Nobody’s life is ever perfect. Families tell lies. People keep secrets. But the life which Will and Ellie Spears have built together is as perfect as it’s possible to be.

Until, one day, something is let slip. A discovery is made. And all of a sudden Ellie and Will’s life falls down, as acceptance gives way to an obsessive search for answers.

Families tell lies. People keep secrets. But sometimes the truth is much more dangerous.

Hide and Seek is the addictive new psychological suspense novel from Amy Bird, 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

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: 9781474007733

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

Part One: Exposition

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

Part Two: Development

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Part Three: Recapitulation

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

Concerto: A composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra. Often constructed in three parts: exposition; development; and recapitulation. Sometimes drives people to murder.

PART ONE EXPOSITION

Chapter One

-Will-

You know those days when everything is so right, so perfect, that you think something must go wrong? That something must smash through your happiness like a hammer, sending it splintering into tiny little pieces that you can never gather together again? Today is one of those days.

Because it’s an archetypal moment, isn’t it, getting the twenty-week scan? You can stop crossing your fingers a little bit as you look at that small creature that you and your wife – or your girlfriend, whatever works for you – have made. You have confirmation that the foetus is healthy, no weird abnormalities. Everything’s on track. Plus you get to find out its gender. And you can share it around, the news of the family line continued, and everyone is so proud and pleased and gives you champagne. If you’re the dad, that is. If you’re the mum you have to make do with apple juice.

And it actually looks like a human being, now, your little creation. Not like at the twelve-week scan, when it was just a shadow creature, inside your wife’s wonderful, magical belly. OK, right, sorry. You expect medical academics to be technical. Inside her perfectly ordinary womb where the foetus will gestate along the lines of the normal processes for homo sapiens. Actually, sod that. As I was saying, in Ellie’s magical belly, it didn’t look like much. But now it does. And doesn’t Ellie know it! At every red traffic light on the drive home from the hospital she is holding the scan image up to my face.

“He totally has your nose,” she shouts over the music we have blaring out of the CD drive. Ellie’s stuck on our latest favourite CD, a rousing piano concerto by some guy called Max Reigate. I guess she hopes that by playing it so loudly the baby will hear and give her a friendly kick, or something.

I twist my head slightly to see the scan photo, eyes off the road for a moment.

“Um, Ellie, I’m not sure that’s a nose.”

“OK, then, he totally has your p—”

“Ellie!” I warn her. “That is so wrong. There are some comparisons you shouldn’t make.”

She shrugs. “OK, fair one. But he looks like you.”

And even though I know she is wrong, and there is no way she can tell yet whether it looks like me, I don’t mind. Because I’m going to be a dad. Finally, after all those months of Ellie dragging me into the bedroom, ovulation stick in hand shouting ‘Now, now, now!’ (a real romantic, Ellie) I’m, touch wood, going to have a son. I would have been happy with a daughter too, of course. But, you know how it is – I’m a boy, I want another boy. Not in that way. In a proud, paternal, ‘this is my share of a football team’-type way.

So there’ll be all sorts of celebrations later, when Mum and Dad come round. I texted them from the hospital to say all was well and to tell them it’s a boy. I can’t wait to show them this latest picture. They’ve been on the whole journey with us, my parents. They knew, of course, that we were trying. There’s only so many times you can offer Ellie champagne and shellfish before she cracks and fesses up to the real reason she’s turning them down. Better that than have people think you are dull, in Ellie’s philosophy. Then when we kept cancelling brunches because Ellie wasn’t feeling too well, they twigged. Mum drew me to one side and asked me, point blank, if we were pregnant. I just gave her holding statements initially – it was mine and Ellie’s secret, at first. But then, after the twelve-week scan, I gave her the news. ‘It’s early days, yet,’ I said, ‘but all being well, you’re going to be a grandmother.’ She looked a bit funny at that, kind of a false smile, but I reckon it’s because she still thinks of herself as being about eighteen, and the G-word scared her.

First, though, we’re doing the crib, me and Ellie. We promised ourselves that. Now that we know there are no anomalies, we can actually start building a life for our new little baby. Our new little boy. For when he arrives. So when we get back, we head up to the room that will over the coming months transform from ‘spare’ to nursery. Ellie settles herself down in the nursing chair, and I lay out the instructions on the floor in front of her.

“I think I know what we have to do now,” I tell her. Capable and efficient, that’s the kind of father I’ll be.

“What’s that, darling?” she asks.

I point at the diagrams in the instructions for the crib.

“Look, it’s simple: quick nail here, quick screw there – ”

“Oh darling,” Ellie says, putting a hand over her brow in a mock faint. “All this DIY porn’s enough to make a girl weak at the knees.”

“Behave!” I tell her. But obviously I’m pleased. Because we went through a phase, for a few months, when she just could not do innuendo or sex or anything else apart from curl up on the sofa feeling tired and nauseous. So I give her a little kiss on the belly and continue with the theme.

“Now, I seem to have lost my hammer – will you dig it out for me?” I growl, in what is maybe a porn star accent, if they all come from the Deep South.

“Sure thing, mister,” Ellie trills. She starts to heave herself up from the nursing chair. I think about the toolbox Mum and Dad gave us – the toolbox to end all toolboxes, as they put it. It’s downstairs, heavy, and as yet unexplored. Bit gittish to make my pregnant wife go fetch.

I gesture to Ellie to sit down.

“It’s all right, I’ll get it,” I say. “You stay here and grow our child.” No objection from Ellie. I troop off downstairs and open the hall cupboard. Toolbox. Toolbox. Ah, there we go – the edge of it peeking out from under a stash of Sainsbury’s bags that I keep meaning to organise. I drag it out of the cupboard and open it up. It really is the toolbox to end all toolboxes – two layers, the first one full to the brim with nails and screws and Allen keys and lots of other things that probably have names but damned if I know what they are. No hammer in the top layer though, so I lift the plastic out and look in the bottom section. Screwdrivers, a wrench, a spirit level… But no hammer. Odd. I would have thought that was a pretty basic ingredient. I look at the outside of the box for a contents list. Yes, there we are: easy-grip claw-hammer. Should be here, but it isn’t.

“That’s really weird!” I call to Ellie as I climb the stairs.

“What?” she shouts back.

“No hammer,” I tell her, as I reach the nursery, slightly out of breath.

She sighs. “Do you need me to come and look?” she asks, preparing again to haul herself out of the nursing chair.

I shake my head. “It’s genuinely not there. I’ve emptied everything out. I checked the contents listing on the side of the box, and there’s supposed to be a hammer, but it’s not in there.”

“Perhaps they borrowed it before they gave it to us, and forgot to put it back?” Ellie suggests.

“Maybe.” Bit annoying though. I wanted to build the crib this afternoon. “Bit odd, though, right?”

“Don’t worry, we can ask for it later,” Ellie says. “Can we not work round it for now?”

I think. How to hammer a crib when you haven’t got a hammer?

Aha! Master plan.

I leave the room for a moment and dart next door. Ellie probably thinks my master plan involves giving up. But no! I return to the nursery with one of my most clod-hoppery shoes, hidden behind my back. I bring it out with a flourish. “Let’s give this a whirl,” I say. Because OK, the shoe doesn’t come with a claw or an easy-grip handle. But I bet it can smash its way through anything.

Chapter Two

-Ellie-

Thank God for the man-brogues. Because I cannot be doing with another Gillian-ism interfering in our plans. Or Will suggesting that we go over to his parents’ house to get the hammer now. We are seeing them enough as it is. I don’t just mean this afternoon. I mean all the time. Will’s mum is like this totally omnipresent – totes omnip, is that a thing? – invasion into our lives. So just one bit of this one afternoon without her… Well, Will’s flash of initiative is a blessing.

That’s what the deposit for this house was all about. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I’m super grateful. I mean, who wouldn’t be for a two-bed house walking distance from central Kingston, when most people in their early thirties are still living back with their parents, or in the boot of a car somewhere? But the house is, what? A five-minute drive away from Will’s parents? A fifteen-minute walk. And they even came house-hunting with us. Imagine that. Your mother-in-law telling you how to decorate your downstairs loo in the most modern ‘relaxing’ trends. Approving your master bedroom, but suggesting replacing the dimmer switch with some brighter lighting. Yeah. Exactly. Freaky. Maybe that’s why she made us get a two-bedroomed place. So we could have separate beds. Unlikely, Mrs S. But you see the point – totes omnip. Wants her son near her at all times. Even if that means randomly stealing hammers so he will go over to their house to find them. Like an Easter egg hunt but far less rewarding.

So now that we have the saving shoe, we can start to assemble our little life. I even get myself out of the nursing chair. A bit of a struggle, it’s quite deep, but it’s perfect in other ways. The chair belonged to my parents. They get to be part of the nursery, that way, even though they’ll never be able to visit it. While I hold the pieces of the crib in place, Will begins to tap the nail gently with his shoe. I’m about to tell him to put some welly into it, when he gets a drifty look on his face, and stops with his non-hammering.

“How about Leo?” he asks.

Ah yes, baby names. For when this creature in my belly emerges, demanding its own identity (and probably my identity too, at least for a couple of years, if all the doom and gloom mummy mags are to be believed).

“Leo Spears… Hmm, certain ring to it,” I say. “Assuming, of course, that you think a boy can’t be called Britney? Or there’s always Asparagus. Ass for short?”

Will rolls his eyes comically. “Enough with the ‘Spears’ jokes! Anyone would think you didn’t want to take my name!”

I put up my hands in a peace gesture. The crib falls to the floor in pieces. Neither my holding nor Will’s shoe-hammering skills are enough to keep it secure. “Peace. Leo is certainly a contender. Now come on, put some muscle into that shoe-hammering, and let’s try to make Leo his new sleep home. Assuming he will actually sleep, at some point.”

So Will raises his shoe again, and I bend down a bit so I am holding the struts of the cot in place.

Will raises the shoe and – Christ – he brings it down hard. It’s like he’s auditioning for the film gong-man, or hitting that bell thing they used to have at the Hoppings Fair, to test your strength, that Dad used to take me to, when I was a kid, up in Geordieland. Except now it’s with a shoe.

“Careful!” I say, because if I’m to be a mother, I need to exercise control when people get a bit carried away. Even though Will does look kind of hot, all biceps and sweat. Perhaps we could just abandon the crib-building and have chair-sex in the nursing chair. The baby websites say that’s an excellent position. Or maybe it’s a bit wrong to have sex in a chair from your dead parents’ home, in which you intend to breast-feed your first-born. I don’t know. I’m still finding the balance.

But Will doesn’t seem to notice either my reprimand or my lascivious looks, because he does it again. Even harder. The sound ricochets round the room. Thwack. Now I am actually worried about the crib.

“Will, gently! You’ll break the casing!”

He brings the shoe down hard again. That’s it. Enough. I’m not letting Mr Alpha Male Dad split this crib. It’s nice. John Lewis nice. And the shoe isn’t bad either – not yet ready for re-soling.

I seize his hand as he is on the upward swing of the shoe, ready for another shot.

“Stop it!” I shout.

He turns to look at me. And, do you know, his face is not as sexy as his biceps right now. Kind of red and sweaty and frowning.

“It’s fine,” he says, shrugging off my hand. And he takes another swing.

Then it happens, like I said it would. The casing for the nail breaks. The heel of Will’s shoe comes ricocheting off. He’s overdone the machismo. We should just have had sex.

Will drops the shoe.

“Damnit!” he says, leaning over to examine the hole in the casing. I lean in too. It’s all split and cracked. Like I will be after… Jesus, I must stop reading those magazines. Focus on the crib. There’s no way that’s going to hold a nail, now.

“Four hundred quid down the drain, then,” I say.

Will looks despondent.

“Or we just hold it together with gaffa tape,” I add, to cheer him up. Classy mummy, I’m going to be. What would Mum have said, if she knew I was already letting my mothering standards slip? Probably nothing. She probably would have kissed me on the head, told me to run along, then it would all magically have been fixed when I came back. SuperMum. All she needed was a cape.

“I can’t believe I just broke Leo’s crib,” Will says. It seems Leo is now definitely Leo. Which is fine. But he’s not here yet.

“It’s only because you’re so big and strong,” I say, a hand on his bicep. OK, it’s not actually as bulging as I imagined, but it’ll do. “How about we try and break our bed as well, hey, before your parents get here?”

Will looks at me. Surprised, maybe. Or not – I mean, with this bump, how difficult would it really be to break the bed? Me on top, like some kind of ex-show pony, its belly too big to compete, but still gamely trying to straddle fences. Huh. Maybe I don’t really want sex. Not the pregnant reality of it.

But no, it’s initiated now. And Will, because he’s great really, isn’t he, despite destroying his child’s new home, he’s slowly kissing me from my neck to my belly. Yes, maybe my bump is glorious. Maybe it’s sexy. It’s of sex, anyway. And it seems Will doesn’t want to break the bed, but would rather break the chair instead. So he sits back and invites me onto him and I straddle him in the very chair in which I used to see my mother sit. Maybe it’s part of the mourning process. Or maybe it’s just a very nice way to spend an afternoon. Either way, the baby sites were right. It’s a very good position. The baby doesn’t get in the way at all – it is just me and Will, for a little while longer. And I perform to standards of which any woman would be proud.

Chapter Three

-Will-

“I still can’t believe I broke my son’s bed,” I say to Ellie, as she peels herself off me. I take a covert look at her bump. It really is becoming impressive now. She’s a mother way before I’m a father.

“What, you broke me?” Ellie asks in mock consternation, looking down at herself.

I laugh, but I’m serious. It’s not a great portent of my ability as a father, is it, getting so carried away in a show of my shoe prowess that I damage his new bed? If I do that to furniture, how am I possibly meant to help keep the child alive, in those precious two weeks of paternity leave?

Ellie sits on my lap, side-on, and wraps her arms round my neck for support.

“We’ll get it fixed. Reclaim our hammer from your parents. Stick some superglue in the cracks, then give it a really good precision blow.”

A precision blow sounds good. I consider saying this to Ellie, but she might take it wrong, like I didn’t just enjoy the sex. I did. Obviously (and I’m hoping the chair has survived unscathed). But she keeps saying that if I find the bump too big or unattractive, we can be intimate in other ways. So she might think the request for a precision blow (job) is a pointed one. That sex is no longer fun.

So instead, I just nuzzle her neck and tell her she is wonderful.

“We’ll be good parents, won’t we?” I ask her.

She nods her head. “We’ll still be you and me. So we’ll be the best.”

“You already are the best,” I tell her. “But I really do need to do some work on my lecture before my parents come over.”

Ellie looks at me. “Really? Post-coital work? That’s a first.”

“It needs to be done,” I say. “Just like you did.” I kiss her and gently nudge her from my lap. I ease past her out of the room. “I’ll take the bedroom, if that’s OK?”

“Such bad sleep hygiene,” she says. I can hear the roll of eyes in her voice.

“So are babies,” I retort.

“Touché,” says Ellie, with what must be a smile.

Good. Banter situation normal. No blame for my crib-breaking (which is good of Ellie because, really, spending £400 on a crib only to break it is not ideal).

I shower, get dressed, then prop myself up on the bed, surrounded by my papers…and nothing really happens. I’m still annoyed with myself about the crib. It’s silly, really. Such a small thing. And it can’t have been a very good crib if me hitting it with a shoe damages it. Really I was just health and safety testing it. Imagine if little Leo, banging it with a plastic beaker (because that’s what they do, isn’t it, babies, bang things?), had been able to break the nail-housing, and the nail had sprung out and blinded him. Or the side of the crib had given way, letting him roll out, then roll down the stairs – unthinkable. The ultimate parental nightmare. So really I should be pleased with myself. And just buy another crib. Or take it back. Say it was defective.

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.

Ellie looks at Mum. “I borrowed it from your place,” she says to Mum, her voice level. “While we were watering your plants, when you were away, I came across it. I hope that’sOK?”

“You came across it?” Mum asks. Her voice is tight.

Ellie shrugs. “Yes.” She holds Mum’s gaze. It’s like a challenge.

I feel like I’m missing something. I look at Ellie but she is busy examining the CD case. Then she looks up.

“Let’s play it!” she says, brightly (defiantly?). “We’re meant to be celebrating, so let’s celebrate.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Ellie love,” says Dad. “You’re meant to play babies whale music, aren’t you, not Ma – not this stuff.”

“My baby,” begins Ellie, then joins hands with me briefly, and corrects herself. “Our baby, is going to take after Will’s doppelganger and be an amazing musician. Not mess around with skeletons and brains like his nerdy dad. It’s all decided.”

Mum and Dad don’t look too pleased. But Ellie is already advancing to the CD player. And I get an outbreak of the goofy grins again at the thought of being a dad. Plus it is, as I’ve said, pretty amazing music.

“Put it on track three,” I say. “It’s the best bit.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Will always likes to get straight to the climax.”

I try to blush but I guess my parents kind of know we’re having sex. The evidence is protruding from Ellie’s belly. If not my tousled hair. Plus it’s like they’re not in the room. This is mine and Ellie’s and little (almost baby) Leo’s moment. We can do what we like. Mum is holding the Appletiser glass so tightly I am worried she might break it. Maybe I should offer her something stronger.

But then the room is filled with Max Reigate’s amazing sounds. The piano builds up in a wonderful rhythm of threes – ya da da, ya da da, ya da da – with chords separating then combining, unrelentingly crescendoing until my brain feels like it’s filled with blood, and with each beat of the piano hammers against the strings, there is more blood, pulsating to escape. And then –

“This is the best bit,” I say, waving my arms around, twirling about the room, in a way I know Ellie thinks is attention-seeking, but it’s how the music moves me. “Listen to how the violin and the piano are almost talking to each other, like a love affair, together coming closer and closer towards the climax, that wonderful pianorgasm and – ”

The music stops. But it’s not the end. Mum is standing next to the CD player, her finger on the stop button. Her back to the room.

“Mum, did you stop it? Sorry, did ‘pianorgasm’ offend you? It just…”

I trail off. Because Mum turns to face me. And she has tears in her eyes.

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.

Chapter Six

-Ellie-

It’s pretty obvious why Gillian was on the verge of crying yesterday, I think to myself, as I get ready to go out to Will’s parents for dinner (because, of course, we are seeing them again). Like, not specifically why she chose that moment, over the CD. But generally.

Jealousy.

Or over-cotton-woolling, non-chopping of apron stringsing, over-mummy’s-boying. You get my drift. Not letting go. Even her jacket – that dreadful, 80s power-shoulder-pad thing – was green. That says a lot, right?

She was like that before we got married, me and Will, three years ago. Took me to one side, did the ‘are your intentions honourable?’ bit on me. OK, not quite in those words. But she actually said: “You do understand the phrase ‘in sickness and in health’, don’t you? You’ll have to look after him, if things don’t go right. Like I’ve always looked after him.” Classic jealousy. Classic not wanting another woman in the life of her precious son. When my father gave me away, I half-expected her to tell Will to give me back again. She knew I knew her game, though, because she covered her tracks. “And give him a family,” she said. “That’s what he needs.” Presumptuous. What if I wanted to put my career first, like everyone else? I knew she didn’t really mean it. Otherwise why would she be getting all teary now?

Although, to be fair, she had looked after him. My God, she had. Over looked after him. Like, he won’t do any of his own admin, ever. When we got married, I was trying to get all our papers together, prove to the registrar we were able to get married. I had this little pack of documents, and I asked Will for his birth certificate, and he was like “Oh, Mum does all that stuff.” So I was like, what do you mean, and he said “Yeah, she looks after that, for all the ID stuff, she just takes care of it.” First time, apparently, that he needed all the ID things, he was away with school and so his mum did it, and she’s just kept doing it since. So, yeah – over-mothered.

And I know where she keeps it all too. In that study of hers. All those lockable little drawers. As if she’s got all these secrets, neatly filed away. I bet that’s where she keeps Will’s baby pictures: it’s like an emblem of filial closeness. If she can keep baby Will locked away, he’ll forever be her little boy.

That’s where I got the Max Reigate CD from. Not our house. Obviously. No, from her witchy little study. Actually, it’s quite a nice study. Green, wood, armchairs, all that stuff. After all, this is Surrey, darling. But it’s still witchy because it just has this air of ‘do not touch the secrets’. So one day, as I told her, I was there looking after the plants, and even though I’d been told not to bother about the spider plants in the study, I was like, who is she to decide when they need water? So I went in and watered them, and – just while they were absorbing the water, obviously – I had a little look round. Tested a few drawers, see if they would open. Didn’t, of course. But the bureau lid came open. Miraculous, because Will says it was always locked when he was little. He puts that down to the fact he kept trying to make origami models out of her writing paper. I think she just wanted to control what he had access to in this world. Either way, when he was little, it was locked. When I was in the room, it was open. So I pulled up the lid (to admire the fine craftsmanship of the interior, obviously) and what caught my eye, because of its redness, was the Max Reigate CD case. Underneath that was a Max Reigate LP. Weird, right, having both? And then of course I saw the resemblance to Will, so I had to bring it home to show him, and then Will’s parents came back from holiday so there was no way to slip it into the study again, so…we kind of kept it.

And yes, so, this is what her tears were all about. Not the missing CD. That would be odd, particularly as she still has the LP. Although I have a theory about that CD. I’m not telling Will yet, because he is still totally puzzled by mummy’s almost-tears. He’s not admitting it, but look at him now, reading his lecture notes while he waits for me. He is drumming his fingers, drum, drum, drum, the way he always does when he’s stressed. Was doing it in his sleep last night. Really annoying – don’t need to wait until we have this baby for unbroken sleep. But yes, the baby – that’s why Gillian was crying. Because if your son has his own son with his wife, that’s him gone, right? He has this whole other family, that he’s co-head of (not head: things have moved on since Gillian was a girl). Never again can she put him over her knee and smack him, literally or figuratively. She becomes less and less relevant, slips away, into a kind of outsourced childcare provider.

“Shall we drive?” Will asks me, taking a break from his drumming and his notes. “Looks a bit dark out there. Forbidding.”

I follow Will’s nod to the windows. Yes, it is dark. That’s because it’s night. It happens.

“If my master plan were to allow my arse to take over the entire bed, maybe,” I retort. “But as it’s not, let’s walk.”

And I predict that when we get there, there will be more fun and games with Mrs S. Because when I have a theory, you see, as I do, I don’t let it go. Not until I’ve explored it thoroughly. Will may be the scientific breadwinner, but I can be just as forensic as him.

Chapter Seven

-Will-

Ah, of course, the walking thing. Ellie has informed me that this is the best way not to put on too much baby weight, and to lose it again quickly. It told her this in some magazine. It also told her to do pregnancy yoga. She bought all the kit, went to one session, and came back scowling. We didn’t speak of it again. But the walking is a lot easier. Not that I am thinking about her weight. All I generally think when I look at her is how much the pregnancy folklore about shining hair and glowing skin is true – look at it now, that dark-brown mane swishing as she brushes it. And if she’s pale, that only emphasises the line of her lips. But she seems convinced that I’m worrying about some post-baby age in which she is all pudgy and round – so anything that will reduce the chances of that is QED. The automatically right thing to do. But I’m not thinking about that at all. Not much, anyway.

So we grab a bottle of wine from the wine rack, I lock up the house, and away we go into the night.

“Let’s take the scenic route,” says Ellie. “Along the river.”

We go that route in the day, but I’m not so sure about night. I think of muggers and bandits and ghouls. Ellie is clearly just thinking of calories. Then her real reason becomes clear. The road we turn down takes us past a nursery, its sign covered with pictures of butterflies and smiling children (the chrysalis experience?). Sod a ghosts walking-tour. It’s clear Ellie is the chief tour guide for the ‘we’ll soon be parents’ walk.

“Doesn’t it look cute?” says Ellie, pointing at the nursery. “And it would be so handy, wouldn’t it? You can drop him off before work.”

I’d kind of like to know why she still won’t be going to work. Or if she’s not, why we need a nursery school.

“Is it expensive, do you reckon?” I ask, thinking maybe it will prompt the discussion.

Ellie just shrugs. “Childcare is expensive. We’ll have to deal with it. But anyway, imagine how cute he’ll look, our little Leo, with his father’s – ”

“Watch it,” I say, detecting a new poor taste in-joke.

“– appendage, all dressed up in his uniform, with a little briefcase.”

“Like I used to have, when I was in juniors? In the photos?”

“Exactly like that. I want to look at that later, it’s so sweet. Anyway, we’ll need to register Leo, like, as soon as he pops out. That can be your job. You can literally catch him, then sprint along here and register him.”

“Nah, I’m gonna be too busy smoking a cigar. Take my fatherhood traditions very seriously, I do.”

“My God, you’re such a cliché! I bet your father did that, didn’t he?”

I shrug. I’m yet to have the conversation. “I’ll ask him.”

The road leads us on past Tiffin Girls’ School.

“Ah, and here’s where he’ll spend much of his later years, I imagine!” says Ellie.

“What, cross-dresser is he, our son?”

“Don’t play the innocent. I bet you spent hours here, eyeing up the girls, as they all paraded out, with their skirts rolled up.”

“Think that’s a Northern thing, Ellie. No evidence of skirts being rolled up here.”

“Did they have short skirts?”

“Maybe. If you were looking. Mum always turned up to walk me home so I didn’t get much of a chance.”

“Didn’t like you getting into cars with strange leggy girls, I bet. And do you think you, as a parent, would allow the skirt-rolling?”

“As the father of a son, I would go further. I would advocate it!”

Ellie nudges me affectionately with her shoulder, pushing me off the pavement. “You old lech,” she says. “You just want to eye up Leo’s girlfriends. You’ll say: ‘see that there appendage he’s got, I’ve got one much – ’”

“Enough with the appendages! Besides, I’ll be too busy knocking you up with our little daughter to be worrying about Leo’s girls,” I say, nudging her back, taking a quick squeeze of her not-at-all-expanded backside as I do so.

“Will you now?” she asks.

“I will,” I return, kissing her. It was a good idea to walk. Out in the open, all the worries start to fall away. This is territory that I know. Apart from those four years in Dartington, before we moved, all my life has been here. I know these streets. It has the feel of my childhood.

“I used to walk along this road to the park,” I say. “Mum would collect me, and then we’d go feed the ducks, play on the swings. I’d have to drag along to the supermarket, afterwards. But then Mum would buy me a treat.”

“Such a mummy’s boy,” she says.

“Meh,” I say shrugging. “Daddy bought me sweets and took me places too.”

“You were spoilt rotten. We are so not going to spoil little Leo, are we hey, Leo?” Ellie has a small chat with her stomach before we continue.

“Spoilt for who?” I ask. “Not you. I’m perfect for you,” I say, expecting a kiss. I don’t get one.

“Ach, with your perfect little spoilt upbringing. Just perfect Little Lord Fauntleroy, with your briefcase and your ducks.”

“Is that jealousy? Grim up North, was it?”

I wonder if I’ve gone too far. Is it safe to mock her parents, her upbringing, yet, eighteen months on?

Ellie turns to me. I hold my breath. She could quite justifiably berate me for what I’ve said. But she doesn’t. Instead, “I wouldn’t think you had everything so perfect, you know,” she says cryptically, as we reach Mum and Dad’s driveway.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

But before she has time to answer, our crunching feet on the gravel alert the parents within, and the door opens.

“Welcome!” trills Mum, gaily. Good. No crying today then. Closer up, I can see there are bags under her eyes, and a little grey at the temples I’ve never noticed before. And she has another of her jackets on – pink this time, the one she wore when she needed special extra armour for a doubting client. When I hug her, she smells of sherry. I see Dad behind her in the hallway. He gives me a nod, and when Mum releases me, extends his hand for a shake. Never been a big one for hugs, Dad. Bit formal with me. Not keen on physical closeness. Although he must have been with Mum, at least once, of course.

The door shuts behind us and we’re in. Mum starts fussing around with Ellie’s coat, telling us to ‘Go through, go through’ to the living room, that dinner will be in twenty minutes or so, boeufs en croute. Dad leads us into the living room. But just as we are getting settled, Ellie lowering herself down onto the cushions, Mum comes in and asks if she can ‘borrow’ Ellie. Ellie doesn’t look at all like she wants to be borrowed. But I realise this is another part of the master plan, to leave me alone with Dad. Always know what’s best, don’t they, mums? Ellie is yet to get that wisdom, because she is scowling, but I nod at her and help pull her up from the cushions, and she’s off. It’s just me and Dad.

“So,” I say.

“So,” he says back.

“Mum OK?” I ask.

He nods slowly. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

I grimace. “Ouch.”

There’s a pause.

“So, I was wondering – now that I’m going to be a father, with a son, newly-born thing soon to emerge from… Well, emerge. Let’s leave it at that. Any tips?”

Dad takes a sip of his drink. “Such as?” he asks, once he’s swallowed his mouthful.

“Well, I don’t know. I was kind of hoping you’d tell me. Um, what was it like, when I was born, and you were holding me in your arms? Did you know what to do? Was there an immediate connection?”

“Childbirth’s an amazing thing,” he says. “It’s a real blessing for people.”

“Right, good.” I take a sip of my drink. Not quite going as I’d planned, this chat. He seems tense, uptight. Maybe things haven’t been so good here, the last couple of days.

“And, so, what was it like, when you first got me home? Was I a sleeper, a crier, a wailer? Don’t know if it’s hereditary, but if it is, good to be warned, right?”

Again, a sip of the drink. “When we got you home,” he says, and has another sip.

“Yes?” I prompt.

“You took a little while to settle,” he says, finally. “A bit quiet, at first.”

“That’s a blessing, though, right?” I ask. “A quiet baby? From what Ellie says, I imagine we’ll never sleep again. Not at night, anyway. During the day, we’ll need a special supply of matchsticks to keep our eyes from closing as we drive. Otherwise, it’s falling asleep at traffic lights and level crossings and boom – that’s parenthood over.”

“We just sat and stared at you, really. Tried to take you in. You looked like you were doing the same. A big change, for all of us.”

I’m beginning to think maybe Dad has been at the sherry too. Of course it’s a big change – from womb to nursery. Maybe I was just a little monster and he doesn’t want to worry me by admitting it. Part of the stress of sleepless nights must be their anticipation, right?

“OK, so – here’s the big question. What brand of cigar did you smoke when I was born?”

And there we go. Another sip of his drink. Looking at Dad closely, there’s some pretty frantic eye-movement going on, like he’s trying to think of an answer. What’s wrong with him tonight? Maybe I’ll try the Ellie approach: joke him out of it.

“I get it, Dad. Admit it – you missed the birth.”

That brings his face out of his drink. Very quickly. He chokes a little, so sudden is his movement, mid-mouthful. He stares at me, his eyes wide. I’ve started down this line, so I’d better finish.

“Yep, I bet you were one of ones who went to the pub and missed the call. Or went to sit on the green, and get high – whatever you guys did back then.”

He continues to stare at me without speaking. I’m getting a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps I hit some truth here. Did Dad abscond before the birth, or something?

Ellie comes into the room. I can hear Dad’s sigh of relief. He’s not getting away with it that easily, though – I’ll be back on him in a moment. Ellie’s eyes are a bit wild. I wonder what Mum has been doing to her in the kitchen.

“I’m going up into the loft,” she announces. “To get the photo albums.”

I stand up from my chair.

“Ellie, what? The loft, in your condition?”

She waves a hand. “It’s just a pull-down staircase. I can climb a staircase.”

“But you hate going up there at the best of times. And if you fall – ”

“I won’t fall,” she says.

“Let me go up,” I volunteer. I can get to the bottom of Dad’s madness later. I have responsibility elsewhere.

Ellie pushes me down onto the sofa. “There’s no danger,” she says. “I want to.”

So I let her. My ears follow her up the first flight of stairs, up the second, to the opening of the trap-door, the descent of the foldaway stairs, and her ascent up them. There are no crashes or bangs. I relax. Slightly. Not completely.

Then Dad speaks. Ellie’s interruption has obviously allowed him to find some words.

“I was a very responsible parent. I always looked out for you, from the moment I knew you were coming. No matter what.”

He stands up, and leaves the room. He takes his drink with him. I’m alone in the room with his words. I replay them in my head. Then I keep replaying the last ones. ‘No matter what.’ Why would he say that? Why would Dad, steady old Dad, the actuary, for whom everything is measured, everything assessed, say something like that? What was this ‘what’ that would matter?

But before I can ponder it further, there is a cry from Ellie.

Chapter Eight

-Ellie-

God, they’ll probably all come running now. Shouldn’t have cried out. They’ll all feel vindicated in thinking I’m a walking baby home that shouldn’t be climbing a loft staircase, not a woman perfectly adept at balancing and other basic life skills. But I couldn’t help crying out. You know what it’s like, when you find something. Something that makes everything fit together. Plus anger. Anger is a good one for prompting you to cry out too. And there’s a bit of that. Because given they knew we were shopping for nursery furniture, you’d think they would have told us.

But they can all come running now, if they want. I’ve found what I came up here for and more. Wouldn’t have been any good if Will had come up. He’d have gone straight to the photo albums, the usual ones, in that corner, not looked left nor right, like the good little mummy’s boy he is. Definitely mummy’s boy. Rather than daddy’s boy. All makes perfect sense, when you look at the evidence. And apply a bit of educated guesswork. Will’s not the only one who can come up with a thesis.

And it will serve her bloody well right, her mighty Mumship. Because do you know what she did? Do you know why she wanted to ‘borrow me’? To shut me up. Pure and simple. I mean, does she not know me at all? Has she somewhere along the line totally misunderstood me – like a Chelsea Emo, totes misunderstood – and now thinks I’m the simpering sort of daughter-in-law, who not only toes the line but plays footsie with it, caressing it lovingly but never crossing it? Maybe because I was so silent after she did the sidling up to me at the wedding rehearsal with her ‘in sickness and in health speech’, she thinks she can get away with it. Or maybe it’s her ‘now your parents have passed on you need a new mother figure to stop you floundering’ motif (as if you can be a replacement mother, just like that, to such a brilliant one as Mum – and as if I’m floundering)? Because otherwise, why would she have done it?

So she started off nice enough. Well, I say nice. But how nice is it really to be asked to slice courgettes when you’ve come round to be fed? So anyway, she’s like “Oh, I’m so happy for you and Will, Ellie darling. You must be so pleased.” And I’m like, “It’s not exactly fucking rocket science is it, Mrs S – we are quite pleased.” Except I miss out the fucking bit. And the rocket science. So yes, I just tell her we’re pleased. Then, crafty bitch, she changes tack.

“It’s so important,” she says, “for Will to have stability right now. No sudden changes, or outside influences, as he tries to become a father. We need to look after him too.”

I have no idea where she’s going at this stage, although I resent the ‘we’; like she’s still got a say in his life. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to imprison us in her house, away from so-called ‘outside influences’, to protect him. So I hold the courgette knife a little closer. But then, she makes it clearer.

“Like that CD of, oh, what’s he called?” she says, like she’s forgotten.

“Max Reigate?”

“Yes, that’s the one – which you stole from me, you naughty girl!” She waves a carrot at me, to make her reprimand ‘fun’ but it fails. There is no fun in her eyes. I shrug. She plainly thinks everyone who grew up North of the Watford Gap is a thieving rascal, so no point in saying again I was only borrowing it.

“I know you think it’s a little bit of fun, saying there’s a resemblance between Will and Mr Reigate,” she continues, losing those first name terms, for show. “But saying things like that can lead to all sorts of crazy thoughts. Harmful thoughts. Things that might not be good for Will.”

“What kind of harmful thoughts, Mrs S?” I ask, all innocence. But I know exactly what she means. Harmful to her. Thoughts that would whip that Surrey mask right off her face. End up with her having to leave this cosy nest she’s been set up in so nicely. The canvas for all her interior designs.

“That doesn’t matter, Ellie darling. They’d just be harmful. For Will. When you’re a mother, you’ll understand. So just, just drop that one, OK?”

I take a moment to pretend to consider. Pretend I think she is protecting Will, rather than just herself.

“Drop the Max Reigate thing?” I ask.

She nods. I nod back, like I’m still considering it.

And then, what I do is, very softly, so softly she has to crane her neck to listen, I start humming the main theme of the Max Reigate concerto. And she starts turning red. Not pale this time, like in front of Will and – well, I would say his Dad, but I’m not sure that’s right. In front of Will and John. This time it’s pure anger. Like that look Will had when he was holding the shoe. And I can imagine that at any moment she is going to thrust at me with the carrot peeler. So that’s when I announce that I’m going to the loft, and Will starts his whole ‘You’re a fragile little mother-to-be’ act, which is maybe sweet, maybe patronising, but either way so totally unnecessary – totes unness. And I’m so glad I came up here. Because I have much more proof now, of my little theory.

So I come down to the edge of the loft. And I can see them all looking up at me, gathered round that little hole, expectantly, like it’s about to give birth to me or something. But I take my own time coming down. And I’ll take my own time about my revelations. Will needs to be the first to know the full weight of them, of course. When we get a moment alone, I’ll tell him. I reckon he’ll be pleased, after the shock wears off. But first, I’m going to make that woman squirm. Teach her she can’t make me keep things from Will, things he needs to know. Plus there’s nothing like a little torture over Sunday dinner.

Chapter Nine

-Will-

Ellie doesn’t say much when she comes down from the loft. My heart is still hammering away in my chest from the run up the stairs. For one absurd moment I think it is beating to the same rhythm as Max Reigate’s concerto. Those are the sort of mad thoughts you have, I suppose, when you think someone you love is in danger. Forget the life flashing before your eyes; my heart becomes a piano.

I’d expected – dreaded – a fallen Ellie, crumpled at the foot of the stairs. Or maybe clots of blood where they shouldn’t be. But she is composed, aloof almost. The only change to her is a bit of dust on her dress, and that she is clutching some photo albums. Two, I recognise. One, I don’t. I try to take hold of them from her, but she resists. “We can look at them after supper,” she says. She gives me a little kiss on the cheek. As she moves away from me, I see the Ellie spark in her eye. That mischievous look that was there when we first met and she claimed she was conducting research into sperm count (she abandoned the clip-board pretty quickly). Or when she turned up in my office, wearing nothing but a lab-coat. Or when she convinced me we should wear matching skeleton outfits to dinner to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement. It’s the only time I regretted proposing to her by putting a ring on a skeleton’s finger.

It doesn’t worry me, the look. Because nothing bad has ever happened when she has it. But I know it means we should expect something (other than the baby). Particularly when she has her head down, pretending to look demure, like now. She sits carefully at the dinner table, placing the albums beneath the chair, at her feet.

It’s not until we’re all seated, embarking on our individual boeufs en croute, that Ellie begins. She doesn’t speak straightaway. First, she clears her throat. I’ve been tapping away at the pastry with my knife, trying to break through to the layers beneath with the minimum damage. At the throat-clearing, I look up. So do Mum and Dad.

“I just want to say,” begins Ellie, “thank you so much for the crib.”

At first, I think she is referring to the one we were building yesterday. Which would be odd, because we bought that ourselves. But no.

“I only wish you’d told us earlier,” she continues. “We wouldn’t have bothered buying our own and trying to build it.”

This is another crib, then.

I look at Mum and Dad. They seem as bewildered as me.

“I mean,” Ellie continues. “You obviously got it quite some time ago. It will need some dusting down.”

The slightest hint of a frown starts to develop on Mum’s face.

Whatever Ellie has in store, I decide she could do with moving it along.

“Mum? Dad? What’s this about?” I ask. I carry on with trying to slice through the pastry without it flying everywhere. A crib is not a big enough matter to let my meal go cold over. At least, not unless I have to try all over again to assemble it.

“I’ve no idea,” says Mum. “Haven’t been up to the loft for years. It’s your Dad’s lair.”

“Oh come on, Mrs S, don’t be modest,” says Ellie, with a grin. It’s a wolf’s grin. All teeth, a precursor to ripping people apart. I take her hand under the table. Where is this going? She squeezes my hand and purses her lips at me. ‘I love you’, that means. Our code. I release her hand. All’s well, then. Must be. Ellie continues. “I know you had a role in the surprise. You can’t let Will’s dad” – she emphasises these words strangely – “take all the credit.”

“I’m not taking any credit,” says Dad.

Ellie smirks. “No,” she says. “I thought that was the case.”

I finally manage to cut neatly through the pastry. There is an inviting layer of mushroom stuffing and well-done beef underneath. We used to have it red. We can’t now, because of the toxins in the blood, might damage the baby.

“I’m sorry to have spoiled the surprise,” Ellie is saying.

“Come on, eat up,” I say, through a mouthful of meat. I see Mum glare. I swallow. My bad, talking with my mouth full. Then I see she is glaring at Ellie.

“I thought, at first, it must have been Will’s old crib. But of course, then I saw the initials.”

“Ellie, darling, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Mum. “Eat up, your food’s going cold, and there are two of you to feed.”

“Of course, it’s dark up there. But do you know, I distinctly thought I saw those initials.”

“I’ve never seen any initials on the crib,” says Dad. He is shooting glances at Mum now.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” I say, because I haven’t.

“There aren’t any initials on that crib, unless you’ve drawn them on yourself,” Mum snaps.

“Mum!” I say, shocked at her tone.

Ellie doesn’t seem to care, though. She just smiles more broadly.

“Oh, so you admit that there’s a crib, then?” she asks, making her first incision into the pastry. Neat, no fuss, no mess.

“Of course I admit there’s a crib. It’s Will’s old one.”

Ellie brings the knife out of the meat and makes another incision, forming a triangle.

“What? You have my old crib? Why didn’t you say? That’s awesome. Little Leo can have that. Oh, Christ,” I look at Ellie. “Was I meant to tell them the name yet? Sorry.”

Ellie does the ‘I love you’ oboe-player lip-purse again, before skewering the section of boeuf en croute she has separated from the rest.

“Just Will’s crib?” Ellie asks. “Not a hand-me-down from someone else?”

“Just Will’s,” says Mum.

I don’t know what Ellie’s game is. I’d say, maybe there isn’t one, maybe she is just pleased we have the crib. But I know Ellie. There is always a game. That aside, the key thing is that there is a crib, and my son will apparently sleep in the same crib that held me.

“Oh, I really want to see it!” I say. “Can we get it down, have a look? What’s it like, Ellie? Is it really cool?”

“It’s a real historical item,” Ellie says. “I know you’ll find it really interesting.”

“How come you didn’t tell me before, Mum?” I demand.

“Yes, how come?” asks Ellie.

“Oh, you know, we thought you’d want something more modern. That’s been up in the loft for years.”

“Came with you all the way from Dartington, did it?” asks Ellie.

“Of course,” says Mum. “Seeing as that’s where Will was born.”

“Such a wonder you’ve never noticed the initials, then.”

Mum is mid-mouthful of meat and cannot speak.

“M.C.R.,” says Ellie.

Dad’s knife shrieks across his plate.

I see him flick a glance to Mum. Ellie bites calmly into a mouthful of meat. Mum stares at her plate, then lifts up her chin and continues to eat. Dad watches her for a moment, then does the same.

If this Ellie’s big reveal, I don’t understand it. We don’t know anyone called M.C.R.

Unless?

No.

And I’m certainly not called M.C.R.

“It’s probably the maker’s name,” I say. “Like, ‘My Cribs Rock’.” I laugh at my own joke, then stop, because no one else has even giggled.

The rest of the meal continues in silence. I play the three letters over in my head. M.C.R.? Who is M.C.R.?

After we’ve eaten, and I’ve complimented Mum on the deliciousness of the meal, I announce that I’m going up to get the crib.

“I’ll come with you,” says Dad. “It’s too heavy for you to manage on your own.”

When Dad and I leave the table, Ellie follows. She catches my arm as we go into the hall, and pulls me back, so that we’re standing in the shadows of the staircase. I see she is holding the third photo album, the one I don’t recognise.

Ellie leans in close to me.

“M.C.R. stands for Max Charles Reigate,” she whispers. “The crib belonged to him. And he’s your father.”

Chapter Ten

-Will-

“What?”

I don’t whisper. I almost bellow, so incredulous am I at what she has said.

“Shh! He’ll hear you!” says Ellie. “I don’t know if he knows.” She nods her head in the direction of Dad – because yes, I’m 100% sure he is my dad, thank you.

“Knows what? Jesus, Ellie, have you gone mad? Max Reigate, my father?”

“Come on,” she says, her voice low. “It all makes sense. They were all living in Dartington together at the right time. Your mum and” – she makes an inverted comma sign in the air – “‘dad’ are, like, trying for kids or something, but your mum, she gets the hots for this amazing musician, she shags him, then nine months later you pop out.”

“You’re out of your mind,” I tell her.

“Are you coming, Will?” calls a voice from upstairs.

“Yes, Dad.” I pretty much spit the word ‘Dad’ at Ellie. She’s taken her mad theories too far this time.

She glares at me.

“So Max Reigate, he’s not stupid, he works out the dates, and he wants to be involved in your upbringing. He gives her the cot, one that’s been handed down through the family. Your ‘dad’, maybe he’s in denial, or gets angry, so they move away, up to Kingston, out of harm’s way.”

“Ellie – seriously? You expect me to buy all this just from some initials on the crib?”

“That’s not it, there’s more, in this album, there’s – ”

“Come on Will, I’m waiting,” calls Dad from upstairs.

“Coming!” I shout. Moving past Ellie, I start climbing the stairs, two steps at a time.

“Will!” hisses Ellie.

“We’ll talk about this later. You’re out of your mind.”

And honestly, I think she is. This is why she needs to get a job again. It’s been ages since she was made redundant, since she professed she was ‘done with science’ and ‘done with teaching’. She has too much time for all these mad thoughts to run around in her head. So, I look like a pianist. So, I identify with his music so much that I feel like on some level I’ve been listening to it my whole life. So, my parents used to live in the same part of the country as Max Reigate. So, there’s a crib with some letters that match his initials. So, my parents have been acting weirdly.

So, a little voice inside me says, you can see where she’s coming from.

I shake my head. It’s nonsense. I’ve had the most stable upbringing of anyone I know, with two parents who love me. Ellie just can’t get it into her head that I’m not some spoilt object of guilt – I’m just loved. Maybe she’s still mourning for her own parents, and wants to deny everyone else a cosy family too. But killing other people’s happiness can’t increase her own.

She’s not giving up, though. She’s following me up the stairs. I only notice because the voice saying ‘It’s true’ is too feminine to be coming from inside my head. I should turn round to her, laugh it off, but do you know what? I’m pretty angry right now. Not only is it a slur on my mother, it makes Dad seem like an idiot too. We’ll row it out later, it will all be fine, but for now I’m going to focus on this crib. The crib for my son with his crazy mad mother.

When I get to the top of the stairs, Dad is standing halfway up the loft staircase.

“What kept you?” he asks.

“It was my fault, Mr S,” says Ellie, all smiles and politeness. “I was reminding him what to look out for on the crib.”

“As long as it’s structurally sound, I don’t care,” I say. “Thanks, Dad, for helping me get it out.”

I follow him up the stairs into the loft. Ellie comes with us.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait downstairs, Ellie?” I ask. “Seeing as you’re already so well acquainted with the crib?”

“No,” she smiles. “I’d like to see your reaction to it.”

If Dad has noticed the tension between us, he doesn’t let on. He is over in the far corner of the loft. I follow him. And there it is. The crib.

There is no heart-stopping moment. No sense of realisation. I do not turn to Ellie and say ‘Darling, you were right’. Because it is just a crib. It is white, wooden, with slats. It is designed to keep a baby secure and asleep.

“Wow, Dad, it’s amazing!” I say.

He turns round and looks at me, carefully.

“It’s just a crib, son,” he says.

“Yes, but, you know, it’s my old crib – triggers so many memories, you know?”

“Does it?” he asks, quickly. There is intensity in his voice, concern.

“Not really,” I concede. “But it might do, in time.”

Dad turns and looks at the crib. “Yes,” he says, thoughtfully. “I suppose it might.”

“Perhaps of his father’s face, hanging over him in the cot, hey, Mr S?” Ellie says. There’s a false warmth in her voice.

I change the subject. Dad would be humiliated if he knew what she was driving at.

“How shall we get it out, Dad?” I ask, glaring at Ellie.

“It’s true,” she mouths, taking advantage of Dad’s turned back.

I turn away from her, to face Dad.

“Let me take one end,” I say. “We can take it down together. Bit of father and son removal work, hey?” Then I have a thought. “By the way, while I remember – you don’t happen to have the hammer from our toolbox do you? We were trying to find it yesterday.”

Dad looks at me strangely, like I’m mad.

“Why would we have that?”

“Well, it wasn’t in the toolbox, so I thought maybe you’d borrowed it, before you gave us the toolbox.”

Dad shrugs. “Not me,” he says.

“Maybe Mum?” I ask.

He nods slowly. “Maybe. Bit of an odd thing to…but maybe. I’ll ask her. See if we’ve got a spare, anyway, downstairs.”

Hammer question sort of answered, we turn our attention back to the crib. We each pick up one end. As I lift up mine, I catch sight of the initials. They are as Ellie said: M.C.R. – engraved into the wood. As we bring the crib into the light and down the staircase from the loft, I see something else. I lose my footing on the stairs.

“Will!” shouts Ellie, putting a hand to my back to stop me falling. It’s enough for me to recover my footing.

“All right?” asks Dad, from his end.

I nod and we carry on. I don’t want to trip again. So I avert my eyes from what I saw. A small sticker, next to the initials, of a piano. Ellie is right. This crib was his.

But that means nothing, I tell myself, as we carry the crib into the living room. So, maybe the crib belonged to Max Reigate at some point. Maybe he gave the crib to my parents as a christening present, complete with a piano blessing. Maybe anything.

We all assemble in the living room and stare at the crib. Mum joins us.

“It’s rather dusty,” says Dad (because I’m still calling him that, strange crib notwithstanding).

“Not dusty enough to hide those initials!” says Ellie. I turn to her and shake my head.

“It’s a lovely crib,” I say. “Thank you.” I give Mum a squeeze on the shoulder. She lays her chin against my hand. We stay a moment like that.

Then Ellie breaks the peace.

“Now, time to look at these photo albums!” she says. She is still clutching the third, unfamiliar album.

“I’ll get the others from the dining room,” I say. I don’t know what is in her mystery album, but I don’t trust it, or her. If she has some idea of a family showdown to end the evening, assembled round her ‘proof’, I don’t want any part of it.

“No need,” says Ellie, waving the album.

“Where did you get that?” demands Mum.

“From the loft, with the others,” says Ellie, all innocence.

“It’s a personal album,” Mum says. “There’s nothing of Will in there.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ellie says. “I had a quick look, and I thought there’d be some stuff he’d like to see. You in the 70s, the old Dartington family home. Your friends.”

Ellie’s eyes are shining. She is working up to a Poirot moment, I can tell. The right timing as well – Sunday evening, prime ITV3 crime viewing. And à la the famous sleuth she assembled us all here, in what could pass for a drawing room. She’ll show us whatever photo she’s found, list a stream of mad conjectures, probably produce a murder from somewhere, and then she’ll never be welcome in the house again. At least Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’ functioned properly, unaddled by whatever pregnancy hormones are taking hold of Ellie’s brain.

Ellie is starting to open up the pages.

“You know,” I say, “I’d much rather just see the pictures of when I was little. Not sure I need to study Dad’s kipper ties.”

“No, Will. I think you really need to see your father’s kipper ties.”

Mum is advancing towards the album. “Ellie, darling, Will’s right. And it’s getting late; some of us have to work tomorrow, remember?”

Oh – Mum shouldn’t have done that. Play the ‘job’ card. Guaranteed to piss Ellie off.

“OK, Mrs S,” says Ellie sweetly. “To speed things up, how about I just show Will the particular photos I found that I think would be of special interest to him?”

She begins flicking through the album.

Mum leans in and snaps the album shut. “No. Borrow the other ones. It’s late, and we need to get the crib in the car. John will drive you home.”

She pulls the album away from Ellie. As she does so, the pages open slightly, and something flutters out to the floor.

It’s not a photo. It’s a letter, with a little red ribbon tied through the top of it. A love letter. I reach down to retrieve it for Mum, but Mum is quicker than me. The letter is in her hands before I can touch it. But not before I can make out the signature.

It is from Max. Max Reigate.

And it’s signed ‘fondest love’.

Chapter Eleven

-Ellie-

Will is still in denial, even after he sees the letter.

All the car journey home, he prattles on to his ‘Dad’ about how excited he must be to be a grandfather. If fake dad is excited, he hides it pretty well. Most people I know don’t display excitement by biting their fingernails and giving monosyllabic answers to questions.

Fake dad and Will install the crib in the nursery. There’s a hammer nestling in the crib too, now, retrieved from Will’s ‘parental’ home. Didn’t hear fake dad ask Will’s cheat of a mum about it; he must just have found it himself. Maybe he figured Will’s mum couldn’t take any more accusations in one night. Its easy-grip handle shines out in the dark, like a little metal baby with an orange muffler. Finally, fake dad leaves.

“Well?” I say to Will.

“Never put me through an evening like that again!” he says.

Oh. I see. We are having a testosterone reaction. This happens sometimes. Apparently his mum’s sleeping around is now my fault. We’ll go for calm, docile – not the usual shouting back approach. Calm it down.

“Sweetie, I’m sorry if I upset you. It’s just there are certain signs – ”

“The way you were doing all that manoeuvring, that manipulating, it was – ”

“How I got you in my clutches in the first place,” I say, aiming for coquettish.

I see from the shocked look on his face that I have missed the mark.

“OK, forget I said that.” Moving on. “Look, I know it’s a bit disorientating, a bit – ”

“Disorientating? Listen to yourself! You are trying to say that my dad isn’t my dad at all, I’m some, some bastard child, from a sex romp between my mum and a random composer!”

“Not a sex romp. You saw how that letter was signed off. And there was a photo, in the album, of them, together.” If only he’d listen. If only I didn’t have to cope with this male reaction. Anger is not an appropriate response to logic.

“What, on a date?”

“No, a group of them, your mum, your fake dad – ”

“Cut that out!”

“OK, Gillian and John, if you prefer, in a group shot, at a picnic, including Max Reigate.”

“Which proves nothing. Absolutely nothing. Jesus, Ellie – why are you so determined this should be right?”

“It’s not a case of me being determined. It’s just right. It stacks up.”

Will leaves the nursery and moves into the bedroom.

“Look, I have to go to work tomorrow, this talk and die lecture is coming up, I need to put some good hours in…” he says.

“I just wish we could see that letter,” I say. “That would prove it.”

“Ellie, leave it, OK? I’m tired,” he says, doing a fake yawn.

“I bet she’s locked it away on one of those study drawers,” I tell him. “All we need to do is break in, prise them open, and – ”

“‘All we need to do is break in’!” Will repeats back at me. “Do you know what?” He glares at me. But then I never do know what. Because he leaves this long pause and it’s like he’s making himself be calm. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, softer. “We’re both tired. Let’s just get some sleep, OK?” And he kisses me on the forehead.

So that’s it, fight over? I feel vaguely disappointed. Where do I go now with my theory on his father, if we’re not going to shout about it? Actually, screw ‘theory’ – I’m pretty damn sure I’m right about this. All the evidence is there. Plus it just feels right, you know? Otherwise, why would Will be so in love with that music? It’s in his blood.

As Will brushes his teeth, I consider as I lie in bed going into the bathroom to continue the discussion. Because it’s for his benefit, not mine. What do I care who his father is? I just feel he has a right to know. But I don’t move, I just stay where I am in bed. Otherwise, I might end up telling him all I know about Max Reigate. What I learnt, when I Googled him. It would be too much for Will, at this stage. Better get him to accept the main fact, before I move onto the others. Other.

Besides, it will all be all right in the morning, as Mum used to say, when she tucked me in. Any remaining tension will be gone. She had this almost pagan belief that the sun coming up for the start of a new day cleansed all the trouble that had gone before – whether that was mean girls at school or a fight with a boyfriend. I told myself that when I heard about their crash, that night. ‘It will all be all right in the morning.’ Except it wasn’t, of course. Because in the morning, they were no longer there. There’s an exception to every rule though. That was it. For all the other mornings, everything will be all right. By the power of my mother’s word.

So I turn off the light, position myself on my left side (good for the baby) and drift away to sleep. When Will comes back to bed, I wake for a moment as he settles behind me, arms looped round me in our usual sleep-spooning. Not holding me quite as tight tonight, but maybe he’s just worried about hurting little Leo. Or maybe we haven’t quite made up yet. But I still feel myself drift off towards sleep. I don’t have any guilty conscience that would stop me. Why, after all, would I? I just want the best for Will, and the truth is always the best. For us, anyway.

I awake in the night to the sounds of music. At first, I think I am imagining it, that it’s a fragment of dream that’s wafted over into my waking world. But no. I am fully awake. And it’s really there. And Will really isn’t; the bed next to me is empty and cold. The sound is coming from downstairs. I get out of bed and open the bedroom door. The music gets louder. I tiptoe downstairs to the living room. The door is shut. I push it open, as gently as I can. Will is curled up on the sofa in foetal position. His eyes are shut. In sleep or in contemplation, I don’t know. On the coffee table lies the Max Reigate CD case. His concerto is the music I heard. I look at the CD display indicator. Still on the first track, so he can’t have been listening long.

“Will?” I say softly. No answer. I wait a moment. How that piano hammering away can act as a lullaby, I don’t know. But then, the pianist’s not my father. I tiptoe out of the room again. The music can offer more persuasion than I can.

In the morning, I go downstairs to find Will already at the breakfast table. He looks up when I come in. There’s a smile. Small, but enough. The anger is gone.

“Let’s find that letter,” he says.

Chapter Twelve

-Will-

I can see Ellie thinks that she’s convinced me.

But she hasn’t.

I just don’t want any more of those dreams. As I walk to the station, I feel like I’ve only slept for twenty minutes. And of course, that could be true. But it must all have been REM phase, otherwise I don’t know how I managed so many nightmares.

And there’s the counting to ten mentality. In other words, the need to indulge your pregnant wife. I was furious last night, when we got home. Really, I was. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I couldn’t stand to look at her any more that night, to go and sleep on the sofa. But you can’t do that, can you? You can’t run away from the mother of your child, however mad she is. And half of the madness must be hormone-induced. Can’t ever say that of course – I’d be lynched, or divorced, or both. But it’s true, I’m sure. So half the stuff that Ellie comes out with isn’t her at all; she’s just a mouthpiece for raised progesterone. I’ve got to be the strong, stable one in the centre of this. To take responsibility for keeping our marriage on track until that baby’s out. It will all be much better then.

At first, though, I couldn’t sleep at all. I was just too angry. At myself, just as much as at Ellie, for rising to her bait. I’d put my arms round her to spoon her, like we usually do – she can’t stand it when I sleep with my back to her – but my heart wasn’t in it. Then came the remorse. I shouldn’t be lying in bed projecting anger into the home of my little boy. Ellie, in her own peculiar way, is just looking out for me. She gets these odd ideas. That’s why I love her. She must know I was still angry. In anyone less strong, these arguments might cause mental turmoil, even a miscarriage. In fact perhaps they had. I raised my head from the pillow to listen for signs of distress. No. There she was, snoring gently to herself. Which made me a bit angry again, given she was the one who’d stopped me sleeping.

So I went downstairs instead, rather than lying next to her, simmering in resentment. And I tried to sleep. But how can you sleep when your wife has decided that your father isn’t your father? How can you not replay all the conversations you remember? And try to find in your memories the ones that you can’t? I tried and I tried to think of Max Reigate being there when I was little. But there’s nothing. Nothing before that eating of the daffodil outside the house in Kingston, captured by Kodak.

And if your wife is claiming that your real father is in fact an eminent musician, how can you stop yourself from replaying his music as well? So I got out the CD and played it to myself. I really listened this time. To the orchestra all together at the start, quiet, mellow, but expectant. Then in it comes. The third voice. The Reigate voice. Strident, unapologetic, like the voice of some eternal truth. You can almost tell he wrote the concerto himself. It is designed to show off the piano. No little tinkling tunes. Straightaway, there’s this intense mood. All these heavy notes and accents. Every three notes, there’s one really powerful one. Like a war march, or something. Every so often, the orchestra will get a look in. Or the orchestra such as it is – he doesn’t even seem to be using the full one, just strings and woodwind, so there’s nothing to compare with the weight of the piano. In the first movement, there are just two voices – orchestra and piano. But later, in the second and third movements, it’s like a three-way conversation, violins fiddling and oboes whining against the weight of the piano. But they cannot win. Not against all that force, all that violence. You feel like you’re becoming the piano, its music is so far inside you. It’s a wonder they managed to record it live, the way he hammered at the strings of the piano. You’d think they’d split and break. Maybe that’s part of his skill; exerting just enough pressure with the hammers so that the instrument can go on functioning. He gives it a bit of a rest in the second, slower movement – saves himself for that soul-wrenching final cadenza at the end of the third. Then the piano tuners lift the lid and see the real damage.

The second track, or movement, whatever it’s called, is a bit softer at first. And he’s allowed the string section a bit more of a look in. There are three ingredients then, in an uneasy harmony – him, the violins and the woodwind. Still that brutal and haunting central tune though, carried across the three of them. And even though it’s slower, the second movement, you are constantly in suspense about where the piano will take you next. But it’s nothing to the last movement. The sheer pulsating violence of those runs, the anger, almost, with which the piano answers the violins. It’s like some kind of defiance – yes, yes, YES goes the piano. No, no, NO, say first the strings, then the woodwind. The piano gets the last word though. Heroically, brilliantly, romantically, it comes in with this final flourish. Think of the fingers that play that. The brain that composed it. Think of being fathered by that genius. What it would be to share the same DNA. Pounding away on the keys, Max Reigate makes his final transcendent affirmation, every note accented. HERE I AM, HERE I AM, HERE I AM. AND THIS IS WHAT I DO.

Then it stops. The piano goes, the piece ends, just like that. As if the music was never there.

But of course, the silence afterwards is part of the music. It’s the silence that stays with you. The silence that your brain can’t deal with, so it recreates the playing all over again. In your dreams. But in your dreams, there are two keyboards. They’re shaped like staircases, spiralling up and down, in a double helix. And you’re running – or rather I’m running – up and up and up the piano-stairs, trying to find the way to the other staircase. Because on that other staircase, there are these most amazing fingers walking up and down, caressing the notes. And I want to be caressed too, by those fingers. I want to sit on them, allow them to carry me UP UP UP and DOWN DOWN DOWN. But it’s not just that. I need to get away from my keyboard staircase. From the hammers that are pursuing me. It’s like the piano has been inverted, and rather than the hammers being inside, they are all on the outside, bashing the notes. Except they’re not piano hammers – they’re actual hammers, and each key they hit, they smash. Fragments of black and white fly around, filling the air between the two staircases. And the hammer gets closer and closer and closer and I try one last time to jump. I think I can do it, I think I can bridge the gap. But I’m suspended between the two staircases; time stops and I don’t know, I just don’t know, if I’m going to make it. And that terror, that inbetweenness, is what wakes me.

And it’s what makes me agree we need to find that letter from Max. The letter to Mum. Because I can’t let it go, now, can I? Now Ellie has brought it up, so insistently. I can’t just not know.

We’ve made a plan. We spent so long making it over breakfast that I had to miss my usual swim at the Rotunda. I think over the plan as I wait on Kingston platform for the train. I think over it as the train takes me to Waterloo. I think over it on the Tube, on the way into Guy’s Campus, on the way up to my office, along from the hospital building. Even, if I’m honest, on the toilet. Because it’s this plan that will tell me if Ellie’s mad, hormone-laced theories are true. And because I can’t stand the idea of my father not being my father – because who would that make me? But nor can I bear being denied a connection with Max Reigate. Max Reigate. There is such an emotional association with that name in my mind now. I can’t just be a fan of his music. There has to be some blood link there, doesn’t there?

The plan isn’t much of a plan. It’s a creep in when your parents are sleeping using your spare key, then jimmy open your mum’s filing cabinets sort of plan (Ellie is convinced Google will tell her how to pick a lock; she’s going to spend the day practising). It’s based on a hope they don’t set the burglar alarm at night, that Dad (?) won’t suddenly want some Digestive biscuits and milk during the night (like he always used to get me if I couldn’t sleep, when I was a child – oh, Dad, I love my Dad), that Mum won’t get it in her mind to have a midnight listen to her old flame’s LP. Or come downstairs to creep out into the night to be with him. Oh, listen to yourself! It’s fantastical. I’ve become the victim of Ellie’s over-hormoned imagination.

I try to focus on the work for my lecture. I just need a few more cases of the ‘talk and die’ phenomenon, make it more real and human to the attendees, then I’ll be fine. It’s my first public lecture and I want it to be accessible and informative. Brilliant but casual. The sign of a bright future and a well-spent past. I leaf through the journals my research student has flagged for me. “There are some great ones here!” he said, enthusiastic to find plenty of trauma victims, poor suckers crept up on from behind with a bat or a hammer. Or even a piece of lead-piping. Classic Cluedo fun. Except these are the odd ones, the almost survivors – they think they’re fine, having fended off attack. They go about their day. Then later on, they’re dead. And I’ve got to teach my students to be alert to that. I’ve got to share these mysteries with the scientifically-minded public and my fellow faculty members. To remind them to look beyond concussion, to keep those observations going overnight. And to know what it means, when the blood starts to form, when the brain starts to swell. How easy it is to miss the signs.

Have I been missing signs, all these years? Has there been some other secret world going on around me, some intrigue in which John Spears has suspected with each growing year that his loving wife, Gillian Spears, is not so loving after all, and actually had an affair with their good friend Max? Who their son now closely resembles? Has our house, always a loving family home to my eyes and ears, actually held bitter hisses and accusing glances, shot over my head for the last thirty-four years?

Or has John Spears been completely ignorant of it all? Innocently going about bringing up ‘his son’, while my mother laughs at him and nurtures a secret love affair with my real father? Can a man be that blind? What if it were Ellie, and our son, little Leo, as he will be? What if he weren’t really mine? I would notice, wouldn’t I? Maybe that is why Ellie is so convinced about Gillian, a little voice in my head says. Maybe her female intuition is nothing but a shared female guilt.

No. I shake my head. I imagine I’m trying to shake those fragments of piano keys from the dream out of my ears, out of my brain. The music has confused me. These are my parents (as Ellie and I will be Leo’s parents). Something has unsettled them, that is all. I get out my phone to call Ellie, to abort the plan, to tell her I trust my parents. But my fingers stop before they unlock the phone. If we don’t see it through, if we don’t read the letter that will undoubtedly be innocent, the idea will be Ellie’s constant refrain, a recurring theme over the years. And so, we will go ahead with the plan. Tonight.

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