Free No Escape by Hilary Norman Page B

herself.
    Hanging on to ignorance with all his might.
    It was a blur after that, several days of phone calls from the London flat, of trying to keep Jack occupied and reassured, of doctors’ and hospital waiting rooms with out-of-date magazines
and well-mannered, wretched patients and families. Of consulting rooms and X-ray departments and laboratories, with poor, uncomplaining Jack being poked and prodded and asked to walk and sit and
stand – to
perform
, Lizzie felt, with impotent rage – by a series of men and women in suits and white coats. They saw a paediatric neurologist and an orthopaedic consultant and a
geneticist, and Lizzie and Christopher were quizzed, their own questions responded to, dozens of facts and statistics and advice presented to them.
    And, somewhere amidst all that, the diagnosis, handed down like the sentence Lizzie had been waiting for since Christine Connor had asked her into her office.
    Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Bestowed on Jack by a faulty gene carried on the X-chromosome. The female chromosome.
    Given to him, in other words, by his mother.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Lizzie had said, much later that last endless day-into-night, back in Marlow. ‘How can it
be
? There’s no family
history. Is there?’
    She had thrown the last question at her mother, who had driven from London earlier to help Gilly with Edward and Sophie.
    ‘Not as far as I know,’ Angela said, feeling – not inaccurately – under attack.
    All three children were asleep upstairs, Jack through sheer exhaustion, and Gilly had gone home a while ago to her flat in Maidenhead, and the other adults were in the drawing room, slumped in
front of the log fire which crackled and glowed as usual, but seemed, just then, to give off none of its normal warmth or comfort.
    ‘What about your brother?’ Lizzie asked.
    She had known, for as long as she could remember, that there had been an uncle named James who had died very young, but Angela had told Lizzie years ago that she’d never known exactly what
her brother had died of, because her parents – both gone now too – had never seemed to want to talk to her about it.
    ‘Could it have been this?’ Lizzie pressed.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Angela was white-faced. ‘I suppose it could.’
    ‘Please find out.’ Lizzie knew she sounded harsh, could not help herself.
    ‘Really?’ Angela asked.
    ‘Of course, really.’
    ‘Will it make a difference?’ Angela asked. ‘Knowing that?’
    ‘No.’ It was Christopher who answered. ‘No difference. Not to Jack.’
    Lizzie looked at him, wildness in her eyes. ‘But maybe they’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Maybe what James died of was something
like
this, but not
actually
it. It
might be something they’ve found a cure for since then.’
    ‘They’re not wrong, Lizzie,’ Christopher told her, very gently. ‘And though there very well may be a cure in time, there isn’t one yet.’
    For a long moment, just then, Lizzie had hated him with all her might.
    As she had, earlier, found herself filled with hatred for Anna Mellor.
    ‘I went to her two
years
ago,’ she’d said to Christopher, in the geneticist’s waiting room. ‘I
asked
her if he was all right, and she said he was
fine, that it was nothing to worry about.’
    Christopher had told her that he’d telephoned Anna a little while ago, while Lizzie had been in the loo with Jack, to ask her that very question, and Anna had said she’d thought of
DMD right away and had examined Jack’s calves for the enlargement that was often an early warning sign in toddlers.
    ‘She said his legs seemed normal,’ Christopher had told Lizzie, ‘which was a great relief.’
    ‘I’m glad Anna was relieved,’ Lizzie had said with venom.
    ‘She’s very upset for us all,’ Christopher had told her, and then added, with quiet but vast pain: ‘I didn’t see it either, Lizzie, or if I did, I chose not
to.’
    ‘
Did
you?’ she had asked him, quickly, violently. ‘Did