‘No matter. I’ll take it back when he’s finished with it.’ Matteo was sure that the clinic upstairs could spare one rather battered blue car, but Rose was obviously making a point with her son.
‘Thank you.’ She turned back to William. ‘You can play with it while I talk to Dr Di Salvo, but when we go, we’re going to give it back to him.’
William nodded, running to the corner of the office with the car and sitting down on the floor. He looked at his mother and then Matteo, and then started to play with the car, running it up and down the carpet in front of him.
‘Sorry about that.’ She pulled an embarrassed face. ‘He’s an only child and...well, we’ve been exploring the concept of giving things back recently.’
‘He seems to interact with people very well.’ Rose’s eyes had taken on that look of suppressed panic again, and Matteo’s first instinct was to reassure her.
‘I do my best to give him as much time as possible playing with other children. It’s not always easy...’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry if I overreacted over the colour-blindness. I didn’t mean to imply that it’s...well, it’s not a terrible thing. I hope I didn’t offend you.’
Her words jolted him into the unwelcome recognition that she had offended him. That her reaction had somehow told him that he wasn’t good enough and that it was a hard thing to take from a woman as beautiful as she was.
‘Not at all. It’s not an easy thing for people to understand at first.’
‘It’s kind of you to make excuses for me. I’m a scientist so I should be able to understand these things.’ She clasped her hands together tightly on her lap. ‘It’s...something he inherited from me?’
The question seemed to matter to her. ‘Blue-green colour-blindness is carried on the X chromosome so...yes, almost certainly. Is there anyone in your family who’s colour-blind?’
‘Not that I know of. My mother was adopted at birth, though, and she was never interested in finding her biological parents. I suppose she could have passed it to me, and then...’ She broke off. ‘I hope you don’t mind all these questions.’
‘Questions are what I’m here for. I can’t give you a proper clinical judgement, that’s Dr Garfagnini’s speciality, but I can tell you about my own personal experience.’
Even if his personal experience was making this more difficult than he’d expected. The line between doctor and patient—or patient’s mother in this case—had suddenly become a little more fuzzy than usual, and Matteo felt his own heart bleeding into the mix. But Rose had the one thing that pressed all his alarm buttons, telling him to back off now and stop thinking about how much he liked being in her company, and how intrigued he was to find out more about her. She had a child.
* * *
Alec, her ex-husband, would have known this all along. If there was something the matter with anything, then he would have taken it for granted that it was Rose’s fault. Even after more than four years of separation, it still grated to find that he would have been right and that this was one more way in which she’d failed William.
But for William’s sake, if not her own, she should calm down. Attaching a value judgement to something like this would only make him feel not good enough. She couldn’t do anything about her genes, but not good enough was something she could choose not to pass on to him.
She owed Matteo an explanation, though. He’d been more than kind, and she wanted to give him an explanation, which was strange, because usually she’d move heaven and earth rather than talk about this.
‘My marriage broke up before William was born, and I worry that...’ She shrugged miserably. ‘I can’t help worrying that somehow all the stress might have affected him. And I really should have noticed this before.’
He nodded, as if somehow he understood completely. It was a giddy feeling, and Rose reminded herself that he probably nodded in that exact way with all his patients.
‘You’re a scientist, you know that stress can’t change genetic make-up. But I suppose that any amount of good sense can’t stop a mother from worrying about her child.’
She couldn’t help smiling at him. ‘No. That’s right.’
‘And my colour-blindness wasn’t confirmed until I was William’s age. Even though my parents knew it was a possibility because two of my mother’s brothers are colour-blind.’
Rose nodded. ‘Thank you. I hear what you’re saying.’
‘But you don’t accept it?’
‘Give me time. I’m not sure that I can excuse myself so easily just yet.’
Matteo smiled, leaning back in his chair. ‘Fair enough. This is all very new. It may take a while before you can understand exactly which colours William can and can’t see. He’s probably already developed a lot of coping strategies, which may mask his inability to distinguish one colour from another.’
‘What kind of coping strategy?’
‘Well, for instance I talk about red and green traffic lights, but what I really mean is the one at the top and the one at the bottom. I know they’re red and green because people have told me, and so I refer to them in a way they’ll understand.’
‘How did you know about William? I mean, if you couldn’t see the colour of the cars...’
Matteo laughed. ‘I cheated. The receptionist told me.’
‘Do you see things as textures?’ He looked surprised at the question and Rose explained. ‘I had a student who was colour-blind a couple of years ago. He had a real knack with the data from ground-penetrating radar, and I got him involved in an ultrasound survey that the university was doing of some caves in the area. He really excelled with it, and he told me that it was because he saw things in terms of texture.’
‘We all see texture. But I use shape and texture a lot more in defining objects, because that’s what’s available to me. I can’t tell the difference between pink and purple on histological slides, so I got through that module at medical school by learning different cell shapes. The coloured stain is intended to highlight what’s there, but just looking at that can sometimes obscure other things.’
‘Which is why you’re a radiologist?’ Rose imagined that he was very good at what he did. He had that quiet assurance about him.
‘Partly, perhaps. Although actually it fascinates me.’
She laughed. ‘My mistake again. William’s options aren’t defined by his colour blindness.’
When she looked into the dark brown of his gaze, almost anything seemed possible. But if William’s future was all about options, hers wasn’t. It was about staying on course, looking after her son, and trying to make some contribution through the work that she loved. Matteo was a kind man, and he was gorgeous, but he wasn’t an option.
* * *
They’d talked for half an hour, and when William had tired of his game and come to squeeze himself onto Rose’s chair, she’d explained what colour-blindness was in response to his questions. Despite her initial reaction, Rose had been so positive about it all, telling her son that he was special, that his next questions seemed almost inevitable.
‘We’ve got super powers, then?’
‘Not yet.’ She flashed Matteo a smile, bending towards William with a stage-whisper. ‘Maybe when you grow up.’
William turned to Matteo, then back to his mother. ‘He’s got super powers?’ Matteo tried not to smile, since the observation had been behind his hand and clearly intended for his mother’s