John contributed nothing to the discussion. With the newspaper headline this morning, and the expression on his colleagues’ faces, he wasn’t sure he had any kind of a future in academic research.
He wasn’t even sure he had any future in his marriage either.
At half past nine he pocketed his phone, picked up his computer, grabbed his bag and stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please excuse me, I-’ he hurried out of the conference room without finishing his sentence.
He walked down the corridor towards his office, his eyes brimming with tears, hoping to hell not to bump into any of his students, unlocked the door and went in, closing it behind him.
There was a pile of mail on his desk, and thirty-one new messages on his voice mail.
Christ.
And fifty-seven new emails.
His phone rang. It was Naomi, sounding livid.
‘I’m being bombarded with calls here. Your new lover’s done a great job circulating my office number.’
‘Jesus, Naomi, she is not my bloody lover!’ he yelled, then immediately felt terrible. This wasn’t her fault, she had done nothing to deserve this; it was his own stupid goddamn fault. No one else’s. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘I-’
She had rung off.
Shit.
He dialled her direct line number but it was busy.
He looked despairingly at the phone, at his computer screen, at the bare walls of his office. His secretary had stuck this morning’s post on his desk and near the top of the pile was a handwritten Jiffy bag with something hard inside. Curious, he ripped it open with the silver letter knife Naomi had given him for Christmas, and pulled out the contents, two stiff sheets of card held together by elastic bands, protecting something.
Inside was the photograph of Naomi that had been missing from his desk, the one of her taken in Turkey. The photograph that was on the front page of USA Today.
A folded slip of paper was also in the envelope. A short, handwritten note, with no address and no phone number. It said:
Hi John! It was great meeting you. Thanks for lending me this! All the best. Sally Kimberly.
You bitch! My Christ, you bitch!
His door opened. Saul Haranchek came in. ‘Can I – er – bother you for a moment, John?’ He hovered, rocking on his beat-up trainers, wringing his hands as if he bore news of the end of the world.
John looked at him and said nothing.
‘You’re a dark horse,’ he said. ‘I ah – we – I mean – like – none of us – you know – we didn’t have any idea that you and-’ He wrung his hands again. ‘Look – your private life is your affair but I – someone showed me the newspaper – USA Today. ’ He shook his head nervously. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine – just tell me?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ John said.
Nodding like some kind of automaton, Saul Haranchek turned back towards the door. ‘OK, right-’
Interrupting, John said, ‘Saul – look, I don’t mean it that way, it’s just – I guess – I’ve blown my chance of tenure, right?’
His phone was ringing again.
‘You want to take that?’ Haranchek said.
John answered it, in case it was Sally Kimberly. It wasn’t. It was a woman called Barbara Stratton asking if he could do a quick down-the-line radio interview. He told her again more politely than he felt that he couldn’t, and replaced the receiver. ‘I’ve been an idiot, Saul,’ he said.
‘Is it true what I read? Did you and Naomi really go to Dettore?’
The phone was ringing again. John ignored it. ‘It’s true.’
Haranchek put his hands on the top of a chair-back. ‘Oh boy.’
‘Do you know something about him?’
‘He was right here at this university back in the eighties for a couple of years. But no, I don’t know anything about him – only what I read – and now he’s dead, right?’
‘Yes. Do you have a view on his work?’
‘He was a smart guy – had an IQ that was off the scale. Having a high IQ doesn’t necessarily make you a great human being, or even a good one. It just means you can do shit in your head that other people can’t do.’
John said nothing.
‘Look, it’s none of my business. I’m rude to ask about it. But the real problem is, John, that this article doesn’t do your credibility as a scientist much good – nor our department, by implication.’
‘The truth is not at all how the paper put it, Saul. You know how things get distorted. Papers love to claim that science is more advanced than it really is.’
His colleague looked at him dubiously.
‘You want me to resign? Is that what you’re saying?’
Haranchek shook his head adamantly. ‘Absolutely not. No question. It’s unfortunate timing – let’s leave it at that.’
‘I’m sorry, Saul,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do to salvage my tenure chances?’
Haranchek glanced at his watch. ‘I have to get back to the meeting.’
‘Apologize for me, will you, Saul?’
‘You got it.’ He closed the door.
John stared down again at the note from Sally Kimberly. Although angry at her, he was even more angry at his own stupidity. He’d been nice to her, opened up to her in the hope she would do a good piece on his department. Why the hell hadn’t he remembered the world didn’t work that way?
He got himself a coffee then sat down. Almost immediately his phone rang again. It was Naomi and her voice was very small and quavering. ‘John, have you seen the news – in the past half hour?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Why, what it is?’
‘Dr Dettore. He was killed by religious fanatics – they’re claiming responsibility, saying Dettore worked for Satan. They’re called the Disciples of the Third Millennium. They’re saying they put a bomb on the helicopter. And they’ve announced that anyone tampering with genetics will be a legitimate target. I’m really frightened, John.’
27
In the small editing suite, Naomi sat watching the rough cut of the first episode of the new series on disaster survivors she had been hired to promote and then left to drive home.
She needed to concentrate, somehow to blank out the news about Dr Dettore, blank out her anxiety over the child growing inside her and blank out her suspicions that John had slept with the bitch reporter Sally Kimberly.
And blank out the looks she got from everyone she worked with. She wondered which of them had read the piece or heard about it. Some of them must have, for sure, but no one said anything to her, and that made it worse. Lori was the only friend who contacted her. ‘Darling, what amazing news!’ she said, her voice different to usual. Still as bubbly as ever, but today almost too damned bubbly, as if it was an act, as if she was doing her best to mask distaste but not quite succeeding. ‘You didn’t tell us!’
It seemed that in the past two days her entire world had been turned upside down. She was having a girl, not a boy. Dettore was dead. Fanatics were making threats. Her face was on the front of America’s biggest newspaper. And she could no longer trust her husband.
She wished desperately she was back in England. Back with her mother and her sister. John always talked about marriage being a wagon-train circle you formed against the outside world, but he was wrong. Your flesh and blood were that wagon-train circle. They were the people you could trust. No one else. Not even your husband.
She remembered a poem she had read a long time ago, which said home was the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.
That’s where she wanted to be now. Home.
English home.
Real home.