Misspent Youth (12 page)

T
HE CHECKUP
at Peterborough University hospital had gone well. Jeff was shown into the gene therapy department, where a couple of Norwegian technicians took tiny samples of blood and tissue. He also participated in a few simple physical calibrations, jogging on a treadmill while his heart and lungs and muscles were monitored. The department’s equipment was linked to the Brussels university, where the rejuvenation team studied the results as they came through. He even spent a couple of mildly awkward minutes chatting with Dr. Sperber over a teleconference channel.

Once he’d been given the all clear he drove his Merc EI8000 out of the city along the A47. Lieutenant Krober sat in the big car’s passenger seat, quiet and respectful as always. The rest of the Europol team followed in their dark BMW sedan.

“I wanted to say thank you for easing off Tim at the weekend,” Jeff said. Tim had done a lot of pleading about his Saturday evening date, which put plenty of pressure on Jeff. Negotiating with the Europol officers about clubbing in Peterborough actually made him feel as if he was doing a proper job as a father.

“It was good to avoid conflict with the boy,” Krober said.

“I don’t think he saw any of the surveillance team,” Jeff said. “At least he never said so to me. And I’m sure he would.” As far as Tim was concerned, he’d been given the whole night off, free and clear from the bodyguards. The actual deal Jeff worked out was slightly different.

“They are most adept at discretion; it is what they are trained for. Neither your son nor Ms. Goddard showed any awareness of our officers.”

Krober couldn’t have been there himself, Jeff thought. The idea of the eternally formal German trying to blend into some Peterborough lowlife dive was ludicrous. A brief image of Arnold Schwarzenegger walking into Tech Noir played across Jeff’s mind.

Though he hated the subterfuge, Jeff was quietly pleased about the arrangement. Judging by the way Tim had babbled on about the date after he got back on Sunday evening he’d had the time of his life. Yet with the Europol team there to watch over him he’d been perfectly safe the whole time. A perfect solution to the parent’s problem of how much slack to cut your kids.

So far Jeff had resisted asking Krober for details, like did Tim actually smoke joints, or were he and Annabelle sleeping together. He thought he knew the answer to that one, even though Tim swore he’d just stayed over at her house. It made him obscurely proud that his son had a girlfriend that attractive.

Jeff grinned as he turned off the A47 into Wansford. Now Dad was hoping for the same kind of lecherous encounter his son was getting.

The cocktail bar in the Wharf Inn possessed the kind of aspirant grandeur that was the province of four-star hotels everywhere. Its hidden lighting was gold-tinged, deepening the hue of the somber wood paneling. A waiter in a striped waistcoat and snazzy bow tie looked up and smiled from behind the small rosewood counter, then went back to adjusting the multitude of exotic foreign bottles lining the mirrored shelving. Thick, fluffy, claret-red carpet absorbed the sound of every footfall as Jeff walked in. He had to wrinkle his nose up against a sneeze; the conditioned air was chilly and clinically lifeless.

Nicole Marchant was waiting for him, sitting by herself at a table in the corner. With her locked-down hairstyle and Chanel business suit, the bar was her perfect milieu.

“I wasn’t entirely sure if you’d make it,” she said as he sat down opposite her.

“A no-show was not an option.”

Her gaze slipped over to Krober and two other Europol officers who shuffled around a table on the other side of the bar. The carpet even managed to soak up their noise.

“Are we going to have an audience?” she asked in an arch tone.

“They know this is a private meeting.”

“Our company keeps a suite on the first floor.”

“That sounds perfect.”

She stood up.

Jeff followed her out into the lobby. He was sure it had never been this easy before.

S
UE
B
AKER WAS AN ONLY CHILD
, and arrived late into her parents’ lives. Her mother was over forty-five when she was born, her father a great deal older. As such she was loved intensely, spoiled rotten, and guarded with extreme jealousy. While she was a child she considered such devotion to be wonderful, leading to a personality that the family’s politer friends called precocious. Only when she began moving through adolescence did problems with such attention-surplus really start to develop. In any other girl her particular brand of self-centered egotism might have fired a standard teenage rebellion that eventually burned itself out, as is the way of such phases. Unfortunately for Sue, she was born beautiful. Standard was never going to be an option in her life.

Her first fashion show booking was at age fourteen, to the head-shaking dismay of the Data Mail editorial (complete with hyperlinks to pictures of the event), which questioned the moral validity of such child labor exploitation on behalf of middle England. Money poured in as her career skyrocketed. There were no restraints anymore, no governors imposed on her behavior. She was dated by Europe’s aristocratic heirs and the sons of
nouveau
billionaires. Her life was parties, photo shoots, holidays, runways, parties, tabloid-fêted romances, global travel, public appearances, parties, her own calendar, weekends on yachts in Monaco harbor, and still more parties. Even her father’s death when she was fifteen didn’t deter her; if anything, she partied harder to forget the pain. It was a life that could never last. At most, beauty is ephemeral.

Not that Sue had to worry about longevity. The day after her sixteenth birthday party her agency checked her into a private Swiss detox and rehab clinic. That was the first of four such sessions in the next three years, to the horror of her heartbroken mother. Gorgeous she might have been, but there were always prettier, younger girls hot for their shot at the top. For the fashion industry, Sue had stopped being news and was now bad news. She didn’t even have money left to cushion her fall. Taxes, managers, agency fees, and her head-on lifestyle with its dangerously large drug habit had consumed that. Her mother had to cash in one of her small pension funds to pay the clinic’s final bill, which meant she could no longer afford to live in the cozy country cottage her husband had left her. The Data Mail wasn’t even interested in paying for an article on a fallen wild child. At nineteen and a half she was washed up. Her entire life had been lived and was now finished; she couldn’t imagine what to do next. Then she met Jeff Baker, and three weeks later they were married.

Jeff paid for the Mulligan Residential Care Hall in Uppingham, where her mother now lived, a private home with round-the-clock nursing and hotel-style accommodation. It had been written into their marriage contract.

Sue visited at least once a week. It was a level of devotion that she fully acknowledged grew out of the guilt for her wayward teenage years. Nonetheless, she never let a week slip.

Mulligan Hall was on the town’s outskirts, its broad grounds bordering the A47 bypass. It had been built as a hotel thirty years ago, situated so that its residents could benefit from splendid views across the rolling countryside. Since then the town had expanded, surrounding it with an estate of low-cost social housing: almost identical yellow-brick boxes with silvered thermoglass windows and shiny black solar cell roof panels. The golf ball–size spheres of police District Surveillance Scheme cameras peeped out from the eaves, as ubiquitous as twentieth-century TV aerials, providing multiple coverage of the estate’s streets. A high brick wall covered in GM thorn-ivy separated the hall’s grounds from those of its neighbors.

Sue’s Mercedes DX606 coupe slid silently past the open gates. She parked in her usual spot in the shade of a big sycamore tree and walked into the lobby. The young receptionist looked up as she entered. “I think your mother’s in the garden room, Mrs. Baker.”

“Thanks.”

“Um.” The girl was coloring. “The director said to ask if you could see him when you’re finished. If you have the time.”

“That’s fine,” Sue assured her. It was an unusual request; she couldn’t think what the director wanted.

As a hotel Mulligan Hall hadn’t lasted ten years; bankruptcy arrived in the wake of global fuel rises and the increasing dominance of the datasphere. Transport and its related industries were badly hit by the societal, political, and technological changes of the new century. But the building did not go unused for long. Europe’s badly skewed demographics were giving rise to a vast demand for care facilities as the continent’s population aged and the birth rate continued its gradual decline.

In England, care homes run by the local councils were put under greater and greater pressure as the number of residents continued to increase year after year. No matter how much money Government allocated, there was never enough to provide full service, and care-staff shortages had been acute for as long as Sue could remember.

Mulligan Hall was strictly for those who could afford it, for which Sue was profoundly grateful. She couldn’t stand the idea of her delicate mother in one of the council homes. Walking down the clean, well-decorated central corridor, she could almost believe the Hall was still a hotel. It was only the function of rooms that had altered. The cocktail bar was now a physiotherapy clinic, the snooker room had become a massage and reflexology center, while the original indoor swimming pool had been greatly extended to provide all sorts of hydrotherapy. Upstairs, the entire third floor was given over to a specialist ward for genoprotein treatments. Best of all, it didn’t smell like an old folks’ home.

The garden room was a big semicircular space with tall glass walls and Victorian-style black and white marble floor tiles. Ladies now too old to lunch sipped their afternoon tea as they sat around in the room’s cane furniture. Sue’s mother, Karen, was curled up in a broad winged chair that faced the lily pond outside. The tea tray on the glass-topped table beside her hadn’t been touched.

Sue walked over to her, ignoring the stares and knowing nods from the other residents. She knelt down beside the chair, and touched her mother’s arm. “Hello, Mummy.”

Karen’s attention wavered from the small screen, where she was watching Nicholas Parsons asking the questions on
Sale of the Century
. It was a GoldYear access, a company that rebroadcast seventies, eighties, and nineties programs in the daily order they were originally shown, even including the day’s news. It was a service mainly used by people over fifty to quench their nostalgia. Provider costs were met by a small amount of tweaking using modern image techniques. For ITV the ads were modified with computer inserts, changing the products the old ads were promoting to contemporary items, while on BBC programs GoldYear simply used placement inserts, with modern products superimposed over their historical counterparts.

“Susan, hello.” Karen gave her daughter a slightly puzzled look.

Sue picked the remote off the table and turned the volume down. The way genoprotein treatments had stabilized her looks in her midtwenties seemed to be a constant source of confusion to the old woman now. At least Karen had recognized her today. The last few years had seen a steady deterioration in her condition. The biomedical companies liked to claim that they’d defeated Alzheimer’s disease with their treatments and therapies. But Karen had contracted a variant that was resistant to the efforts of standard treatments.

“How are you feeling today, Mummy?”

Karen patted at her bare arms. She was wearing a blue cotton flower-pattern dress without any sleeves. “You know, I think I’m a little cold, dear.”

“Me too. It must be the air conditioning they’ve got in here. Shall we go for a walk in the garden? It’ll be warmer out there in the sunlight.”

“If you like, dear.” She took a last look at Nicholas Parsons and tried to raise herself out of the chair. Her thin arms trembled as she pushed her way up.

She’s only a few years older than Jeff
, Sue thought bitterly. Karen’s recent decline hadn’t been purely mental; she’d lost a lot of weight, resulting in a turkey neck and long folds of flesh on her arms and legs. Her hair was now snow-white. Even with the Hall’s hairdresser washing and styling it once a week, the thinness could no longer be disguised.

Sue took her mother’s arm and escorted her out through the French doors and onto the brick path circling the garden. The fountain in the lily pond made a loud gurgling sound as it foamed down the central statue of Venus.

“What a lovely summer it’s been,” Karen said.

“Not quite over yet, Mummy.”

“No, no, of course not. They do seem to stretch on so these days.”

“I know.” She stopped by a bed of thick scarlet rosebushes, the flowers as wide as dinner plates. “Don’t these smell lovely?”

Karen bent over to sniff one. “My sense of smell isn’t what it was, you know, dear. I must be getting old.”

“No, Mummy, you’re not.”

They moved on.

“When are you going to bring that boy around to see me again?” Karen asked. “What was his name now? Daniel, was it? I liked him. He has prospects. And you’re not getting any younger, my girl, for all you’re a pretty thing. You have to start thinking about these things now.”

Sue couldn’t help the slight sigh that eased out through her lips. Daniel Roper had been a city executive who had taken her to Italy for a couple of weekends when she was seventeen—she couldn’t even remember exactly what his job was now. “I haven’t seen Daniel for a long time, Mummy. I’m with Jeff now. You remember Jeff, don’t you?” Sue hoped her mother hadn’t seen any of the recent media reports on Jeff. God alone knew what kind of reaction that would kindle in her faltering mind. The Hall’s domestic computer had been instructed not to allow her to access any current news streams featuring the Baker family.

Karen looked around blankly at the deep turquoise sky. “Where’s Timmy? I always like it when Timmy visits.”

“Tim’s at school today, Mummy. He couldn’t come, but he sends his love.” For whatever reason, Tim never argued with her when she brought him on a monthly visit. It was as though his grandmother was a sort of neutral territory where their usual domestic war was suspended for the duration. Not that he enjoyed going; Sue never deceived herself about that. But when he talked and listened to Karen he displayed positively human traits of decency and sympathy.

They reached a tall trellis that was swamped by honeysuckle. Karen ran her hand across the long red and gold trumpet flowers. “Timmy at school? Why, he must be nearly five now. How time flies by.”

“Yes. Doesn’t it just.”

Karen gave her a pleasant, expectant smile. “Are we going home now, dear? It’s late. I must get your father’s supper ready. You know what he’s like if there’s nothing for him to eat when he gets home.”

“Just a little while longer,” Sue murmured. It took a lot of discipline not to screw her face up in despair. Over the years she’d surprised herself by how strong she could be when dealing with her mother.

Karen suddenly sucked on her lower lip as her body made a quick lurch forward. It was as though she’d tripped. Sue gripped her tighter. “Oh dear,” Karen said brokenly. She looked down at her feet.

Sue followed her gaze. A catheter bag was lying on the brick pavement between her legs.

“They’re going to be so cross with me again,” Karen said. She began to wring her hands anxiously.

“Oh Jesus.” Staring at the bag with its leaking tube, Sue fought hard to keep her poise. “How long have you been using those?”

Karen smiled happily. “Using what, dear?”

T
HE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
was on Mulligan Hall’s second floor, looking out over the courtyard at the front. So he doesn’t have to see the residents shuffling around the lawns, Sue thought grimly. She still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock in the garden. A couple of staff had come running when she shouted for help. Her mother was crying softly as they led her back inside. Worst of all, one of the caretakers had said: “It’s best you don’t come with us. It always takes a while to get her settled again after these episodes.”