The Testament of Jessie Lamb (20 page)

‘Maybe we'll see the kingfisher?' I joked.

Dad laughed. ‘Bluest bird in all the land.'

‘Better than a peacock?'

‘Better than a peacock.' We pulled on hats and gloves and set off down the steps into the little forest. The steps lead you from being level with the tree tops to being down amongst the roots and trunks, as if you've changed scale. The lower side is bounded by a big stone wall, and the only way out is over the stile. So when you're in it you feel safe and cut off from all the rest of the world. When I was little Dad and I used to play hide and seek there. He'd shut his eyes and count to a hundred and I'd hide, scrambling over fallen branches to find a good thick trunk to stand behind, peeping round to watch him crashing off in the wrong direction. I could just smell the resin and faint fungussy mouldiness of the trunk against my cheek, and feel the scratchy little pine needles that used to get inside my trainers and poke through my socks.

‘Remember playing hide and seek?' I said.

‘I used to panic that you were really lost.'

‘It can't be much bigger than a football pitch!'

‘I know,' he said, ‘it's ridiculous.'

I remembered trying to stand still as a statue, my heart hammering nineteen to the dozen. Listening to the snapping twigs and soft crunch of needles, his footsteps coming nearer then moving away. Judging when to make my dash for home. When I beat him he used to groan and pretend to tear his hair, and I laughed so much I always got the hiccups. We went over the stile and down the lane and then straight on along the track by the top reservoir.

‘Well Jess,' he said. ‘Shall we talk about all this?'

‘I'm not going to change my mind.'

‘What do your friends say?'

‘They don't know. I'm not supposed to tell anyone.'

‘So what started you off thinking about it?'

‘You.'

‘I was afraid you'd say that.'

‘You said it was necessary. You can't be so hypocritical–'

‘I said it was necessary. That didn't mean I thought it was necessary for
you
to do it.'

‘Every girl who does it is someone's daughter.'

‘Right.' We went on crunching through the snow in silence. I knew he would miss me–of course. ‘I'm not doing it because you made me think I should. I'm doing it because I want to.'

‘Tell me your other reasons.'

‘Lots of things.'

‘Like what, Jessie?'

‘How else can the world get back to normal?' He just walked in silence. ‘Women having to die when they have babies,' I said. ‘The gangs. People wanting to kill themselves. Stuff we discussed at YOFI.'

‘Ah, YOFI. Your friend Iain. What did they say?'

‘Nothing. Anyway, I've left.'

‘Look Jess, just because you've arrived somewhere in your thoughts it doesn't mean I can automatically leap there after you.'

‘If you want things to get better, it's no good just
telling
people what to do. Like you said, someone has to fire the first shot.'

‘Have they asked other people to set an example?'

‘No one's asked anyone.'

‘But are some of the other girls going to volunteer?'

‘Not as far as I know. None of them went to the clinic. It hasn't been on the news, has it?'

‘You only heard of it because of me,' he repeated.

‘I would have heard later, is all.'

‘Isn't it one thing to try and live differently, and quite another to volunteer to die?'

‘It's the same cause.' I stopped to look back the way we'd come. No one else had walked in that snow along the track, and we'd made two brilliant sets of footprints. I pointed them out to Dad. ‘Look. Great for anyone following us.'

‘Yes,' he said vaguely.

‘Perfect crime,' I said. ‘Walk with the other person to the top end of the reservoir. Kill them and take off their shoes, dump the body in the res. Then go back with their shoes on your hands making a set of tracks next to yours, as if they've gone all the way back with you. Perfect alibi.'

He looked a bit surprised. ‘You're not really serious, are you?'

‘About the alibi?'

‘About volunteering.'

‘Yes.' Just because I didn't want to drone on about it all the time. Sometimes grown ups are so pathetic, you lose all patience with them. You can be serious and then your mood can flip, and there's something funny, you can lighten up. Adults plod along as if they're weighted down with stones.

‘OK, let's talk about the science.'

‘You're not going to put me off.'

‘Fine. But since I do know about the science I think you deserve to go into this with your eyes open.'

‘Dad, you won't lie to me, will you?'

‘Jesseroon.' He put his arms around me and gave me a big hug, and quite suddenly, I was smashed by a cold wave of anxiety about the whole thing. I didn't want to cry. I didn't want him to see me cry. Dad kissed me on the forehead. ‘My poor wee nut brown maid. No lies. Just the facts, OK?'

‘OK.'

‘Let's start with artificial wombs. They were developing them before MDS, but now it's a priority. You put an embryo in an artificial uterus, and it can be monitored and looked after in a stable environment. There's no risk of receiving any infection from a human mother–and no woman has to sacrifice her life.'

‘Have they tried it?'

‘They're close to a breakthrough.'

‘Then why is Mr Golding asking for volunteers?'

‘I told you, it's in development.'

‘So they still might not be able to make it work.'

‘There are a number of strands to this, Jessie. Not only are there the artificial wombs, there are genetically modified sheep. Which is where I personally think the breakthrough will come. The sheep uterus is similar in size to the human, and there's been some very plausible research to suggest that it might be possible to develop implanted embryos in modified sheep.'

‘Transgenic sheep?' I asked him. ‘The ones that are half human?'

He laughed. ‘Who told you they're half human?' According to Baz, they had these monsters at Wettenhall.

‘I read it somewhere.'

‘They're just sheep with slightly altered genes. They're indistinguishable from any other sheep. Just as woolly and just as dim. I know which I'd rather sacrifice, between a sheep and a girl.'

‘Wouldn't it be embarrassing to have to explain that your mother couldn't come to parents' evening because she was a sheep.'

Dad laughed. After a bit he said, ‘Another angle, although no one in this country really wants to acknowledge it, is that brain-damaged or seriously disabled young women might be used.'

‘Why should someone who can't
choose
–'

‘I agree, not nice.' There was a silence. ‘The other thing you need to think about, though, is that they're developing better ways of helping ordinary women tolerate MDS. They're testing cocktails of drugs which might help to delay the onset of symptoms. One day they may be able to sustain women through pregnancy without having to put them to sleep.'

He was like a devil, tempting me.

‘All I'm saying is wait. Wait a year, give the boffins a chance to come up with a few answers.'

But I know the younger I am, the better it is for a baby. Everyone knows that. I'd be trading a year of my life against a child's whole existence. We came to the dam at the top and we had to scramble down that steep slope, to get to the path on the opposite side. The snow was really deep. I tried to step sideways for a bit then I ran in giant strides, and when I got to the path I stopped and waited for Dad to catch up. I could feel the lumps of snow in my boots, starting to melt and soak through my socks. The reservoir was black down at this end, deep and dark and peaty.

‘Why doesn't it freeze?' I asked him.

‘It's moving, there's water flowing in.'

‘It would be good if you could skate on it.'

‘Would you like to skate?'

‘Yes.'

‘You could have lessons. We can go to an ice rink.'

‘They must waste tons of energy keeping an ice rink cold.'

‘You are a bit arbitrary, Jess. Don't you think they use energy in SeaLife, heating and lighting all those tanks?'

I hadn't thought of that.

‘Another thing,' he said. ‘You need to consider the likelihood of a successful outcome. The survival of a baby.'

‘What d'you mean?' My feet were freezing now.

‘Lots of the Sleeping Beauties' pregnancies fail. Either the foetus spontaneously aborts, or the woman develops MDS symptoms more aggressively than predicted, and the baby's damaged–there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. But the survival rate for babies is creeping up, it's about one in two now. Give them another year and it may have increased to two in three. Wouldn't it be better to wait, for that reason alone? For that increase in your chances of a live birth? There's nothing sadder than seeing these girls lose their lives for nothing.'

‘But 16 year olds have the best rates of all. Mr Golding told us.'

‘This will be a new procedure. It's not the same as Sleeping Beauties.'

I glanced at Dad. He was looking very carefully where to put each foot. ‘You think if I waited, I'd change my mind.'

‘That's not why I'm saying it.' He did look at me then, screwing up his eyes against the glare of the snow.

‘Alright,' I said. ‘What?'

‘There are a lot of frozen embryos, but not an inexhaustible supply. And they are our only stock of potentially MDS-free children. So I think everyone will want to move slowly. There'll be the initial programmes where they'll implant a limited number of girls. But they'll decide what to do next on the basis of the results.'

‘Results?'

‘How many children survive. If the vaccine is one hundred per cent effective. My guess is that most clinics will do one experimental batch and in nine months, when the first trials have produced results, doctors will compare and analyse those, and then embark on a second programme. Which, by definition, is likely to have higher success rates. These first volunteers, they really are the guinea pigs.'

We both stopped walking. I was wriggling the toes on my left foot to try and get some life back into them.

‘Look,' he said. ‘I'll promise not to try and dissuade you, if you agree to dip out of this round and wait nine months for the next one.'

‘I'm cold,' I said. ‘Let's go back to the car.'

‘D'you want some cocoa?'

‘No.' I set off fast in front of him, crunching through the snow, my eyes aching now from all the glare. I thought, when I get home I'll sit in a hot deep bath and unpick everything he's said. I'll work out what to do, sensibly, on my own. I'll make a list of questions to ask Mr Golding. I am not a child. But walking through the secret forest and trudging up all those steps, I was feeling sick and empty inside, as if all my hopes had been crushed.

When we got into the car Dad didn't follow the Ashton road, he turned off towards Oldham. ‘Where are we going?'

‘I'm taking you out for lunch. We won't talk about it anymore, OK? Let's just have a nice lunch and enjoy ourselves, Jess. All I wanted was for you to know the facts.' He turned down the lane to the White Hart, which was a lovely surprise. We hardly ever go there because it's wildly expensive. Their home-made veggie bangers and mash are one of my favourite lunches of all time, and also they have a fire so I'd be able to thaw my frozen toes. Then I began to have a little, trickling feeling of excitement, at the thought of all the things I could do if I had nine more months. Going on with college, and getting back to proper friends with Sal; making a vegetable garden with Dad in the spring; and–and Baz!

There were only a few other people in the pub, an elderly couple and a group of businessmen having lunch. The old couple didn't say a word to each other, and when the old man got up and shuffled off to the toilet, his wife carefully poured the clear drink from her glass into his tumbler of what looked like orange juice. She was wrinkled as a prune, with mad white fluffy hair, and when she noticed me watching her she nodded and smiled. ‘Perfect alibi,' whispered Dad.

‘Go on.'

‘The pills he takes for his heart disagree with vodka. He's on orange juice. She pours her vodka into his glass and he drinks it. She tells everyone he must have drunk hers by mistake.'

‘Half a glass of vodka wouldn't be enough to kill him.'

‘You don't know how many times she's done it before.' As if to prove him right, the shrivelled lady went off to the bar and ordered more drinks. The old man drained his glass in her absence. Dad and I giggled.