Gifted and Talented

by Holden, Wendy

  They were turning off the dark road, through a pair of brick gateposts. The headlights picked out the entrance to a car park. He swung into a space and switched off the engine. ‘It’s the labs. Just something I have to check on. Come with me, if you like.’

  His tone was warm, excited. Diana smiled back. She was, she realised, being invited into the inner sanctum – the red-hot centre of his preoccupations. That he was far more interested in his work than in her was obvious, but his enthusiasm was such that she scarcely minded. She unstrapped her seat belt eagerly. ‘I’d love to.’

  He smiled, touched. ‘Sure? It’s only a lot of worms.’

  ‘Worms?’

  He expected her to look disgusted; instead, she looked something closer to charmed. ‘I love worms,’ Diana said. ‘They’re great gardeners.’

  The laboratory was an older, more graceful building than Diana had imagined, with beautiful cast-iron Art Deco doors. ‘Department of Neurology’, read the sign on the wall next to them. Richard was already inside and she had to hurry to catch up. He threw some friendly words at the uniformed guard and Diana, scurrying after him across the expanse of marbled floor, shot an apprehensive look at him too. ‘Evening, Madam,’ said the guard, grinning and touching his white peaked cap. She blushed.

  In the lift, Richard shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ceiling, his brows knit, evidently thinking of whatever it was he had come to do. Diana covertly examined his outfit; given the chaos of his arrival at her home, it was her first opportunity to do so. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt with a rich green scarf that looked like cashmere. A heavy, plain grey overcoat completed the look. The same rather distracted elegance as before, she thought, as if he had dressed in a hurry, but with unerring taste. His lack of vanity was very attractive. She felt a shiver of lust.

  The lift doors opened; she followed him down a series of quiet, strip-lit corridors and, eventually, through a pair of doors.

  He turned to her. ‘Welcome to my world!’ he said, with a touch of irony.

  The room was large, empty and full of desks and computers. As they passed a large light box, Richard slowed. Ranged on the top of it were laboratory slides with what looked like pieces of wafer-thin brown meat on them, so finely sliced every detail of their marbling could be seen. ‘That’s a brain,’ he told her. ‘Look, here – that dot – that’s a neuron. They change shape and size with use. The person studying these is trying to show how you can quite literally see someone’s thoughts.’

  Diana looked at the brown slices of brain. They reminded her of the smoked cod’s roe carpaccio she’d had in a London restaurant once. The comparison made her snort. She realised with surprise that the unimaginable had happened: aspects of her old life now seemed funny.

  Then, halfway down the laboratory room, something in a high-sided plastic box made her jump. ‘Hamsters?’ Diana looked down at the squirming bodies in the vivarium.

  ‘Mmm,’ Richard said absently. He was at the far end of the room, bent over a desk. ‘One of my colleagues is looking at what makes them laugh.’

  ‘Laugh?’ Diana repeated. ‘I didn’t realise hamsters laughed.’

  She grinned. Rosie was going to love that.

  The wall before Richard was entirely covered with small, colourful, illuminated Perspex boxes. As Diana approached she saw each box contained several worms, their bodies glistening in the coloured light. She turned to him. ‘Don’t tell me. Worms laugh too?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She listened hard as he explained.

  ‘So,’ she said slowly, when he paused to take a breath, ‘you put a smell in the green-lit box that they don’t like and later you take the smell away. They still stay out of the green box because they associate the colour with the nasty smell?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘So what’s the point of that?’ Diana asked, more bluntly than she had intended.

  Richard stared. Scholars at his level tended to be left to their own devices. ‘Well,’ he began, struggling with his instinctive indignation. ‘It’s to do with how the brain can be controlled by colours.’

  Brain control sounded worrying. Didn’t it? Instead of nodding and subsiding, Diana forced herself onward. ‘Is that – well – ethical?’

  She half-expected he would shoot her down in flames. But instead he smiled.

  ‘You’re quite right. There are controversial aspects. But we’re confining it to worms at the moment; the research is at a very early stage and will probably be used for mental health therapy in the end.’

  Diana nodded seriously. She wondered, but didn’t dare ask, what the point of the laughing hamsters was. Perhaps later.

  The Bursar’s car had not even disappeared around the corner of the estate before Sara had pushed Milo off the iPad and was on the internet researching Richard. Her excitement rose. On the various sites in which he appeared, the distinguished Professor Black was usually in his laboratory looking dark, handsome and thrillingly preoccupied by his high-powered and prestigious work. The only variation on this theme – clearly he had not exactly courted the attentions of photographers and, judging by some of his expressions, seemed rather to resent them – were shots of Professor Black looking impressive on a podium, addressing rapt students at various exclusive Ivy-League colleges.

  The possibility – indeed the probability – that he was married had occurred to Sara. Not a problem. Married men were fair game, as the women who had snatched both hers and Diana’s husbands had shown. Nonetheless, it had been a great moment when Sara discovered that Richard was a widower: a sitting target.

  The ex-wife – who featured in some of the pictures, too – didn’t look anything special, Sara concluded. Freckled face – unmade-up – with messy strawberry blond hair caught up loosely behind. Neither fat nor thin, although it was difficult to tell in the ancient jeans she had seemed invariably to wear. If that was what Richard Black had been used to, Sara had concluded, she herself could hardly fail to make a positive impression with her polished appearance, honed figure and blazing white teeth. Diana may have upgraded herself slightly and lost weight, but she was no match for the full gala Oopvard.

  Sara’s hopes soared. That such a prize had fallen into her lap! Into Richard’s, too, as he would soon grow to appreciate. A glamorous, metropolitan and sophisticated woman such as herself would be a considerable asset to him as he entertained, after all. As for Milo, growing up in a university atmosphere with an internationally feted neuroscientist as his stepfather was bound to have a positive impact on his up-till-now modest academic achievements. He would hardly be able to help becoming a towering genius himself.

  All that remained was to bring Richard round to her plan. Sara decided to devote the rest of the evening to plotting how this might come about and drifted back upstairs to the bath she had abandoned earlier.

  She was irritated to see that Diana’s nine-year-old daughter, who had much too direct a stare for Sara’s liking, was back up there, leaning over the basin with her fat friend. Make-up and brushes were perilously balanced on the top of the loo and along the edges of the tub.

  They seemed to be discussing someone.

  ‘I think he’s nice,’ Rosie was saying. ‘I know Mum thinks so too. She’s been excited about it all day, even though she’s been trying not to show it. And she went all red when he got here, you could see it even under the make-up.’ She chuckled.

  ‘He’s hot,’ the fat teenager opined. ‘For an old person,’ she added, critically.

  They were, Sara deduced, discussing Richard. Her Richard. Indignation mounted within her. ‘Hey,’ she said crossly, storming into the bathroom. ‘I’m having a bath, OK?’

  ‘Sorry, Sara.’ Rosie backed away from the basin immediately. Sara could not help noticing that, even with only one eye made up, the girl already had a fawnish prettiness.

 
‘We thought you’d finished,’ Shanna-Mae said.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t, so scram,’ Sara snapped ungraciously.

  Rosie and Shanna-Mae collected their belongings and went downstairs. They surprised Milo in the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboards.

  ‘What are you doing, Milo?’ Rosie asked calmly.

  He turned, his dark face twisted in a scowl. ‘What’s it to you?’ He squinted to look at her better. ‘And what’s up with your face, anyway? Looks like someone’s punched one of your eyes out.’

  Rosie ignored these last remarks. ‘If you need something in particular, I might be able to help you find it.’

  ‘Looking for the Krispy Kremes,’ Milo snarled, evidently unused to having to explain his actions.

  ‘They’re in the fridge,’ Rosie said. ‘There’s one for each of us.’

  An incredulous grin spread over Milo’s face. His eyes, slightly lopsided, gleamed. ‘No, there isn’t,’ he said. He opened the fridge door, reached for the plate and tore off almost half of a chocolate one with one bite.

  ‘That’s very mean of you,’ Rosie said immediately. ‘They were brought as a present for us and we don’t get things like that very often. Any more,’ she added, as an afterthought.

  Milo looked scornful. ‘So what?’ he demanded. ‘Your mum shouldn’t have walked out on your dad.’

  Rosie was white, her face incredulous. A black fire crackled in her eyes. ‘Stop that!’ she said in a low, dangerous voice.

  Milo merely smirked in reply. ‘Although my mum says that, if your mum had made more of an effort, your dad wouldn’t have started screwing around . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’ Rosie screamed, and launched herself at him. Shanna-Mae, however, was too quick for her. Despite her size, she was unexpectedly fast on her feet and had grabbed Rosie round the waist with her powerful arms. Rosie was held, suspended, above the carpet, kicking and flailing, clawing the air as if to slash the skin from Milo’s face.

  ‘Just ignore ’im,’ Shanna-Mae counselled, shooting a look of disgust at Milo. ‘’E ain’t worth it.’

  Rosie allowed herself to be lowered, shakily, to the ground. With a final glance of loathing at her tormentor, she left the kitchen. Milo looked after them, grinning broadly, his cheeks stuffed with doughnut.

  With Shanna-Mae shuffling after her, Rosie returned to the sitting room. ‘We can do our make-up here,’ she suggested.

  ‘OK,’ Shanna-Mae agreed. Her plump face fell slightly. ‘Shame about them Krispy Kremes. I’ve never had one before.’

  Rosie beamed at her. ‘Never mind, Shanna-Mae. One day, when you have salons across the world, you can have as many Krispy Kremes as you like.’

  Shanna-Mae’s small eyes lit up. ‘Yeah – and have doughnut concessions in all my shops!’

  Rosie giggled. They had just finished unpacking the cosmetics again when Milo entered the sitting room, a half-eaten doughnut in his hand. ‘This is the last one,’ he mocked. ‘Watch me and weep, paupers.’

  With an enormous effort, Rosie ignored him. She and Shanna-Mae began quietly talking to each other about the merits of the various eye shadows spread about them on the carpet.

  Milo paced around them. Furious at being ignored, he began cavorting round the room’s edge, executing huge and violent kicks at unexpected moments. He was clearly doing his best to aggravate her, just as Rosie was doing her best to ignore him. But after the trainered foot came to within a centimetre of her nose, Rosie could bear it no longer.

  She looked up, exasperated. ‘What are you doing, Milo?’ she asked calmly.

  The dark eyes gleamed spitefully. ‘My karate.’

  ‘Just ignore ’im,’ Shanna-Mae urged.

  Eventually Milo ended his physical exertions and lay, sprawled on the floor, with his console, either uttering curses or exclaiming with violent jubilation.

  ‘What are you playing?’ Rosie had tried to ignore him, but it was impossible.

  Shanna-Mae flashed her a warning look.

  ‘High School Slaughter.’ Milo’s narrow eyes sparkled with excitement as he gunned down victim after victim. ‘Die, you bastard,’ he muttered to himself occasionally as he virtually picked off another group of virtual schoolchildren with his virtual AK-47.

  Shanna-Mae and Rosie looked at each other. By mutual consent they rose and returned to the kitchen where they resumed manufacture of the face cream.

  For a while, all was calm. The girls were soon absorbed in their task and it was only once the ingredients had been stirred together and were cooking in a pan on the stove that it occurred to Rosie how uncharacteristically quiet Milo was being.

  Not even the roar of simulated gunfire could be heard any more.

  Shanna-Mae, dipping a finger in the mixture to check the consistency, looked up too. ‘He’s very quiet,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Too quiet,’ Rosie agreed. Their eyes met.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look.’ said Shanna-Mae.

  Upstairs in the bath Sara was staring into the steamy mirrored wall tiles. Was her eyelid about to go next? She bent forward to inspect the newly loose and dangling flap of skin where all before had been taut and perfect. She was falling apart. Everything was falling apart. Richard Black had come into her life only just in time.

  But the plan she had hoped to make, the plot to trap him, was taking its time in coming.

  She had done everything to create a contemplative atmosphere. She had chucked in the water every last drop of some cheap old bath essence she’d found and piled up for post-bath use every towel she had been able to find in the whole house. But inspiration had not struck.

  Sara stared into the mist and stirred her boiling thoughts. What she needed was some excuse to be alone with him. But what? Even if she were to stay here indefinitely in this horrid box of a house, Richard, if ever she saw him, would obviously only be here to see Diana.

  The thought of them together, even now, burned and festered within her. If only, she thought, there was some drama she could stage, some crisis which would bring Diana back and then, somehow, throw Sara and Richard together. But what? A house fire would only result in them all having to go outside – in that scrappy, crappy, little garden. In November.

  Of course! Sara sat up excitedly in the bath. A medical emergency; something small-scale. She could pretend to have broken her ankle and have him take her to A & E . . .

  The fires of excitement accompanying this inspired thought died down again, however. Richard would obviously have had medical training. He might be able to spot a feigned break. Perhaps she could sprain it instead. But Sara drew the line at throwing herself down the stairs, particularly stairs as nasty as Diana’s. She would have to think again.

  Sara was sinking back in her bath when a loud scream from below brought her bolt upright again. The scream repeated itself; there was blood in it, Sara felt – fury and vengeance. And now she could hear someone else as well; it sounded like Milo, yelling in terror: ‘Mum! Muuuuummm!’

  She rose out of the bath, grabbed one of Diana’s towels and plunged downstairs. The noise seemed to be coming from the sitting room, if you could call something that size a room.

  Sara peered round the doorway. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. Had the three of them been painting? They’d covered the whole room, by the look of it.

  Everywhere there were smudges of colour: red, scuffed black, shimmery orange and violet. Blue, sticky varnish decorated the walls, as if it had been thrown there. Seeing a great pool of a greasy beige substance on the carpet, Sara realised that it wasn’t paint – it was make-up; the make-up that Rosie and the fat girl had been using.

  What had happened? Bits of compact lay here and there, broken glass glittering, their hinges wrenched and broken. Squashed tips of lipstick, open tubes of gloss and bent mascara wands were scattered about. Eye pe
ncils and make-up brushes were snapped in two. Nail-polish bottle tops, detached from their bottles, stuck to the sofa cushions.

  The fat teenager was rolling on the floor, screaming. ‘You bastard!’ she was yelling, pounding her fists hard into Milo.

  He was pressed beneath, unable to move, thrashing his head from side to side and shouting. ‘Mum! Muuuuuum!’

  ‘That’s right,’ the fat girl cried hysterically. ‘Shout for Mummy, why don’t you? Coward!’ She punched him again and Milo screamed anew.

  Sara stepped into the middle of the floor. ‘Just what is going on?’ she shrieked. She lunged at Shanna-Mae with one hand, hanging on to her towel with the other. ‘Leave my son alone, you great bully!’

  She was aware that someone had taken her arm and was shaking it. She looked up and found herself staring into the wild gaze of Rosie.

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Mrs Oopvard,’ panted the little girl. ‘Milo’s done something really terrible. While we were in the kitchen, he took all Shanna-Mae’s make-up and wiped it everywhere. He’s destroyed everything she had. She saved for it for years; it’s everything to her . . .’

  Sara stared around, briefly awed herself by the extent of the wreckage. That Milo could unleash such chaos was impressive even by his standards. She gazed at her son, red-faced, rolling out from under Shanna-Mae who now stood up and, head in hands, sank on the sofa and began to sob bitterly.

  Milo was loudly protesting his innocence. ‘She hit me, Mum . . .’ he whimpered.