Why was Joanna so late home? Should not her instinct have been, having betrayed Oliver, to go straight back home and warn him? Of course, but her neck hurt, she was confused and upset; she was not convinced, even if she tried to persuade him of it, that Oliver would appreciate the danger he was in. He would say she was imagining it, and go on shaking off dahlia tubers, or whatever he was doing. It was difficult to convey the extraordinary and drastic nature of Carl’s world to a young man whose concerns were so very horticultural, with a dash of rock guitar thrown in. He would be positive about the matter of the clones, which she was not sure she wanted him to be. He would say, ‘Well, you always wanted a family: now you have them. Sisters and daughters both,’ and if she complained that it was altogether too sudden, and done against her will besides, and Carl May’s behaviour outrageous, he would have told her not to be so negative, or the peas wouldn’t swell in the pods or the bees wouldn’t fertilize the pears – some threat, at any rate, to hold over her head – and remind her that the reason she was no longer married to Carl May was because he was outrageous, so why act so surprised?
In the end she called Angela from a phone box and confided in her, and Angela was gratifyingly startled.
‘You mean you didn’t even know, Joanna?’
‘No.’
‘Cloned, and not known it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t like that.’
‘Neither do I, Angela. That’s why I’m calling.’
‘Poor Joanna.’
‘Because you know how all this time I’ve been complaining about having nothing – no children, no career, no family, no husband, nothing I’ve earned or worked for myself: a whole life wasted –’
‘Yes, I do, Joanna –’
‘Well, there was a kind of pride in that, Angela. It was my singularity. He has taken away my singularity. He has shovelled all these bits and pieces at me, and I hate it.’
‘It would make me feel better, I think.’
‘It made me feel like just nothing, Angela; and this makes me feel perfectly dreadful, I can tell you. All I can do is just wander about. I’m calling from a phone box, I’m not even home.’
‘Why did he save it till now, do you think?’
‘Because he was angry, I suppose.’
‘I expect he was. Men don’t much like their ex-wives bursting into their offices. Good old Carl, always has to be in the forefront of everything, even test-tube babies. Tinker tinker with the universe.’
‘I don’t know how you can say that: “Good old Carl.” ’
‘I was being ironic, Joanna.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘Joanna, would you say Carl was mad? Answer frankly.’
‘No,’ said Joanna, ‘I’m afraid he isn’t. I think he just likes to have his own way, and get his own back. He’s childish.’
‘I see,’ said Angela. ‘Can I tell Gerald about the clones?’
‘If you feel you have to,’ said Joanna, a little tearfully.
‘Are you going to try and find these creatures?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t suppose they know. It might be an even worse shock for them than it has been for me.’
‘I can see that. A kind of extra mother, dreadfully like oneself. Seeing what one would grow into. Thirty years ago, you say.’
‘Yes.’
‘What it amounts to is you’ve got four identical twins half your age walking round unclaimed.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘Well, don’t tell your Oliver or he might go after them.’
‘You mean to kill them? Because they upset me? Like slugs, snails and greenfly?’
‘No I don’t mean that, Joanna. I mean he might fancy them.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Because they’re half your age. You, but more so, Joanna.’
And Angela thought, but was too kind to say, even though she was jealous – how could she not be jealous with Joanna still beautiful, still pulling them in, at sixty – ‘You’d be the first taste of a drug on his tongue, Joanna, and they the real stuff, the full flavour.’ Instead, she said, ‘I hope you didn’t tell Carl about your gardener lover. I hope that wasn’t why he was so angry?’
‘Well yes, I did.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Angela. ‘Wasn’t that rather stupid?’
‘Yes,’ said Joanna.
‘I hope your clones are more prudent than you,’ said Angela, ‘or their nearest and dearest will be having a terrible time. I think you should go straight back home and warn this gardener of yours. Gerald takes Carl quite seriously, you know.’
‘I should hope so,’ said Joanna.
Joanna went and walked about Richmond Park, in totally impractical shoes. When she was thirty she had imagined all her troubles would be over by forty, there would be nothing left to go wrong: at forty she had imagined the same about fifty, and at fifty she had given up: she still found herself walking about distracted and alone, carefully refraining from crying, just as she had when she was a child.
She remembered coming home from the Bulstrode Clinic and that time she had really wept, from physical weakness more than anything else, or so she had supposed. She remembered that the doctor’s name had been Dr Holly. Holly and May, she’d thought at the time, berries and flowers. Red berries, white flowers, and nothing coming out of either.
Well, she’d been wrong about that. Too much had come out of it. She would go back to Oliver and tell him everything, everything, no matter what Angela said; they would go off for six months to some secret destination. New Zealand, perhaps. The soil was good, she believed, and the gardens were wonderful. If he loved her, he would believe her; they would go. Or she would apologize to Carl; tell him she’d been making it all up. Something. Her head ached, her neck hurt: she had to sleep.