Hide and Seek (16 page)

And so these little trails, they get my hopes up. I flick my eyes straight to the footnotes or endnotes. I go to indexes to find his name. But it’s never there. Never a mention of the tragic loss of the dazzling pianist. It’s as though his death has been cut out of history, the history that I know must have happened.

Maybe if I could work in a more organised fashion, if my notes were not all around me on the floor, that would assist. But I have the piano now, you see. It is theoretically my desk. The other staff, they will not believe me. And so, I don’t let them come in here any more. They can’t come in during the day, when I am at home, sleeping, because I lock it. The cleaners don’t come in and nor should they; I cannot have them vacuuming up my precious breadcrumbs of research.

I pull myself up from the floor and walk to the musical desk. It is beautiful. It waits, silently, for me always. Patience is almost its best feature. But that’s supplanted by its smoothness. For my piano, our piano – it belongs to Max as well, really, in spirit – has this wonderful wooden sheen. Over the weeks since it arrived, I’ve learnt to play the outside as much as the inside. A sweep of the hand over the lid makes a delightful swoosh. So quiet and so private it could never be a concert. But I am the only audience that this piano needs. Apart from Max, of course. He is always here. And yet, in the papers that litter the floor, not here enough.

I take out the polish and the duster from the piano stool. This always soothes me, this time of night, when I’ve reached ultimate frustration. Now I spray the polish on my beautiful friend and I ease the cloth methodically up and down that fine lid. Along and back, along and back, along and back. Just the motion makes my breathing a little easier. Then, finally, I am ready to go inside. I lift the lid. I sit on the stool. I confront the music that is always there.

Right hand in place first. Then left hand. I’ve learnt, for this first bar of the piano’s entrance, where my hands should go. I had to look up the positions on the internet. But now I have it. And one day, when I’ve mastered this bar, I will get onto the next one. Try, this time, now, to get the right and the left moving at the same time. Think, feel, what Max must have done. Slowly bring the fingers down in a chord. Move instantaneously – no, too slow!
Instantaneously
to the next position with the left hand, start the flowing melody with the right. Again, again, quicker, quicker, quicker. Why can’t I do this? I am Max’s child. This music is part of who I am. Why don’t I have the ability just to make my fucking hands move like they should? Just three different chords, three little descents of my left hand onto the keys, at same time as moving around my right hand a little. I’m a grown man. I should be able to do it!

I bring both my hands down onto the piano in a crash. There. I can do that. Again and again, I thump them down. The piano, my beauty, responds. And if I stand, and lift the top lid of the piano, I can crash my hands down on the keys and see the little hammers smash onto the strings at the same time. Crash, smash. Crash, smash. CRASH, SMASH.

Absurd. Absurd. I play like a toddler. I play like I must have played with him. If we’d had more time, he’d have taught me properly. I’d be somewhere else now, some piano stool in some drawing room, doing a rendition of my father’s first concerto. Rather than sitting here in this answerless room murdering the opening bar. Thanks, Sophie. Thanks very much for denying me my heritage.

I stand up from the piano and look at my papers scattered on the floor. Only a few weeks, now, until the rescheduled lecture. They will not move it further. And nor should they. Paternity leave is fast approaching. Not the sort I need, the sort they give you in order to find the secrets of your father’s death. The sort when you become a father yourself. And I must resolve all this by then. Find the Max answer. Solve the Sophie question.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place. Perhaps the books don’t have the answer. But I’ve tried to find the inquest that should have been held into Max’s death, and no joy. I found plenty of others from the time, and from the coroner’s court that would have had jurisdiction. But not his. Again, vanished from history. Perhaps I’ve been going about it the wrong way. Perhaps it’s people, not records, who can tell me. After all, I’m not just some random researcher, some student or hobbyist. I am Dr William Spears – or maybe Reigate now? Yes, I am Dr William Reigate, lecturer in neurological trauma at one of the most prominent medical schools in the country. If not the world. I can make some calls, can’t I? Find the medics who dealt with it. They can’t all be dead or vanished, too. I will explain who I am, why I need to know. I get out my phone and look for the nearest hospital to Dartington. Looks like Torbay. Who do I know round there? There must be someone, one of my fellow students from when I was training, who spent time there, or works there now? Who can point me in the direction of the right person, make things happen.

Who, who, who?

I go into my Facebook app and scroll through my friends (/random acquaintances). Who?

And then, there it is. Of course. How could I forget? Felicity Stephens.

Chapter Twelve

-Will-

It would be Felicity, wouldn’t it? Flick. Ellie’s only ever rival. In that department. Not that Ellie ever acknowledged it. Even when I was about to de-friend Flick, when Ellie and I had started going out, Ellie stopped me. ‘No,’ she’d said, as we lay in bed with my laptop. ‘I’m not the jealous type. Besides, she’s got nothing on me.’ And then, as I recall, I got the best blowjob of my existence. Ellie always knew how to get one over on the competition.

But now that old flickering flame has the key to my knowledge. I always thought I was too young for an old flame. Maybe it’s a coming of age. Because there’s nothing else I can think of calling her. Flick, the old flame who I dated for three months. Flick, the old flame who I abandoned for Ellie. Flick, the old flame who continued to flirt with me, right up until she moved to Devon. Where she became a consultant. At Paignton hospital. As she repeatedly told me in those drunken ‘screw you’ voice messages. Which means she must work in the same NHS Trust area as the Torbay hospital.

Right. So. Am I really going here?

I look at the scattered papers around the room.

I feel the piano under my hands.

I think of the childhood I lost. And the woman who is to blame.

Yes, I really am going here.

The question is, how? What tactic should I take? If Flick now is still the same Flick I knew then, she is all ego. Not arrogant. Just needy. Liked to be romanced, valued, made to feel worthwhile. A whole load of emotional foreplay before you could go anywhere near the bedroom.

I look at her photos on Facebook. Yes, these are the same old Flick. Beautiful, of course. Tiny and slim as ever. If you hit her with one of those piano hammers, she would snap in two like a string. The same abundant dark-brown, almost black, long hair. And of course, that same camera pout, looking all ‘sexy’, but with the look of a scared, frightened child in her eyes. A slightly wild child. But definitely a frightened one. The same old Flick.

So it’s no good just messaging her with a simple factual query. She probably wouldn’t respond. Or if she did, it wouldn’t be quite on point. No, I need a more sophisticated message. An emotional one. One that will make her think I want to rekindle what was so firmly burnt out. One that makes me hope Ellie never ever hacks my account.

Should I sleep on it?

Again, the papers, the piano, the loss. The Sophie.

No.

Act now.

So I ask Facebook to let me message her. And in the window that comes up, I write:

‘Find myself thinking of you. Of the old times.’

Then I send it. The 2am Facebook booty call.

And before I can lock up my office, there is a response.

‘Are you sending that from your bed, lying next to your wife?’

So. She is awake. And lonely. And drunk?

‘I’m working late tonight.’

‘Oh right. “Working late.” Why do I suspect you make a habit of that?’

This is all very well, but I don’t need insinuations of infidelity, I need a date. Sort of.

‘Fancy helping me out of my workaholic tendencies? If I buy you a drink, maybe you’ll do me a favour.’

And send. There’s a pause. A long pause. Damn. I’ve blown it. Too forthright. She probably thinks I mean a sexual favour. For the purposes of that message, I probably did.

And it looks like she did too. Because finally I get another message.

‘Cheeky. As in, the cheek of it. Are you in a time-warp? Did 12 years not just go by?’

Hmm. Not going so well. I have one more chance, I reckon, to try to make this meeting. Maybe some flattering line?

‘Not from the looks of your photo.’

Send.

Now we’ll see if it’s still the same Flick.

‘Oh, charmer… OK, one drink. And one favour ;)’

And yes, it is. Same old Flick. Needy, vulnerable, gullible Flick. I pause. I shouldn’t be doing this. Not because of Ellie – I have no intention of doing anything to dishonour her. A little flirty drink, but nothing more than that. She’s pregnant with my son, for God’s sake! But to Flick. Using her. It’s not what she needs.

But then, abandoning the venture now will do more harm. I can imagine the spiral she’ll go into, the glasses of wine she’ll drink, to try to understand how she managed to turn me off when I was about to ask for a date. So I just type:

‘Thursday? 7pm? Café Royal hotel bar?’

And before I’ve thought about what the hotel bit means, I’ve pressed send. I just picked it because me and Ellie went there once, and it’s the most ‘I’m treating a girl’ place I could think of. Then and now.

Which is probably why I get the response from Flick that she is very much looking forward to it (wink).

Flick, I really hope you have the answers. And that you’ll tell them to me down in that bar. Otherwise, I may for once be very glad that my father isn’t alive. So that he can’t judge me.

Chapter Thirteen

-Ellie-

So she’s resurfaced. She had to eventually. Gillian, that is. I guess it was to be expected. I just wish it wasn’t today. The day of the field trip. The day I reclaim Sophie – and hopefully also Will. Because, you know, there’s still not much change. For the better. If anything he’s even more tense, more distant. When I asked him earlier what time he’d be home, I had to repeat myself twice, before he’d answer me. Of course, he doesn’t know what time he’ll be back. Perhaps he’ll pull an all-nighter. His knee kept jiggling under the breakfast table as he spoke. We could share some of that nervous energy, some of that frustration. But before I could offer, he’d gone.

I get a phone call, early. Much earlier than is civilised when you’re phoning a household with a six-month pregnant woman in it. Much later than Will has left the house. Then again, Gillian never has been particularly civil to me.

She doesn’t even bother to ask to speak to Will, now, when she phones. Just ‘Is he there?’ as if somehow, him being in the house is a victory, that she’s won access to him. But of course, he isn’t there. And he won’t be there tonight, either, I tell her. Throwing himself into his work because of her betrayal. And she tries to tell me, of course, that it wasn’t a betrayal, that she knows what’s best for him etc, etc, bollocks. I hold up one hand to cut her off, even though I know she can’t see me.

“You know what, Gillian?” I say. “Don’t even bother. Because today I’m finding Will’s real mother. I’ll be in that car in ten minutes, on my way to her.”

It’s a lie, of course, because I’m not driving. I’m not convinced my belly would fit under the steering wheel. No, it’s a minicab and a first-class train ticket all the way, thank you very much.

There’s a gasp from Gillian, then silence. It’s like she’s thinking down the phone at me. Finally she speaks. It’s a strangled voice, like in the silence she’s been winding the phone cord round her own neck. “You can’t be,” she says. Which is odd, because she doesn’t know I’m lying about the driving. And pretty bloody annoying, actually. Again, like she knows best, when she really bloody doesn’t. So I say:

“I damn well am, Gillian. I’ve found the Reigates’ old house in Dartington and I’m going there. Getting some local intelligence. And I’ll find out where she is now.”

And that shuts Gillian up for a moment. Before her next outburst of nonsense.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Eleanor,” she says. Still strangled, but at a higher pitch. “Just stop. Nothing good is going to come of this. You’re having your own little family. Be happy with that.”

And I can hear her add in her head ‘Like I was happy with mine, before you came along.’

But she doesn’t know anything about happiness. All hers, all Will’s, was faked for so long. I want real happiness. Real, solid relationships. Which is what today might bring. So I just hang up. That’s the thing: I don’t
need
to give an answer to Gillian, because I don’t answer to her. I answer to myself, and to Will, and to little Leo inside me. And if we all want a nice new mother to make us complete, that’s what I’m going to get.

Of course, the phone goes again and again and again. But then I get a text saying my cab is outside, so I leave Gillian’s nonsense behind and start on the journey.

I’ve told Will I’m going job-hunting today. Just in case, you know, he phones me or something and the phone is off. Unlikely, given his current lack of interest. But I live in hope. Given it was his idea, he could have looked more pleased about it. Actually, I was half-minded just to abandon the whole Sophie exercise, when I told him. I said there was this great little publisher I’d found, publishing science books for kids, and that I was going to speak with them today. And, you know, I have found one. In case he wants to Google them. But I don’t think that’s likely. Because he just nodded and said ‘Good. We could do with the extra money.’ No ‘oh how lovely that sounds like a super job for you’. Or ‘oh good luck honey I hope that goes well’. Though if it did exist, it could hardly go well, could it? I would turn up with my pregnancy belly masquerading as the elephant in the room. I can imagine it now, this made up job interview: them all staring at my belly, but not mentioning it, just asking about my short- to medium-term plans and hoping I won’t sue them if they don’t shortlist me. Sure, I know I have rights. But right now, I don’t want to use them. We have money. Will makes it. I’m finding his mother, and I’m finding myself as a mother. End of. But if Will starts about the job hunt again, the search for Sophie is off. Which would be a shame. Because if I can just find her, he might notice again what it is to have a family.