Alex offered a quiet laugh. He knew Amel was a great scientist, and yet a believer too. Long talks had revealed him to be a complex man, and Alex respected Amel’s views—though they were not his own. He had suggested that Allah watched with humor as they all tried to gain clues to the immense secrets of his universe—that he watched their progress like an indulgent father—Darwin, the lot. For Amel, God and Science were not opponents. Science just gave them some of the tools to find their own godlike powers. And they had a long way to go, Amel said.

Alex looked up at his kind, wise face. He would be happy to have him there on Friday. It would help, somehow.

9

CRABTREE LANE RAN DOWN TO THE RIVER, AND ON WEEKENDS IT WAS A little haven of peace that, spiritually, moved it miles from its relative centrality in the capital. On this chilly October night there was just a hint of mist settling on the water’s edge. Alex parked his car outside a period cottage, which had been witness to the amorous excursions of Charles II, when he brought one mistress or another up the Thames more than three hundred years earlier. With a little help from their parents to get the deposit, he and Anna had bought the house opposite eight years before, when Anna was pregnant with Max. It was handy for work and close to the water, which he loved, but it also had a country feel that his wife had been enchanted by. Mother and son had remained, and at least occasionally Alex wished that all three—Anna, Max, and the house with the two pretty trees—were still his to come home to. It wasn’t that he hadn’t appreciated them before. But his life as a doctor in organ donation and research demanded dedication and countless hours, which he gave; and he hadn’t noticed his home life steadily eroding without the attention due to a young wife and baby son. She was never especially vindictive about it, never even held him personally to blame for what she knew he couldn’t change; but one day they had woken up to find their relationship had passed them by. There was not too much hostility, or fighting about custody or maintenance, but a residual sadness that two intelligent people couldn’t avoid the pitfalls of a career that would come second to nothing.

Max was tall for his age, with hazel-green eyes that were similar to his father’s. He pounced on the door when Alex rang the bell to collect him for the weekend.

“I’ve got to show you something amazing!” He started to drag his father up the stairs before he could get his coat off in the hall. “I’ve been playing with the new Sims you brought me back. You won’t believe what they’re doing, Daddy.”