LOUISE VOSS AND

MARK EDWARDS

Catch Your Death

Dedication

For the kids: Gracie, Ellie, Poppy and Archie.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue - Sixteen Years Ago

Chapter 1 - Present Day

Chapter 2 - Present Day

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9 - Sixteen Years Ago

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12 - Sixteen Years Ago

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Also by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue Sixteen Years Ago

The world was on fire.

Or maybe she wasn’t in the world any more. Maybe this was Hell. The heat, the taste of sulphur on her tongue, the sickness, the torment. Screams rang through the air, relentless, monotonous, a one-pitch yell of despair. She opened her eyes and saw a figure stooping over her; a hovering devil, with flaming red hair. She tried to shout but all that came out was a rasping noise, and the devil’s face was close, the brimstone smell of its breath in her nostrils.

‘Kate. Kate, get up. Come on.’

She stared, blinked. Slowly, a face came into focus. Not a devil, but Sarah, her red-headed room-mate.

Sarah pushed aside the thin sheet that covered Kate’s body and took her by the hands, pulling her up. Kate’s pyjamas were damp and cold, but her skin was desert-hot. Her fever was nearing 105 degrees. Sarah was in a similar state, but she’d been lying on top of her sheets, too ill to sleep.

Kate’s bare feet touched the floor. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her body was a bruise, tender to the touch.

‘Come on.’

Kate could still hear the screaming, and put her hands to her ears to block it out. She’d only ever felt this ill once before, as a child. She had the vaguest memory of a nurse with black skin and kind eyes sponging her down with cold, cold water which dripped down her narrow heaving chest, and soaked the waistband of her pyjama trousers. She’d cried, weakly, at the ordeal. Cried for her mother, even though her mother was already gone.

She wished the nurse was here now, to cool her with water, to put out the fire that raged across her skin.

Her eyes fixed on the curtains. At some time during the night, as she drifted in and out of feverish dreams, she had seen little men with malevolent eyes swinging on those curtains. Sarah opened the door and, holding each other up, they stepped into the corridor. Kate had a vague idea that she was supposed to be angry with Sarah but she couldn’t remember why.

At the same time that Kate and Sarah left their room, another couple of young women emerged from the next room. Denise and Fiona, the Glaswegian girls they weren’t allowed to be in contact with, but had communicated with, talking and giggling like boarding school girls through the walls, figuring out ingenious ways to pass notes out of the windows, attached to the end of a cane Sarah had found in the Centre’s gardens.

‘Is it real?’ Fiona asked. Her voice was thick, her nose bunged up. Kate thought she was speaking a foreign language. Or maybe the language of Satan. What if these were all devils, taking her to be tortured, dragging her into Hell? She panicked and tried to pull away.

Denise caught her and she nearly fell, but the Scottish girl managed to stop her from crashing to the floor.

‘It can’t be a drill,’ Fiona said, answering her own question.

‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Denise, leading the way.

She gripped Sarah by one hand and Kate, who kept pulling back, looking around her with wild eyes, by the other. Where was everyone else? Were they the last people left in the building?

‘We’re going to die,’ Kate said. ‘We’re going to die.’

Denise shushed her. ‘No. We’re not. The exit’s just around this corner. Come on, Kate. We’re nearly there.’

They turned the corner and came face to face with a wall of thick smoke.

‘Oh God!’

Kate emitted a small yelp of fear and struggled, but Denise held tight. ‘Calm down.’

They were all sweating now, as the corridors filled with heat, and the smoke pricked their eyes, bringing forth the tears. Four young women in their pyjamas; holding on to one another, paralysed by the most primitive fear of all.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ Denise said.

They turned round and ran – even the sickly Kate and Sarah, with Denise and Fiona holding their hands. They heard a crack and a crash in the distance and suddenly smoke was filling the whole corridor, rushing up behind them, chasing and overtaking them. It caught them and, like drowning swimmers, they panicked and gulped in lungfuls of the stuff, acrid and bitter and lethal. Coughs racked their bodies.

Sarah fell to her knees. Fiona stopped and tried to pull her back up. Denise let go of Kate so she could help, and as they struggled to get Sarah to her feet, Kate peered ahead. They were engulfed now, the smoke filling the whole corridor, and her eyes streamed as she tried to make sense of what she could see.

There were figures coming at them through the smoke. The devils. Come to claim her. The screaming continued.

One of the devils grabbed hold of her. She tried to fight but the devil was too strong. It lifted her and carried her deeper into the smoke. She kicked weakly. Each of her friends had been taken hold of too. She decided not to fight any more. She just wished she’d had a chance to say goodbye to Stephen.

Stephen’s face was the last thing she pictured as she slipped into the welcoming darkness.

When she came round she was lying on the grass outside. She lifted her head and saw that Sarah was lying nearby. Sarah lifted her arm and waved weakly. Kate tried to speak to her, but a moment later she passed out again.

The next time she awoke, she found herself in the eye of a storm of chaos. Doctors and researchers ran around with their white coats flapping. A man in a red uniform, a fireman, stood nearby, drinking from a white cup. She could hear the seesawing wail of a police siren mixed with the piercing, steady scream of an alarm.

She rolled onto her side and coughed hard, spitting out black phlegm.

‘Kate!’ Denise appeared. ‘Are you alright?’ Her blonde hair was grey with soot, her cheeks and forehead smeared with it.

Kate sat up. Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. But she was alive. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

She concentrated. ‘I remember . . . devils. A scene from Hell. I thought I was dead.’

‘I thought we were going to die too. The Centre was on fire. It looks like the whole building we were in has been burned out.’

For the first time, Kate looked properly at the scene before her. In the darkness, clouds of smoke still rose from the long thin building that she’d called home for the last week. Fire engines stood close by, the uniformed men lined up with hoses, sending ribbons of water into the fire to fight its rival element.

‘We were lucky,’ Denise said.

‘Was anyone killed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Fiona?’

‘Fiona’s just over there. I don’t know where Sarah is though. They brought her out with us but I haven’t seen her since.’

‘She was here a minute ago. When I came round I saw her. She waved at me. Then I passed out again.’

‘Maybe they’ve already taken her to hospital . . .’ She trailed off. ‘There were other girls in there, though. I haven’t seen them bring anyone else out, but it’s too chaotic to know what’s going on.’

Kate pushed herself to her feet, her head spinning, her eyes blurring. She was so sick. What the hell had they given her yesterday? This was no common cold.

‘I’m going to check on Fiona and see if I can find Sarah,’ Denise said, touching Kate’s hand then disappearing into the chaos.

As Kate tried to steady herself, to stop the world rotating around her, a man in a white jacket came up to her. Kate squinted at him. He was tall and thin; kind of creepy. He reached towards her, uninvited, and laid a hand on her brow, making her flinch away. She knew she had a reason to be afraid of him, but in her delirium she couldn’t remember what it was.

‘Kate. You shouldn’t still be out here . . . you’re too unwell.’

She ignored him. ‘Do you know Stephen? Stephen Wilson? Have you seen him?’

He shook his head. ‘Come on – you really should rest. You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke. And you have a fever.’ He looked around as if searching for someone to help. He muttered something under his breath. Something about somebody interfering?

She didn’t hear any more because his words were drowned by her own coughing fit. Her throat felt like a raw wound.

The creepy man helped her sit down. He looked around again then said, ‘Stay here, okay? Just stay here.’

Another coughing jag filled her eyes with tears, and when it passed, he’d gone.

She needed to find Stephen. He’d told her he was staying late tonight. She’d been planning to meet him. He said he might have something to tell her. She stood up again, concentrating all of her remaining energy into staying upright, and headed towards the building and the firefighters.

‘Stephen,’ she tried to call, but her voice was too weak. She was dizzy and nauseous. She wanted to lie down, to sleep. But she desperately needed to find him – just see him and make sure he was okay before she could rest. There was no reason, really, to think he could have come to harm. His office was in a separate wing of the Centre. But still, she wanted to be sure. She loved him.

In the distance, she could see figures close to the building, the darkness and smoke reducing them to silhouettes. Two firemen were carrying out a stretcher with a motionless form on it; a form of approximately Stephen’s height and build. One arm flopped over the edge of the stretcher and, as they grew closer, Kate saw the familiar bulk of the chunky wristwatch Stephen always wore. It was blackened, like the arm to which it was attached, but she was certain she recognised it.

It was Stephen. She tried to run, but her own legs were too weak, her lungs too clogged. Her bare feet slipped on the grass and she lurched forward. When she got to her feet, the scientist – the same man who’d touched her forehead – blocked her way.

‘You have to rest,’ he insisted.

‘But Stephen,’ she said, reaching out towards the building, and suddenly there was movement all around her, an ambulance speeding past, firefighters running towards the Centre, and the scientist grabbing her arm and producing a needle which he stuck into her. A quick jab, and an even shorter struggle before haziness enveloped her. Once again, she passed out.

The last thing she saw was the scientist frowning down at her, while behind him paramedics crouched on the grass beside Stephen, and one of them shook his head.

She never knew if she actually did scream, or had just imagined it.

Chapter 1 Present Day

The woman lying on the bunk appeared to be dead, until she sneezed; the violent motion making her skinny body spasm. She opened bloodshot eyes and lifted an arm, trying to pull a tissue from the box on the bedside cabinet. But as she reached out, her body spasmed again and she knocked the box to the floor. Too weak to pick it up, she lay still, until a further series of sneezes rocked her body like gunshots.

There were two men watching the girl. One was in his early forties but appeared younger because of the lack of lines on his face. His skin was tanned from a recent holiday in Bangkok, and at first glance he was unusually handsome, like a model in a commercial for razors or fast cars. But anyone gazing at his face for more than a few seconds would notice something strange. He still looked like a model, but a model in a magazine or on a billboard, frozen in time, unanimated. Worst of all were his eyes, which were small and lifeless like a shark’s. Secretly – because no-one dared criticise him to his face – he had been described as a robot.

His name was John Sampson.

The other man, whose name was Gaunt – nobody had ever heard him use his first name – was taller and paler, with skin that spoke of months and years spent in artificially-lit places like this. He was so thin he appeared to be wasting away. When he was locked in the laboratory, he often forgot to eat. Food wasn’t important. Nor was sleep. There was too much to do; too many exciting things to be discovered and tested. Nodding towards the woman on the bunk, he said, ‘She arrived last night. We picked her up at Heathrow and brought her straight here.’

Sampson said, ‘What is she? Chinese? Thai?’

She reminded him of a girl he’d met in Bangkok. He wondered idly if that girl’s family were still looking for her or if they’d given up by now. If they even cared.

‘Vietnamese, actually. Her name’s Lien. Twenty-three years old, resident of Hanoi. Doesn’t speak a single word of English – oh, except “please”. “Please, please, please.” She said that quite a few times, before she lost the ability to speak. I wonder what promises they made to her at the other end? A new life in England: a good job, a flat, a washing machine and a colour TV . . .?’

Sampson peered at Lien through the one-way glass.

‘What is it? Bird flu?’ he asked.

Gaunt, who wore a doctor’s white coat and spoke with an upper-middle-class English accent, took off his glasses and sucked on them. Finally, he said, ‘No. This is something new.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very impressive, actually. I have to hand it to our friends in Asia these days. Sars. Avian Flu. Both very impressive. But this one’s even better.’

‘It’s fatal?’

The doctor laughed. ‘Oh yes. Infinitely more so than Avian Flu.’

John Sampson looked at Lien again. She had tried, while they were talking, to pick up the glass of water that sat beside the tissue box, but she had knocked that over too. Water dribbled down the side of the cabinet and pooled on the floor.

‘I’d like to talk to her.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. She’s extremely contagious. She’d just have to breathe in your direction and you’d catch it.’

‘Shame.’ Sampson would have liked to find out how the girl was feeling.

‘Want to see exactly how contagious this is?’

Gaunt gestured for Sampson to follow him. They walked a little way down the harsh, bright corridor, beneath fluorescent strip lights that flickered occasionally, and stopped in front of another small room with one-way glass. A second woman, this one Caucasian, with bleached hair and dirty roots, sat on the edge of the bed. She looked miserable and confused. Not as far gone as Lien, but she had a red nose, pink eyes, and she held a box of tissues in her lap.

Sampson waited for the doctor to explain.

‘She’s a prostitute. Serbian; she was brought here last night. She was clean – no viruses, no problems, remarkably healthy for a woman of her profession. How old do you think she is? About twenty six?’

Sampson nodded slowly. The girl was beautiful. He pictured himself holding her, sitting with her as she died. She would explain what her pain and suffering and fear felt like. He would stroke her dirty hair as she breathed her last breath.

Gaunt said, ‘We put her in a room with Lien for twenty seconds. They didn’t touch or even speak to one another. She started showing symptoms eight hours later. But she herself isn’t contagious yet. You can talk to her if you want.’

Sampson raised his eyebrows.

The doctor drummed his fingers on the glass and the girl looked up. A gold chain, bearing a locket, hung around her neck. Beneath the sickness, she looked angry and defiant. Her mouth moved but they couldn’t hear what she was saying. Maybe she was pleading. Or spitting words of fury. Whatever, her words were as futile as her hopes.

‘This is the most remarkable thing about this virus,’ the doctor said, ignoring the girl. ‘It has a safe period. For fifteen hours, the carrier isn’t contagious, even though they start to exhibit symptoms. My Asian contact told me they wanted to develop a virus that would be safe to work with for short periods. With this strain, the carrier can be safely transported to a far off place, just like Lien here. Could be useful in war. Like a time bomb. And it suits our aims perfectly.’

Sampson nodded, not taking his eyes off the young prostitute. ‘So the people who were on the plane with Lien will be fine.’

Gaunt continued talking. Something about how close they were to completing their plans. Sampson tuned him out and continued to watch the girl sniffling on the bunk. He was waiting for the doctor to shut up and open the door, so he could talk to her and find out the answers to his questions. After that, when she became contagious and he had to leave her, he would find out what job the doctor had planned for him.

Who would he want killed this time?

Chapter 2 Present Day

England was just as she remembered it. Grey, oppressive skies, even in summer, people rushing from place to place, avoiding one another’s eyes, locked into their own personal spaces. The music they used to isolate themselves came from an iPod these days rather than a Walkman, and the litter on the streets carried different brand names, but apart from that, it was like stepping into a time warp. Even the teenagers wore the same clothes she’d worn twenty years ago. Punk and goth were fashionable again. Bleak fashions for a bleak city.

It was so good to be back.

Kate Maddox felt an urgent tug at her arm and looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes – eyes like her own, Vernon had always said. ‘His mother’s eyes and his father’s nose.’ She hoped that was all Jack had inherited from his dad. Other attributes mother and son shared were dark brown hair; Kate’s long and wavy, falling over her shoulders; and Jack’s cropped close, but in exactly the same shade of chestnut; freckles across the bridge of the nose which were only really visible in summer, and an infectious, easy laugh. Like Kate, Jack would probably be tall and slim when he grew up. She was secretly pleased that he would one day, hopefully, tower over the short-legged, bull-necked Vernon.

‘Mum, Mum, look – there’s that robot I was telling you about.’

Jack was pointing towards a shop window – Hamleys, she realised, the giant toy shop that she had once dragged her own parents around – and a white toy robot lumbering around in the window. She only had the vaguest recollection of Jack telling her about this robot, but it was clear that it had been occupying his thoughts recently. It was amazing how, in the midst of upheaval, he could still fixate on such things. Actually, it was reassuring. Although she hadn’t yet explained to the six-year-old exactly how different things were going to be from now on. She’d been putting it off.

‘Can we have a look? Please?’

‘Okay.’

She allowed herself to be led over to the window where Jack pressed his palm against the glass and watched the white and silver robot as it performed a number of tricks. ‘It’s so cool,’ he breathed.

‘Hmm.’

He gazed up at her. ‘I’d be really happy if I had one.’

She smiled at his disingenuous turn of phrase, then caught herself and frowned. ‘I think it’s probably too expensive.’

Jack squinted at the price tag. ‘It’s eighty pounds. How much is that in dollars?’

‘Too much.’

She sensed him deflate and felt a blow of guilt, then annoyance at her own guilt. £80 was too much for a toy, although she and Vernon had both bought Jack a lot of expensive gifts recently. Guilt gifts. Competitive gifts. Most of those toys were still in Boston, in Jack’s cluttered bedroom with the Red Sox bedspread and posters covering every inch of the walls.

The robot’s eyes flashed red and Jack squealed with laughter. ‘Cool. I can’t wait to tell Tyler about this.’

Tyler was Jack’s best friend. Hearing his name brought back that feeling of guilt with a vengeance. Was she a bad mother? What would Jack say and do when she told him? She looked at the robot and at Jack’s rapt expression as he watched it; and then she decided to infringe the first rule of parenthood: never back down once you’ve already said no.

‘I guess you have been a good boy recently.’

Thirty minutes later they were in McDonald’s in Leicester Square – another treat for Jack, who wasn’t normally allowed to go into such unhealthy and additive-laden places. Every other kid in the place was gazing enviously at Jack’s white robot.

Jack cradled it on his lap while he ate his veggie burger with one hand, Kate trying to be relaxed at the sight of the ketchup threatening to drip at any moment. The bloody robot was nearly as big as her son and now they were going to have to lug it round with them. What had she been thinking? She’d let her guilt get the better of her.

‘I’m going to call him Billy,’ Jack announced solemnly. ‘Billy, this is my mum.’

The robot bleeped on cue.

‘Pleased to meet you, Billy,’ Kate said, forking a piece of tomato.

‘Mum, where does the Queen live?’

‘Nearby, in Buckingham Palace.’

‘Billy and I would like to visit her.’

‘I’m sure she’d be fascinated to meet Billy, but I don’t think the Queen allows visitors.’

Jack thought about this. ‘Is it because I’m American?’

‘You’re half British.’

‘Which half ?’

‘The best half.’

‘Daddy said that most British people are stuck up and have dirty teeth, like that man over there.’

The man Jack was referring to, who did indeed have teeth that looked like they’d fall out in shock if a toothbrush ever went near them, looked angrily over, and Kate shrunk down in her plastic seat.

‘Jack, shush.’ Most British people were stuck up? That was the most hypocritical thing Vernon had ever come out with – he was the bloody snob in the family. He was the one who refused to fly economy because of the hoi polloi. He was the one who didn’t have a single acquaintance without an Ivy League education.

‘Are my teeth American?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about Billy’s?’

‘I don’t think he’s got teeth. But if he did, they’d be made in China like the rest of him.’

‘Mum, what do robots eat?’

She grabbed one of his french fries and held it up. ‘Microchips?’

They both giggled, and the man with the mossy teeth gave them an equally dirty look.

‘Come on, we ought to get going. I’m tired and I need a bath.’

‘Are we going back to the hotel?’

‘Yup.’

‘Mum.’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t have to have a bath, do I?’

‘It depends how good you are between now and bedtime.’

They left the restaurant and joined the throng outside. With Kate holding her son’s hand, they edged their way through a crowd gathered around a juggler.

As they reached the kerb, she stuck her arm in the air as she spotted a taxi with its orange light on, but another man, a businessman with a phone stapled to his ear grabbed it first. The cab crawled away – traffic didn’t speed in this part of London, where gridlock had become something else for tourists to write home about – and she cursed under her breath. She looked around for another cab.

And saw a ghost.

Chapter 3

‘Stephen!’

Life is full of moments like this – snap decisions, taken unconsciously, and when people ask, later, ‘Why did you do that?’ the only honest reply is, ‘I don’t know.’ The sole explanation she could think of was that, in that moment, she was flung back in time to a night when she thought she’d died and gone to Hell. When she’d walked in despair through the grounds of the Cold Research Unit and searched for her lover.

And if she’d seen him then, she would have called out his name, like she did now.

But he didn’t react.

The man on the other side of the road didn’t flinch or alter his expression. He just stood there, drinking from a Starbucks cup, staring into the middle-distance and frowning. He wore a grey pinstriped jacket and faded blue jeans. His hair needed a cut and flopped over the rim of his glasses. Staring at him, she recognised the same traces of age she’d noticed in the mirror: the crow’s feet, the lines at the side of the mouth that held a history of smiles, the lines on the forehead that mapped a legacy of sadness. When the wind ruffled his hair she noticed that it was receding, just a little. But it was definitely him. Even though it couldn’t have been.

Kate felt as if she’d just been punched in the solar plexus; as breathless as the night the Centre caught fire. The people and the traffic around her blurred. Only Stephen stayed in focus. He began to walk away, dropping his coffee cup into a rubbish bin, and moving off quickly.

‘Mum, are we looking for a taxi?’

‘Yes. I . . . come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

She didn’t answer. She escorted Jack across the road and followed the man who looked so like Stephen, but who couldn’t be Stephen, because he had been killed in the fire that night. He made his way up a quieter street towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘Mum, why are you walking so quickly?’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

Jack whined. ‘But I’m tired. My legs hurt.’

She should have stopped then, stuck to her original plan – a taxi back to the hotel, a hot bath, let Jack watch the kids’ channel on the hotel TV. This was insane. Stephen was dead. He’d been dead for sixteen years. This was just a guy who looked like him, a doppelgänger. Isn’t everyone supposed to have a double somewhere? Or maybe she was just imagining the likeness, fulfilling a fantasy that Stephen was still alive. She hadn’t seen him for sixteen years, so how could she say this man looked just like him?

But he did. She had carried Stephen’s face locked in her memory for a decade and a half. Whatever else she’d forgotten, she had never forgotten him. This guy did look exactly like him, and that was weird and worth investigating.

She felt compelled to follow him, despite her son’s complaints.

He turned the corner onto Shaftesbury Avenue. The faces of famous Hollywood actors gazed down at her from theatre billboards; Jack made some comment about ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. The ghost, or lookalike, or whatever he was, turned right. Luckily, the crowds slowed him down so he didn’t get too far ahead even though she was having to drag along her son, plus his robot. He turned another corner, then another, and they found themselves on a quieter street lined with Chinese restaurants and shops flogging cheap bags and faux-silk.

‘Mum, Billy’s tired too,’ Jack said, waving his robot in the air, and just as she was about to respond, the man stopped and turned around.

He looked straight at her. ‘Why are you following me?’ he asked.

Kate felt like an idiot. This was an act of madness, the kind of thing Vernon accused her of. You need help. Some pills. You should see someone. Let me call Doctor Mackenzie. And she’d cry, get angry, protest – I’m sane. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t want any drugs. I don’t need them. It was the way he looked at her. It made her believe she was losing her mind.

God only knew what Vernon would have said about this.

The ghost/lookalike took a few wary steps towards her. He gazed curiously at her, then down at Jack and back at her.

‘Stephen?’ she said, holding her breath.

He shook his head. ‘You’ve made a mistake.’

He didn’t seem angry. At least that was something. He wasn’t going to shout at her. But even though he said she’d made a mistake and, of course, she knew he couldn’t really be Stephen, he didn’t only look like her long lost boyfriend – he sounded the same too. His voice was identical: well-spoken English, a soft voice, intelligent. Sexy.

She realised that Jack was looking up at her with wide eyes, scared of the strange man. She put her hand on Jack’s head and smiled. The man must have seen the boy’s fear too. He winked at him.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Kate said, in a rush. ‘I’ve made a stupid mistake. You look exactly like someone I used to know, this guy I used to be close to, and I had to try and find out if you . . . it’s stupid because . . .’

‘He’s dead.’

She stopped her babble and stared at him.

‘I assume you’re talking about Stephen Wilson?’

She nodded dumbly.

The man smiled with one corner of his mouth. ‘He was my brother.’

Chapter 4

Ania, the hotel babysitter, was well-used to neurotic parents who felt pinned between anxiety and eagerness – the eagerness to get out and see the city, not spend their vacation tied down by the kids. But this woman, with her little boy, seemed more worried than average. Her voice trembled as she spoke and she dropped her handbag on her way to the door. Her purse, her keycard and tissues all tumbled onto the carpet and she bent quickly to scoop them up. Highly-strung. Or up to something. She had that air about her. She was doing something that made her ill at ease; something secret.

If she had to bet on it, Ania would wager that it involved a man.

The boy, on the other hand, was relaxed, leaning back in his chair clutching a toy robot to his chest, his free hand expertly handling the remote control, flicking from cartoon to pop video to wildlife programme. He giggled at the sight of meerkats playing on screen. Perhaps he didn’t realise that his mother was about to go out. Or perhaps he was secure enough in her love to know that she’d be coming back – it was the ones who were insecure who usually freaked out the most.

Ania finally managed to get the nervous woman out into the corridor. The boy had an American accent but the mother was English. It was intriguing. Where was the father? Not that Ania was really all that interested. As long as she got paid, who cared? She liked the boy, though. He seemed like a nice kid.

The woman said, ‘Here’s my mobile number, and the name and number of the restaurant, just in case. I’m Kate, by the way. And you’ve already met Jack.’

‘Okay.’

‘Bye Jack, sweetie,’ she called. ‘See you later.’

‘Bye.’ He didn’t look up. The meerkats were more interesting. Ania was relieved – no tantrums to deal with. Good. She felt a sudden tickle in her nose, and sneezed.

Kate turned back. ‘Have you got a cold?’

She shook her head. ‘Maybe I am getting one.’

‘Hmm. Well, it depends if your body has encountered this virus before. If so, your antibodies will fight off the cold and it’ll go away.’

Ania nodded, not knowing what to say. She was pleased when the anxious mother finally left.

Kate emerged from the tube station and checked her watch. As so often happened, she had rushed out in a hurry and arrived early. Vernon was always going on about her obsessive need to be punctual and reliable. In the early days, he found it endearing; a positive character trait. Later, it became another sign of her uptightness.

She walked up Charing Cross Road and stopped outside a bookshop full of medical and scientific books. She recognised some of them. There was a famous book called The Plague on the Horizon, which contained several quotes from Kate. She had a signed copy back in Boston. The author had interviewed Kate because of her involvement in the investigation of the West Nile Virus, a potentially lethal illness that had first been seen in the US, in New York, in 1999. WNV, as virologists called it, caused muscle weakness and confusion in some people, and could lead to meningitis, paralysis and death in others. It was a particularly interesting virus (and when Kate said this to non-scientists they would raise their eyebrows, wondering how anyone could find such a horrible thing so interesting) because of the way it was transmitted. Mosquitoes became infected after feeding on virus-carrying birds, such as crows. One of those mosquitoes could then infect a human. Kate’s team were trying to develop a vaccine for WNV. So far, they had not been successful.

Kate caught sight of her reflection in the dark glass. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. She hadn’t been able to decide whether or not to wear make-up. This certainly wasn’t a date, but sometimes make-up made her feel more confident, less exposed to the world, so she’d put on a slick of lip-gloss, a touch of mascara. Still, she wasn’t looking her best. A large part of her wanted to be locked up safely behind the door of her hotel room with the TV on and Jack beside her. She hoped he’d be okay. That babysitter had seemed capable enough, but – she let her imagination reach out – what if she was a child-killer, a front for an international child-slave racket, or just plain irresponsible?

She castigated herself. Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. Relax. It’s a reputable chain hotel, the woman had references.

She pushed her hair behind her ears and stood up straight. All you’re doing, she reminded herself, is meeting the brother of an old boyfriend.

His name was Paul.

‘We were twins,’ he had said, a second after they’d met in the street and he had told her he was Stephen’s brother. Stephen had never mentioned he had a twin, which seemed very odd in retrospect. Maybe he did tell her, but she’d forgotten. So much of that summer was obscured behind thick fog. When she tried to remember those days, it was like trying to read a road sign without her contact lenses in. No matter how hard she strained, she couldn’t make out the details through the haze and, in the end, the effort became painful and she gave up.

When she played back that meeting with Paul in her mind, it made her cringe. She had felt so awkward, standing there with Jack, having to talk loudly over the roar of the London traffic. Paul seemed uneasy too. She couldn’t blame him – being confronted by a woman who is staring at you like you’re a phantom would do that to anyone.

‘How did you know Stephen?’ he had asked.

Kate had been aware of Jack looking up at her. Part of her wanted to turn and run. But she was hypnotised by the face of this stranger who looked so much like the man she’d loved long ago. Alongside unease, his face showed kindness, just as Stephen’s had. She had the sudden urge to launch herself at him, wrap her arms around him and kiss him. For years she had dreamt of a moment like this – of bumping into Stephen and him telling her, ‘It was all a mistake. Reports of my demise were exaggerated.’ And they’d embrace, and the years would disappear.

Except this wasn’t Stephen.

‘We were friends,’ she said.

‘At university?’

She almost told a second lie, but said, ‘No. I met him at the Cold Research Unit in Salisbury.’

‘Oh.’

She said, ‘I was there.’

He spoke softly. ‘There . . . when he . . .?’

‘Yes.’

Jack had spoken up then. ‘Mummy, what are you talking about? Billy’s bored. And he needs to pee.’

Jack’s words broke the tension and the adults laughed.

Kate said, ‘Look, I’m really sorry. I don’t normally follow strangers through the streets.’

Paul smiled. ‘It’s okay. It’s understandable.’

‘Maybe. But I’d better go and get Billy and his master back to the hotel.’

‘Hotel? You don’t live in London?’

‘We live in Boston,’ said Jack.

‘Really?’

Kate went to turn away, but hesitated. She didn’t want to say goodbye, but lingering there was pointless.

Paul said, ‘Wait,’ even though she hadn’t yet moved. ‘Would you like to meet for dinner?’

‘I . . .’

‘It would be nice to talk to someone who knew my brother. Our parents won’t talk about him because it’s too upsetting. I never see any of our old friends these days. Sometimes it feels like he never existed.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Except I see him every time I look in the mirror.’

Kate didn’t know what to say.

‘So, dinner? You can bring Jack and – Billy, is it? – if you like.’

Before she could change her mind, she blurted, ‘Where? What time?’

He pointed up the street at a restaurant. ‘Do you like Chinese? We could meet there at seven.’

‘Alright.’ She turned away, then realised she hadn’t told him her own name.

‘I’m Kate,’ she said.

Something happened when she said that; it was as if the name meant something to him but he wasn’t sure what. The moment passed and he smiled. ‘Okay, I’ll see you later.’

She killed twenty minutes walking slowly through Soho towards the Chinese restaurant. It was a warm, overcast evening, and the streets were rammed with people in T-shirts standing outside pubs. She hadn’t smoked for years, but she had a craving for cigarettes. And cider. She thought she knew why, too: she was going to meet a man she didn’t know for dinner, something she hadn’t done for a long, long time. It threw her back in time, made her feel like a teenager. She wouldn’t smoke or drink cider, or go to bed with this man, but she wouldn’t be enormously surprised with herself if she did. She’d done enough out-of-character things recently.

She paused outside the restaurant, inhaled the smell of cooking rice and sweet and sour sauce and MSG. She watched a trio of chickens rotating on a spit in a window opposite and had to look away. She hadn’t eaten meat, either, for years. Another thing that irritated Vernon – living with a goddamn vegetarian.

‘You enjoyed the taste of meat when we met,’ he said, the underlying innuendo making her shudder. She had to stop thinking about him. But how could she? When he found out what she’d done, as he would very soon . . . She didn’t want to think about it.

She didn’t have to. Paul arrived at that moment, appearing out of nowhere and grinning nervously at her.

‘I left Jack with a babysitter at the hotel,’ she said. ‘I hope he’s OK. I just thought it would be easier to talk without interruption.’

‘Sure,’ he said, easily.

She’d been worried that he might think she was planning to come on to him, farming her son out to a stranger, being a bad mother – but he didn’t seem at all fazed. ‘I’m starving,’ he added.

‘Me too,’ she said, although she wasn’t.

He led the way into the hot, noisy restaurant, waves of chatter rising and falling against a backdrop of the clatter of plates at a service hatch. A waiter showed them to a table, chucked a pair of menus down on the table and zoomed away again.

Seeing how taken aback Kate was, Paul said, ‘They’re famously rude in here. It’s part of the appeal.’

They exchanged pleasantries about the warm weather and Chinese food for a few minutes, ordered drinks and studied their menus.

The waiter reappeared. ‘Yes?’ he demanded, looking as though he wished he was anywhere else but here.

Paul gave the waiter a few numbers from the menu, and Kate did the same.

‘You’re vegetarian?’ he asked. When she nodded, he asked, ‘Do you eat fish?’

‘No, I’m vegetarian.’ She immediately regretted her snappiness. ‘Sorry, it’s just that everyone always says that – it’s like an automatic response. Proper veggies don’t eat fish.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ He pretended to make a note on an invisible notepad. ‘Fish have feelings too.’

He was charming. Just like Stephen – or rather, how Stephen would be if he’d had sixteen more years to practice. She had to keep reminding herself, though, that this wasn’t Stephen. She had to remember that she had only met this man this afternoon. Her fantasies were not coming true. On the way over, she kept asking herself why she was doing this, what her motives were. There were, in the end, two things.

One, she had never been able to talk to anyone else about Stephen. Now, like his brother, she relished the chance to talk to somebody about him, somebody who knew him intimately. Perhaps that way, after all these years, she could achieve some kind of – and she hated the word but couldn’t think of a better one – closure.

Two, she was glad of the distraction. She had only been able to think about one thing since arriving in London, and her brain needed a break from the worry. What better way to stop fretting about the future than to concentrate on the past?

‘So,’ Paul asked. ‘What brings you to London? Visiting relatives?’

It was far too complicated to explain, even if she’d wanted to. ‘No. Well, not really. Jack and I are just about to move over here.’ She played with her chopsticks, unsure of how much to tell him. ‘I’m looking for a place at the moment. Actually, I’m kind of shocked by the price of property in London.’

‘Where do you live at the moment? Oh yes, Boston, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nice.’ He waited for her to give more details but she wasn’t forthcoming. ‘And what do you do in Boston?’

‘I work at Harvard.’

‘Doing . . .?’

Kate laid her chopsticks on the table. ‘I’m a professor in the department of immunology and infectious diseases. I specialise in the study and treatment of viruses.’

She watched Paul closely to see his reaction. Telling people what she did usually had two effects. Weak men, the kind who were intimidated by clever women, would try to outsmart or belittle her. Other people would inch away, like people she talked to on the extremely rare occasions she went to parties, as if they might catch something from her.

Paul didn’t appear to be at all intimidated or frightened. ‘Cool. So is that how you knew Stephen? You worked with him at the Cold Research Unit?’

‘No, I was a volunteer there. I’d only just graduated. And after that, I went to Harvard and, apart from the odd visit, never came back.’

‘Until now?’

‘Until now,’ she echoed, thinking how strange it was that you could summarise a life so quickly and painlessly, missing out all the important facts. Of how she went to Harvard, still in a state of shock, only weeks after Stephen’s death. The years she spent in the graduate research programme. Meeting and marrying Vernon Maddox – a man who could not have been more different to Stephen – and having Jack. The glorious day she became Professor Kate Maddox. Work, and Jack, had both continued to be fulfilling and enjoyable, but the rot had well and truly started to set in with Vernon by then. His fuse had grown shorter and shorter over the years, seemingly in inverse proportions to his nasal hair. What Kate had initially thought was passionate and forthright about him soon became perceived as merely hectoring and unpleasant.

She didn’t tell Paul all this, though.

‘And what do you do?’ she asked.

‘You might not believe this, but I chase viruses too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes – but a different kind to you. Computer viruses. Or I should say, the scum who create them and send them out across the internet.’

‘You’re a cop?’

‘No. Not really. I work for an internet security firm. It’s a very exciting business.’

She smiled. ‘Sounds a bit geeky to me.’

‘Er, says the professor of – what was it? – immunology and infectious diseases?’

‘Touché.’

Paul laughed. ‘Actually, a lot of people think it’s a geeky job, and I do spend a lot of time staring at computer screens. But so must you.’

‘You’re right. Too much time.’

‘Except now you’re moving to London. Are you moving to a university over here? Kissing the Ivy League goodbye?’

He asked a lot of questions. Stephen had been curious like that too, interested in others.

Their food arrived, the waiter plonking it down on the table, shoving their glasses out of the way then stomping off. Kate was too busy trying to decide how honest to be to feel aggrieved by the waiter’s rudeness. Should she tell Paul that she had no idea about what she was going to do professionally; furthermore, that she didn’t care right now?

She said, ‘I’m considering my options at the moment.’

‘I see.’

They emptied their beer bottles and Paul put his hand up to order more. Kate licked her lips. She hardly drank at all these days and the beer tasted good: sweet and mood-changing. Tongue-loosening.

‘Tell me about Stephen,’ she said. ‘What was he like as a kid?’

Paul dipped a spring roll in sweet chilli sauce, and took a bite. ‘He was the leader, at first. He was born second – five minutes after me – and after that he spent his, I mean our, childhoods making up for it. He was the first to say “Daddy”, the first to walk across the living room instead of bum-shuffling, the first to climb the tree at the end of our garden. He was the first to get a girlfriend. Melissa, that was her name. She lived just down the road. A ponytail and freckles. We had a camp, which was really just a space between some bushes, and he took her in there and snogged her. I was so jealous.’

He laughed, rather awkwardly. ‘I suppose I was jealous of him in a lot of ways. We were competitive, always wanting to get the best marks at school or win at football. For once, I was better at that than him – he was hopeless – but he was better academically. Being good at football won me more points at school, but getting good grades went down better with my parents.’

‘Go on,’ Kate said softly. She felt as though she could listen to him talking about Stephen all night.

‘I don’t know what to tell you next. There’s so much.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘There was a period when we were in our early teens when we didn’t want to be twins any more. We wanted to be individuals. I took the lead in this – Stephen really was an academic, always buried in a book, or carrying out experiments with this chemistry kit he had, which he upgraded every year. By the time he was a teenager it seemed to take over his whole bedroom. We called it his Gaseous Empire.’

He smiled at the memory, then continued. ‘Stephen lived in a dream world – a world of the mind – so he barely noticed when I went out of my way to look as different from him as I could. I cut my hair really short, got into hip-hop.’ He grinned again. ‘Break-dancing was big around that time.’

‘I remember it well.’

‘Stephen wouldn’t, if he was here. He didn’t know anything about what was going on in the street. I used to take the piss out of him for it. So did my friends. They all thought he was the world’s biggest nerd, and couldn’t believe he was my brother. I used to bring my mates round when my parents were out and we, my little gang, would rip the piss out of Stephen, call him the Prof, all this stupid stuff. We were gits.’

Kate didn’t say anything. My poor baby, she thought, and for a second she felt angry with Paul. Neither of them had eaten anything for several minutes. Paul was staring into the middle distance; into the past.

‘There was this kid that I used to hang around with called Terry. I didn’t really like him but he decided he wanted to join our group because he liked the same kind of music as we did. And everyone else was terrified of him. He was a little psycho, the kind of boy who tortured frogs for a laugh and terrorised the younger kids with demands for money. The kind of person I’d do anything to avoid these days.

‘He waged war against Stephen. Every day, in the playground, or on the way home, he’d be there, taunting him. It was never physical, but Stephen was the kind of kid who despised confrontation. Terry would go up to him and say something like, “I heard you called me a wanker,” and Stephen’s voice would break as he denied it. Stephen clearly did think Terry was a wanker, but he would never have dared say it, even to me.’

Kate wanted to reach into the past and hug Stephen. And slap this Terry. A vision rose up of herself stepping in, defending her boyfriend.

But she understood what it felt like to be bullied. She’d allowed it to happen to her for a long time. It was only recently that she’d had the courage to stand up for herself.

She said, ‘Didn’t you do anything?’

Paul pushed his noodles around his plate with a chopstick. ‘No. I mean, I’d say, kind of weakly, “Come on Terry, leave him alone,” but that was about it. I was scared of Terry too – he was so unpredictable – and I suppose there was a part of me that was glad. Glad that it wasn’t me. That I was the cool brother. It’s awful, isn’t it?’

Kate didn’t respond. She wondered what kind of teenager Jack would grow into. A cruel one? Or a soft one like Stephen? She prayed neither.

Paul said, ‘Then one day, Stephen totally surprised me. Terry was doing the old “You called me a wanker” routine, and “Do you want a fight?” and Stephen put down his school bag – I can picture him dropping it – and said, “OK, then.” And he stepped forward and punched Terry right in the mouth. Knocked him over.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘That’s what I thought. I felt like cheering. And Stephen coolly picked up his bag, stepped over Terry – who was too shocked to move – and walked off. I’d like to say Terry learned the error of his ways, but the next day he started bullying someone else, someone younger and more timid, but he never bothered Stephen again.’

Paul sighed. ‘I still felt ashamed that I hadn’t done anything to help. Eventually we became friends again. We had to be, really, we were brothers. Sometimes, usually at four in the morning, I wake up and start thinking about it. I wish there was some way I could make it up to Stephen. I’d ask for forgiveness, if he was here now.’

Finally there was an awkward pause in the conversation and she could see him struggling to say something.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

Instead of speaking he reached into his pocket and took out a folded sheet of paper. He didn’t show it to her, just held it, gazing into space. Kate could almost hear his thoughts ticking away. Stephen used to do this too.

He said, ‘As soon as you told me your name was Kate, it rang a bell.’

‘Stephen told you about me?’

‘Yes. In a manner of speaking. It wasn’t something I’d thought about for a long time, but yes, I recognised your name straight away. I went home to check, to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, or mis-remembering, and there it was, in black biro.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Paul tapped the piece of paper. ‘A few days before he . . . before the fire, he wrote to me. He mentioned your name.’

‘And you’ve kept the letter all this time?’

‘I’ve kept every souvenir of Stephen I could. But this letter – I would have kept it anyway.’

‘Why?’

He handed it to her. ‘Read it and you’ll understand.’

She hesitated before taking the piece of paper from him, and as it touched her fingertips she felt a thrill, a shiver, as if the ghost she thought she’d seen earlier had touched her.

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