, raised a placatory hand. “I have to go. We’ll talk again when I get back. I’m hoping I might even be able to fly back tomorrow night. Look, why don’t you at least come home – ”

  “No.”

  He waited for her to enlarge on that. She didn’t.

  “No, what?” he asked. “No, we’re not going to talk about it again. I’ve said everything I have to say. And no, I’m not coming back. I’m staying right here. With Chloe.”

  She leaned back with her arms folded and held his gaze. This was a Rachel he hadn’t seen before – implacable, steely.

  As he got up to leave, he felt an answering steeliness in himself. He would go it alone if he had to. For Chloe’s sake.

  In the meantime, he had a flight to catch.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Glass of wine?” Will said.

  “Great,” Katie said, taking off her coat.

  Will had offered to make pizzas for her and Minnie, but Minnie already had a date. She had looked coy, so it was probably someone in the lab.