Perfect People

50

John was disturbed by the expression on Naomi’s face as she opened the front door for him. She looked pale and strained.

‘Kids OK?’

‘They’re fine. Upstairs. Asleep.’

‘How was the toddler group?’

‘Embarrassing.’

He heard a gurgle come through the baby intercom. Then another gurgle, like a response.

‘Embarrassing?’

‘Yes, it was embarrassing, John, I was embarrassed by my children – our children – our wonderful designer babies.’

He raised a finger to his lips.

‘What are you telling me?’ she demanded. ‘Walls have ears?’

‘We agreed we’d never say it – and it is dangerous to say it in their presence, they might start repeating it when they’re older.’

‘For Christ’s sake, how paranoid do you want to be?’

He looked at her, taken aback. ‘How paranoid?’ He was thinking about the death of Dettore, about the entire Borowitz family, about the O’Rourke family. That’s how paranoid, he was thinking. We can’t afford to stop being paranoid. We really can’t.

Ever.

He listened again for a moment to the baby-monitor speaker. ‘I don’t hear music – you’re not playing them music?’

‘That’s right, I’m not playing them music. I’m too exhausted to play them music, why don’t you go up and play them music? Why don’t you go and bring the entire London Philharmonic Orchestra down here to play them music?’

‘Honey – darling-’

‘I don’t think this playing them music, playing them all this ditzy New Age crap, is doing them much good. You seem to think you can bring Luke and Phoebe on like – like – some kind of hothouse courgettes – that if you sprinkle enough music and words all over them, they’re going to come bursting out of their cots and running into our room and recite the whole of Plato’s Republic from memory.’

John went through to the kitchen, in need of a drink. He knew it was tough on Naomi at the moment, but things would change. Work was going well, they were starting to pay off their debt to Naomi’s mother and to her sister – although both of them insisted they didn’t need paying back. Soon they might be able to afford an au pair – his mother had already suggested the daughter of a family friend, but it was too much of an expense at the moment. And Naomi was still adamant she did not want anyone else looking after them.

He took a tray of ice cubes from the freezer and popped half a dozen into the cocktail shaker that was lying, disassembled, beside the drying rack from last night. ‘What was this embarrassing thing that happened at the toddler group?’

‘Oh, that?’ She feigned a matter-of-fact tone. ‘It seems something our friend Leo Dettore overlooked was the gene for basic social graces.’

‘They behaved badly?’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that, it was – the way they interacted – or rather, didn’t. They just totally ignored the other kids – all delightful babies. Our two didn’t want to know them. And there was something really strange – when any other baby came up to them, Luke and Phoebe would just give them a cold stare, and the baby would burst into tears and start screaming.’

‘They are nine months old, honey. That’s far too young to expect them to be social. I thought the point of the toddlers’ group was for mums to have a break, for you to meet other mums, get to know the community a little?’

‘They made the other babies cry, John. They’re so much bigger than the rest of them, that’s part of the problem.’

‘Babies are always crying-’ He hesitated, lifting his cocktail glass from the rack. Then, taking the olives out of the fridge, he said, ‘I thought last week they got on fine?’

‘They got on fine in the sense that they didn’t really do anything. I thought maybe they were shy, or something.’

‘What about the other babies? Were they all playing together?’

‘No – not exactly playing. But there was some interaction. There wasn’t any with Luke and Phoebe. It’s as if after a while the others became scared of them.’

‘More likely they were fazed because it’s two of them. Naomi, you can’t expect any interaction at this age. Jeez – and you’re hitting on me for expecting too much – I think you’re expecting way too much. And there’s a twins thing,’ John said. ‘All the information we have says that twins prefer each other’s company because that’s what they’re used to.’

‘Mix me one of those, too,’ she said. ‘A large one.’

He looked at her dubiously. ‘You know what that book says about alcohol when you’re breast feeding, that it gets in the milk-’

The vehemence of her reply startled him. Clutching the Absolut Vodka bottle by the neck in one hand and the dry vermouth in the other, brandishing them like clubs, she screamed with pent-up fury, ‘I don’t give a toss, John, OK? I don’t give a flying fuck about all these books, all these websites on how to have a smarter baby. Get a life, you sad man, and while you’re at it, give your wife a life, too.’

He stared at her blankly and the next moment found himself holding both the bottles as she thrust them into his hands.

‘Once a day, that’s all I breast-feed them now. I’ll have a very large one, John, a double, or maybe even a triple, right to the top, shaken, and I want four olives in it. Are olives OK, will they do something weird to my milk? Will four olives in my martini turn our babies into retards?’

A ripple of laughter came through the baby monitor. John and Naomi both turned to look at it. It was uncanny timing, as if both Luke and Phoebe were laughing in unison at them.

The sounds from the babies continued as he mixed their drinks and lanced the olives with cocktail sticks. Happy sounds, calling out to each other, giggling. Listening to them, and the first sip of her drink, seemed to calm Naomi.

They carried their drinks upstairs and along the corridor, then stopped outside the door. The sounds were continuing, happy little cries, giggles. But the moment John opened the door, they stopped.

Phoebe lay on her side, thumb in her mouth, surrounded by a pile of her favourite toys – her polar bear, a snake, a zebra and a lion – apparently fast asleep. Luke, too, lay on his side, teething ring clenched in his mouth, eyes shut, breathing the deep, rhythmic breaths of sleep.

Naomi and John looked at each other, then she signalled with her eyes for them to go back out.

In the corridor, John closed the door, softly. ‘How can they be that noisy one moment, then sound asleep the next?’

It was a while before Naomi answered him. There was nothing she could actually put a finger on, it was just a feeling she had, a small current running through her like an undertow, that Luke and Phoebe were already smarter than they were letting on. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, finally.

In his cot, Luke called out to Phoebe. It was a high-pitched sound, a higher frequency than a dog whistle, inaudible to a human ear, well outside the range of the baby monitor.

On the same frequency, Phoebe answered him.