Chapter 23
‘Mrs Wildmore,’ Dr Morgenstein announced, affable, sweeping up to Lisa. Both hands were stretched outwards in an attitude of avuncular greeting.
Lisa shifted her toddler carefully on to her left arm and, politely, stretched out her right hand. The specialist covered it with both of his and smiled beyond her. His grey three-piece, she noticed, was immaculate. Her eyes swept to his manicured fingers. Could she now pull away her hand? Holding a weight of thirty pounds without her steadying right arm was beginning to cause problems. Lisa thrust her left hip forward in an effort to achieve balance. Looking down she noticed Dr Morgenstein’s shoes had been polished into brilliance. She pulled her hand away to stop the toddler, now leaning away from her, from falling out of her arms.
‘Do sit down, Mrs Wildmore.’ Dr Morgenstein motioned her to the upright chair on the far side of his desk and walked back to his seat. ‘So this is the little man in trouble, is it?’
Lisa was uncomfortably aware of her muddy tights, her stained skirt. She manoeuvred the child she was holding to cover as much of her clothing as possible. The extra pair of shoes she’d had in the car gleamed incongruously clean. They were, however, out of sight.
‘This is Ja - Janus,’ she said, widening her mouth to cover her unease. ‘He’s one of my identical triplets.’
‘Of course.’
‘We have been rather worried about him lately. He did seem - well, sort of bloated,’ she went on helplessly, aware that the child on her lap was nothing of the sort.
‘I see,’ the specialist encouraged her. ‘Where, precisely, do you feel he’s bloated?’
‘Well, err, you see...’ Lisa looked over the bare, polished desk at the man keenly assessing her. She watched, distracted, as his steel-rimmed glasses slid down his narrow nose.
‘Yes? In your own words, Mrs Wildmore.’
‘Actually,’ Lisa blurted out rapidly, ‘He was bloated all over until about a couple of hours ago.’ She sounded feeble-minded even to herself.
‘Two hours ago?’
‘I stopped the car by some woods because he was crying quite a bit.’ The doctor was watching her with interest. ‘Well, screaming. He seemed to be in great pain.’
‘I see.’ He was making some notes on a pristine pad.
‘His clothes seemed too tight on him. I took them off and he started peeing.’
‘He hasn’t been urinating as much as usual?’
Lisa looked desperately round for inspiration. ‘No, no, it wasn’t that. His whole body was just so swollen - but then he peed and peed and it seemed to go down.’
‘I’m not quite sure that I entirely follow you, Mrs Wildmore. You’ve brought James along?’
‘Janus.’
‘Of course; Janus, yes. You’ve brought Janus along as an emergency because he seemed terribly bloated to you and this worried you. Is that right?’
‘And he was in considerable pain, yes.’ She looked at the docile child on her lap. ‘And his behaviour had changed. He was becoming terribly aggressive.’
‘You were sufficiently worried to seek specialist help rather than consulting your GP.’
‘I’ve taken Janus to Dr Gilmore several times. He couldn’t find anything wrong with him. I know there’s something, but I can’t pin it down. So I thought I’d bring him before the bloating subsided again.’
‘It comes and goes?’
It builds up alarmingly just before he feels the urge to clone, Lisa thought grimly. But I can hardly tell you that.
‘It seems to get worse over a period of time, and sort of reach a climax. Then it goes down again. As I said, I have mentioned it to Dr Gilmore. He suggested I get an expert opinion.’
‘Of course, quite right. And you feel the child has released the extra fluid now because he urinated quite extensively on the way up here?’
‘I know it sounds unlikely.’
‘He could just be the type of person who holds fluids more than others.’
‘His brothers are identical with him, and they don’t do it.’
‘No two human beings are ever identically the same,’ Dr Morgenstein pursed his lips severely. ‘And of course it may just have been that he eats more salt food than the others.’
‘I never use salt in cooking. I don’t consider it healthy.’
‘Even foods specially prepared for young children contain salt, I’m afraid. Marmite is often recommended, for example,’ the specialist smiled slightly. ‘So even if you don’t use salt for cooking he may have imbibed a fair amount.’ Neat writing began to fill up the page in front of him.
Lisa used unsalted Marmite, and never allowed her children packaged food, but she decided to keep her nutritional knowledge to herself. Let him think she was an idiot, as long as he examined the child properly.
‘But you will check him over?’
‘Of course, Mrs Wildmore. I’m just making a few notes to start with. We’ll give him a thorough examination, take specimens, the whole routine, in a few moments. Then you won’t need to worry in the future.’
‘My husband was getting worried, too,’ she added.
‘I can assure you I am taking the matter seriously,’ the doctor told her as he rang the bell for his nurse. ‘Just take, err, Jason,’ he started out, blinking at his notes.
‘Janus.’
‘Janus. Get him ready for me, will you please, Miss Dobbs?’
It seemed the paediatrician was good with children. Lisa could hear the child gurgle with pleasure throughout the whole of the half-hour check-up. That child wasn’t the Janus she’d started out with that morning. That much was clear.
Twisting her wedding ring around her finger, Lisa tried thinking back to the events of the Priddy Woods. Her mind simply refused to do it. All she could picture was a small yellow figure running away from her in the shrouded tangle of spruces.
Was Alec right? Was she the one who needed medical help, and not the toddler she’d brought with her? That could not be the only explanation. Alec had also been alarmed by the bloating, had noticed the aggression. Even Betsy had admitted Janus was waterlogged.
‘Nothing at all to worry about, I’m sure,’ Dr Morgenstein assured Lisa suavely. ‘Naturally we’ll send all the samples to the laboratory.’ He smiled benignly. ‘A very healthy toddler, Mrs Wildmore. If you have two more like him you’ve very lucky.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a marvellous family. And after thinking I was infertile, too!’
‘You were worried about infertility?’
Had that been an unwise thing to say? ‘Some years ago,’ she brushed it off. ‘When we were still in London.’
‘You took fertility drugs?’
‘About five years ago.’
‘I see.’ He made more notes. ‘There is just one small thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I see Janus wears an earring.’ The paediatrician looked at her reflectively.
He thinks I’m a bit of a hippy, Lisa realised. A one-time layabout who’s married a successful man.
‘Is there any special reason for that?’
Lisa laughed, relieved. ‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘Each of the triplets wears a precious metal earring in his left ear. It’s just so that we can be sure of telling them apart. They really are identical, you see.’
‘You mean you can’t tell the difference?’ He sounded interested for the first time that morning.
‘We can tell the difference, of course. It’s to help the staff at the playschool.’
‘I see. They already go to playschool.’
‘They were longing to join their elder brother,’ Lisa said defensively. ‘Anyway, Janus wears a gold earring, Jeffrey wears platinum and James wears silver. I’m told precious metals don’t cause allergies.’
‘That may be true in general, Mrs Wildmore,’ the doctor said gravely. ‘But I do suggest you take Janus’s earring off. I think you may have noticed an allergy to that. If there’s no problem with the other two, you can always tell which one he is by the absence of an earring.’
Dr Morgenstein walked over to Lisa, patting Janus on the head, then put his finger on the child’s left earlobe. He undid the clasp, slipped out the earring, and handed it to Lisa.
‘I think you’ll find that will solve your problem,’ he smiled at her. ‘But if you’re worried again don’t hesitate to get in touch.’
Lisa slipped the earring on the small fingertip of her left hand for the second time that day, her heart missing several beats. She stood, unsteadily, to leave. The child on her arm smiled radiantly at her, and clapped his hands. She was tiring rapidly.
‘I didn’t leave his walking reins with you, did I?’ she asked the receptionist as she was leaving. ‘They’re yellow, to match Jansy’s T-shirt.’
‘I don’t think you brought any in here, Mrs Wildmore.’
Morgenstein, Lisa thought as she was driving back, was obviously going to ring Gilmore at the first opportunity and tell him that Lisa herself, not Janus, was medically unsound. Morgenstein’s modulated, soothing voice spelled menace to her.
She looked at the smiling dimply child strapped in his seat. He was gurgling happily, trying out the sounds of speech, the image of Jeffrey and James. This was her son Janus: her very own son. Love for him swept over her.
She must have hallucinated what she thought she’d seen in the Priddy Woods, must have allowed her tears and the flickering shadows to mislead her. As for the walking reins - she’d definitely lost those. But that could have a perfectly simple explanation. She’d simply left them where she’d taken Janus’s clothes off, where she’d allowed him to pee, and then forgotten them.
She smiled radiantly. The little boy with her was perfectly normal. The doctor had said there was nothing wrong with him, been quite certain about it.
Lisa sang out loud. She was completely sure she’d finally been freed from the cloner. She’d left him in the Priddy Woods, a product of her fertile imagination.