Free CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) by Emma Lorant Page A

the bed. She felt exhilarated, unwilling to go to sleep. ‘I did think that tiresome Parslow was holding something back. Perhaps he saw some sort of shadowing.’
    She hoped that’s what it was. Instinct told her there was more to it than that, that Parslow had identified something, but hadn’t recognised its significance. But still - so what? She had her twins, healthy and strong. Nothing else mattered.
    ‘D’you really think you might be carrying another baby? Is it possible for one to be born later?’
    ‘I looked it up when I was doing my researches,’ Lisa explained. ‘It’s happened in the past. Quite rarely, of course, but twins have been born one or two weeks apart. If that can happen with twins, presumably it can also happen with triplets.’
    Alec wasn’t smiling now. ‘I certainly hope you’ve got that wrong,’ he said. ‘We planned a family of two.’
    You may have, Lisa thought coldly to herself. I planned on rather more.

CHAPTER 7
    Lisa was lying on the couch in her conservatory, revelling in the luxury of having some time entirely to herself. The twins were sleeping in their prams beside her, and Seb was still at Meg’s. She had, she thought, about half an hour before he was due back.
    ‘Don’t you at least need a home help?’ Alec had nagged at Lisa several times in the last few days.
    ‘I’m managing extremely well,’ she’d snapped at him, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. ‘Rita gives the babies their bath, and I don’t want anyone else around them, spreading germs. Lucky it’s such torpid weather; I don’t even need to dress them most of the time. And God bless Pampers!’
    Help, Lisa felt, meant someone constantly about, someone she’d feel obliged to talk to, someone who’d want to chat over coffee and biscuits, require regular cups of tea. Lisa preferred her own way of coping. She knew that Meg managed a much larger family and her chickens and goats. For the moment Lisa wanted as little interference as she could get away with. There was a sense, she realised vaguely, of not wanting to be spied on.
    Alec’s returning interest in her body was a different issue. Something impelled her to try to keep him away for the time being, though why she felt this she couldn’t really understand. There was, after all, no longer any reason for it. She shelved the problem neatly by insisting he help her with the two o’clock morning feed. As she’d worked out, that knocked him out.
    In any case he wasn’t at home all that often. The launch of Multiplier, due around the time of the twins’ birthday, had unexpectedly been postponed. The delay had infuriated Alec. All his hard work, all the time he’d spent, were wasted. Flaxton, overwhelmed with pre launch orders of what promised to be an even more commercially important fertiliser than Doubler, needed Alec’s presence both in Bristol and in London.
    ‘And d’you really have to go on wearing that awful gear?’ Alec had demanded several times, exasperated.
    For some reason she could not explain even to herself Lisa continued to wear her maternity clothes. The bump, she had to admit when she examined her body in the bath, though marginally there, was flattening rapidly. Was she disturbed, suffering from post-partum depression? Did her conviction that another child would soon appear mean some sort of mental illness? She’d heard of women becoming psychotic after childbirth. Was that why she was so irritable with Alec, so on edge? Perhaps she’d ask Meg for some of the valerian tea she’d always sworn by.
    ‘Drugs do be addictive.’ Meg had shaken her head sagely when Lisa had brought the subject up. ‘I grow they roots right in me own garden. Stands to reason them got to be better for yer.’
    The sound of crunching gravel on the drive shook Lisa out of her thoughts. Probably Meg already. She walked to the conservatory door and saw Meg and Sebastian, hand in hand, coming towards her. Seb was sobbing, wiping his eyes. He