Finally Eleanor was being discharged, with a caution, which really pissed her off. A caution against what? Kicking further traffic wardens? Wasn’t being kicked an occupational hazard of being a traffic warden? If they didn’t want to be kicked, they should go into the kind of job that didn’t involve annoying members of the general public. The police called it ‘assault’, but it was just nature. She could have given them a lecture on nature if she’d wanted to. She probably had slides on her phone. But it had been a long day, the hottest day of the year, and she’d spent it all in some disgusting cell that smelled of urine and had no natural light or air but still managed to be as hot as Hades. They’d have kept her in all night if she hadn’t ‘confessed’. In her head she put the confession into inverted commas, because she didn’t really mean it, even though, OK, she had actually kicked that traffic warden.
There was loads of paperwork. She had to give a statement, which was copied down by some barely literate officer, and then she had to read it and sign it over and over and over to say that she agreed with it. Then there was some further procedure around the administration of the caution itself, and then finally a seemingly endless kerfuffle to get her possessions back. Waiting at the front desk, in her stockinged feet, she thought that the police force itself should be arrested, for wasting police time.
She drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited. She wasn’t alone in the station. There were a few orange plastic chairs in the lobby area, and fidgeting on one was an attractive, if somewhat overweight, black woman, beside a slightly older Asian man who looked far calmer, possibly even slightly bored. The woman kept checking her phone, which irritated Eleanor because she still didn’t have her own phone back.
Then the doors to the station opened and two police officers came in, with a young man and a younger woman whom Eleanor recognised instantly. She frantically began to prepare a story, but beyond a glance when they first entered, they didn’t react to her at all. Eleanor realised that these must be the other pair of clones – she knew they lived in this town, that was why she had come here after all – and yet she couldn’t fight her instinct that they must, somehow, know who she was.
The resemblance really was uncanny. Of course their bodies looked the same. But the way they held themselves, their facial expressions, the way they walked – how many times had she told Sally to stand up straight? They even had the same haircuts (as far as Eleanor could recall), the same style of clothing. For a moment she wanted to rush over and embrace them, but all along her intention had been to observe them in secret, and there was no reason why that should change now, even if – especially if – they had just been arrested. Besides, it would hardly make a good impression on them, meeting her like this. She could wait. Eleanor pushed her feelings as far down as they would go. She was not their mother. She was a scientist.
The fat woman jumped up from her seat and ran to Billy – to Bill, Eleanor corrected herself. She was surprisingly nimble.
‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ she said, ‘but there’s no other way for you to get the help you need.’
‘Don’t apologise to me,’ said Bill (his voice exactly like Billy’s). ‘It’s Billy you should be apologising to.’
Now Eleanor was truly astonished. Somehow Bill and Billy had made contact! Exactly how much did he know? Had Maximilian told him everything? Perhaps Bill had emailed Billy around the same time that he had emailed her, wanting to make contact with, as he put it, his ‘birth mother’. Which was quite insulting, given that he had no way of knowing that his ‘genetic mother’ had died in 1608.
‘I think we should probably take this into one of the interview rooms,’ said the Asian man. ‘I’ve called for someone from the mental health team, and they should be here soon.’
Mental health? Now this was satisfying. Maximilian had always been so insistent that his children were models of perfect development.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my mental health,’ said Bill – well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
‘Bill …’ started the fat woman, presumably a girlfriend – no, she was wearing a wedding ring. A wife! Eleanor surreptitiously examined her. Fat women always had good skin, so it was hard to guess her age, but she didn’t look much older than Bill, perhaps younger, even. Not an Anne Hathaway, then. Later, once she had made Bill’s acquaintance and set up a formal interview, she could ask him whether as a youth he’d ever had a physical relationship with an older woman. Modern contraception would presumably have prevented any accidental pregnancies. Hopefully, Bill would be more mature than Billy when it came to the interview. Billy had always been so reticent in answering questions about his sexual encounters.
‘Here are your things,’ the officer behind the counter said to her. ‘You can go now.’
‘Finally,’ said Eleanor. But she had no intention of leaving. She took her shoes and put them on as slowly as she could.
‘He’s telling the truth,’ Sal said. ‘There’s two of him. They’re clones.’
At that word, everyone in the station was gripped. Now Eleanor didn’t have to feign an excuse to stick around. It would seem like natural curiosity.
‘Sal, I admire your loyalty to Bill, but you’re not helping him by buying into his delusions,’ said Bill’s wife. ‘He needs professional care.’
They were sectioning him for claiming to be a clone! Should she step in and confirm his story? She could end the confusion in a matter of moments. But she would find out more by staying silent.
‘But it’s true!’ Sal was saying.
‘How do you know?’ said Bill’s wife. ‘Have you seen this other Bill?’
‘No,’ said Sal, ‘but I’ve seen the other me.’
Eleanor gasped, but fortunately, so did the Asian doctor or whatever he was, so nobody noticed. Sal had met Sally! Was it possible that Billy and Sally were here, now, in this town?
‘The other … you?’
‘Yes, Thandie,’ said Sal. ‘And I’m definitely not mad so Bill isn’t either. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s so weird. Barbra Streisand had her dog cloned, and if they can do that, they can do people, and they did Bill and me. Other Sal explained everything to us.’
‘Other Sal?’
‘The other me. We’re made from the same hair. Just a normal hair. But they made Bill and Other Bill out of one of Shakespeare’s teeth!’
‘Sal, I know that you want to support your brother …’ The woman called Thandie put a hand on Sal’s shoulder.
It began to occur to Eleanor that inside a police station was not the best place for her to be, should these revelations go much further. She gathered up the rest of the possessions that the desk clerk had returned to her and made her way, as casually as she could, to the front door of the police station. Just before she could leave, though, the door opened, and in came Sally.
‘Mum!’ she cried, and threw her arms around Eleanor.
Eleanor had never liked being hugged. She patted Sally a couple of times on the back. ‘Yes, yes, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Why have you got your T-shirt on inside out? Don’t you ever look in the mirror?’
‘This is my mother,’ Sally told the room. ‘She’s the one who made us!’
Now all eyes were on Eleanor.
‘Well, now that that’s all cleared up, I’ll be on my way,’ she said.
Immediately, there was a chorus of dissent. Eleanor tried to edge to the door, but Sally had a firm grip on her arm.
‘But, Mum, I haven’t seen you for five years, you can’t just leave,’ she was saying. ‘And don’t you want to meet Other Billy and Other Sally? You made them too! And they’re really nice! Where’s Billy? I thought he’d be here!’
Sally tried to drag her over to the others, who were all asking questions at once.
‘Well, I suppose I do have time for a quick chat,’ said Eleanor, prying Sally’s fingers away. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere together? There must be one cafe in this town that has a decent coffee machine.’
‘So you’re Eleanor Anderson,’ said Bill, stepping into her path. ‘My long-lost mother. I emailed you a few weeks ago. You didn’t reply. And yet here you are in my home town. What a coincidence. Tell me, is there any particular reason you were happy to watch me get carted off to a loony bin when you could have intervened at any time and explained the whole situation?’
‘We don’t say loony bin,’ said the doctor.
‘I think we’d all appreciate some clarification,’ said Bill’s wife.
‘Well, I am Sally’s mother, of course,’ Eleanor told them. ‘And Sal’s. They’re twins. And I’m, ah, Bill’s mother too, yes. A shame we didn’t meet under other circumstances. But as for all of this talk of cloning …’
Then the door opened again.