The man who called himself Billy’s father pulled over in a side street.
‘Hopefully, there won’t be too many customers,’ he said, ‘but if they come, I’ll have to serve them. Turning children away from an ice cream van when you’re inside it is too cruel.’
‘Yes, you’re obviously the kind of man who hates letting children down, Father who abandoned me as a baby and whom I have never heard from or about in the whole of my life before now.’
‘You have a point there.’ Billy’s so-called father nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re very angry with me, and with good reason. But I’ll tell you anything that you want to know.’
‘All right then,’ said Billy, ‘Let’s see … How about this: what’s your name?’
‘That’s a good question. I go by Madoc Evans. But my real name is Maximilian van der Vegte. A bit of a mouthful, and very easy to trace, though it’s a good online-banking password. Madoc Evans is a better name to hide with. It sounds Welsh, you see. If you tell people you’re Welsh, they just go on about sheep and Tom Jones and call you Boyo and never ask you any questions. Also I am a mad doc. So there’s a little joke in there.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You admit you were hiding, then.’
‘Yes, but not from you.’
‘And yet I might never have found you.’
‘That’s true.’
‘99 Flake please.’
It was a small voice from an even smaller child outside the window of the van. Madoc got up and served the child his ice cream. The child trotted away with a big grin.
‘Do you fancy one?’ he said to Billy afterwards.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘With two flakes. And chocolate sauce.’
‘I hear that’s how Shakespeare liked his,’ said Madoc.
‘Also not funny.’
‘Sorry.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I was just trying to lighten the mood.’
‘No. What were you thinking when you decided to make me?’
‘Ah.’
Madoc finished swirling the chocolate sauce onto the ice cream and stuck in the two flakes. He handed it to Billy and climbed back into the front seat.
‘I was ambitious in those days. And selfish. I imagined myself as the most famous scientist in the world. Human cloning is an extremely complex procedure, but with Eleanor I thought I might be able to make it happen—’
‘Because she could carry the babies?’
‘No, no, that’s not important. Half the population has a womb. It’s that she’s a much better scientist than I am. It was a lab match, not a love match, you understand. But she wanted more, she was greedy; it wasn’t enough for her to learn the secrets of the body, she wanted the mind as well. And when she outlined her plan, it was tempting, too tempting, how could I resist the opportunity to meet William Shakespeare himself—’
‘Hello? A rocket and a Calippo please.’
Billy watched Madoc get up again and serve his customers, a sunburned woman with a little girl, maybe five or six. Her face lit up as her mother handed her the Calippo.
‘Maybe it would make more sense if you joined me back here,’ said Madoc.
Billy went into the body of the van with his father. There wasn’t a lot of room back there between the ice cream machine, the drinks fridge and the freezer chest, but they managed to squeeze in. Billy felt a thrill of being allowed somewhere secret and forbidden. It reminded him of how he felt the first time he went behind the scenes in a theatre.
‘So,’ he said, ‘Shakespeare.’
‘Yes. It was a terrible thing to do. I think I realised the moment the two of you were born, how terrible it was. You weren’t William Shakespeare, you were just two little babies. Loud babies. You liked expressing yourselves, is what Eleanor said. But I buried my misgivings, it was just so exciting that we had succeeded. Human clones! The first in the world! The idea from the start was to bring you up separately. One knowing, one not knowing. One nature, one nurture. At first I lived with Bill nearby, while Eleanor worked on the control group.’
‘Sally. Her name is – their names are – Sally.’
‘We argued over the names. I wanted different ones for all of you. But Eleanor thought that for the “nurture” half of the experiment to succeed, you needed to be called William. And she said that the comparison wouldn’t work unless my child was called William too, that the results might be skewed. Who knows what influence a name has on a person? In the end I agreed. For science. Then for the control, I wanted Rose. Another stupid joke. Because that which we call a rose by any other name …’
‘So why Sally?’
‘It’s Eleanor’s mother’s name. She had to cut off all contact with her relatives – too many complications – and she missed them. She had to be very tough, Eleanor. She is not completely bad as a person. Or if she is, there are reasons. I could still communicate with my family; my babies were “normal”. I made up a story about a wife who left me. I based her heavily on Eleanor. A fellow scientist who hurt me so badly I gave up my career, changed my name. Well. Not important. At first I went along with the plan. I went away with Bill and Sal, left you and Sally to be raised by Eleanor, moved far enough away that you would never meet by chance. We thought. But I started feeling it was wrong to leave you two behind the moment I closed the car door. Maybe even before. You weren’t my flesh and blood, we weren’t in any way related; I told myself I had nothing to feel guilty about. And yet. I knew. Eleanor and I wrote to each other, sent each other our observations about the subjects, that is, the children, how they – you – were developing. My Bill and Sal were normal kids – well, Bill was never exactly “normal”, he had a precocious intellect from the start, but they had normal childhoods, normal development, they thrived. And Sally, your Sally, was a happy child. But you. Eleanor told me that you were moody, difficult, withdrawn. She thought maybe that was natural, the sign of creativity, but I knew that it had to be from the pressure you were under. Because Bill was so doing so well, you see. I felt sick about what we had done. I stopped sending Eleanor updates, stopped all my scientific observations of the children, changed our names, moved again. Our arrangement had originally been that I would tell Bill and Sal everything once Sal was eighteen and Bill twenty-one, so that they could choose how to make their way in the world as adults, but I never did. I didn’t want to rob them of their innocence, their chance to just be people, nothing special, just people like anybody else.’
‘What about my chance?’
‘It was too late for you.’
As Billy’s soul tore into myriad tiny pieces, a large group of kids arrived at the van and started to place their orders. There were so many of them waiting that eventually Billy began to help Madoc serve them. He found that it made him feel better. There was something so simple and satisfying about it, handing over the ice creams and seeing the children smile. Madoc appeared to notice the effect the work was having on him.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Making people happy. I could have carried on as a scientist, I was one of the best, but I’d had enough of playing god. After causing all that pain, I wanted to do something that increased the amount of joy in the world. This seemed like a good way to do it.’
Billy closed the freezer and went back into the front seat. Presently, Madoc joined him.
‘I thought of coming for you, many times,’ he said. ‘And I so nearly did. But I was always afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘That Eleanor would come for my Bill and my Sal, and ruin their lives the way I’d already ruined yours. So I hid. I thought that at least I had saved two of you. And I hoped that I was wrong, that you might be content, fulfilled. Once we had the internet, once I thought the kids were resilient enough to withstand Eleanor if she tracked us down in return, I did look you up, over and over, but I never found you. I wondered if you also changed your name.’
‘No. But I never did anything google-able.’
‘I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done to you,’ said Madoc. ‘If you can, I was hoping you might one day forgive me. I’m still working on forgiving myself.’
Billy was about to say that he never would, but his phone rang in his pocket. He felt relieved. He wasn’t sure whether he’d have been telling the truth.
‘I hate those things,’ said Madoc.
‘So do I,’ said Billy. ‘I never answer it.’ But he pulled out the phone anyway. ‘Oh, I definitely need to take this. Sally?’
‘Billy,’ said Sally at the other end, ‘Other Billy’s been arrested! They think you’re both the same person, and they’re going to put him in detention. I explained everything to him before the police got there, but that means he told them about there being two of you and that both of you are Shakespeare, and that made it all worse. Other Sally’s gone with him to the police station. Oh, I met Other Sally. She’s cool. What do you want me to do?’
I could leave now, thought Billy. Nobody’s looking for me any more. I’m sure Madoc can get Bill out of the loony bin. And I don’t owe him anything, we’ve never even met. Sally would be fine here, she could work in that newsagent she’s got her heart set on. Northern Ireland. The Giant’s Causeway. Always wanted to see the Giant’s Causeway.
‘How fast does this thing go?’ he asked Madoc.