Amy Bird - Hide And Seek (Part 2)

Chapter Two

-Ellie-

OK, so maybe I should have told him about Max Reigate being dead earlier. But he wasn’t going to engage brain with my theory, was he, that way? Not very interesting to speculate over whether your mother may or may not have had an affair with a dead musician. No real outcome, no real hope. Plus why bother him with mourning the loss of his father when we didn’t know conclusively it was his father? I know what that loss is like. You don’t want to mourn it if you don’t have to. So it was all from the best of intentions, really. I wasn’t to know he was adopted. At least I gave him the extra Gillian tit-bit, even if I’ve no idea what it means. An olive branch. He should be grateful for that.

It’s a shame most of this is addressed, in my head, to Will’s back as he lies apart from me in bed.

Part of the purdah that he’s put me in.

Oh, it’s not an official purdah, of course. Officially, I’m forgiven. We had the showdown. We had the ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ And we had my very cogent explanation. Perhaps not as cogent as the one I’m addressing to his back. I more gave him a summary – ‘I thought I needed to help you to the truth, and I needed to do it in stages.’ He was still upset, though, of course. I’d let him believe in a future that didn’t exist, get excited about a father he’d never meet, a man he’d never become etc etc. But I never knew he would turn out to be adopted, did I? I still thought his mother was his mother, just that there’d been a bit of a fling with a sexy pianist. Still would have been a bit of a headfuck, I guess, but not this much.

And you know, he bought that, I think. I thought. Began talking at mealtimes again. Making little jokes. I thought I was out of the doghouse. I thought maybe a bit of sex would help seal our reconciliation.

No.

He is tired a lot. Suddenly. The yawns appear as soon as I initiate anything.

Might be unconnected. Might be my belly. Might be – a general downness, I guess.

But whatever it is, it’s not great. Evenings are too quiet. Too soft. We can’t do the ‘sex makes amends’ bit.

It’s not all bad, though, I guess, this place we are now. I am kind of enjoying practising my nurturing and mothering skills on him. If I can’t practise my other skills on him. Good timing, in a way. Is the ickle boy sad? Shall I cheer him up? Of course I don’t actually say that, do I, and nor would I. Bit odd. But I guess that’s what I can say to little Leo, when he starts being his own person. So it’s fine to think it, as I bring Will Rich Tea biscuits and tea, like my mum used to bring to me when I was sad, and it was too early in the day to simply say the next morning would wash the grief away. Plus he hasn’t really got a mummy at the moment, has he? Never had one, in the real sense. May have to work on the Sophie Reigate née Travers bit, in due course. But for now, he has me. I need to look after him. And I guess maybe I do need to practise. Because it’s not long now, until I’m due to pop. Three and a half months. Three and a half months to learn how to look out for a defenceless little person. Learning how to let it feed on you. For it to get enough sustenance without sucking you and your existence totally dry. Oh, Mum – the eternal postcard: I wish you were here. I would give up all the antenatal classes in the world for half an hour of your wisdom.

It would be better, of course, if I didn’t also have to practise the sleepless nights bit right now. It’s like, really, thanks Will, thanks for lowering the balance of my sleep bank before I’ve even become so huge that I can’t sleep at all. Or before we’ve even got a wailing sprog to attend to. Because, honestly, I challenge anyone to sleep through Will’s sleeping. Quiet evenings, maybe, but not quiet nights. He’s never been much of a snorer, but he’s sure as hell making up for it now. Not by snoring. No, that would be fine. It’s the tossing and turning, and the drumming, and the muttering that get me. Like really sinister muttering, if you didn’t know him. ‘Mummy’ he’ll murmur, which would be a bit Norman Bates if you didn’t have the back story. Plus ‘talk and die’. Ghoulish to anyone else. But I know he’s worried about his lecture, I’m sure of it. There’s only so much compassionate leave you can get out of a case like this and time is ticking before he needs to deliver it. They’ve already rescheduled to make allowances for him. Understanding his bad sleep etiquette doesn’t make it any less annoying, though – just as you’re about drifting off to sleep, there comes another ‘drum drum drum’ of his fingers on the bed posts, or he’ll roll right over onto you and your precious load, and sleep is suddenly hours off through fear of foetal crushing. I guess it’s maybe a blessing when he’s turned away from me, like he is at the moment. If he were hugging me in his sleep, like he always used to, little Leo would have been tapped to death by Will’s fingers by now.

But it can’t go on, can it? Because what I’d need, if it were little Leo I was looked after, is a solution. That was always Dad’s role. I’d come to him as a teenager, whinging about something, and he would just say: “Look, wipe away the tears, and tell me what you’re going to do about it.” Practical and pragmatic. Shame he didn’t have time to do anything practical when the other car came ploughing head-on, the wrong way down a dual carriageway. But now. Follow Dad’s advice. Don’t cry about it. Be proactive. What am I going to do, about Will, about this sleeplessness?

And I think I have an idea. Yes, there we go. That’s what I can do. It’s in two parts. The first, I can find in my medicine cabinet.

Chapter Three

-Will-

Ellie, she thinks she has all the answers. All the explanations for everything. For her own behaviour, for everyone else’s behaviour. But for all her knowledge, all her senses, all her knowing, she doesn’t feel what I feel. If she did, she would never have told me those lies. She would never have let me imagine a life with Max Reigate. Right from the start, right from when she looked him up and found his initials, she should have told me. I don’t know when the rules changed. We always tell each other everything. Or at least, we did. But there are apparently different rules now. Apparently we only have to tell each other everything when it suits us. Full disclosure – but only when convenient. After it actually fucking matters. After you’ve actually emotionally fucking invested in a new future.

Count to ten. Come on, remember – mother of your child. No arguments causing miscarriages. Retrieve the hammer out of the crib and install it in the toolbox. Go back upstairs, into the nursery, with its ghoulish dead-father crib, and smile at your pregnant wife.

Looking at her, through my smiles, I know she doesn’t feel how I feel about something else too. Doesn’t feel as I feel about a mother who simply thought ‘Hey, this is all too difficult since my husband died. So even though my little son has just been left fatherless, I’m going to make him motherless too, by just giving him unfeelingly away.’ You’d think she would. With her own mother, up on the almighty pedestal she’s now deified on, and with her own impending motherhood, you’d think she would have as little sympathy for Sophie Travers and she does for Gillian.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I test her out again. But no. Same old response. Ellie just goes on about the blood clot again. “There may have been an accident,” she says, seated on that sex-cum-nursing chair like it’s a judge’s bench. “That might be what Gillian was referring to. Or someone attacked him. Imagine how Sophie must have felt. Like she couldn’t be a mother at that moment; just a grieving widow.”