Hide And Seek

Chapter Three

-Will-

“I still can’t believe I broke my son’s bed,” I say to Ellie, as she peels herself off me. I take a covert look at her bump. It really is becoming impressive now. She’s a mother way before I’m a father.

“What, you broke me?” Ellie asks in mock consternation, looking down at herself.

I laugh, but I’m serious. It’s not a great portent of my ability as a father, is it, getting so carried away in a show of my shoe prowess that I damage his new bed? If I do that to furniture, how am I possibly meant to help keep the child alive, in those precious two weeks of paternity leave?

Ellie sits on my lap, side-on, and wraps her arms round my neck for support.

“We’ll get it fixed. Reclaim our hammer from your parents. Stick some superglue in the cracks, then give it a really good precision blow.”

A precision blow sounds good. I consider saying this to Ellie, but she might take it wrong, like I didn’t just enjoy the sex. I did. Obviously (and I’m hoping the chair has survived unscathed). But she keeps saying that if I find the bump too big or unattractive, we can be intimate in other ways. So she might think the request for a precision blow (job) is a pointed one. That sex is no longer fun.

So instead, I just nuzzle her neck and tell her she is wonderful.

“We’ll be good parents, won’t we?” I ask her.

She nods her head. “We’ll still be you and me. So we’ll be the best.”

“You already are the best,” I tell her. “But I really do need to do some work on my lecture before my parents come over.”

Ellie looks at me. “Really? Post-coital work? That’s a first.”

“It needs to be done,” I say. “Just like you did.” I kiss her and gently nudge her from my lap. I ease past her out of the room. “I’ll take the bedroom, if that’s OK?”

“Such bad sleep hygiene,” she says. I can hear the roll of eyes in her voice.

“So are babies,” I retort.

“Touché,” says Ellie, with what must be a smile.

Good. Banter situation normal. No blame for my crib-breaking (which is good of Ellie because, really, spending £400 on a crib only to break it is not ideal).

I shower, get dressed, then prop myself up on the bed, surrounded by my papers…and nothing really happens. I’m still annoyed with myself about the crib. It’s silly, really. Such a small thing. And it can’t have been a very good crib if me hitting it with a shoe damages it. Really I was just health and safety testing it. Imagine if little Leo, banging it with a plastic beaker (because that’s what they do, isn’t it, babies, bang things?), had been able to break the nail-housing, and the nail had sprung out and blinded him. Or the side of the crib had given way, letting him roll out, then roll down the stairs – unthinkable. The ultimate parental nightmare. So really I should be pleased with myself. And just buy another crib. Or take it back. Say it was defective.

But before that, I really must try to work on my lecture. I’ll kick myself if I’m up on the podium, staring out at the audience, and just thinking back to the afternoon when I couldn’t be bothered to work. I have some of the bullet points already. I just need to flesh them out, then add the extra research my student is doing.

‘Intro – Natasha Richardson’ the first bullet says.

Fine, I can deal with that. I speak softly to myself, practising.

“The world was shocked when actress Natasha Richardson – wife of Hollywood legend Liam Neeson – seemed perfectly fine after a skiing fall, carried on acting normally and then, hours later, died. That phenomenon, which we are studying today, is known colloquially as ‘talk and die’, medically as epidural haematoma, and is my area of specialism. It occurs when a head trauma leads to blood building up between the skull and the dura mater, causing pressure on the brain and, if unrelieved, that pressure can be fatal. In Natasha Richardson’s case, it was. She was unusual, though, because hers was caused by a skiing accident. The vast majority of cases in reality are caused by a violent act – so your classic baseball bat or hammer-blow to the head.”

Or a hit with a shoe, I could add. But it’s not a comedy. And I can’t dumb the thing down any more. It’s already pretty simplistic – film star’s wife, skiing… Maybe I should just invite them to eat popcorn. But the faculty head said I had to make it accessible. Start with a human interest story, reel them in. Which is what I’m doing. And I chose skiing specially – one of the jollier examples. Well, not jolly exactly – I still can’t watch films with Liam Neeson in without feeling sorry for him. But a skiing accident is in a sense jollier than the usual causes of our friend epidural haematoma – the domestic row between husband and wife escalates to a saucepan on the bonce, or the burglar gets carried away with his baseball bat. At least with skiing, no one is inflicting the pain. I chose well. So why the self-doubt? Have I been working too hard? I suddenly feel tired. Exhausted actually. Overwork and tiredness, that’ll undermine anyone’s self-confidence. I have had pretty disrupted sleep, I guess, over the last few months, what with Ellie getting up in the night, then all the tossing and turning as she tries to find a position comfortable for sleep. And sex, you know, is tiring – I read that men are hormonally conditioned to be sleepy after sex. Plus maybe I tired myself out from that other hammering too, with the shoe. I don’t know where that came from – all that energy, all that force. Maybe sexual tension. Maybe Ellie knew I needed some kind of release. Wherever it came from, it’s not there now.

So I put my papers to one side, and curl up in foetal position on the bed. Max Reigate’s music floats back to me from the car journey, and all those other times we have listened to it. That moment, after the climax, the great build-up, where everything is calm again. The chords are in harmony, surrounded by happy little triplets of notes lilting about, rather than the aggressive earlier accents. And all is resolved. That’s what I need. To absorb that calm, from the CD. But then Ellie will know I’m not working. So I’ll just have to curl up here and secretly let the imaginary music calm me. Even though the refrain in my head will be hard to drown out. The refrain that says: ‘You don’t know how to be a father. You don’t know how to deliver a public lecture. You’re not equal to what lies ahead.’

Chapter Four

-Will-

I’m woken by Ellie shaking me.

“Come on, lazy bones,” she says, flooding the room with light. “They’ll be here in a minute.”

REM is still with me. “There was a piano,” I say. “And some hands, and I don’t know, maybe some water and…”

“You probably just needed to go to the loo,” Ellie says. “I always dream about water when I need to go. Always wakes me up, thank goodness – nobody wants the Yellow Sea in their bed.”

She kisses me, then leaves the room. I try to recapture the dream, but it’s too far away from me. So I come back into the now. I stretch out and look at my watch. 4pm! I’ve been asleep for two hours and my parents are indeed due. I feel a bit groggy, in need of some sugar, before we entertain. But no – there’s the doorbell. I pull myself off the bed, rake a hand through my hair in a bid to make it look a bit less like I’ve been in bed all afternoon – whether through sex or slumber – and canter downstairs.

Ellie hasn’t let them in. Apparently that’s my job. I take the chain off the door, open it up, and we’re both immediately engulfed in celebration.

“Congratulations darlings!” Mum says as she launches into the house. She gives me a hug and a kiss, waves at Ellie’s belly, then does a kind of air-hug at Ellie herself. “Don’t want to squash the son and heir!” she says. Her beaming face suggests she is over any angst about being a grandmother. She’s even wearing the dark-green linen ‘occasion jacket’ (I used to call it the ‘snazz jacket’) that she always wore for important client meetings.

Dad follows, less loudly, but with a firm handshake and a slap on the back. “Well done, Ellie. Well done, Will,” he says.

Mum leads the way through to the dining room. From her bag she produces twenty-week scan cupcakes and Appletiser (apparently that’s the done thing in Surrey these days). And she is beaming at us.

“Such happy news! Do let me see the scan.”

Ellie of course obliges, and we get into the family resemblance discussion again.

“Doesn’t he look like Will, though?” she asks, rhetorically.

And they agree, my parents, because they have to. If Ellie’s parents were here too, then maybe there’d be more debate. But of course, they’re not.

Then Ellie makes me hold the scan photo and stand next to Dad, so that the three of us Spears family males are in a line. She puts her head to one side.

“Hmm, don’t see it you know. Will and baby maybe, but not getting the cross-generational resemblance thing,” says Ellie.

Dad peers at the photo. “Ah, you know what it is? The baby already has more hair than me.” He rubs his balding head ruefully.

And then Ellie does her party trick. I should have seen this coming, really, she’s been going on about it so much.

“But I tell you who I do see a resemblance with,” she says. She goes over to the CD tower and pulls out the familiar red box, that she retrieved from the car earlier.

“Ellie,” I say, half-chiding her, but she is glowing and wonderful, so I can’t really reprimand her.

“No, no, it’s so funny, I have to show them. Drum roll please – we’ve found Will’s doppelganger. He is the spitting image of: Max Reigate, concert pianist.” And she flourishes the CD box proudly, holding it next to me and the baby photo for comparison.

I turn to Mum and Dad with a mock eye-roll, my half-apologetic smile already prepared.

But the smile dies. Because Mum and Dad are staring at the CD box without any hint of a smile on their faces. In fact, the old cliché that they look like they’ve seen a ghost could not be more true. Mum has turned pale. Dad is shooting anxious glances at Mum. I look at Ellie. She is still holding the box and grinning, but the grin has a fixed quality now. None of us speak. Then Ellie does her usual humour escape route thing.

“No, you don’t see the resemblance? OK, no offence taken. Specsavers have some great deals on right now, though.”

Mum seems to recover herself. “Don’t be daft, Ellie. Will’s just got one of those faces – resembles everyone. Or at least we both think so because we love him, hey?” She gives Ellie a ‘women-together’ sort of nudge. Ellie moves away.

“Yeah, I know they say love is blind but I have actually retained my 20-20 vision, Mrs S.” Oh dear. She’s using her haughty voice. A definite warning sign. Time to move things on.

“It’s true, I’m a mongrel,” I say. “I look like all sorts of people. Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Max Reigate… It’s a real curse.”

Ellie rolls her eyes at me. “They say new dads feel extra-confident, but Brad Pitt? Really? You’re not even blond!”

“But you look like every bit the Angelina, my darling,” I tell her, giving her a kiss.

But maybe Mum feels a bit nauseated by all the smooching, because she’s back on Max Reigate.

“Where did you get that CD, anyway?” Mum asks.

I look at Ellie. I don’t know where we got it. Ellie just produced it one day. “Look what I found,” she said. “Spooky, right – look at the nose, the eyes, the hair. It could be you. Or, like, your long-lost brother!” And we’d listened to the CD, which actually turned out to be pretty amazing, this romantic piano concerto full of clashing chords and little haunting riffs of melody. It starts off being all orchestral, and you’re just waiting in suspense for the piano to take over in its solo brilliance, because you know it will. Then once it does, you know nothing will be same again. It just haunts you, by its presence and its lack.

Ellie looks at Mum. “I borrowed it from your place,” she says to Mum, her voice level. “While we were watering your plants, when you were away, I came across it. I hope that’sOK?”

“You came across it?” Mum asks. Her voice is tight.

Ellie shrugs. “Yes.” She holds Mum’s gaze. It’s like a challenge.

I feel like I’m missing something. I look at Ellie but she is busy examining the CD case. Then she looks up.

“Let’s play it!” she says, brightly (defiantly?). “We’re meant to be celebrating, so let’s celebrate.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Ellie love,” says Dad. “You’re meant to play babies whale music, aren’t you, not Ma – not this stuff.”

“My baby,” begins Ellie, then joins hands with me briefly, and corrects herself. “Our baby, is going to take after Will’s doppelganger and be an amazing musician. Not mess around with skeletons and brains like his nerdy dad. It’s all decided.”

Mum and Dad don’t look too pleased. But Ellie is already advancing to the CD player. And I get an outbreak of the goofy grins again at the thought of being a dad. Plus it is, as I’ve said, pretty amazing music.

“Put it on track three,” I say. “It’s the best bit.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Will always likes to get straight to the climax.”

I try to blush but I guess my parents kind of know we’re having sex. The evidence is protruding from Ellie’s belly. If not my tousled hair. Plus it’s like they’re not in the room. This is mine and Ellie’s and little (almost baby) Leo’s moment. We can do what we like. Mum is holding the Appletiser glass so tightly I am worried she might break it. Maybe I should offer her something stronger.

But then the room is filled with Max Reigate’s amazing sounds. The piano builds up in a wonderful rhythm of threes – ya da da, ya da da, ya da da – with chords separating then combining, unrelentingly crescendoing until my brain feels like it’s filled with blood, and with each beat of the piano hammers against the strings, there is more blood, pulsating to escape. And then –

“This is the best bit,” I say, waving my arms around, twirling about the room, in a way I know Ellie thinks is attention-seeking, but it’s how the music moves me. “Listen to how the violin and the piano are almost talking to each other, like a love affair, together coming closer and closer towards the climax, that wonderful pianorgasm and – ”

The music stops. But it’s not the end. Mum is standing next to the CD player, her finger on the stop button. Her back to the room.

“Mum, did you stop it? Sorry, did ‘pianorgasm’ offend you? It just…”

I trail off. Because Mum turns to face me. And she has tears in her eyes.

Chapter Five

-Will-

“Mum? Is something wrong?” I ask, rushing to her.

She is shaking her head wordlessly.

“Gillian, you OK? Do you need to go home?” Dad puts his arm around her.

Mum takes a deep gulp and manages to add some words to her head-shaking. Too many of them.

“Home? Don’t be silly. We’re celebrating! Isn’t it wonderful news about the scan? Ellie, have another cupcake!”

“Mum, honestly, are you OK? Do you want to sit down?”

“I’m fine, Will.” Mum replies. “Just being silly. The music’s beautiful, and you’re having a little boy. I’m just so pleased.”

I look up at Dad. He is standing mutely behind Mum.

“Aren’t we pleased, John?” Mum asks him.

Dad takes his cue. “Delighted. I might even have a cupcake too.”

Good. Some kind of normality is restored, I guess. I help myself to a cupcake. Not sure what the blue icing is made of, but it’s pretty tasty. I wonder if Mum had some pink cakes in reserve.

“Great. So. What shall we do, to celebrate?” I ask.

“Let’s get the photo albums down,” says Ellie. “Go mushy over pictures of us when we were little.”

“Mum, Dad, what do you think? I don’t have my baby ones, obviously but – ”

Mum cuts in. “We’re so sorry about that, Will. I keep replaying the moment we closed the door on the Dartington house – I was sure we had everything. And I called up the new owners about the albums, but nothing.”

“Probably paedos,” jokes Ellie. “Wanted to ogle photos of Will in his little bathtub.”

I’m not sure Mum gets that it’s a joke because she looks a bit appalled.

“Yep, thanks for that Ellie,” I say. “Now, Mum, Dad, in a non-paedo way, would you like to look at photos of baby Ellie?”

“Why not?” says Mum brightly. “Let’s go through to the living room. It will be more comfortable in there for Ellie.”

“Fine. You go through. We’ll make some tea and bring in the albums.”

So Mum and Dad potter off into the front room, taking the scan picture with them. In the kitchen, I fill the kettle. Ellie is springing around in excitement. I wonder if Leo enjoys that or if it’s like being inside a mad rollercoaster.

“You know who else lives in Dartington?” she asks me in a whisper. “Max Reigate!”

“Damnit, so he’s the paedophile who’s busy looking at my baby photos! And here’s me thinking he was just into music.”

Ellie sticks her tongue out at me.

“Anyway, how do you know?” I ask. “Have you been Googling him? Trying to find a better photo? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you fancied him.”

Ellie leans forward to kiss me. “I fancy you,” she says, saucily. Then she breaks away. “So it figures I’d fancy your doppelganger.”

“Hey!” I say, hitting her lightly on the arm.

“Will, you’re not meant to hit pregnant women, you know,” she says.

“You’re not meant to talk about other men in front of our son. Or above or around our son, whatever it counts as now. Anyway, you’re distracting me, you minx. What’s the deal with Mr Doppelganger and Dartington? How many sites have you stalked him on?”

“I’ve just seen the evidence, Mr Un-forensic Scientist. On the CD case?”

As I pour the now boiled water into the teapot, Ellie goes back into the dining room and returns a moment (ok, maybe a few moments – give the pregnant lady a chance) later with the CD case.

“There – recorded in Dartington. 1978.”

“Well done, Sherlock. Actually, we should so watch that again. The second series.”

“1978 – the year before you were born, yes?”

“Yes, what of it? Seriously, though, can we watch that again?”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Forget your boy crush on Benedict Cumberbatch for a moment, and focus on the real-life mystery.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Bit peculiar, right, your Mum, your Dad, Max Reigate, all hanging out in Dartington? Your Mum getting all misty-eyed over his music?”

“Just because they lived in the same place, doesn’t mean they knew each other.”

“Come on, it was the 70s. Everyone knew each other, man!”

I flick her on the forehead. “And whatever they were smoking back in the 70s got into your brain. While you drool over Max Reigate, the rest of us are going to look at your baby photos.”

I take the tea tray into the front room, and leave Ellie there while I go up to get her albums from the bedroom, where we keep them. Sorry, from our bedroom – there’s another one now, that we’re assembling. I know exactly where they are, but I sit down on the bed and take some breaths first.

Why would Mum act like that? It was properly weird. I mean, it was just a CD. One of her CDs, it turns out, thanks to Ellie acting like some kind of magpie, apparently (still not sure of the story there). But even so. Crying? When your son has the happiest news ever, that your family line will be continued? I shake my head. Really odd. Beyond odd.

“Sweetie, are you coming?” I hear from downstairs. Ah, Ellie. Never has liked being alone with my parents for long.

I exhale and push myself off the bed. Ellie’s little pseudo-mysteries are all very amusing but no reason for me to start sharing her hormone-addled nonsense. I lean under the bed and pull out the albums, from next to our keepsake box. The box is full of anniversary cards and an array of other mementos from our lives, stretching back years. We should look through it again some day. But not now. I return downstairs with the albums.

I sit on the floor beneath the sofa, albums on my lap.

“Here we go,” I say, opening up the first of her albums.

I turn over page after page of Ellie looking like a small otter, lying on a woollen blanket, just after she was born. Mum gives the obligatory oohs and aahs. Dad stays silent but does a little nod of his head in acknowledgement every so often. About ten of those new-born photos. Ellie at her mother’s breast. Move on from that. A bit dodgy to stare at your mother-in-law’s chest. Then Ellie naked in a bath, Ellie naked in a paddling pool, Ellie (amazingly, with clothes on) propped up on some swings. Ellie, when a little older, chasing some ducks. All the things that babies are meant to do. And all the things that proud parents are meant to capture and treasure forever. I feel a bit let down with Mum and Dad. I glance at them, and Mum squeezes my shoulder.

“You’re so lucky – you’ve got all of this to come!” she says. And there are the misty eyes again. Jesus. What’s with her today?

She’s a whole lot soppier than I ever imagined. So I just smile and squeeze her hand back. Can’t be doing with those tears over-spilling. Although I wouldn’t mind gently berating her over the photos. There’s a bit of me that’s missing forever. I don’t remember chasing ducks. I don’t remember much before the age of, I guess, three or four. The first memory I can pin down is of sitting eating a daffodil in our garden in Kingston, when I was about four. Because that’s where the albums that we still have start. I vow that if we ever move, I will not entrust something so precious into the hands of removal men. I will carry the albums myself, swaddled in tissue, as precious as if they were the baby itself.

But at least I still have my parents, unlike Ellie. I should be grateful. I turn to Ellie, to see how she is dealing with looking at her parents’ faces (and her mother’s breasts) again. Whether she is wishing she could have told her parents the news, that they might have known of their grandson’s soon-to-be existence. But no. My Ellie is sleeping, a little bit of drool coming down from the edge of her mouth. She must have been like that for a little while, with none of us noticing. Good job she has the knack of day-sleeping. We’ll need that when the baby is born. Or Leo, as he now seems to be called.

I tap Mum and Dad to get their attention and nod towards Ellie.

They give little amused smiles and gesture their heads to the door, showing they realise they should leave. I close the photo album softly, take the half-eaten cupcake from Ellie’s lap, and pull the sofa-throw over her. I tiptoe from the room, Mum and Dad behind me.

Out in the hall, they whisper their renewed congratulations and we make future plans.

“You’re still on for dinner tomorrow night, are you?” Mum asks. “It won’t be too much for Ellie?”

I nod my head. “It’ll be fine. She just missed her after-lunch nap earlier.” No reason to tell them why.

“Great,” says Mum. “See you at seven tomorrow.”

I nod and give her a hug. There’s another big handshake from Dad. “Really proud, Will. Can’t wait to meet your little son.”

There’s no mention of the earlier tears. We’re in happy land again.

Dad takes their proudness out into the street. Going to the window, I see him shepherd Mum into the car. Why they’ve driven, I don’t know – it’s so close and there’s a lovely walk by the river. Maybe Mum is ill. Maybe that’s it. She was looking a little green around the gills, unless that was just the jacket reflecting off her.

After they’ve left, I realise we didn’t ask about the hammer. I could shout after them, but that would wake Ellie. Never mind. There’s always tomorrow.