Kate felt as if she’d just been punched in the solar plexus; as breathless as the night the Centre caught fire. The people and the traffic around her blurred. Only Stephen stayed in focus. He began to walk away, dropping his coffee cup into a rubbish bin, and moving off quickly.
‘Mum, are we looking for a taxi?’
‘Yes. I . . . come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
She didn’t answer. She escorted Jack across the road and followed the man who looked so like Stephen, but who couldn’t be Stephen, because he had been killed in the fire that night. He made his way up a quieter street towards Shaftesbury Avenue.
‘Mum, why are you walking so quickly?’
‘I’m in a hurry.’
Jack whined. ‘But I’m tired. My legs hurt.’
She should have stopped then, stuck to her original plan – a taxi back to the hotel, a hot bath, let Jack watch the kids’ channel on the hotel TV. This was insane. Stephen was dead. He’d been dead for sixteen years. This was just a guy who looked like him, a doppelgänger. Isn’t everyone supposed to have a double somewhere? Or maybe she was just imagining the likeness, fulfilling a fantasy that Stephen was still alive. She hadn’t seen him for sixteen years, so how could she say this man looked just like him?
But he did. She had carried Stephen’s face locked in her memory for a decade and a half. Whatever else she’d forgotten, she had never forgotten him. This guy did look exactly like him, and that was weird and worth investigating.
She felt compelled to follow him, despite her son’s complaints.
He turned the corner onto Shaftesbury Avenue. The faces of famous Hollywood actors gazed down at her from theatre billboards; Jack made some comment about ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. The ghost, or lookalike, or whatever he was, turned right. Luckily, the crowds slowed him down so he didn’t get too far ahead even though she was having to drag along her son, plus his robot. He turned another corner, then another, and they found themselves on a quieter street lined with Chinese restaurants and shops flogging cheap bags and faux-silk.
‘Mum, Billy’s tired too,’ Jack said, waving his robot in the air, and just as she was about to respond, the man stopped and turned around.
He looked straight at her. ‘Why are you following me?’ he asked.
Kate felt like an idiot. This was an act of madness, the kind of thing Vernon accused her of. You need help. Some pills. You should see someone. Let me call Doctor Mackenzie. And she’d cry, get angry, protest – I’m sane. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t want any drugs. I don’t need them. It was the way he looked at her. It made her believe she was losing her mind.
God only knew what Vernon would have said about this.
The ghost/lookalike took a few wary steps towards her. He gazed curiously at her, then down at Jack and back at her.
‘Stephen?’ she said, holding her breath.
He shook his head. ‘You’ve made a mistake.’
He didn’t seem angry. At least that was something. He wasn’t going to shout at her. But even though he said she’d made a mistake and, of course, she knew he couldn’t really be Stephen, he didn’t only look like her long lost boyfriend – he sounded the same too. His voice was identical: well-spoken English, a soft voice, intelligent. Sexy.
She realised that Jack was looking up at her with wide eyes, scared of the strange man. She put her hand on Jack’s head and smiled. The man must have seen the boy’s fear too. He winked at him.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Kate said, in a rush. ‘I’ve made a stupid mistake. You look exactly like someone I used to know, this guy I used to be close to, and I had to try and find out if you . . . it’s stupid because . . .’
‘He’s dead.’
She stopped her babble and stared at him.
‘I assume you’re talking about Stephen Wilson?’
She nodded dumbly.
The man smiled with one corner of his mouth. ‘He was my brother.’
Ania, the hotel babysitter, was well-used to neurotic parents who felt pinned between anxiety and eagerness – the eagerness to get out and see the city, not spend their vacation tied down by the kids. But this woman, with her little boy, seemed more worried than average. Her voice trembled as she spoke and she dropped her handbag on her way to the door. Her purse, her keycard and tissues all tumbled onto the carpet and she bent quickly to scoop them up. Highly-strung. Or up to something. She had that air about her. She was doing something that made her ill at ease; something secret.
If she had to bet on it, Ania would wager that it involved a man.
The boy, on the other hand, was relaxed, leaning back in his chair clutching a toy robot to his chest, his free hand expertly handling the remote control, flicking from cartoon to pop video to wildlife programme. He giggled at the sight of meerkats playing on screen. Perhaps he didn’t realise that his mother was about to go out. Or perhaps he was secure enough in her love to know that she’d be coming back – it was the ones who were insecure who usually freaked out the most.
Ania finally managed to get the nervous woman out into the corridor. The boy had an American accent but the mother was English. It was intriguing. Where was the father? Not that Ania was really all that interested. As long as she got paid, who cared? She liked the boy, though. He seemed like a nice kid.
The woman said, ‘Here’s my mobile number, and the name and number of the restaurant, just in case. I’m Kate, by the way. And you’ve already met Jack.’
‘Okay.’
‘Bye Jack, sweetie,’ she called. ‘See you later.’
‘Bye.’ He didn’t look up. The meerkats were more interesting. Ania was relieved – no tantrums to deal with. Good. She felt a sudden tickle in her nose, and sneezed.
Kate turned back. ‘Have you got a cold?’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe I am getting one.’
‘Hmm. Well, it depends if your body has encountered this virus before. If so, your antibodies will fight off the cold and it’ll go away.’
Ania nodded, not knowing what to say. She was pleased when the anxious mother finally left.
Kate emerged from the tube station and checked her watch. As so often happened, she had rushed out in a hurry and arrived early. Vernon was always going on about her obsessive need to be punctual and reliable. In the early days, he found it endearing; a positive character trait. Later, it became another sign of her uptightness.
She walked up Charing Cross Road and stopped outside a bookshop full of medical and scientific books. She recognised some of them. There was a famous book called The Plague on the Horizon, which contained several quotes from Kate. She had a signed copy back in Boston. The author had interviewed Kate because of her involvement in the investigation of the West Nile Virus, a potentially lethal illness that had first been seen in the US, in New York, in 1999. WNV, as virologists called it, caused muscle weakness and confusion in some people, and could lead to meningitis, paralysis and death in others. It was a particularly interesting virus (and when Kate said this to non-scientists they would raise their eyebrows, wondering how anyone could find such a horrible thing so interesting) because of the way it was transmitted. Mosquitoes became infected after feeding on virus-carrying birds, such as crows. One of those mosquitoes could then infect a human. Kate’s team were trying to develop a vaccine for WNV. So far, they had not been successful.
Kate caught sight of her reflection in the dark glass. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. She hadn’t been able to decide