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So why did my instincts drive me to a course of action that ultimately sabotaged the opportunity? The first-level answer was obvious. They were telling me not to proceed. But why? I identified three possibilities.

1. I was afraid that I would fail to perform sexually.

It did not take long to dismiss this possibility. I might well have been less competent than a more experienced person and could even have been rendered impotent by fear, though I considered this unlikely. But I was accustomed to being embarrassed, even in front of Rosie. The sexual drive was much stronger than any requirement to protect my image.

2. No condom.

I realised, on reflection, that Rosie had probably assumed that I had left her room to collect or purchase a condom. Obviously I should have obtained one, in line with all recommendations on safe sex, and presumably the concierge would have some for emergencies, along with spare toothbrushes and razors. The fact that I did not do so was further evidence that subconsciously I did not expect to proceed. Gene had once told me a story about racing around Cairo in a taxi trying to find a condom vendor. My motivation had clearly not been as strong.

3. I could not deal with the emotional consequences.

The third possibility only entered my mind after I eliminated the first and second. I immediately knew – instinctively! – that it was the correct one. My brain was already emotionally overloaded. It was not the death-defying climb from the surgeon’s window or the memory of being interrogated in a dark cellar by a bearded psychiatrist who would stop at nothing to protect his secret. It was not even the experience of holding Rosie’s hand from the museum to the subway, although that was a contributor. It was the total experience of hanging out with Rosie in New York.

My instincts were telling me that if I added any more to this experience – if I added the literally mind-blowing experience of having sex with her – my emotions would take over my brain. And they would drive me towards a relationship with Rosie. That would be a disaster for two reasons. The first was that she was totally unsuitable in the longer term. The second was that she had made it clear that such a relationship would not extend beyond our time in New York. These reasons were completely contradictory, mutually exclusive and based on entirely different premises. I had no idea which one was correct.

We were in the final stages of our descent into LAX. I turned to Rosie. It had been several hours since she asked her question, and I had now given it considerable thought. How was I feeling?

‘Confused,’ I said to her.

I expected her to have forgotten the question, but perhaps the answer made sense in any case.

‘Welcome to the real world.’

I managed to stay awake for the first six hours of the fifteen-hour flight home from LA in order to reset my internal clock, but it was difficult.

Rosie had slept for a few hours then watched a movie. I looked over, and saw that she was crying. She removed her headphones and wiped her eyes.

‘You’re crying,’ I said. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Sprung,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s just a sad story. Bridges of Madison County. I presume you don’t cry at movies.’

‘Correct.’ I realised that this might be viewed as a negative, so added, in defence, ‘It seems to be a predominantly female behaviour.’

‘Thanks for that.’ Rosie went quiet again but seemed to have recovered from the sadness that the movie had stimulated.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘do you feel anything when you watch a movie? You’ve seen Casablanca?’

I was familiar with this question. Gene and Claudia had asked it after we watched a DVD together. So my answer was the result of reflection.

‘I’ve seen several romantic movies. The answer is no. Unlike Gene and Claudia, and apparently the majority of the human race, I am not emotionally affected by love stories. I don’t appear to be wired for that response.’

I visited Claudia and Gene for dinner on the Sunday night. I was feeling unusually jet-lagged, and as a result had some difficulty in providing a coherent account of the trip. I tried to talk about my meeting with David Borenstein at Columbia, what I saw at the museums and the meal at Momofuku Ko, but they were obsessed with grilling me about my interactions with Rosie. I could not reasonably be expected to remember every detail. And obviously I could not talk about the Father Project activities.

Claudia was very pleased with the scarf, but it provided another opportunity for interrogation. ‘Did Rosie help you choose this?’

Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.

‘The sales assistant recommended it. It was very straightforward.’

As I left, Claudia said, ‘So, Don, are you planning to see Rosie again?’

‘Next Saturday,’ I said, truthfully, not bothering to tell her that it was not a social occasion – we had scheduled the afternoon to analyse the DNA.

She seemed satisfied.

I was eating lunch alone in the University Club, reviewing the Father Project file, when Gene arrived with his meal and a glass of wine and sat opposite me. I tried to put the file away, but succeeded only in giving him the correct impression that I was trying to hide something. Gene suddenly looked over at the service counter, behind me.

‘Oh God!’ he said.

I turned to look and Gene snatched the folder, laughing.

‘That’s private,’ I said, but Gene had opened it. The photo of the graduating class was on top.

Gene seemed genuinely surprised. ‘My God. Where did you get this?’ He was studying the photo intently. ‘It must be thirty years old. What’s all the scribble?’

‘Organising a reunion,’ I said. ‘Helping a friend. Weeks ago.’ It was a good answer, considering the short time I had to formulate it, but it did have a major defect. Gene detected it.

‘A friend? Right. One of your many friends. You should have invited me.’

‘Why?’

‘Who do you think took the photo?’

Of course. Someone had been required to take the photo. I was too stunned to speak.

‘I was the only outsider,’ said Gene. ‘The genetics tutor. Big night – everyone pumped, no partners. Hottest ticket in town.’

Gene pointed to a face in the photo. I had always focused on the males, and never looked for Rosie’s mother. But now that Gene was pointing to her, she was easy to identify. The resemblance was obvious, including the red hair, although the colour was less dramatic than Rosie’s. She was standing between Isaac Esler and Geoffrey Case. As in Isaac Esler’s wedding photo, Case was smiling broadly.

‘Bernadette O’Connor.’ Gene sipped his wine. ‘Irish.’

I was familiar with the tone of Gene’s statement. There was a reason for him remembering this particular woman, and it was not because she was Rosie’s mother. In fact, it seemed that he didn’t know the connection, and I made a quick decision not to inform him.

His finger moved one space to the left.

‘Geoffrey Case. Not a great return on his tuition fees.’

‘He died, correct?’

‘Killed himself.’

This was new information. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Gene. ‘Come on, what’s this about?’

I ignored the question. ‘Why did he do it?’

‘Probably forgot to take his lithium,’ said Gene. ‘He had bipolar disorder. Life of the party on a good day.’ He looked at me. I assumed he was about to interrogate me as to the reason for my interest in Geoffrey Case and the reunion, and I was thinking frantically to invent a plausible explanation. I was saved by an empty pepper grinder. Gene gave it a twist, then walked away to exchange it. I used a table napkin to swab his wine glass and left before he returned.

29

I cycled to the university on Saturday morning with an unidentifiable, and therefore disconcerting, emotion. Things were settling back into their normal pattern. The day’s testing would mark the end of the Father Project. At worst, Rosie might find a person that we had overlooked – another tutor or caterer or perhaps someone who had left the party early – but a single additional test would not take long. And I would have no reason to see Rosie again.

We met at the lab. There were three samples to test: the swab from Isaac Esler’s fork, a urine sample on toilet paper from Freyberg’s floor, and Gene’s table napkin. I had still not told Rosie about the handkerchief from Margaret Case, but was anxious to get a result on Gene’s sample. There was a strong possibility that Gene was Rosie’s father. I tried not to think about it, but it was consistent with Gene’s reaction to the photo, his identification of Rosie’s mother and his history of casual sex.

‘What’s the napkin?’ asked Rosie.

I was expecting this question.

‘Retest. One of the earlier samples was contaminated.’

My improving ability at deception was not enough to fool Rosie. ‘Bullshit. Who is it? It’s Case, isn’t it? You got a sample for Geoffrey Case.’

It would have been easy to say yes but identifying the sample as Case’s would create great confusion if it tested positive. A web of lies.

‘I’ll tell you if it’s the one,’ I said.

‘Tell me now,’ said Rosie. ‘It is the one.’

‘How can you know?’

‘I just know.’

‘You have zero evidence. Isaac Esler’s story makes him an excellent candidate. He was committed to getting married to someone else right after the party. He admits to being drunk. He was evasive at dinner. He’s standing next to your mother in the photo.’

This was something we had not discussed before. It was such an obvious thing to have checked. Gene had once given me an exercise to do at conferences: ‘If you want to know who’s sleeping with who, just look at who they sit with at breakfast.’ Whoever Rosie’s mother had been with that night would likely be standing next to her. Unless of course he was required to take the photo.

‘My intuition versus your logic. Wanna bet?’

It would have been unfair to take the bet. I had the advantage of the knowledge from the basement encounter. Realistically, I considered Isaac Esler, Gene and Geoffrey Case to be equally likely. I had mulled over Esler’s reference to ‘people involved’ and concluded that it was ambiguous. He might have been protecting his friend but he could equally have been hiding behind him. Though, if Esler was not himself the father, he could simply have told me to test his sample. Perhaps his plan was to confuse me, in which case it had succeeded, but only temporarily. Esler’s deceptive behaviour had caused me to review an earlier decision. If we reached a point where we had eliminated all other candidates, including Esler, I would test the sample I had collected from Margaret Case.

‘Anyway it’s definitely not Freyberg,’ said Rosie, interrupting my thinking.

‘Why not?’ Freyberg was the least likely, but certainly not impossible.

‘Green eyes. I should have thought of it at the time.’

She interpreted my expression correctly: disbelief.

‘Come on, you’re the geneticist. He’s got green eyes so he can’t be my father. I checked it on the internet.’

Amazing. She retains a professor of genetics, an alien of extraordinary abilities, to help find her father, she travels for a week spending almost every minute of the waking day with him, yet when she wants the answer to a question on genetics she goes to the internet.

‘Those models are simplifications.’

‘Don, my mother had blue eyes. I have brown eyes. My real father had to have brown eyes, right?’

‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘Highly likely but not certain. The genetics of eye colour are extremely complex. Green is possible. Also blue.’

‘A medical student – a doctor – would know that, wouldn’t she?’

Rosie was obviously referring to her mother. I thought it was probably not the right time to give Rosie a detailed account of the deficiencies in medical education.

I just said, ‘Highly unlikely. Gene used to teach genetics to medical students. That’s a typical Gene simplification.’

‘Fuck Gene,’ said Rosie. ‘I am so over Gene. Just test the napkin. It’s the one.’ But she sounded less sure.

‘What are you going to do when you find out?’

This question should have been asked earlier. Failure to raise it was another result of lack of planning but, now that I could picture Gene as the father, Rosie’s future actions became more relevant to me.

‘Funny you should ask,’ said Rosie. ‘I said it was about closure. But I think, subconsciously, I had this fantasy that my real father would come riding in and … deal with Phil.’

‘For failing to keep the Disneyland promise? It would surely be difficult to devise a suitable punishment after so much time.’

‘I said it was a fantasy,’ she said. ‘I saw him as some sort of hero. But now I know it’s one of three people, and I’ve met two of them. Isaac Esler: “We must not revisit the past lightly.” Max Freyberg: “I consider myself a restorer of self-esteem.” Wankers, both of them. Just weak guys who ran away.’

The lack of logic here was astounding. At most, one of them had deserted her.

‘Geoffrey Case …’ I began, thinking Rosie’s characterisation would not apply to him, but if Rosie knew about the manner of his death she might interpret it as a means of escaping his responsibilities.

‘I know, I know. But if it turns out to be someone else, some middle-aged guy who’s pretending to be something he isn’t, then time’s up, arsehole.’

‘You’re planning to expose him?’ I asked, horrified. Suddenly it struck me that I could be involved in causing great pain to someone, very possibly my best friend. To his whole family! Rosie’s mother had not wanted Rosie to know. Perhaps this was why. By default, Rosie’s mother knew more about human behaviour than I did.

‘Correct.’

‘But you’ll be inflicting pain. For no compensatory gain.’

‘I’ll feel better.’

‘Incorrect,’ I said. ‘Research shows that revenge adds to the distress of the victim –’

‘That’s my choice.’

There was the possibility that Rosie’s father was Geoffrey Case, in which case all three samples would test negative, and it would be too late for Rosie to wreak her revenge. I did not want to rely on that possibility.

I turned off the machine.

‘Stop,’ said Rosie. ‘I have a right to know.’

‘Not if it causes suffering.’

‘What about me?’ she said. ‘Don’t you care about me?’ She was becoming emotional. I felt very calm. Reason was in control again. My thoughts were straight.

‘I care about you enormously. So I can’t contribute to you doing something immoral.’

‘Don, if you don’t do the test, I’m never going to speak to you again. Ever.’

This information was painful to process, but rationally entirely predictable.

‘I’d assumed that was inevitable,’ I said. ‘The project will be complete, and you’ve indicated no further interest in the sexual aspect.’

‘So it’s my fault?’ said Rosie. ‘Of course it’s my fault. I’m not a fucking non-smoking teetotal chef with a PhD. I’m not organised.’

‘I’ve deleted the non-drinking requirement.’ I realised that she was referring to the Wife Project. But what was she saying? That she was evaluating herself according to the criteria of the Wife Project? Which meant –