‘Don’t worry,’ Dr Chan smiled warmly. ‘Everything’s already been approved in advance. They can’t film anyone who hasn’t given their written permission. And Zander has his own room – you’ll be perfectly private – I promise you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’ She smiled again and continued. Bee followed her down the corridor towards a lift. The second floor was more modernized than the ground floor, looked more like a hospital and less like a boarding school.
‘OK. This is it.’ They stopped outside a door. ‘This is Zander’s room. Ready?’
Bee tugged at her polo neck and smoothed her hair and wiped her sweaty palms against her gabardine trousers. Her heart was racing so fast she thought she might be having one of her panic attacks.
After twelve years of guilt and thinking and imagining and planning and hoping, this was it. Finally. She was going to meet Zander. Jesus. She wasgoing to meet Zander.In a few seconds she’d be in a room with Zander, looking into his eyes.
What was she going to see in them?
She was terrified.
She took a deep breath.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes. I’m ready.’
23
The room was small and sunny and modern. There was a TV in one corner, a Playstation and a computer, and posters on the wall. It was the bedroom of a normal young boy. Except for the hydraulic bed and the smell of disinfectant in the air.
‘Zander. Good morning,’ Dr Chan said, breezily.
A very small boy turned to face them from the computer he’d been working at. He had dead-straight brown hair cut in an unflattering style that covered half of his face. He was wearing glasses and a too-large checked shirt. But he had a delicate face, a finely sculpted nose sprinkled with freckles and wide-set, piercing blue eyes.
‘Good morning, Dr Chan,’ he said, glancing at Bee momentarily before turning back to his computer.
‘You’ve got a visitor, Zander.’
Bee arranged her face into what she hoped might look like a non-threatening expression, but all her facial muscles felt tight and unyielding.
‘This is Belinda, your auntie,’ continued Dr Chan, ‘remember? We’ve talked about Belinda?’
‘Yes, Dr Chan. I remember talking about Belinda.’
‘Belinda’s come all the way from London, just to see you. Don’t you think it would be polite to at least say hello?’
He turned slowly in his chair and eyed Bee up.
Bee’s heart missed a beat and then started racing again. She’d been expecting him to be fragile, vulnerable, sad. But this boy looked so … strong. So assured. So cold. He didn’t look like a child. He looked like an adult.
‘Hello, Belinda,’ he said sarcastically, and then turned away again.
‘Zander …’ Dr Chan began.
Bee put her hand out and touched her arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ she mouthed. And then she walked towards Zander and sat on the edge of his bed, within his range of vision. There was a slick of sweat on her upper lip and she could feel a dampness under her arms. ‘Hi, Zander,’ she began, ‘what are you doing?’ She indicated the screen with her eyes.
‘I’m researching Robert K. Meyer’s inconsistent arithmetical theory.’
‘Aaah,’ said Bee, ‘right.’
‘Yes, you see, Meyer was more interested in the fate of a consistent theory, but there proved to be a whole class of inconsistent arithmetical theories; Meyer and Mortensen in 1984, for example. Meyer argued that these theories provide the basis for a revived Hilbert Program.’
‘Aah.’
‘Yes. Hilbert’s program was widely held to have been seriously damaged by Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem, according to which the consistency of arithmetic was unprovable within arithmetic itself. But a consequence of Meyer’s construction was that within his arithmetic …’
