Note: The story featured here will be changed at the beginning of every month, when the old story will get archived in the Fiction category.

THE PERFECT CHILD

They’d been planning it for years. Their perfect child. They worked out each evening in the gym in the basement of their house; each morning they woke up early to solve a Sudoku over breakfast. When she finally became pregnant, she played Mozart to the foetus in her womb.

They didn’t mind all the tests; in truth, they rather looked forward to them. On the pinboard in the kitchen, they hung charts. Every calorie they ate, not a blueberry went unrecorded. No alcohol, of course. And they broke off all contact with any friends who smoked. They placed grandmother into a rest home so they could turn her granny flat into a nursery.

Then one day the doctor called them to her surgery. She was a woman who didn’t mince words.

“There’s a problem, I’m afraid.”

“A problem?”

“Down syndrome.”

A pause. “That isn’t possible.”

“We can do more tests. But they seem conclusive.”

“But this can’t happen to us. We’ve been so careful.”

“Many parents say that having a Down child has been the most rewarding experience in their lives,” the doctor said. “Down children are very loving. But of course the decision is yours.”

The husband didn’t say a word as he drove them back home. He went straight down to the basement. She could hear him smashing up the equipment in the gym.

At length she appeared at the door, blood streaming down her legs. “It’s OK, honey, I killed it. I used a knitting needle grandma left behind. Could you drive me to the hospital, please?”

Two weeks later they bought a puppy. A Japanese akita, one of the most expensive breeds on the market. That night they gathered as a family around the restored Victorian hearth and listened to Mozart.

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