‘So,’ Paul asked. ‘What brings you to London? Visiting relatives?’
It was far too complicated to explain, even if she’d wanted to. ‘No. Well, not really. Jack and I are just about to move over here.’ She played with her chopsticks, unsure of how much to tell him. ‘I’m looking for a place at the moment. Actually, I’m kind of shocked by the price of property in London.’
‘Where do you live at the moment? Oh yes, Boston, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice.’ He waited for her to give more details but she wasn’t forthcoming. ‘And what do you do in Boston?’
‘I work at Harvard.’
‘Doing . . .?’
Kate laid her chopsticks on the table. ‘I’m a professor in the department of immunology and infectious diseases. I specialise in the study and treatment of viruses.’
She watched Paul closely to see his reaction. Telling people what she did usually had two effects. Weak men, the kind who were intimidated by clever women, would try to outsmart or belittle her. Other people would inch away, like people she talked to on the extremely rare occasions she went to parties, as if they might catch something from her.
Paul didn’t appear to be at all intimidated or frightened. ‘Cool. So is that how you knew Stephen? You worked with him at the Cold Research Unit?’
‘No, I was a volunteer there. I’d only just graduated. And after that, I went to Harvard and, apart from the odd visit, never came back.’
‘Until now?’
‘Until now,’ she echoed, thinking how strange it was that you could summarise a life so quickly and painlessly, missing out all the important facts. Of how she went to Harvard, still in a state of shock, only weeks after Stephen’s death. The years she spent in the graduate research programme. Meeting and marrying Vernon Maddox – a man who could not have been more different to Stephen – and having Jack. The glorious day she became Professor Kate Maddox. Work, and Jack, had both continued to be fulfilling and enjoyable, but the rot had well and truly started to set in with Vernon by then. His fuse had grown shorter and shorter over the years, seemingly in inverse proportions to his nasal hair. What Kate had initially thought was passionate and forthright about him soon became perceived as merely hectoring and unpleasant.
She didn’t tell Paul all this, though.
‘And what do you do?’ she asked.
‘You might not believe this, but I chase viruses too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes – but a different kind to you. Computer viruses. Or I should say, the scum who create them and send them out across the internet.’
‘You’re a cop?’
‘No. Not really. I work for an internet security firm. It’s a very exciting business.’
She smiled. ‘Sounds a bit geeky to me.’
‘Er, says the professor of – what was it? – immunology and infectious diseases?’
‘Touché.’
Paul laughed. ‘Actually, a lot of people think it’s a geeky job, and I do spend a lot of time staring at computer screens. But so must you.’
‘You’re right. Too much time.’
‘Except now you’re moving to London. Are you moving to a university over here? Kissing the Ivy League goodbye?’
He asked a lot of questions. Stephen had been curious like that too, interested in others.
Their food arrived, the waiter plonking it down on the table, shoving their glasses out of the way then stomping off. Kate was too busy trying to decide how honest to be to feel aggrieved by the waiter’s rudeness. Should she tell Paul that she had no idea about what she was going to do professionally; furthermore, that she didn’t care right now?
She said, ‘I’m considering my options at the moment.’
‘I see.’
They emptied their beer bottles and Paul put his hand up to order more. Kate licked her lips. She hardly drank at all these days and the beer tasted good: sweet and mood-changing. Tongue-loosening.
‘Tell me about Stephen,’ she said. ‘What was he like as a kid?’
Paul dipped a spring roll in sweet chilli sauce, and took a bite. ‘He was the leader, at first. He was born second – five minutes after me – and after that he spent his, I mean our, childhoods making up for it. He was the first to say “Daddy”, the first to walk across the living room instead of bum-shuffling, the first to climb the tree at the end of our garden. He was the first to get a girlfriend. Melissa, that was her name. She lived just down the road. A ponytail and freckles. We had a camp, which was really just a space between some bushes, and he took her in there and snogged her. I was so jealous.’
He laughed, rather awkwardly. ‘I suppose I was jealous of him in a lot of ways. We were competitive, always wanting to get the best marks at school or win at football. For once, I was better at that than him – he was hopeless – but he was better academically. Being good at football won me more points at school, but getting good grades went down better with my parents.’
‘Go on,’ Kate said softly. She felt as though she could listen to him talking about Stephen all night.
‘I don’t know what to tell you next. There’s so much.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘There was a period when we were in our early teens when we didn’t want to be twins any more. We wanted to be individuals. I took the lead in this – Stephen really was an academic, always buried in a book, or carrying out experiments with this chemistry kit he had, which he upgraded every year. By the time he was a teenager it seemed to take over his whole bedroom. We called it his Gaseous Empire.’
He smiled at the memory, then continued. ‘Stephen lived in a dream world – a world of the mind – so he barely noticed when I went out of my way to look as different from him as I could. I cut my hair really short, got into hip-hop.’ He grinned again. ‘Break-dancing was big around that time.’
‘I remember it well.’
‘Stephen wouldn’t, if he was here. He didn’t know anything about what was going on in the street. I used to take the piss out of him for it. So did my friends. They all thought he was the world’s biggest nerd, and couldn’t believe he was my brother. I used to bring my mates round when my parents were out and we, my little gang, would rip the piss out of Stephen, call him the Prof, all this stupid stuff. We were gits.’
Kate didn’t say anything. My poor baby, she thought, and for a second she felt angry with Paul. Neither of them had eaten anything for several minutes. Paul was staring into the middle distance; into the past.
‘There was this kid that I used to hang around with called Terry. I didn’t really like him but he decided he wanted to join our group because he liked the same kind of music as we did. And everyone else was terrified of him. He was a little psycho, the kind of boy who tortured frogs for a laugh and terrorised the younger kids with demands for money. The kind of person I’d do anything to avoid these days.
‘He waged war against Stephen. Every day, in the playground, or on the way home, he’d be there, taunting him. It was never physical, but Stephen was the kind of kid who despised confrontation. Terry would go up to him and say something like, “I heard you called me a wanker,” and Stephen’s voice would break as he denied it. Stephen clearly did think Terry was a wanker, but he would never have dared say it, even to me.’
Kate wanted to reach into the past and hug Stephen. And slap this