sure anyone would do it. Wouldn’t you feel like you were trying to replicate your dead children in a sick way?’
‘I would, yeah,’ says Dom. ‘But I’m not them. Lewis Braid’s a weirdo. Always was. Flora wasn’t, but … if she really did lose her children in some terrible accident, and she’s traumatised, who knows what she might do?’
Zannah taps her pad with the pen. ‘All right, so, option one: Mum had a funny turn and didn’t see or hear what she thinks she did. Option two: Mum saw a new, different Thomas and Emily who were named after their dead older siblings. What else?’
I don’t feel that option two is in any way a possibility, but I don’t have the energy to protest. Flora wouldn’t do that. No version of her, past, present, future, however freaked out, would do it.
‘Do we want to include a supernatural possibility?’ asks Zannah.
‘No,’ Dom and I say together.
‘How about: Mum did see Thomas and Emily Braid, the same Thomas and Emily Braid she knew twelve years ago, and they’re now teenagers, but they look like little kids because they’ve got some messed-up genetic disease?’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I say.
‘There are definitely some conditions that make you age faster, or slower,’ Zan insists. ‘If Lewis and Flora both had some kind of recessive gene that was a really bad fit with the other one’s recessive gene … or something like that. See, Mum? A teacher at school actually taught me something – recessive genes. It might explain who Chimpy is, too.’
‘How?’ asks Dom.
‘If Thomas and Emily have both got this genetic thing, chances are Georgina has too. Chimpy might be her nickname. Maybe she needs to live in a home, which would obviously upset Flora, which explains why Mum said she looked and sounded so upset.’
‘No. This is stupid.’ Zannah looks hurt, and I feel guilty for cutting her off. I can’t stand to think about Flora’s children dying or having genetic diseases. I don’t want to imagine every possible grotesque scenario. ‘The two children I saw looked perfectly healthy and normal. There’s no—’ I break off and start again, trying to sound less dogmatic. ‘I don’t believe there’s any medical condition that could make two teenagers look like healthy, normal, much younger versions of themselves.’
‘Agreed. Overwhelmingly unlikely, verging on impossible,’ says Dom. ‘Still, it would explain why they suddenly dumped us as friends. Lewis was obsessed with perfection. He wouldn’t have wanted us around to witness the non-growing phase of his children’s lives.’
‘I’m still putting it on the list as option three,’ says Zannah. ‘Same Thomas and Emily, genetic condition that makes them look younger. What do Lewis and Flora do? What are their jobs?’
‘They’re both scientists by training,’ Dom tells her. ‘He’s been working in IT for years, inventing systems that do all kinds of fancy things. She did the same kind of stuff. They worked together for years, until they had kids, and then Flora gave up her job and became a full-time mum.’
‘Scientists?’ Zannah chews the lid of her pen thoughtfully. ‘No. Even if a science genius invented a drug that stopped people ageing, they wouldn’t freeze their kids in time at three and five. Those are pain-in-the-arse ages. You might freeze your kids at, like, nine and eleven.’
‘Trust me, if Lewis Braid had invented a way to halt the ageing process, he’d have patented it, publicised it widely and made millions from it,’ says Dom. ‘He wouldn’t keep quiet about it.’
It ought to be possible for me to listen to this jokey back-and-forth and feel comforted. Instead, it’s making me feel lonely. No one but me saw what I saw. No one saw how wrong it was. Flora wasn’t okay – she didn’t look it and she didn’t sound it. Nothing about it was right.
‘Mum, you’ve not eaten anything,’ says Zannah.
‘I’m not hungry. You can have it if you want.’
‘Flora’d be what age now?’ Dom asks. ‘Forty-three, like us?’
‘Forty-two,’ I say. ‘She could easily have had two more children.’
Zannah says, ‘What about this possibility: Flora did have two more kids after her first three. The youngest two look very similar to young Thomas and Emily, because siblings, and you saw them and freaked out, Mum. That’s why you thought you heard Flora call them Thomas and Emily, but actually she called them by their real names, whatever those are – Hayden, Truelove, whatever.’
‘No. I heard her say, “Thomas, Emily, out you get” before I saw their faces.’