CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) Read Online Free PDF Page B

at her shrewdly, face to face. ‘Frank be just like any other man,’ she’d said, shrugging. ‘But him never did cause me no trouble.’
    That hadn’t been what had worried Meg, then. Presumably she focused her worries on Phyllis’s foot. She did seem oddly anxious about that.
    Alec’s lips were on Lisa’s, eager and pressing. ‘You’re choking me,’ she spluttered, gasps of coughing successfully wrenching her out of his arms. ‘I think I must be getting a cold.’
    Startled, annoyed, he lifted his head away from his wife’s explosive hacking without, however, releasing her.
    ‘It’s all that ridiculous composting you’ve decided to go in for,’ his voice hissed in her ear. ‘You overdo it, and then you complain you’re tired or not feeling well.’
    The coughing eased and he reached towards his groin, his lips flirting now, caressing her ears, her hair, her eyelids. She struggled, heaved against him, began to cough in earnest.
    He let her go, climbed over her to his side of the bed, reached his hand out to turn off the light, and pulled the duvet away from her to spread over himself. Lisa lay back, recovering her breath.
    ‘You really are becoming tricky, Lisa. I never know where I am with you.’
    ‘It’s just a cold,’ she murmured, putting out her hand. ‘It’s brought on by a virus. Nothing to do with making compost.’
    Her husband turned away from her. The silence from the other side of the bed made her uncomfortable. It stirred her imagination yet again. Alec, she knew, could have lived quite happily without any children. Now that he had a son she sensed he felt that was all he needed. He was prepared to tolerate one sibling for Seb. She was clear he wouldn’t put up with more than that.
    ‘’Night,’ she purred. ‘I expect it was just the nightmare. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’
    ‘I’ll get Saunders in to stack the compost for you, if you insist on making it,’ Alec announced. ‘You’d think Doubler would be good enough for you. You can even have a go at Multiplier, if you want.’ He heaved the duvet up and down. ‘You’re not Meg Graftley, you know. She’s got the muscles for all that. You haven’t. I wish you’d bear that in mind.’
    Listening to her husband’s deep breaths of sleep Lisa felt isolated, unsure. What was wrong with her? Why was she causing trouble? She now had everything she’d always dreamed of. A healthy son, a comfortable country house set in idyllic surroundings, another baby on the way, a perfectly good husband doing well in his profession. What else could she possibly want?
    A large family. Lisa wanted a family like Meg’s - half a dozen children, company for each other, tumbling over the house. She wanted nothing more than to be an earth mother.
    The four-leaf clover appeared in her mind again. Four leaves erupting from a single stem. One for hope, one for faith, one for love - and the last one for luck, as the saying went.
    ‘It’ll bring me luck,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I know it will bring me luck.’

CHAPTER 4
    Ian Parslow, the obstetrician at the Bristol Infirmary, was no less condescending than the one Lisa had consulted at the Hammersmith. She wondered vaguely why he had such a good reputation in the Bristol area.
    ‘We’re actually looking at the ultrasound, Mrs Wildmore,’ he was telling her, an edge of irritability creeping through the bedside manner. ‘You can see for yourself - one baby!’
    He showed them both how they could tell it was a boy. Lisa, used to graphic representation, immediately caught on. Parslow smiled knowingly at Alec who was doing his best to decipher the vague blurred impressions. ‘You can’t always see, but he is lying exactly right.’
    Was she imagining it, or was Parslow looking rather intently at the monitor? It was impossible to say, but Lisa sensed the man holding back. Her instincts told her that her new pregnancy was different from her first. She tried to imprint the pictures on her brain,