Hide And Seek

But before that, I really must try to work on my lecture. I’ll kick myself if I’m up on the podium, staring out at the audience, and just thinking back to the afternoon when I couldn’t be bothered to work. I have some of the bullet points already. I just need to flesh them out, then add the extra research my student is doing.

‘Intro – Natasha Richardson’ the first bullet says.

Fine, I can deal with that. I speak softly to myself, practising.

“The world was shocked when actress Natasha Richardson – wife of Hollywood legend Liam Neeson – seemed perfectly fine after a skiing fall, carried on acting normally and then, hours later, died. That phenomenon, which we are studying today, is known colloquially as ‘talk and die’, medically as epidural haematoma, and is my area of specialism. It occurs when a head trauma leads to blood building up between the skull and the dura mater, causing pressure on the brain and, if unrelieved, that pressure can be fatal. In Natasha Richardson’s case, it was. She was unusual, though, because hers was caused by a skiing accident. The vast majority of cases in reality are caused by a violent act – so your classic baseball bat or hammer-blow to the head.”

Or a hit with a shoe, I could add. But it’s not a comedy. And I can’t dumb the thing down any more. It’s already pretty simplistic – film star’s wife, skiing… Maybe I should just invite them to eat popcorn. But the faculty head said I had to make it accessible. Start with a human interest story, reel them in. Which is what I’m doing. And I chose skiing specially – one of the jollier examples. Well, not jolly exactly – I still can’t watch films with Liam Neeson in without feeling sorry for him. But a skiing accident is in a sense jollier than the usual causes of our friend epidural haematoma – the domestic row between husband and wife escalates to a saucepan on the bonce, or the burglar gets carried away with his baseball bat. At least with skiing, no one is inflicting the pain. I chose well. So why the self-doubt? Have I been working too hard? I suddenly feel tired. Exhausted actually. Overwork and tiredness, that’ll undermine anyone’s self-confidence. I have had pretty disrupted sleep, I guess, over the last few months, what with Ellie getting up in the night, then all the tossing and turning as she tries to find a position comfortable for sleep. And sex, you know, is tiring – I read that men are hormonally conditioned to be sleepy after sex. Plus maybe I tired myself out from that other hammering too, with the shoe. I don’t know where that came from – all that energy, all that force. Maybe sexual tension. Maybe Ellie knew I needed some kind of release. Wherever it came from, it’s not there now.

So I put my papers to one side, and curl up in foetal position on the bed. Max Reigate’s music floats back to me from the car journey, and all those other times we have listened to it. That moment, after the climax, the great build-up, where everything is calm again. The chords are in harmony, surrounded by happy little triplets of notes lilting about, rather than the aggressive earlier accents. And all is resolved. That’s what I need. To absorb that calm, from the CD. But then Ellie will know I’m not working. So I’ll just have to curl up here and secretly let the imaginary music calm me. Even though the refrain in my head will be hard to drown out. The refrain that says: ‘You don’t know how to be a father. You don’t know how to deliver a public lecture. You’re not equal to what lies ahead.’

Chapter Four

-Will-

I’m woken by Ellie shaking me.

“Come on, lazy bones,” she says, flooding the room with light. “They’ll be here in a minute.”

REM is still with me. “There was a piano,” I say. “And some hands, and I don’t know, maybe some water and…”

“You probably just needed to go to the loo,” Ellie says. “I always dream about water when I need to go. Always wakes me up, thank goodness – nobody wants the Yellow Sea in their bed.”

She kisses me, then leaves the room. I try to recapture the dream, but it’s too far away from me. So I come back into the now. I stretch out and look at my watch. 4pm! I’ve been asleep for two hours and my parents are indeed due. I feel a bit groggy, in need of some sugar, before we entertain. But no – there’s the doorbell. I pull myself off the bed, rake a hand through my hair in a bid to make it look a bit less like I’ve been in bed all afternoon – whether through sex or slumber – and canter downstairs.

Ellie hasn’t let them in. Apparently that’s my job. I take the chain off the door, open it up, and we’re both immediately engulfed in celebration.

“Congratulations darlings!” Mum says as she launches into the house. She gives me a hug and a kiss, waves at Ellie’s belly, then does a kind of air-hug at Ellie herself. “Don’t want to squash the son and heir!” she says. Her beaming face suggests she is over any angst about being a grandmother. She’s even wearing the dark-green linen ‘occasion jacket’ (I used to call it the ‘snazz jacket’) that she always wore for important client meetings.

Dad follows, less loudly, but with a firm handshake and a slap on the back. “Well done, Ellie. Well done, Will,” he says.

Mum leads the way through to the dining room. From her bag she produces twenty-week scan cupcakes and Appletiser (apparently that’s the done thing in Surrey these days). And she is beaming at us.

“Such happy news! Do let me see the scan.”

Ellie of course obliges, and we get into the family resemblance discussion again.

“Doesn’t he look like Will, though?” she asks, rhetorically.

And they agree, my parents, because they have to. If Ellie’s parents were here too, then maybe there’d be more debate. But of course, they’re not.

Then Ellie makes me hold the scan photo and stand next to Dad, so that the three of us Spears family males are in a line. She puts her head to one side.

“Hmm, don’t see it you know. Will and baby maybe, but not getting the cross-generational resemblance thing,” says Ellie.

Dad peers at the photo. “Ah, you know what it is? The baby already has more hair than me.” He rubs his balding head ruefully.

And then Ellie does her party trick. I should have seen this coming, really, she’s been going on about it so much.

“But I tell you who I do see a resemblance with,” she says. She goes over to the CD tower and pulls out the familiar red box, that she retrieved from the car earlier.

“Ellie,” I say, half-chiding her, but she is glowing and wonderful, so I can’t really reprimand her.

“No, no, it’s so funny, I have to show them. Drum roll please – we’ve found Will’s doppelganger. He is the spitting image of: Max Reigate, concert pianist.” And she flourishes the CD box proudly, holding it next to me and the baby photo for comparison.

I turn to Mum and Dad with a mock eye-roll, my half-apologetic smile already prepared.

But the smile dies. Because Mum and Dad are staring at the CD box without any hint of a smile on their faces. In fact, the old cliché that they look like they’ve seen a ghost could not be more true. Mum has turned pale. Dad is shooting anxious glances at Mum. I look at Ellie. She is still holding the box and grinning, but the grin has a fixed quality now. None of us speak. Then Ellie does her usual humour escape route thing.

“No, you don’t see the resemblance? OK, no offence taken. Specsavers have some great deals on right now, though.”

Mum seems to recover herself. “Don’t be daft, Ellie. Will’s just got one of those faces – resembles everyone. Or at least we both think so because we love him, hey?” She gives Ellie a ‘women-together’ sort of nudge. Ellie moves away.

“Yeah, I know they say love is blind but I have actually retained my 20-20 vision, Mrs S.” Oh dear. She’s using her haughty voice. A definite warning sign. Time to move things on.

“It’s true, I’m a mongrel,” I say. “I look like all sorts of people. Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Max Reigate… It’s a real curse.”

Ellie rolls her eyes at me. “They say new dads feel extra-confident, but Brad Pitt? Really? You’re not even blond!”

“But you look like every bit the Angelina, my darling,” I tell her, giving her a kiss.

But maybe Mum feels a bit nauseated by all the smooching, because she’s back on Max Reigate.

“Where did you get that CD, anyway?” Mum asks.

I look at Ellie. I don’t know where we got it. Ellie just produced it one day. “Look what I found,” she said. “Spooky, right – look at the nose, the eyes, the hair. It could be you. Or, like, your long-lost brother!” And we’d listened to the CD, which actually turned out to be pretty amazing, this romantic piano concerto full of clashing chords and little haunting riffs of melody. It starts off being all orchestral, and you’re just waiting in suspense for the piano to take over in its solo brilliance, because you know it will. Then once it does, you know nothing will be same again. It just haunts you, by its presence and its lack.

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