Flesh and Blood by Simon Cheshire

laptop, Dad chucklingat
EastEnders
. When the truth dawned on me, it felt like running into a brick wall.
    The changes in their behaviour had reminded me of some aspects of what we’d been told to look out for in our friends, when they did the warning-us-off-drugs thing at school. I didn’t for one second think that Mum and Dad were getting hold of anything illegal. Dad had always steered well clear of anything like that, despite his music business connections. He’d had a friend who’d overdosed when he was still in his teens, and it had put him off for life.
    And they weren’t drinking. They’d never really been drinkers. There were some beers and a bottle of wine in the fridge, but that was about it. Where was this peculiar dopiness coming from?
    The icy sensation washed over me as several thoughts clicked into place, one after the other:
    They seemed permanently laid-back, permanently pleased and smiley. Just like the Giffords next door. And the Daltons.
    What did Mum and Dad, and the Giffords and the Daltons have in common?
    Dr Greenhill’s GP surgery. Their pointless check-ups, as far as Mum and Dad were concerned atleast. Neither of my parents were exactly in poor health. The Giffords, being that much older, I could understand, but not the Daltons, or us Hunters.
    Dr Greenhill was…?
    Supplying them all with something? Tranquillizers, antidepressants? Something else?
    There and then, I asked Mum and Dad about it, as subtly as I could. They flatly denied there was any kind of medication in the house, beyond a box of paracetamol in the kitchen drawer.
    Were they lying to me? Were they even
aware
that they were lying to me?
    Any why? For God’s sake, why?
    I almost dismissed the whole thing as beyond belief. What possible reason could our GP – any GP – have for dosing up a whole street? But, again and again, my mind kept snapping back to Emma’s mum, and Emma, and her grandad, all taking for granted that I was going to comply with the check-up thing. “I’m sure you’ll feel better for a chat,” Emma’s grandad had said.
    The more it churned around inside me, the creepier it got.
    And what was it old Mr Gifford had saidon the day after we moved in? About Emma’s dad? The ex-surgeon. One of the country’s leading psychopharmacologists. And what do psychopharmacologists do? I looked it up immediately. They create drugs. Ones that affect mood, and thinking, and behaviour. Some of the things that had been developed over the years were terrifying.
    These thoughts and connections spiralled through my head because of that specific thing I noticed: I could see tiny, thin lines on Mum and Dad’s upper lips. Had they not been there before? Had they only just appeared? Had I been missing them for days? I didn’t know. Mum and Dad now had the same barely-there, slightly yellow runny noses that all the neighbours had when we met them for the first time.
    Correction, that the neighbours
still
had, because I’d seen Mr Dalton ferrying Greye to his playgroup only the day before, and I’d talked to Mrs Gifford as she’d tidied her front garden at the weekend. I’d seen them dab the same little trails from their noses as they’d done weeks earlier. And I’d thought to myself that, yuck, that virus was hanging around for a long time.
    My parents and the neighbours showed the same behaviour. And had apparently caught the same tenacious virus. Which I miraculously hadn’t. The only difference was that I’d never been for a check-up with Dr Greenhill, and they all went regularly.
    There seemed to be only one logical conclusion. Something was being done to them.

Chapter Six
    I had no proof. Coincidences and suspicions weren’t proof. The utter absurdity of my so-called logical conclusion kept hammering away at my brain, throwing out questions, until I just couldn’t hold it all in my head at once.
    After all the wavering, and the indecision, and the puzzling, I decided to do some research on the Greenhills.