‘Maybe he needs you to spell it out for him.’
‘How?’
‘Shock him out of his comfort zone. He obviously believes that he is doing all he can to help the woman he loves so dearly. Tell him that feeling bad about everything doesn’t do a damn thing to help her. Point out to him that he has the means to stop your mother’s suffering if he’d just start thinking for himself instead of having the BMA and Church of England do it for him.’
‘I couldn’t do that to him.’
‘Desperate times, desperate measures.’
Caroline shook her head as she thought it through and came to the same conclusion. ‘I just couldn’t.’
‘Then you’ll both watch your mother go through hell until the Good Lord or whoever relents and lets her go. Still, a couple of choruses of “The Lord’s My Shepherd” and a few words of comfort from the vicar should make everything all right. Flowers on the grave every first Sunday of the month and a picture on the piano...’
‘You bastard!’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, I asked you to tell me what you thought,’ said Caroline, enunciating each word carefully ‘And that’s exactly what you did. I thank you for that. And, if it’s any comfort, I still love you.’
Gavin’s shoulders relaxed.
‘But just who the hell are you to talk?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Come on, Gavin, you’re in cancer research. You’ve come up with a way of treating tumours, and not once have we discussed this in relation to my mother. Why not?’
Gavin sat back in his chair and appeared to look in all directions for inspiration. ‘Because I work with test tubes. It’s a world away from real people. A few lab experiments have worked out okay and things are looking promising but...’
‘Do I hear the sound of furious back-pedalling, Gavin?’
‘Okay, I do think it has a chance of working if anyone ever gets round to giving it its chance, but even then there will be hurdles to jump before it’s tried out on people.’
‘But you have the wherewithal to try it?’
‘I’ve got the drugs, if that’s what you mean...’
‘So your objections are... legal? You don’t have the necessary paperwork, permissions, approvals, etc?’
‘I suppose... but there’s more to it than that. There’s what you have to prove before you get the paperwork.’
Caroline chose to ignore the proviso. ‘How about moral objections? It’s wrong to experiment on people?’
Gavin shrugged, clearly unhappy with the way the conversation had turned.
‘So if you can’t do the legal thing and you can’t do the moral thing, what does that leave us with... the right thing... does it not?’
‘Carrie...’
‘I just thought I’d tell you what I thought, Gav, since you were so obliging when I asked. I think it all boils down to me finding it strange that we’re sitting here discussing who should kill my mother, when you might well have the means of saving her.’
‘Wow,’ said Gavin under his breath. ‘Where did all that come from?’
‘Come on, you’re not telling me the idea never crossed your mind?’ said Caroline, looking incredulous. ‘We both know that we’ve been avoiding having this conversation, ever since you got that great result in the lab, right?’
‘I suppose,’ conceded Gavin. ‘When you first told me your mother had cancer I remember thinking how great it would be if I came up with a cure for her... how impressed you’d be. You’d fall in love with me and we’d live happily ever after. And then again when I saw the tumour cells dying in the lab — but these were just fairy-tale thoughts, like standing on the terrace at a Liverpool game when the manager comes up to you through the crowd and says, “Gav, we’re a bit short of strikers.” It’s just a dream. It’s just not the way things happen...’
‘She’s got cancer; you have a possible cure. I think you should try it.’
Gavin shook his head. ‘It would be wrong. I don’t even know if it works on all kinds of tumours. There could be a cross-reaction between the two drugs in human beings. There are all sorts of reasons...’
‘And none of them valid for a woman who is in pain and dying. Paperwork is for people who are guarding their own arses... if I might quote you.’
‘But if every —’
‘We are not talking about every here. We are talking about my mother.’
Gavin rubbed his temples.
‘Think about it, Gav. That’s all I ask. Give it some serious thought?’
Gavin nodded.
‘Another beer? Crisps?’
Gavin shook his head.
‘You’re not going to go all quiet on me, are you?’
‘No, this is exactly the kind of moment when we should go on speaking to each other.’
‘So tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘I suppose I’m thinking that if I got caught doing something like this, there are a lot of people in the department who’d have a field day. Smart-arse Donnelly isn’t content with doing all the science on his own; he’s now started treating the patients. They’d laugh all the way to the courtroom.’
‘I’ll treat Mum,’ said Caroline. ‘You just give me the drugs and tell me what to do.’
‘It could destroy us both.’
‘On the other hand, it might just work.’
Twenty-two
Gavin didn’t sleep much. He tossed and turned as he struggled to make sense of his predicament and tried to see a way out. The thing he hadn’t told Caroline was that if he were to hand over what Valdevan he had, there would be none left to carry out the final confirmatory experiments. He hadn’t said this because he felt sure that she would have seen it as just another excuse. True, the planned experiments were only repeats of what he’d done before, and the paper might still be accepted without the insurance they offered, but equally well, it might not — it would all depend on which referees it was sent out to for comments. Happily, it was unlikely that it would be sent to anyone in the same department, or even the same university, but word going out on the grapevine might still make things difficult if old pals were to make phone calls and old favours were to be called in. This was why Frank Simmons wanted the data to be watertight before they submitted for publication.
Although he felt bad about it, it wasn’t as if he had any doubts about what had to be done: the interests of the many had to be put before those of an individual, even if that individual happened to be Caroline’s mother. This was what his head was telling him, but his heart was telling him something else. Caroline loved her mother and he loved Caroline. Doing the right thing would mean hurting one of them deeply and denying the other a possible chance of life. There was also the possibility that it might already be too late for her mother — but this was just another doubt that rolled in on the tide of angst that denied him any relief from mounting stress.
He wished there was someone he could confide in, but there wasn’t. Anyone capable of understanding the factors involved was already an interested party, and therefore had an axe to grind. Frank would see publication of the science as paramount. Carrie would cling to any chance at all of helping her mother. He, of course, would like to see both these things happen. Grumman Schalk, on the other hand, were determined to consign Valdevan to history and wanted the science to disappear — as did the university, who were siding with Grumman for financial reasons. If either of these parties were to catch wind of any plan to use the drug therapeutically, they would almost certainly call in the police. Alternative agendas? He couldn’t move for them.