Perfect People

13

Naomi had never been covetous of wealth. Sitting in John’s ageing Volvo on the 405, heading home from the airport, she was wrapped in her thoughts. Her feet nestled in the mess of papers in the footwell; photocopied documents, pamphlets, a playbill, chewing-gum and chocolate-bar wrappers, petrol receipts, parking tickets; the interior of his car was part filing cabinet and part dustbin. John didn’t seem to care about the mess. It was a tip; it looked like it might have recently been vacated by chickens.

As he drove he was talking on the hands-free speaker-phone to a work colleague. Beneath her the tyres rumbled over a section of corrugated road surface; she paid no attention to any of the other cars on the road; she didn’t hanker after a Porsche or an open Mercedes or a custom Explorer. Cars were just transport to her. Yet, staring ahead towards the Hollywood Hills through the late-afternoon haze, she realized that seven years in Los Angeles had changed her in the way, she had noticed, it seemed to change most people who came here.

Los Angeles made you want money. You couldn’t help yourself; you suddenly found yourself wanting things you’d never wanted before. And feeling emotions you’d never felt before. Such as envy.

She loved their modest little single-storey house south of Pico. It had a roof deck, and an orange tree in the back yard that once a year produced a crop of deliciously sweet fruit, and a light, airy feel inside. It was their home, their sanctuary. And yet, sometimes when she saw swanky homes high up in the Hollywood hills, or close to the ocean in Malibu, she couldn’t help thinking that one of those would be a great place to raise a child.

She pressed a hand to her tummy. Luke was just a speck inside her, a mere two weeks old, who would be going to school in a few years’ time. To me you’re a person now, Luke. How do you feel about that? Good? Me, too.

After Halley was born, everyone had told her the best schools were in Beverly Hills, and they were the only schools a concerned parent could ever seriously consider – unless, of course, you particularly wanted your son to grow up as a pistol-toting crack dealer. But how would they ever be able to afford a home in Beverly Hills?

John’s earnings were so limited. He was working on a book about his field, and sure, some impenetrable science books did become best-sellers, but his last book, although well reviewed in the academic press, had sold less than two thousand copies – and he had been pleased – he hadn’t even expected to sell that many!

She would have to get her own career back into full gear, she decided. Since Halley’s death she’d been freelance, accepting occasional public relations work when she felt strong enough to cope. She had two months’ work starting next week, on the promotion for a new Oliver Stone movie, but nothing beyond that. It was time to go job-hunting in earnest, to phone all her contacts at the studios, networks and independent companies, perhaps take a permanent position after Luke was born. Something with career-ladder opportunities, maybe Showtime or HBO or MTV or Comedy Central, where she had the chance to move up to producing, and start making serious money.

Enough money to move to Beverly Hills.

Some hope, in the thick of this recession.

It wasn’t even certain, of course, that they would remain in LA. John was up for tenure at USC next year and he really didn’t know whether he would get it. If he did, they would be committed to remaining in LA for a long time, probably the rest of his career, but if not, they might well have to move to another city, maybe even to another country. Although she liked the States, her dream was to live in England again one day, to be somewhere close to her mother and her older sister, Harriet.

It felt strange being back. Neither of them had spoken much on the plane; she’d tried to watch a film but had ended up channel surfing, unable to concentrate. Nor could she get into the book she had bought in the airport before getting on the plane, called The Unborn Child – Caring For Your Foetus.

They were both experiencing a reality check. After four weeks in the cocoon of the ship, they were coming back to be part of the normal world again. To nine months of pregnancy; to keeping absolutely quiet to their friends. To having to be careful with every penny. To a thousand things that needed doing and organizing.

Her pregnancy with Halley had been OK, but not especially great. Some of her friends seemed to sail through their terms; others had struggled. She had been up and down, with bad morning sickness, and she’d been very tired in the last months, which hadn’t been helped by a freak heatwave that had lasted from early June through to August. She’d read in some magazine that the second baby was meant to be much easier. She hoped so.

John finished his call.

‘Everything OK?’ she asked.

‘Yes, just about, I think. Some software glitch with my human evolution program no one can fix. I’ll have to go in tomorrow.’

‘It’s Sunday,’ she said. ‘Do you need to?’

‘Just for half an hour. And I have to get a load of stuff emailed off for Dettore. He seems pretty serious about coming up with funding – I mean, hell, his company spends billions on research – he could finance my whole department for the next thirty years out of petty cash.’

‘I know your half an hour. That means you’ll get home around midnight.’

John smiled, then placed a hand on her belly. ‘How is he?’

‘Fine so far. Good as gold.’ She grinned and placed her hand on John’s. ‘I don’t want to spend tomorrow on my own. I feel kind of flat, nervous about, you know-’ She shrugged. ‘Let’s do something together. I understand you have to deal with your work, but can’t we spend some of it together – go for a hike in the canyons, perhaps? And go visit Halley’s grave – he’ll need fresh flowers, it’s been over a month.’

‘Sure, we’ll do that. And a hike sounds good. Nice to go and walk somewhere without the ground moving under us.’

‘I can still feel the ship swaying,’ Naomi said, pulling out of her handbag the printed booklet Dr Dettore had given her.

She opened it, but instantly her head swam. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, fighting back a sudden, sharp bout of nausea, convinced for a moment that she was going to throw up. She glanced at John, but said nothing. Wondering. Fourteen days.

Was fourteen days too soon for morning sickness?

John’s phone rang and he answered it. It was a young, eager postdoc fellow he had recently taken on called Sarah Neri. ‘Sorry I was out when you rang earlier,’ she said.

‘No problem. Did you get any information?’

‘Yes, there’s a whole ton of stuff. It’s a website connected to the Lloyd’s Register, and the Serendipity Rose is on it. She has a sister ship operated by a cruise line, and all the information you requested is on the cruise company’s website. I’ll email it all to you.’

‘Give me the beats of it now.’

Sarah Neri ran through the key points. Then after he had hung up, he began doing some calculations in his head.

The Serendipity Rose weighed twenty-five thousand tonnes. She had four six-thousand-horsepower engines.

Sarah had found out for him the price of the fuel. The ship was burning around seventeen thousand gallons a day of heavy fuel oil. He figured maintenance, insurance, harbour dues and the fuel costs of the helicopter. Then there was Dettore. Two junior doctors. Three nurses. Two lab technicians. Then all the staff running the ship. The total wage bill would have to be around two million dollars per annum, even assuming the Filipino crew were being paid poorly.

Twenty thousand dollars a day, bottom end, he calculated, and he could be way under in this estimate. The total charge to himself and Naomi had been four hundred thousand dollars. They were there for thirty days. Thirteen thousand, three hundred dollars a day. They had only seen one other couple on the ship, George and Angelina, and the couple who had left as they had arrived. For the first two weeks, Dettore had spent the major portion of each day with himself and Naomi. For the next fortnight, after Naomi had been impregnated, they only saw him briefly once a day, for little more than a courtesy visit. A revolving cycle of three couples on the ship at any one time seemed probable.

Which would produce roughly thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred dollars a day. At these prices Dettore can’t be covering his costs or making any profit.

Why not? If profit wasn’t his agenda, what was?

‘John!’

He glanced at Naomi, startled out of his thoughts by her voice. ‘What?’

‘You’ve driven past our turn-off.’