I suppose you thought you were protecting me. But the hiding is over. I refuse to leave my own past buried. Wouldn’t you?

I must work alone. Because who can I trust, now? My wife? My family? No-one. The answers have been hidden for so long. But I refuse to live a lie one moment longer. I finally know who I am…and it’s time you did, too. And you will.

Ready or not…here I come.

All will be revealed in the electrifying final part of Hide and Seek by Amy Bird: a new novel, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, SJ Watson and Liane Moriarty. Is finding the truth worth losing everything?

Also by Amy Bird

Yours is Mine

Three Steps Behind You

Praise for Amy Bird

‘This novel contains many shocks and turns, it’s filled with emotion and makes for an addicting and fast read’ –Uncorked Thoughts on Yours is Mine

‘There were moments that goosebumps spread across my arms…the last chapter left me a little breathless.’ – Katlyn Duncan, author of The Life After Trilogy on Yours is Mine

‘… there are twists and turns in here that you will never see coming.’ – Emma Kerry, Emma Kerry’s Notebook on Yours is Mine

‘I honestly cannot recommend this book enough! It is fast paced and thrilling, and will have you gripped from beginning to end.’ – Amy Nightingale, Compelling Reads on Three Steps Behind You

‘As a psychological thriller this works extremely well…it is perfectly paced with some real heartstopping moments and a terrific exciting finale. I enjoyed it very much, it appealed to my darker nature and I will definitely be looking out for more from this author.’ –Liz Loves Books on Three Steps Behind You

‘For those of us who love a dark read, this is just perfect.’ – Christine Marson, Northerncrime on Three Steps Behind You

‘I couldn't put this book down.’ – Kelly White, Waterstones bookseller on Three Steps Behind You

‘A novel full of twists and turns. Readers will be surprised who they end up cheering on. Highly recommended.’ – Rosemary Smith, Cayocosta72 Book Reviews on Three Steps Behind You

Hide and Seek Part Three

Amy Bird

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Amy Bird 2014

Amy Bird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781474007603

Version date: 2018-09-20

AMY BIRD

Amy Bird lives in London, where she divides her time between writing and working as a solicitor. Hide and Seek is her third psychological thriller for HQ Digital. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London, and is also an alumna of the Faber Academy ‘Writing a Novel’ course, which she studied under Richard Skinner. As well as novels, Amy has written a number of plays, including The Jobseeker which was runner-up in the Shaw Society’s 2013 T.F. Evans Award. She is a member of the Crime Writers’Association. Her husband, Michael, writes too and one of their favourite pastimes is to ‘fantasy cast’ films of their novels while cooking up new concoctions in the kitchen. For updates on her writing follow her on Twitter, @London_Writer.

The following must be thanked for the creation of Hide and Seek: Messrs Alkan, Beethoven, Grieg and Tchaikovsky for the concerti that helped me imagine the music at the heart of this novel; my talented editor Clio Cornish for helping me find that heart’s true beat; the rest of the HQ Digital team for their passion in bringing the book to readers; my fellow HQ Digital authors who have spurred me on, both on-line and in person; my legal colleagues, who have indulged my authorial leanings; the friends, family and enthusiastic readers who championed Three Steps Behind You while I was working on Hide and Seek. And finally, love, gratitude and joy to my husband Michael. You are with me in all creations.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Praise for

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Endpages

About the Publisher

RECAPITULATION

Chapter One

-Will-

I do my best to blag taking the hammer on the Eurostar. ‘DIY on my home in Paris.’ ‘You just can’t get good tools over there.’ But they don’t buy it. The hammer is confiscated. Never mind. What I said about decent tools in Paris is a lie. I’m sure I’ll be able to buy a hammer. Before I get to the school.

I board the train. As we are waiting to depart, I think about the lecture. There will be disapproval at me postponing it again. But it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be complete without this, this extra bit of research. I have my darling wife to thank for this, for finding and revealing the school Sophie teaches at. Thinking of Ellie, I look at my phone. Nothing from her. That’s a surprise. I thought my darling wife would want to talk. Would want to know why the lecture I claimed to be leaving the house for has been postponed. Soon enough, I will tell her. But not yet. Not until Sophie is dead.

Do I feel advance remorse for what I’m going to do? No. Because this is the woman who has stolen my life. I know everything now, thanks to the memories, thanks to Ellie. That my mother used to have a temper. That she used to beat me. That she used to shout at my father. My Max. And that one time, while we were in the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, she took a hammer and she hit him over the head. And that while he was in the middle of recording what I’m sure was a beautiful, haunting, life-changing concerto, his life ended. And my life ended then too. My real life. The life of the boy of a genius father. The life of sitting under the piano, gazing up. The life of concert halls and artists and excitement. She murdered the both of us. And then she abandoned me. To Gillian and her lies, to John and his non-communicative, non-artistic, non-interesting parenting. To suburban ordinariness. To a non-identity. But I’m going to have my revenge now. My revenge and Max’s vengeance. All my expertise, it is for this. My study of the skull, the brain, the blood. All of it is my calling, to smash in Sophie’s cranium with a hammer and return home in glory. I will wet my son’s head in the first blood of family triumph. He will be a Reigate then, not a Spears. As will we all. Me, Ellie, and Leo. Reigates.

As the train moves towards Sophie’s death, I am pleased to hear it play Max’s concerto. Du-du-dum, du-du-dum, du-du-dum, it goes. If I press my head against the window, I can hear not just the piano, but the undertones of the strings, and the whine of the woodwind. I lift my head back off the window. I am not interested in the strings and the woodwind. I just want to hear the piano. Du-du-dum, du-du-dum, du-du-dum. The train hasn’t learnt all of the concerto like I have. It misses the variance in rhythm. Makes everything too uniform, too methodical. At least it moves at a fast tempo. I can teach it the rest. I become the train’s conductor, waving my hands to show the beats, humming the little cadences that the train does not know. When the ticket conductor comes round, he pauses only briefly to inspect my ticket. He knows I am dealing with a higher art form than him. The main theme comes round again, and I play it on the table in front of me. Because I’ve learnt that bit now. I can play it along with Max, the both of us together. Like when I play on my piano in the office – I have the piano so shiny now, that when I play there is an extra pair of hands reflected back at me from the wood of the piano. They are disembodied hands, up to wrist only, and they closely resemble my own. Except really, they are Max’s hands, from beyond his piano-grave, playing his music with me. A father-son duet.

And maybe, just maybe, in her flat Sophie will have some kind of shrine to Max’s genius. In fact, how could she not? Even if she thinks of it as a shrine to herself, to the evil she is capable of, it will be there. And in that shrine will be the piano. Max’s piano. I will finally caress the very keys that expressed his genius. Our hands will touch across the years, across the notes, across the pain. Plus there’ll be pictures of me and Max. She will have kept them, too, out of the same pride that has made her keep the piano. I will find them and I will take them – I will restore the childhood I have lost. The thought of this enables me and the train to tackle the smoother passages of the second movement with more legato than I have managed previously – we are at one with the slow flow of the music.

By the time the train arrives in Paris, we have almost played the full concerto three times. We had just reached the start of the third movement – fast, still with that underlying beat of three, accelerating in pace until the final glorious whirling cadenza. I continue as I disembark, stepping swiftly onto the platform. I don’t need the train’s help. I don’t need anyone’s help. I just need to kill Sophie.

As I stand on the concourse at Gare du Nord I suddenly feel like weeping. Here I am, in this beautiful city. I’ve been brought here by beautiful music. I’m going to become a father in a couple of months. It should be the happiest happiest time. Imagine what it would be like if I’d never heard about Max. Never heard about Sophie. If I was just in Paris, waiting to be a dad. But no. Never think that. Because to unthink Max is to do what Sophie has done – to uninvent him, to delete him, to try to eradicate him from the earth. That is why Sophie is so bad. And it is why if I remove Sophie, I will in a way be bringing back Max. There’ll be closure. I can move on, proudly.

It is simple enough buying a replacement hammer. I suppose if I was a murderer, I would buy lots of other tools too, to throw the tool-shop owner off the scent. I suppose I would have learnt the French for hammer. Or got out some Euros. As it is, he’s pretty likely to remember the mumbling Englishman buying a hammer and paying with a credit card. The credit card company will remember me too. Good job, then, that I’m not a murderer, but an avenger.

And so on to the school. I get the Métro. My hammer sits snug inside my jacket, waiting to come out. Nobody on the Métro knows what I am about to do. But they would understand, if I told them. They value artistry, here. They know that genius must be savoured or, if that cannot be, then avenged. The Métro is of course playing Max’s tunes. It has a better grasp of them than the train. As we lurch about, speeding up, slowing down, never constant, I feel that Max is on the train somewhere, playing to us. I feel the familiar pulse of blood in my head as I hear the masterful crescendo, his virtuosic solo passages, his unapologetic crashing over the woodwind and the strings. I know he wrote their pieces too. But they were only straw musicians, put there to serve his genius. He is the real star of the show.

Before the tune can finish I arrive at my station. I climb the steps, up to the light, up to the air, up to the green waving trees. And there it is. L’école Sainte-Thérèse. With Sophie inside it.

Chapter Two

-Ellie-

And suddenly everything is happening very quickly.

“Gillian!” I shout. “Gillian, come in here, my waters have broken. You need to call an ambulance!”

While her footsteps clatter towards me from the hallway I pull out my own phone. I’m just about to call Will when my esteemed non-mother-in-law appears in the doorway.

“What, Ellie?” Gillian says. “It sounded like you said your waters had broken but that can’t be right, you’re only – ”

“Yes, I know it’s two months early, you need to call an ambulance!”

And I carry on pressing at my phone, trying to get it to unlock. She must phone an ambulance; only I can speak to Will. There isn’t time for two calls. The ambulance must come, and I must speak to Will. But my fingers, I can hardly make them do anything. They are shaking and shaking and shaking. Two months early! This is bad, this is so bad. And the pains, down below, they are bad too. But they must be contractions, I suppose. So I breathe – 1, 2, 3 – through them. And I get the phone unlocked.

“If I’m calling an ambulance, who are you calling?” Gillian asks me.

“Will!” I half-breathe, half-shout at her. “I’m obviously phoning Will!”

“Why?”

“Because I’m about to give birth, or death, or something to our first attempt at a child, obviously!” I wheeze. “And oh, to tell him not to kill Sophie!”

“What?”

Gillian puts her own phone down.

“Don’t put down the phone, Gillian! Call an ambulance. Or a porter! We’re right next to a bloody hospital, aren’t we? Please. I can’t do both!”

Gillian is silent. She doesn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. How can she not? How can she just be standing glaring at me rather than calling an ambulance. 1-2-3 breathe!

“What’s this about Will killing Sophie?”

“He’s written it in his lecture notes, the idiot. He’s gone to Paris to kill her. He thinks she murdered Max. So I’ve got to call him, tell him the truth.”

Gillian comes closer to me.

“You’ll do no such thing,” she says.

“What?” 1-2-3 breathe! Come on, come on, where’s that ambulance – can’t they just be summoned by my pain?

“You are not going to tell Will the truth!”

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

-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 de dièses,” 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

-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

-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

-Tutti-

Will

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