‘I need to talk to you in private,’ I said to Rosie.

She looked at me very directly. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we need to say in private.’

This seemed odd. But presumably she and Stefan shared information in the same way that Gene and I did. He had accompanied her to the ball.

‘I was reconsidering your offer of sex,’ I said.

Stefan put his hand over his mouth. There was quite a long silence – I would estimate six seconds.

Then Rosie said, ‘Don, it was a joke. A joke.’

I could make no sense of this. I could understand that she might have changed her mind. Perhaps the problem around the sexual objectification response had been fatal. But a joke? Surely I could not be so insensitive to social cues to have missed the fact that she was joking. Yes, I could be. I had failed to detect jokes in the past. Frequently. A joke. I had been obsessing about a joke.

‘Oh. When should we meet about the other project?’

Rosie looked down at her desk. ‘There is no other project.’

19

For a week, I did my best to return to my regular schedule, using the time freed up by Eva’s cleaning and the cancellation of the Father Project to catch up on the karate and aikido training that I had been missing.

Sensei, fifth dan, a man who says very little, especially to the black belts, pulled me aside as I was working the punching bag in the dojo.

‘Something has made you very angry,’ he said. That was all.

He knew me well enough to know that once an emotion was identified I would not let it defeat me. But he was right to speak to me, because I had not realised that I was angry.

I was briefly angry with Rosie because she unexpectedly refused me something I wanted. But then I became angry with myself over the social incompetence that had doubtless caused Rosie embarrassment.

I made several attempts to contact Rosie and got her answering service. Finally I left a message: ‘What if you get leukaemia and don’t know where to source a bone-marrow transplant? Your biological father would be an excellent candidate with a strong motivation to assist. Failure to complete the project could result in death. There are only eleven candidates remaining.’

She did not return my call.

‘These things happen,’ said Claudia over the third coffee meeting in four weeks. ‘You get involved with a woman, it doesn’t work out …’

So that was it. I had, in my own way, become ‘involved’ with Rosie.

‘What should I do?’

‘It’s not easy,’ said Claudia, ‘but anyone will give you the same advice. Move on. Something else will turn up.’

Claudia’s logic, built on sound theoretical foundations and drawing on substantial professional experience, was obviously superior to my own irrational feelings. But as I reflected on it, I realised that her advice, and indeed the discipline of psychology itself, embodied the results of research on normal humans. I am well aware that I have some unusual characteristics. Was it possible that Claudia’s advice was not appropriate for me?

I decided on a compromise course of action. I would continue the Wife Project. If (and only if) there was further time available, I would use it for the Father Project, proceeding alone. If I could present Rosie with the solution, perhaps we could become friends again.

Based on the Bianca Disaster I revised the questionnaire, adding more stringent criteria. I included questions on dancing, racquet sports and bridge to eliminate candidates who would require me to gain competence in useless activities, and increased the difficulty of the mathematics, physics and genetics problems. Option (c) moderately would be the only acceptable answer to the alcohol question. I organised for the responses to go directly to Gene, who was obviously engaging in the well-established research practice of making secondary use of the data. He could advise me if anyone met my criteria. Exactly.

In the absence of Wife Project candidates, I thought hard about the best way to get DNA samples for the Father Project.

The answer came to me as I was boning a quail. The candidates were doctors who would presumably be willing to contribute to genetics research. I just needed a plausible excuse to ask for their DNA. Thanks to the preparation I had done for the Asperger’s lecture, I had one.

I pulled out my list of eleven names. Two were confirmed dead, leaving nine, seven of whom were living overseas, which explained their absence at the reunion. But two had local phone numbers. One was the head of the Medical Research Institute at my own university. I rang it first.

‘Professor Lefebvre’s office,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘It’s Professor Tillman from the Department of Genetics. I’d like to invite Professor Lefebvre to participate in a research project.’

‘Professor Lefebvre is on sabbatical in the US. He’ll be back in two weeks.’

‘Excellent. The project is Presence of Genetic Markers for Autism in High-Achieving Individuals. I require him to complete a questionnaire and provide a DNA sample.’

Two days later, I had succeeded in locating all nine living candidates and posted them questionnaires, created from the Asperger’s research papers, and cheek scrapers. The questionnaires were irrelevant, but were needed to make the research appear legitimate. My covering letter made clear my credentials as a professor of genetics at a prestigious university. In the meantime, I needed to find relatives of the two dead doctors.

I found an obituary for Dr Gerhard von Deyn, a victim of a heart attack, on the internet. It mentioned his daughter, a medical student at the time of his death. I had no trouble tracking down Dr Brigitte von Deyn and she was happy to participate in the survey. Simple.