All Fall Down

‘Good, I think. We Skyped last night. He claims that he misses me madly, but you know Isaac, he’s such a boffin. He can’t get enough of research papers and keynote speeches and whatever else they do at these things. But he was so sweet, you know: before he left, he wrote “I love you” in jellybeans on my pillow. Good thing that Callum didn’t spot it, otherwise all I’d have had left would have been an “o” or a “v” – if that!’

‘Ah, that’s really romantic. He should give Paul a few lessons. He’s so unromantic it’s not even funny.’

Shelley’s blonde hair was all over her face, a shifting mass of curls. She pushed them back from cheeks reddened by the wind. ‘Paul adores you.’

‘I know,’ said Kate. ‘At least I think I do. He keeps proposing to me, so he must do – I wish he’d be a bit more demonstrative sometimes, that’s all.’

Shelley put her head to one side. ‘I’d say a proposal was a pretty demonstrative gesture, wouldn’t you?’

Kate laughed, realising how contrary she sounded. ‘It’s hard to explain. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it’s like he proposes because he thinks he should, rather than because he desperately wants to marry me …’

‘You’re being paranoid, you daft cow,’ Shelley said, smiling at her.

Kate thought she was probably right. She was looking forward to seeing Paul again, after the night away, but this was tempered by the prospect of his reaction when she told him about Harley’s visit. What if Paul wanted them all to go? He’d probably give her a lecture about her duty to protect the public. And, thought Kate, he’d be right to. I do have a duty.

She must have looked worried again, because Shelley put a hand on her arm. ‘Everything OK, Kate?’

‘Oh, I’m fine … It’s nothing much. Just a boring work thing. Look, here comes trouble.’ She raised her voice so that Jack could hear, as he came pelting through the puddles to fling himself into her arms. He still had a couple of chickenpox scabs but had quickly bounced back to his old self.

‘Mummy!’ he cried ecstatically, as though she’d been away for a month instead of one night. ‘I missed you so much!’

She swung him around, laughing as she kissed his pink cheeks and felt the joy of his sturdy little eight-year-old body in her arms. Having a duty to protect the public was one thing – but what about her duty to protect her son? She’d already failed at that once, and vowed she’d never let him down again.

‘Can Callum come round to play battles?’ he asked, pretending to punch Callum in the stomach. Callum stood next to his own mother, holding her hand. He was shy, small and blond like Shelley, and so different from the stocky Jack. He giggled and feigned doubling up at Jack’s swipe, then whispered in Shelley’s ear.

‘Callum wants Jack to come over to us instead,’ Shelley said, straightening up. ‘Is that OK with you, Kate? He can stay for tea.’

Jack and Callum both cheered.

Kate hesitated. She’d missed Jack and would have preferred him to be at home with her – but she also really needed to talk to Paul when he got home from work, and it would be difficult with two noisy boys charging around the place with wooden swords and shields. ‘I’ll pick him up about seven, then,’ she said, hugging Jack. ‘Be good, sweetheart.’

Kate walked back down the lane from the school, keeping an eye out for the water-filled potholes, her head down to shield her face from the brisk unseasonal wind. She unlatched and swung open the five-barred gate of their rented cottage. Paul’s car wasn’t there, and she cursed softly under her breath. He had been out all day at a client’s office in Newbury, trying to help them identify the source of a computer virus that had wiped out half their data, and his phone was switched off. Come home, Paul, I need to talk to you, she implored the empty space on the gravel. Why did he switch off his phone when she had asked him so many times not to?

Leaving the gate open for him, she put down Jack’s book bag and searched in her pockets for the house keys. She gazed up at the house as she rummaged. It was a beautiful, half-timbered, thatched country cottage. ‘Looks like it should be on a jigsaw,’ Paul had said when they first saw it. If it was a jigsaw though, she thought, it would have a few pieces missing – one of the thatch’s eaves had a chewed sort of appearance, and one of the shutters at the front window was hanging off. Still, they loved it. It felt like home.

Kate let herself in to the living room. The huge stone fireplace that dominated the room looked cold and uninviting with the dead ashes of yesterday’s fire still in the grate. Ridiculous weather, she thought, lighting fires, in June? Imagining with longing the sensation of hot sun on her skin, she went into the kitchen and flicked the kettle on, but even as she was reaching for the teabags, changed her mind and uncorked a half-drunk bottle of Merlot instead. Pouring herself a large glass, she went back into the living room and was sinking into a faded pink armchair when she heard Paul’s car rolling onto the driveway.

A moment later he came in, ducking to avoid the low wooden doorframe. His face lit up when he saw her.

‘Hi, angel,’ he said, coming over to kiss her. He was stubbly, with the dark circles under his eyes that he always got after sitting in front of a computer screen all day. ‘How did the lecture go?’

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Bit of a tough gig. But there’s something—’

‘Where’s Jack?’ he interrupted, calling back over his shoulder as he went to pour himself a glass of wine. He took a deep gulp, then came up behind Kate and slid his arms round her neck, nuzzling her hair, the glass held precariously, its ruby contents tipping dangerously towards Kate’s lap.

‘Gone to play with Callum. Shelley’s going to give them tea. Which is good, because I need—’

‘Me. That’s what you need. Because I need you, and—’

‘Paul! Listen, please. Something’s happened. Sit down.’

‘What?’ He sat down on the sofa next to her, scanning her face with alarm.

‘That agent guy turned up at my lecture.’

Paul looked puzzled. ‘The lettings agent? Short bloke with the hairdresser’s car?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Not him. Harley, the MI6 guy. The one who was there when …’ She couldn’t say it. When Jack nearly died. When I nearly died. ‘… you know …’

‘Him? Thought we’d seen the last of him. What did he want?’

‘Paul, he wants me to go to California. Now. There’s a new virus, and they think it’s a mutated strain of Watoto. People are already dying. But it’s all been contained so far, on an Indian reservation, and they’re keeping it quiet because they don’t want to panic everybody. He said they need me to join a team working on it out there, that the lead scientist has asked for me.’

Paul was silent for a moment. Kate looked at his downcast eyes as he stared into the depths of his wineglass. She studied the contours of his face, the sharp planes of his cheek and jaw, so familiar to her years before they had even met. His twin, Stephen, had been the love of her life. For the hundredth time, she looked at Paul and couldn’t prevent herself wondering: is it him I love, or still Stephen? She had long ago concluded that it was a question that she neither wanted nor needed to know the answer to. Not yet, anyway, not while things were going smoothly in their lives.

And things had indeed been going smoothly – until Harley showed up.

‘If MI6 are involved, they must have formed an inter-agency operation. It must be serious. Have they asked Isaac too?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so. Perhaps they don’t realise how knowledgeable Isaac is on Watoto. It makes sense for us both to go, as research partners.’

‘But you’re the primary expert. How long would it be for?’

Kate shrugged. ‘As long as it takes to find a vaccine, I guess. Or until the powers that be decide it’s not a priority any more and the funding runs out. Though Harley said they are throwing unlimited resources at it. Isaac and I are so nearly there – if we were working with other top virologists and had a state-of-the-art lab, maybe, together, we could finally crack it. You know what, I think that’ll be my condition: that Harley lets Isaac come too. I might consider it then.’

‘Would they let me come with you, do you think? You could be gone for months.’

‘Yes, Harley said we could all go … if you wanted to come, that is. I’d hate to be out there without you.’

‘And what about Jack?’

Kate shuddered. ‘I don’t know. Jack’s been begging to go and stay with Vernon this summer – we could maybe extend his visit? He’d be OK with his dad.’

Paul drained his glass, put it on the coffee table in

front of him, and sunk his head into his hands. ‘This is a nightmare.’

Kate moved closer to Paul on the sofa, hugging his side and burying her face in his chest. He smelled of that morning’s aftershave, and it reassured her. ‘I swore to Harley that there’s no way I would go, but part of me is saying I can’t turn my back on this, not when my being on the team would give them a better shot at preventing a pandemic taking hold. I don’t know what to do. But whatever happens, I promise I won’t go without you.’

‘Why don’t you talk to Isaac, get his advice? Maybe they’ve already asked him, and he said no.’

‘He’s in San Diego at that conference, remember? He won’t be back till Tuesday. But I’m sure he’d have rung me if they’d asked him to go.’

Paul sat up, gently pushing her away so they could face one another, eye to eye. ‘Let’s be logical about it. Yes, you could make a difference. Yes, it’s your field. But listen, they could’ve asked Isaac, couldn’t they, and it sounds like they haven’t. You’re not the only virologist working in that field. There are others, maybe not as good as you – but others who haven’t been through what you’ve already been through, and who don’t have families to think about. It’s not fair that they’re putting it all on your shoulders. They’ve already got a team on it out there.’

They talked on, listing pros and cons, sometimes arguing, sometimes rationalising, swinging one way and then the other in the debate. Along the way, Paul lit the fire and Kate made toast and uncorked another bottle of Merlot. Finally Paul opened his laptop and googled ‘new virus in California’, ‘death on Indian reservation’, ‘new strain

of Watoto’, and every other permutation he could think of, but nothing came up. Kate gazed into the fire, trying to allow herself to by hypnotised by the flames – anything