Authors: Peter James
A cold wind blew through her. She shivered. Nature had so much in its damned arsenal. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, floods, meteorites, asteroids. Disease.
She reached out and took John’s hand. He squeezed back, and half turned to her as if he was about to say something. Then Dr Otterman came back into the room and closed the door. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.
They both watched him anxiously, as the paediatrician eased himself behind his desk. As he sat down he peered at something on his computer screen, then plucked a pen from the black mug in front of him and rolled it backwards and forwards between his fingers. ‘Thanks for coming in,’ he said. ‘I felt it was better for you to hear this in person because – well – it’s a very unusual condition – not life-threatening, but it does of course give rise to concern.’
Naomi and John waited for him to continue.
‘It – well, how can I put it – it affects a very small percentage of all children born in the world. We’re going to need an electroencephalogram to make absolutely sure, but I don’t really have much doubt at all.’
Into the tunnel
, Naomi thought bleakly.
We’re going back into that damned, bloody tunnel we were in with Halley. Tests. Hospitals. More tests. More specialists. More hospitals.
He put the pen back in the mug, deliberated for some moments, then retrieved it again, his eyes darting between Naomi and John. ‘This bleeding – I didn’t want to give you my diagnosis until I was pretty sure. Now I have the results from the pathology tests and they are still not conclusive. Phoebe is presenting some symptoms of a variant form of a condition known as McCune-Albright syndrome.’
John and Naomi exchanged a puzzled glance. Then John said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of this – MacEwan-Albright syndrome?’
‘Yes,’ Dr Otterman said edgily. ‘That’s right, yes, McCune-Albright syndrome.’ His face reddened. ‘It’s also known as
precocious puberty
.’
‘
Puberty
, did you say?’ asked Naomi.
He nodded. ‘It’s a congenital abnormality that causes varying forms of early sexual maturity in children, as well as other physiological changes.’
Naomi raised her voice in disbelief. ‘Sexual maturity? What exactly are you saying? Phoebe’s not even two years old – are you telling us she’s sexually mature?’
The paediatrician stared back with a helpless expression. ‘I’m afraid what I’m saying is exactly that. Extraordinary though it may seem, Phoebe is having her first period.’
In the car afterwards, Naomi and John sat for some moments in stunned silence. John put the key in the ignition but did not turn the engine on; instead he rested his hands in his lap. The car shimmied in the wind.
Precocious puberty.
Naomi shook her head, staring at the rain-crazed windscreen.
Bone age will be advanced and serum oestrogens will be in the pubertal or adult range. Oestrogen halts growth. Many children with this syndrome are likely to end up with stunted growth. Early development of breasts. Untreated, a five-year-old girl will have the sexual maturity of a teenager.
‘The pills
will
work,’ John said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘He said they
might
work. They
might
slow down this syndrome, but they won’t cure it, John, that’s what he said.
Sometimes
it helps, that’s what he said.
Sometimes.
’
‘At least it’s not life-threatening.’ Then, after some moments, he added, ‘And – everyone is telling us how big they are for their age. Phoebe wouldn’t be this big if she had stunted growth.’
‘And Luke? Why is he so big?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know why either of them are.’
‘Dr Otterman said the children have physiology closer to three – even four – years old, not two.’
‘But he did say their rate of growth will probably slow down.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure it will,’ John said.
‘What makes you so sure, John? The integrity of Dr Dettore? That fills you with confidence, does it?’
He said nothing.
‘I want the children to have every possible medical test,’ Naomi went on. ‘I want to find out just what other surprises we are in for; what else that madman has done to them.’
John started the engine and began manoeuvring the Saab out of the parking space. He spoke quietly. ‘Dr Otterman said this won’t affect her, and she will be able to lead a normal life.’
‘For most women, John, leading a
normal
life means having children. Do you have any idea how she is going to feel when she reaches her teens and all her friends are entering their prime? When she starts dating? What happens when she falls in love? How is she going to explain to someone in twenty years’ time,
Oh, by the way, I had my first period when I was not quite two years old and went through the menopause when I was fourteen?
’
‘He didn’t say that, hon. He said this condition doesn’t affect the menopause, that she wouldn’t have an early menopause.’
‘He didn’t
know
, John. He said he would know more after the scan. He said no two cases were ever exactly the same.’ She rummaged in her handbag, pulled out a pack of tissues and blew her nose. ‘
Stunted growth
. That’s great. After telling Dettore we wanted our son to be tall, our daughter is going to be a dwarf.’
‘You’re worrying at the moment that she’s too big for her age. She’s not going to be a dwarf.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Look, there will be a lot of advances in medicine over the next twenty years – if we find out that—’
‘Sure,’ she said, interrupting him. ‘And Phoebe is a victim of one of them. Great to know that our daughter is a guinea pig – and a freak.’
‘I think
freak
is a strong word. She’s not a freak.’
‘So what is she? What euphemism would you like?
Maturity challenged? Vertically challenged?
Perhaps it’s a little too
realistic
a word. But that’s what she is, John, that’s the reality we have to face. Courtesy of Dr Dettore, our life savings and loans from my family, we have produced a freak. How does that make you feel?’
‘Would you rather she hadn’t been born? That neither of them had been born?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. Tell me what you feel – I never know what you are thinking.’
‘All I ever wanted was—’ He lapsed into silence.
‘Was what, John? What was it you wanted? Tell me, I’m all ears. And you ought to put the wipers on, might help you see where we’re going.’
He put the wipers on then pulled out into the street. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, after a while. ‘I don’t know what the hell I wanted. I guess, just the best for our kids, for you and I, I just tried to do the best for us.’
‘Is that what you’d like to think?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Did you really want to do the best for us? Or did you want to satisfy your cravings as a scientist?’
He braked more harshly than he needed at the end of the street. ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’
‘I don’t know what I think any more, John.’
‘That’s very hurtful.’
She shrugged.
‘Naomi, I’ve always told you the truth. When I first found out about Dr Dettore, I told you everything I knew, and I warned you there would be a risk in going to him. We both agreed to take a chance.’
‘Maybe you didn’t spell it out quite loudly enough,’ she said bitterly.
‘Perhaps you didn’t listen quite hard enough,’ he replied gently.
She turned and stared at him. Stared at the man she had once loved madly, wildly, crazily. The man she had been through so much with. The man who had given her the strength to get beyond the loss of their son, and the will to go on living.
Stared at him with a hatred so intense that if she’d had a knife in her hand, she honestly believed at this moment she could have stabbed him with it.
The day began in the monastery of Perivoli Tis Panagias the same way it had begun every morning for the past eleven centuries. At two thirty in the morning, beneath a sky still crowded with stars, the knock of wood on wood rang out. The summons to matins.
In the marbled glare of moonlight, the stark drumming rose to a frenzied crescendo that was more a shamanic beat than a gong. It rang out across the shadows of the courtyard, echoing off the worn flagstones and the cracked, peeling fortress walls surrounding the mostly derelict buildings.
In his cell the Abbot rose from his narrow bed, lit the oil lamp on his dressing table, crossed himself beneath the portrait of the Virgin Mary, and dressed quickly in his black robes.
When he had first entered this monastery as a young novice, sixty-four years ago, it had been Yanni Anoupolis’s task to rise first, and go out and call the brothers to prayer, by hammering with the mallet on the ancient teak plank hung from rusty chains in the cloistered courtyard. Then he had been a young man of twenty-two, whose heart had ached to serve God.
Now it wasn’t just his heart that ached, but so much else, also, especially his knees and his hips. The body that housed him was decaying just like the buildings that housed the few remaining monks here. His eyesight was steadily failing, month by month, and so was his energy; he did not know how much more time God would spare him, but at least he had the comfort of knowing that after years of uncertainty, the future of the monastery, perched high on this rock atoll in the Aegean Sea, twenty kilometres south of the Greek mainland, was assured.
Father Yanni pulled his cowl up over his head, then, supporting himself on his stick, walked down the stone steps and into the courtyard, the reek of burning oil from the lamps in the church porch offering scant but welcome relief against the sharp, damp sea air. Behind him he heard the footsteps of three of the four other monks who remained from an original community of one hundred and ninety, when he had first come here.
Entering the rear of the church he crossed himself again, then stood for some moments in humble silence in front of the beautiful Madonna and Child icon. The blessed Virgin Mary! She protected them all on this island. And she had rewarded him for his lifetime of devotion by bringing the American here to save them.
He wondered if the American would be joining them for matins. Some mornings the American sat beside him, usually accompanied by young novices. Other days, the American had told him, he preferred to hold his own private prayer vigil in his room.
Father Yanni loved to see these novices in here, all such gentle, polite young men. So sincere, so devout, so dedicated, praying with such vigour and fervour. The energy of youth!
The American’s name was Harald Gatward. He was a good man, the Abbot knew that much, but he knew little else about him. Only that the Virgin Mary had brought him here – which was all that he needed to know.
The monastery of Perivoli Tis Panagias had been built in the ninth century as a remote offshoot of the Holy Mount Athos, providing an alternative haven for Greek Orthodox monks. They lived an ascetic life here. Worldly pleasures were strictly forbidden – these were temptations by Satan to distract and corrupt. This included chatter. Conversation was strictly on a need-to-know basis. Idle gossip led to malcontent and sin.
The Abbot was the only monk on the island who spoke any English, and his grasp of this language was limited and mostly archaic. He assumed the American must be a very rich man. When the Council of the Greek Orthodox Church had made the decision that they could no longer justify the cost of running Perivoli Tis Panagias for just five monks and had placed the tiny island on the market, hoping to attract a property developer to turn it into a resort, the American had outbid everyone. And this wonderful man had assured the Abbot that it was God’s will that he and his four fellow brothers should live out their lives in peace here.
Of course there had been a few changes. The biggest of these was the new buildings, and women arriving on the island. But they were housed beyond the monastery walls, and none of them had ever encroached on the church, nor entered the refectory.
*
In his tiny cell, even more modest than the Abbot’s and lit by a solitary candle, Harald Gatward knelt beside his bed, face buried in his hands, communing with the Lord in a prayer vigil he had held, with only one short break to check his emails, since eleven o’clock last night.
Gatward was a shambling bull-necked giant of a man, six-foot-six-inches tall, with a baby face that belied his fifty-eight years, and a mane of shaggy, greying hair that hung down from either side of his bald dome. A former colonel of the 51st Airborne, Gatward had been decorated for courage under fire in Vietnam.
And later that same year, on that same field where he had earned his honours, he had held the charred body of his fiancée in his arms as she died. An over-enthusiastic US military helicopter had inadvertently dumped several gallons of self-igniting chemical defoliant onto a field hospital and its staff, just as he was arriving to collect Patty at the end of her shift.