Hide and Seek (21 page)

“And, do you know what? I actually found your bloody mother. Yeah, yeah, you might well look like that. I tracked her down to Paris. Yes, Paris. And not just that. I know where she works. Even now, she is teaching kids, like the fucking kid we’re meant to be having, probably any minute now because this stress, this bullshit – no don’t fucking tell me to calm down – is going to make my waters break any minute, teaching them at L’école Sainte-Thérèse in Paris. All through my own research, under my own steam, I found that out. I even spoke to her on the bloody phone. It was meant to be a surprise. A pick-me-up. But I guess you fucking found your own fucking pick-me-up.”

And then she has to stop because she’s out of breath and panting. But she’s still glaring. So I have just to store up the knowledge she has given me and placate her, make her understand.

“Ellie, darling, listen to me.” I put a hand on her arm but she shrugs me off. “I arranged to see Flick because I wanted – ”

“– to get into her pants.”

“Because I wanted to get the contact information for a specialist in Torbay hospital. Where Dad would have died. Max. I wanted to find out what really happened.”

“And what’s that got to do with Flick?”

“Flick did one of her rotations at Paignton. In the same NHS trust. So I thought she might know people there.”

“And, what, you were willing to go to whatever lengths you needed to find out?” demands Ellie.

I try to maintain eye contact. Only the guilty look away. But I am innocent.

“Not at all. Nothing happened. But, yeah, it looks like she wanted something to happen. She tried to kiss me, I moved away, she slapped me. This stupid post must be her idea of revenge.”

“That’s really what happened?”

“It’s really what happened.”

“So why didn’t you tell me, then, if you had nothing to hide? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to meet her?”

“Because of this.” I raise my hands. “Look at how you’ve reacted now.” She starts to protest, say that I’m blaming her. “I love you, Ellie. I love little Leo. And I didn’t want to worry you. And, you know, I felt a bit guilty, trying to look for more details of Dad, after you’d tried to help me mourn him with the funeral and everything.”

“That did help. It helped loads.”

“Of course it did, Ellie.”

“Mum always knows best,” and she pats her stomach. That is the exact opposite of the truth. No mother knows best. Not Gillian. Not Sophie. Not her.

“Of course, darling,” I reassure her. “It’s not because I’m mourning him. I just wanted some facts for the lecture – thought it would be a nice touch to weave Max into it. And I didn’t want to tell you about her trying to kiss me because I didn’t want to upset you. Upset little Leo. I didn’t think she’d go and do anything nutty like this.” I gesture to the Facebook post.

“What’s everyone else going to think?” Ellie asks me. She gestures to the page. Someone else has already ‘liked’ the post.

“Sod everyone else. Everyone else isn’t our family. It’s so obviously a fake post – nobody who was really having an affair would write a post like that.”

“OK,” Ellie says.

“I got it wrong,” I say. “No more secrets. For either of us.”

Ellie nods. Good. Maybe now we can start talking about Sophie. I look at Ellie. She has stopped breathing so heavily now and her face is less flushed. I sit her down on the nursery chair, and kneel in front of her.

“But what about you, my love? It sounds like you’ve been doing some super-sleuthing about my mother? You found her?”

Ellie nods proudly. “Yup.”

“All under your own steam? At the same time as the job-hunting?”

Her eyes dart away from mine for a moment and then dart back.

“Yup.”

“Wow, that’s just amazing. Am I going to get to meet her?” The woman who killed my father and robbed me of a life of music, I add in my head.

“Well, it’s early days yet. There was a problem with the line when I phoned her. But I’ll try again.”

“Can’t I just speak to her?” Tell her what I think of her. That I’ll be coming to get her. Her and the truth.

“Oh, let me set it up, Will! Please. I’ve got it all planned out. Besides, it might be better for me to act as a go-between, at first. So you don’t need to get into any emotional stuff before you’ve even met.”

She looks down at me earnestly. Why not agree, if it makes her happy? So easy just to say yes.

“Of course, darling. You know best, after all. And it’s only through you we found her, so have it your way.”

“You’re happy, then?”

“I’m delighted.”

And I am. Because now the zebra-pianos don’t mock me. They can’t tell me that I know nothing. Because I know everything now. Everything that I need to know. About where to find Sophie. And I think I’ve always known what I will do when I find her. Ever since my dreams started telling what she’s done. And they told me very accurately, I see, when Ellie shows me the pictures she took of my old home. Because there are the black and white tiles. The tiles of my memory. The tiles of the kitchen where my mother murdered my father.

I’m just about to lean down and kiss Ellie when the picture of the baby pandas that I’d hung on the wall falls down.

“Not a bad omen, I hope!” says Ellie.

“Of what?” I ask. The picture cannot sympathise with Sophie. That wouldn’t be right.

“Little Leo.” She rubs her stomach. Oh. Of course. I rub it too. And for a moment, I do feel the anxious delinquency that I’ve read goes with new fatherhood. I lean down and blow a raspberry on her belly. I’m rewarded with a little kick.

“Of course it’s not a bad omen. It’s just a bad nail.” The nail has fallen out of the wall. I pick it up and show it to her.

“OK. I’ll hammer it back in. I know you and hammers!”

I smile because her tone seems to demand it. And in fact, why not smile, why not grin? Now is the time. The revenge on the old mother. The birth, through Leo, of a new mother. And a new father.

Ellie rises from the chair.

“Now you,” she says. “Hadn’t you better do a bit of practice on your lecture? It’s the big day tomorrow!”

Indeed. It will be a very big day tomorrow, thanks to Ellie’s sleuthing. The ultimate day, even. But not for me.

Chapter Twenty

-Ellie-

Now, where’s that hammer? There’s just time to nail the pandas back into the wall, so to speak, before I have to set off to Will’s lecture. Appropriate, pandas, seeing as we mate as rarely as they do. I thought we might have a chance for a lazy i.e. sexy get-up this morning – a little adult bonding after I shared the news about Sophie, and to rejoice in the fact we know the whole Felicity Stephens thing is nonsense. But Will left early, said he had to check over some points in his office. Good job I believed him over Flick (stupid nickname – just makes you want to flick her right in the forehead, although actually it’s likely that’s more to do with the fact she’s a bitch than with her name). A less secure woman might think that Will had sneaked off now to spend more time with his lover. Or that the reason we haven’t been having sex is because he’s been getting enough of it in another bed. That someone else has been enjoying that naked torso, those firm thighs, that glancing collar-bone, that I so much miss being pressed against me. But no. Not me. I know when my boy is telling the truth. It’s like he said: no more secrets.

Seriously, where can it be, the hammer? It’s not in the toolbox, it’s not in the garden, and it’s not lying around in any of the rooms, so far as I can tell. Will must have hidden it somewhere. I pick up my phone to ask him but then put it down again. He won’t want to be interrupted in the final preparations. I’ll try Sophie again instead, to fill in the time. I can ask Will about the hammer and sort out the pandas later. I wish in a way I hadn’t had to tell him about my mother-finding. But I was so furious, you know? That he’d apparently been hooking up with old whoreface while I was tracing his roots. Obvious, now, that he hadn’t been. But when you see something like that on Facebook, you don’t think logically, do you? Anyway, I do kind of wish I’d been able to keep it a surprise like I’d planned. Much more fun that way. But he’s obviously totally delighted that I’ve tracked her down. You could see this extra sparkle in his eyes, like the sparkle in Sophie’s ring. Maybe he could even be best man! He could give her away like she gave him away. Even things out, in a jolly, ironic, sort of way. I can hear the jokey wedding speeches now. I dial Sophie’s number. Nothing. The aggressive French ring tone just burrs coldly on.

So I guess I’ll just have to head off to Will’s lecture! When I say ‘just’, I don’t mean it like that. It’s a big deal, this, his first public lecture. Geared to the students, of course. And I might be the only public that’s there. But still. A big deal. And he seems to have been working on it for ages – almost as long as I’ve been pregnant. He’ll be giving birth to it only a matter of weeks before I give birth to Leo! Although he keeps postponing it, to get it just right. You can’t postpone a birth.

Just grab my coat, the mustard yellow one I think and – ow! One of those pains, again. Like contractions. But they can’t actually be contractions. I’m not due for another two months. Just little Leo wriggling around, giving Mummy’s pelvis a good kick. I give him a little pat, in utero. Naughty Leo, giving Mummy pain like that. Won’t hit him after he’s born, of course. What sort of mother does that?

And I open the door to that sort of mother. OK, maybe she didn’t hit him, but it’s all part of bad mothering. Gillian. Gillian and her bloody Audi. Just sitting there, outside the house, engine running, window half down. What can she possibly want now?

“Going to the lecture?” she calls out to me.

“Obviously,” I say. Damn. Of course, open to the public includes open to ex-mothers.

“Let me give you a lift,” she says.

“I’d sooner die,” I say. I’d only meant to think it, but what the hell. Then I get another one of those pains, down below, and it stops me short. Gillian stops the engine on her Audi.

“You OK?” she asks.

“It’s nothing,” I say. But the Audi starts to look more tempting. A walk then a train then a tube less so.

“Come on,” she says. “Get in.”

I walk along the pavement, as if I’m not interested. She keeps pace with me in the car. I keep walking, as quickly as I can. Which is not very fast.

“I’ll tell you why I was in Dartington.”

“I think it’s kind of obvious why you were in Dartington.”

“I really hope it’s not,” she says, pushing open the passenger side door.

I look at it. Inside, there are nice plush comfy seats. Cream seats. At least if I am going to go into labour early, or the worse thing, the m-word, I will get the satisfaction of doing it on those seats. Maybe even manage to get some fluids on that sodding green jacket of hers, which I see has come out for the occasion.

“I reserve the right to get out at any time,” I say, as I climb in.

“Of course,” she says.

I place the seat belt carefully under my bump, like the NHS Choices website says I should, and Gillian starts the car.

“So,” I say. “Dartington.”

There’s a pause. So, she’s reneging on her promise already. What a surprise.

“Let’s take a step back,” she says. Oh, great. Corporate speak. As if I need another reminder why I don’t want to start hanging round in offices, whatever Will says. Bet phrases like that were popular with Gillian’s fellow interior designers, as they survey walls ripe for fresh creations, but they won’t wash with me.

“Comes a bit late from you, doesn’t it? Where was all your stepping back when Will turned eighteen and you should have been telling him he was adopted? Have you any idea what these last few months have been – ”

But she cuts me off, the bitch. “Motherhood is all about protection. Protecting the ones you love. Would you agree?”

I shrug. “It’s an element, I suppose. Along with nurturing and supporting and encouraging honesty at all times.” She’s not going to out-mother me, this non-mother.

“Sure. But the thing is, Ellie, that if you know something about your child, something that will traumatise them throughout their life, you don’t let anyone know about it. More than that. If anyone does know, you make damn sure they don’t tell anyone else.”

“What, you’ve spent your whole life putting the frighteners on everyone who wanted to tell Will he was adopted? Bit late for that in Dartington, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not talking about Will being adopted. I’m talking about something else.”

I notice she doesn’t deny putting the frighteners on people though.

“So come on, Dartington. What was that all about?” Hiding your sordid love match with Max Reigate? I ask in my head. Then I think what the heck, why not, I’m pregnant, I can get away with anything, and I owe this woman nothing. I ask it out loud too.

“Yes, I was close to Max Reigate.”

Ha! Thought so.

“But I was close to Sophie too. We were next but one neighbours and great friends. Both thought we were bigger than Dartington, and told each other we were. I was Will’s godmother. You know what that means, being a godmother? If the child’s parents die, you have to…”

“Yes, yes, you have to look after them,” I mutter, irritated. I’m all over this stuff. We’ve been deliberating Leo’s prospective godparents since forever.

“But they never tell you what’s to happen if the child kills the parents,” Gillian says.

What? If the child kills…

I shake my head. I can’t have heard her right.

“I’m sorry?” I ask.

“They don’t tell you what the responsibilities are if your godchild kills one of his parents. His father.”

I can’t stop staring at her. What does she possibly mean? Does she mean Will –? But no. That would be ridiculous. He was only four when Max died.

“Gillian, if you’re trying to tell me Will killed his father, that’s mad.”

Gillian shakes her head. “I wish it was.” There are tears in her voice.

I pause for a moment, trying to work out how to respond. But that’s obvious, isn’t it? Incredulity. She is trying to tell me my husband murdered his father!

“It’s another of your crazy stories, another way to try to keep Will in some made-up world. What next – you’re going to say his mother put him up to it? Which is why he shouldn’t go looking for her?”