After the Truth (Book One)

Seven

'What's the chance of an upgrade?' Evelyn asked coyly whenwe checked in for our flight the next morning. An hour and a half earlier we had greeted each other in the hotel, as I sat down for breakfast at her table. When she saw me there was no hint of any awkwardness due to events of the night before.

'I work for the World Health Organisation and have spent the last five days treating a five-year-old boy with a very rare condition. I saved his life, but I am very tired and desperate for some rest on the flight.'

'You are unbelievable.'

'I've told you before, it's always worth trying it on. You'd be amazed how many times I get lucky,' she said and drifted off to do some shopping.

An abiding memory of Jeremiah's birthday a few days later, is standing in my back garden watching the chaos of children high on sugar and party excitement. They seemed to be running in all possible directions at once. Jeremiah, as the birthday boy, had chosen hide-and-seek as a game to play, it was his favourite. Unusually for him he had chosen to be the searcher, but he had done well and had found virtually all his guests. From what I could see as I stood on the veranda, there was only Samuel and Emiko to find. All the children Jeremiah had already found had been press ganged into an ever more frantic search.

Emiko was Hiro's youngest. She was the same age as Jeremiah. His eldest, Isamu was ten and, after some initial hesitation at the other children being younger than him, was now an active member of the search party.

'Where are they hiding?' Hiro asked as he emerged from the kitchen door with a coffee in hand.

'I thought Jeremiah said the rules were for everyone to hide only in the back garden.'

'When Samuel and Emiko first hid in the passage I went over and said the very same thing. Samuel's reasoning is that over that gate isn't the front garden as there is another gate to the front of the house. Therefore, since no one ever speaks of us having a side garden, if he and Emiko aren't in the front garden they must be in the back garden.'

'Logic that would make Aristotle turn in his grave, I imagine,' Hiro said with a smile.

'The truth is always open to interpretation,' Evelyn said as she emerged with a glass of chardonnay.

I thought briefly of our night in Rio. She wore only a casual jumper and jeans, but they showed the curves of her slim body and I could not resist looking at her hips as she walked towards us. She did not have any children, but she was a friend of the family and Isabel had invited her when Evelyn dropped me off after our return from Rio. I wasn't nervous or guilty about Evelyn being at Jeremiah's party. I could trust her not to expose the truth.

Jeremiah and two of his school friends came towards us and looked for the second time amongst the bush shrubs that separate the veranda from the lawn. They worked their way along the back of the house towards the gate and eventually Jeremiah looked over to discover his brother and Emiko. A noisy argument on breaking the rules ensued and Samuel again espoused his logic. His brother was not as understanding as I was and Jeremiah shunned Samuel and Emiko, telling them they couldn't play the next game, which was football.

Hiro's phone rang as Samuel began to complain to me for adjudication on his brother's unfairness.

Hiro looked at both me and Evelyn, telling whoever was on the other end of the call that we were both with him already. I knew there had been another DDD case reported.

The case described on that phone call has gone down in history and still echoes even today.

At the time, the only significant fact for Hiro, Evelyn and myself was that it was not a solitary death. This time there was eight victims: a cluster.

A cluster could provide information on the method of transmission. We could at last learn the common cause for the deaths. This cluster could very well be the breakthrough we needed.

It was all these things, but the answers we learnt were nothing we had expected.

When Hiro finished the call he relayed the details of the victims. The cluster was in California, it was a horrible tragedy to find out all but one of the eight victims were children, aged seventeen or eighteen. The remaining case was a man in his twenties, the children's education leader.

The three of us stood in silence for several minutes as we watched my sons and their friends playing. I watched Jeremiah kicking the football and I watched Samuel, who had sensed I did not want to talk, playing with Emiko. I know Hiro had the same thoughts I had as we stood silently.

Many of the leaders I will face tomorrow still refuse to believe the answers I learnt in California.