Chapter 17: Arrivals

It was early Monday week when Kay and I returned to London, in the eerie silence of the early hours of the morning, hoping to beat the usual commuter traffic. Marjorie had personally arranged for police patrols to look around the area immediately before we were due to arrive, Marjorie and her girlfriend had personally scoured the flat’s garage area and both public and private access points to ensure there were no personnel lurking around or camera devices monitoring the area. Sparky had already searched the area the previous Sunday, using a transmitter detector he had acquired to check the area for any bugs.

We drove in using one of Kay’s family-owned Range Rovers and managed to make it without detection. Monty came up from his flat to give me another monitoring check and gave me thumbs up for the operation early on Tuesday morning.

During Monday we checked over the facilities in the operating theatre and recovery room and found that Monty and Madge had everything looking spotless. We had already cleared out one of the Oligarch’s accommodation flats at that deep basement level in the months before and, to avoid turning on any lights in our flat, we moved into that fully stocked flat on that Monday morning, knowing that we would probably spend a few weeks down there should the hoo-ha over the twins’ birth continue to rage overhead.

Kay’s former flatmates, all involved in nursing, were all prepared for the birthing. Madge the retired anaesthetist and Monty the surgeon were ready when we all got together at about 6am Tuesday morning.

Andi Smythe was present in the theatre, all scrubbed up, with a hand-held camera as well as the existing CCTV that had thoughtfully been installed at the outset by the unknown Russian. Since the previous Saturday and Sunday week, when Andi shot hundreds of still photos and several hours of interviews with me, Andi had been sending out daily half-hour broadcasts, using voiceovers she had recorded of me remotely from the studio. She had checked out the studio on the Monday, using my keys and fob to get into the basement. She reported back that the equipment was top quality and still licensed from the suppliers and she got all the programs uploaded. Then she worked out how to use it all. I expect she may have had to call acquaintances she had made contact with in the photo journalism world to work out unfamiliar elements of the work but however she did it the daily half-hour to an hour broadcasts looked informative and the way the various clips had been strung together gave if a personal touch.

We all sat down to watch the first draft edition before she released it and it looked very professional, so we told her to press the button and broadcast it. It took the world by storm and within the first two days she had 30 million subscribers keen to keen the videos as they were issued, and the internet crashed. Apparently world governments took measures to close everything else down so by Friday of the first week she was recording 300 million views within minutes of each release, while the earlier ones were continually picking up new viewers.

The twins had constantly been monitored throughout the pregnancy and they seemed to be progressing well. But they were getting really big, big enough to survive on their own, Monty said, and there was no way for them to be born without the caesarean section.

While the initial operation was happening, once the babies had been removed from the womb I was going to be the subject of a caesarean hysterectomy, where the womb and fallopian tubes would be completely removed.

Monty proposed leaving the ovaries if they were healthy, otherwise they would also be removed. Nowadays c-sections are so slick that the mother can still be awake and immediately interact with her babies. Because of the hysterectomy and the possible complications of the host being a man, Monty advised a general anaesthetic, so I wouldn’t be able to see the birth, but by being out of it, ably kept under by Madge’s steady administrations, it would give the operating team more time if there were unexpected complications.

So, I can’t really say much about the actual birth, although Andi keeps reminding me, if you subscribe to her channel you can still see it all in living colour. Just forgive me if I insist that there is nothing at all that would ever compel me to watch it myself!

Kay, along with everyone else, did tell me that the birth of the two boys was quite straightforward, both falling into the just over 2.5kg category, being 2.51kg and 2.53kg each, with one slightly taller, 47.2 cm and 46.9cm respectively.