Hide And Seek

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Oh fuck it, she’s talking nonsense. I don’t need nonsense. I need a medic. And probably an epidural.

“Of course I’ve got to tell him the truth. He’s about to kill someone! He’s about to become a murderer. A real murderer – an adult one!” I prod at my phone again, managing to unlock it.

Gillian snatches it from my hand.

I look up.

“What are you doing, Gillian? I need to speak to – ” Another pain. Come on, come on, breathe it through. 1-2-3. “I need to speak to Will. And you, we, somebody needs to call an ambulance!”

“You are not telling Will that he killed his father. You promised, remember? We have to protect him.” There’s a fierceness in her eyes.

“Oh, Jesus, what, Gillian? You want him to murder his mother and spend the rest of his life in prison?”

“At least then he’ll have closure,” Gillian says. “He won’t be satisfied unless he does this.”

“Only because he thinks Sophie is a murderer! If he knew what had really happened, he wouldn’t want to kill her. Himself, maybe, but not her.”

“Exactly. It would destroy him. So he mustn’t know. Just like he should never have known he was adopted.”

God, there’s this horrible mad glint in her eye. Like the sort people get in films when they suddenly develop superhuman strength and resolve. I think I need to be frightened, but the pains, they are coming so quickly that I’m not sure I can spare the emotion for extra Gillian-caused fear.

“He’d find out, Gillian. In his murder trial for God’s sake, all the past would come out. And that will devastate him even more.”

Gillian shakes her head. She still hasn’t called the ambulance, or the porter, or whatever, and I need it, we need it, me and Leo – now!

“They won’t look that far, the French courts,” says Gillian. “They’ll just see an injured national and a crime scene and a perpetrator.”

I shake my head at her, trying to focus on what she is saying, what I need to say. But it’s so difficult, because I’m shaking and sweating and panting and this shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening now.

“Gillian, listen to me. Listen to yourself. I get that you want to protect Will. But you’re making him into a murderer. He’s just all fucked up now, really fucked up.” Christ, that’s an understatement. “He needs us to intervene, get him home, set him right. See his son, if you will get me a fucking ambulance so that there is some small chance that our poor premature Leo gets into the world alive and doesn’t kill me with him.”

Gillian comes closer to me. She’s actually standing in the watery goo at my feet. But she doesn’t stop there. She leans in towards me and wraps her hands around my wrists. Tight. OK, so I was wrong. I do have room for fear.

She speaks to me, very softly, but very firmly.

“You are not leaving this room until you swear on Leo’s life that you will not tell Will the truth.”

I protest, because this is ridiculous. Her whole motherhood notion, her failed conception of what it means to protect someone. Her horrible horrible desire to blight my future life, Will’s life, Leo’s life, if he has one.

“Ellie, unless you swear that, I am not calling an ambulance. And I am not giving you back your phone. No one will come. You will stay in this room until whatever happens, happens. I will protect Will, like I have always done.”

And I look into her eyes, and she looks into mine, and I know that she means it.

The pain comes sharp. The world starts to cut out a little. I need medical attention, and I need it now. So I do it. I sell out on Will. I commit him to murder. And I barter the life of my son.

“I swear,” I say. “On Leo’s life. Now call me an ambulance.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_006ff568-8603-5350-a104-296d5f5cbf18)

-Sophie-

I try to focus on the children. I try to focus on their scales. I try to give a shit – or even notice – if they are playing sharps or flats or anything at all. But since the call, I cannot. I cannot focus on anything except the thought that maybe, today is the day. The day that everything crumbles.

I am being ridiculous, I tell myself, as I sink into a chair. She won’t come here, English Ellie. All the way to Paris. To speak to a woman who hangs up during phone calls. Who hasn’t even admitted to being the mother of Guillaume, of this ‘Will’. But that isn’t what really frightens me, the Ellie part. It is that he knows. Because if she knows, he must. You can’t keep that kind of thing a secret. And so what could really happen, is that he could come looking. That’s the thought that makes fear grip my stomach. Just like it gripped my stomach that day. When I came into the kitchen and saw him. With the hammer.

Because that’s the other thing. I can’t stop seeing him now. Everywhere there is that horrible horrible child, that Will, with the hammer, hitting his father over the head. There is me, walking into the room, seeing my Max prostrate under the sink, seeing the hammer at his head. And I’m shouting, shouting at Will to stop being so naughty. Of course, he just screams at me, in the middle of a tantrum, and he hits Max another time, then another. So I do all I can do – I run over and I smack Guillaume and I grab the hammer from his hand. He cries and cries and cries, while I lean down and check whether Max is OK.

And Max, the idiot, the silly genius idiot, tells me I’m making a fuss over nothing.

“He’s just playing,” says Max.

And because I have seen what Max has not seen – that red angry face filled with the rage of a thousand men older and angrier than a little four-year-old should ever be – this maddens me. So I shout, I shout at the man who my son has just attacked.

“Imbecile! You refuse to understand he needs attention. You sit at that stupid piano, all day every day and you expect our son to be well-adjusted? You know so little about being a parent that you think this, this hitting you on the head with a hammer is normal?”

And then he shouts back. Rubbing his head, where the hammer has hit, he says “Well, I’m not at the piano now, am I? I’m mending the sink, like you told me to!”

“Asked, Max, asked. And I wouldn’t have had to ask if…”

And so it went on. The argument. While I didn’t know that my husband, my Max was dying. There he was, lying in a pool of water on the floor, while in his brain a pool of blood was accumulating. He went off to the studio in a flurry of slammed doors and foul tempers.

Then two hours later, they called me. They called me to tell me he was dead.

My son had killed him. I explained about the hammer. My son had killed him. They told me I was hysterical. Of course I was fucking hysterical. This little four-year-old, this horrible, horrible ogre of a four-year-old had just destroyed my husband.

And so tell me, how how how was I supposed to look at him again? How was I supposed to raise him, to nurture him, to want him to live? And how, now this Ellie person has called me, am I supposed to feel anything other than terror at the thought of seeing that face again? The face that murdered my husband?

That’s all I can think. At least I wish it was all I could think. Because that, in itself, would be enough, wouldn’t it? But there’s more. There’s that guilt. The mother guilt, that you can’t get away from. The voice that says, ‘but he’s yours. And he was a child. He didn’t know what he was doing, you can’t blame him. You were self-indulgent.’ And that’s the voice I’ve been repressing for almost three decades. Not just that guilt, though. The other guilt. The guilt that says: if you hadn’t made Max fix the sink, that wouldn’t have happened. If you’d let Max stay in his lair, rehearsing or just relaxing for his important recording this wouldn’t have happened. If you hadn’t chosen that day to insist that he as the man did the DIY job that you could so easily do, to decide you were sick of being a sacrifice at the altar of his genius, then he would still be alive. And worse, had you not shouted after the hammer-blow, had you insisted that he go to see a doctor because everyone knows head injuries are tricky bastards, then again, still, he would be alive. Guilt fear and horror. Guilt fear and horror. My personal chord of destruction.

There’s a tug on my skirt from one of the schoolchildren. I hate her for being a child, for being hardly older than Guillaume was. For my knowledge that, given the right circumstances, the right equipment, she too could be a killer. Right now, she just wants to know about what notes she should play.

“Pas dedièses,” I mumble at her. I can only mumble, because this is the beginning of the disintegration. I have journeyed so far into my painful past that I have begun to hallucinate. My fevered mind has created the image of a grown-up Guillaume. And in my hallucinations, he is standing outside the window of the classroom, staring in.

Chapter Four (#ulink_e3b67f8d-6416-50bd-a2ba-25495981e090)

-Will-

There she is. My murdering mother. Just like the photo Ellie showed me. A woman too well-groomed to show guilt. The dyed hair, painted lips, pinched-in waist. They are not the features of a woman destroyed by remembering what she has done. No. They are just the sort of self-indulgent traits I would expect of a woman who killed her husband and abandoned her son. Then apparently got engaged again. I know those features well, of course. From the moment I saw the pictures Ellie gave me, of the woman as she was back then, as she is now, and of the inside of our former home, all my memories have come back. My mother, that woman, standing in the kitchen, with those black and white tiles, holding a hammer, shouting, slapping me, leaning over my father, my Max, to examine her handiwork. My subconscious was trying to tell me the truth, but Ellie and her detective work unlocked the secrets, uncovered the memories that were always there.

And what new memories I will have by the end of today! The hammer smashing through her skull to her cortex. The moment she is still and cannot move any more, cannot do any more harm.

Look, now, at the harm they are letting her do to these children. If they knew, would they let her stand there with them? Address them, give them a perspective on life? Her warped, cruel perspective, that meant she killed so she could live alone. Maybe I should be grateful she didn’t take the hammer to me literally too. Only figuratively. And look, look at all those electronic keyboards that the children are sitting at. Curtailed, castrated pianos, their hammers removed, half their span cut out. How can a woman married to such a man as Max countenance that? How can she have the cheek to teach these small children to play, when she murdered the one true talent she had known? And when she gave away her own child? Never before will someone so deservedly have been brought to a halt.

But how do I do this? I have not given much thought to how I go in for the kill. The hammer and the smashing, yes, I remember that. The hammer reminds me of itself even now – it’s slipped lower in my jacket, and creates a pressure at the top of my groin. It will only come out for Sophie. But when to do it? How to get her alone? Or do I even need to get her alone? Why not just march into the schoolroom now, let the hammer do its work, then walk out again before anyone has realised why the children are screaming?

No. No, that is not right. The children. Think, then, of the lives that they will lead. The trauma counselling that they will need. The memories that they will repress. That will later resurface, and appal them. Lead them to kill. No. I do not want to gift to them my horrors.

And besides, we need a showdown. I need her to know, before she dies, what she has done. Before I force the hammer into her brain, I need to force Max and myself back in there. Even if she resists, I will push into her thoughts the lives that she shattered. Push, push, push, until just when she thinks her head is about to split – it will.

So alone it is. I must wait here, until she comes out. Perhaps move away from the window, lest I scare her. Then, when she emerges, I will follow her home. To the home that must hold Max’s piano, and more remnants of my past. Although that is not the main mission. Just a perk, if I can attain it. The ending of Sophie is the main prize. So should she choose to remain in the school, I will get her there, when everyone else has gone, when she doesn’t expect me. I look at my phone. 3pm. Can’t be more than about thirty minutes until the end of the school day. Good. My wait will not be long.

Chapter Five (#ulink_99eb71d5-3f33-5a55-b1b7-ab329d48720c)

-Ellie-

So she calls the ambulance. She relents, and she calls, on Will’s office phone. She puts my mobile in her bag, where I can’t get at it. And finally, they are there, with their gas and air. The paramedics, from the hospital, the hospital I am already in. For a moment, we are almost a normal domestic scene – the daughter-in-law soothed and shushed by a doting grandmother-to-be, surrounded by a caring ambulance crew.

“Don’t worry, love,” they are telling me. “You’re in one of the top units in London.” And “Of all the places this could happen, this is the best. The birth centre is well-used to complications. You’re in safe hands.”

Their assurances as I – 1, 2, 3, breathe in – are welcome. But they assume that what they can see is all that’s going on. They assume that as they wheel me along, down, up, to their consultants, doctors, midwives, that all they are dealing with is the little thing of a premature birth. In Paris, I want to tell them, there is a premature death happening right now. Two deaths, three deaths, four deaths, more, if we count all who will be affected. I want to tell them: give me a phone. Because I’ve still got to tell Will. He needs me. I need him. Leo needs both of us. Maybe they can give me a phone. Gillian still has mine. I would be happy, it pressed into my hands, Will’s voice next to my ear, my voice in his. Then I could manage this.

But all they are interested in is pressing speculums, swabs, steroids into me. Telling me the amniotic sac has broken. I know, I know, I know these things. Is it not my body, my baby? They tell me the contractions should get slower now, but – there – I can feel them. Still fast. And little Leo, his heart rate is as speeding as mine. Beat, beat, beat we go. Will, leave Sophie! Come to us, not in a prison van, but in a bedazzlement of flowers and concern and awe!

They are telling me that if the contractions slow, they can monitor me for infection, for bleeding, keep me here, send me home, whichever I prefer. Gillian is hovering, feigning concern. But she does not understand what I need to do.

“Send her away,” I tell whichever person it is that is standing over me. “Send her away, I don’t want her here.”

“Poor thing’s delirious,” says Gillian. “I’d better stay.” And then she talks to me. “You’ll be quite alone, if I go,” she says. “Do you know what it is to bring a baby into the world alone?”

No, I say in my head. And nor do you! You weren’t here, you weren’t in a hospital with Will. You merely borrowed him, from a friend, for a while. A friend he is trying to kill. Apparently not a very good friend, if she can be sacrificed at the altar of Will-protection.

“I’d rather be alone than with you,” I say.

Gillian leans down and whispers in my ear. “Ellie, love. Think. You want someone that you know, for these hours. Or they’ll be dark, lonely hours. All alone, with strangers. When your child arrives, will you know what to do? How to look after him? Keep him alive?”

I jolt away from her. She is like a wasp, her words buzzing in my ear. I cannot shake them off as easily as I’d like. I’ve heard stories of people being left in wards, alone, and only a persistent relative brings the midwives running. At least Gillian will look out for her adoptive grandson, if not me. Maybe I should keep her here, not send her away? I toss my head from side to side as I try to decide.

“Try to rest,” a doctor/consultant/midwife tells me. “You’ll need all your energy, later.” In those dark, lonely hours. Perhaps Gillian can stay? “Just focus on the contractions. Are they still close together?”

I nod because they – ahh – definitely are.

And then Gillian, she does the unthinkable. She leaves me. She sort of potters off, her bag over her shoulder, leaving me alone. And I feel it then, what she has said. That now I am alone. Alone with people who take only a professional interest in me, not personal. Alone, and about to become a mother two months early. I’ve only had one antenatal class. I am not ready.

“Gillian?” I ask her retreating form.

She turns round to face me. And I see from her face that she wants me to feel this. This fear, this abandonment.

“I’m just going for some water,” she says. “I won’t be long. I know you need me.”

She is gone. And she has my phone. I’m alone and I’m no closer to Will. But there may still be a chance, while Gillian is away.

“Doctor,” I say to a man.

“I’m a midwife,” he says.

“Midwife,” I say. “I need you to phone my husband. I’ll give you his number. I need you to say exactly this: ‘It wasn’t her who did it, it was you. Who ended Max. In a tantrum. But now, I’m giving birth, early. You must come home.’”

“Right, you’re giving birth, he must come home. Except, you know, the doctors haven’t decided if you should give birth yet, we might try to delay – ”

“But the first part of the message, as well, the first part. ‘It wasn’t her who did it, it was you. Who ended Max. In a tantrum.’”

“Let me get a pen, write that down,” says the midwife.

“We’re losing time, don’t you see, we’re losing time!” I say.

“Don’t worry,” hushes the midwife. “You’re the most important person here.”

But how can he say that? Because I have a role, I have a role for my family. As – ahh – nurturer. For Will, and for Leo. Must be a life preserver, a life giver.

“Bring me a phone, then,” I say. “Bring me your mobile.”

He looks me in the eye. I plead into his. He disappears. And I realise, I am alone. The doctors and consultants, they are off somewhere, discussing, looking at swabs, at liquids, at charts. Then he reappears, the midwife, with a phone. I take it from him, and I’m dialling, I’m dialling, I’m dialling Will. Gillian is still nowhere to be seen. I can tell him. Come on, Will, answer. Please.

Chapter Six (#ulink_637d76ac-2722-58d9-9421-e9c0ec3d282c)

-Tutti-

Will