Haven't They Grown(8)

‘What are the other possibilities?’ Zannah looks around the table, like a manager in a meeting waiting for her team to make helpful suggestions. ‘I can think of one.’

‘Go on,’ says Dom. I find it hard to believe we’re having this conversation.

‘Thomas and Emily, the ones you knew, died. Lewis and Flora then had two more kids, a boy and a girl, and gave them the same names, as a way of honouring the memories of Dead Thomas and Emily.’

‘Very, very unlikely,’ says Dom. ‘Though not impossible, I suppose. It’d explain a lot – the clothes, for example. Lots of families keep clothes their oldest kids have outgrown, and then, if you have more kids …’ He turns to me. ‘If the two children you saw today were also Lewis and Flora’s, there could well be a strong facial resemblance to older Thomas and Emily.’

‘If Thomas and Emily Number 1 are dead, whatever killed them might have killed Georgina as well,’ Zannah points out.

‘There should be an easily found record of it online if they’re dead,’ says Dom.

‘No, you’re wrong,’ I say, realising with a small jolt of shock that I’m supposed to be part of the conversation. This isn’t some kind of weird play and I’m not the audience. Dom and Zan are jumping from one thing to another too fast. ‘If Thomas and Emily had died, then yes, Flora might have wanted to have more children, but there’s no way she’d give them the same names. No one would.’

Dom shakes his head. ‘There’s always somebody who’d do the bizarre thing you think no one would do.’

‘Not Flora. And … I’m not sure anyone would do it. Wouldn’t you feel like you were trying to replicate your dead children in a sick way?’

‘I would, yeah,’ says Dom. ‘But I’m not them. Lewis Braid’s a weirdo. Always was. Flora wasn’t, but … if she really did lose her children in some terrible accident, and she’s traumatised, who knows what she might do?’

Zannah taps her pad with the pen. ‘All right, so, option one: Mum had a funny turn and didn’t see or hear what she thinks she did. Option two: Mum saw a new, different Thomas and Emily who were named after their dead older siblings. What else?’

I don’t feel that option two is in any way a possibility, but I don’t have the energy to protest. Flora wouldn’t do that. No version of her, past, present, future, however freaked out, would do it.

‘Do we want to include a supernatural possibility?’ asks Zannah.

‘No,’ Dom and I say together.

‘How about: Mum did see Thomas and Emily Braid, the same Thomas and Emily Braid she knew twelve years ago, and they’re now teenagers, but they look like little kids because they’ve got some messed-up genetic disease?’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I say.

‘There are definitely some conditions that make you age faster, or slower,’ Zan insists. ‘If Lewis and Flora both had some kind of recessive gene that was a really bad fit with the other one’s recessive gene … or something like that. See, Mum? A teacher at school actually taught me something – recessive genes. It might explain who Chimpy is, too.’

‘How?’ asks Dom.

‘If Thomas and Emily have both got this genetic thing, chances are Georgina has too. Chimpy might be her nickname. Maybe she needs to live in a home, which would obviously upset Flora, which explains why Mum said she looked and sounded so upset.’

‘No. This is stupid.’ Zannah looks hurt, and I feel guilty for cutting her off. I can’t stand to think about Flora’s children dying or having genetic diseases. I don’t want to imagine every possible grotesque scenario. ‘The two children I saw looked perfectly healthy and normal. There’s no—’ I break off and start again, trying to sound less dogmatic. ‘I don’t believe there’s any medical condition that could make two teenagers look like healthy, normal, much younger versions of themselves.’

‘Agreed. Overwhelmingly unlikely, verging on impossible,’ says Dom. ‘Still, it would explain why they suddenly dumped us as friends. Lewis was obsessed with perfection. He wouldn’t have wanted us around to witness the non-growing phase of his children’s lives.’

‘I’m still putting it on the list as option three,’ says Zannah. ‘Same Thomas and Emily, genetic condition that makes them look younger. What do Lewis and Flora do? What are their jobs?’

‘They’re both scientists by training,’ Dom tells her. ‘He’s been working in IT for years, inventing systems that do all kinds of fancy things. She did the same kind of stuff. They worked together for years, until they had kids, and then Flora gave up her job and became a full-time mum.’

‘Scientists?’ Zannah chews the lid of her pen thoughtfully. ‘No. Even if a science genius invented a drug that stopped people ageing, they wouldn’t freeze their kids in time at three and five. Those are pain-in-the-arse ages. You might freeze your kids at, like, nine and eleven.’

‘Trust me, if Lewis Braid had invented a way to halt the ageing process, he’d have patented it, publicised it widely and made millions from it,’ says Dom. ‘He wouldn’t keep quiet about it.’

It ought to be possible for me to listen to this jokey back-and-forth and feel comforted. Instead, it’s making me feel lonely. No one but me saw what I saw. No one saw how wrong it was. Flora wasn’t okay – she didn’t look it and she didn’t sound it. Nothing about it was right.