Читать книгу Hide And Seek - Amy Bird - Страница 16

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.