Hide and Seek Page 20

  But then, on the Métro, he is back. As the train pushes on, down, through the tunnel, the lights go out for a moment. When they flash on again, there he is. The image. Except he doesn’t look like an image. He looks like a real man. A real Guillaume. Or actually, a real Max.

  For perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps this is not an image of the devil son. Perhaps it is the sainted father, frozen at the age of his death. I have only been assuming it would be Guillaume, because that is my fear, projected into hallucinations. But that is an earthly concern. Perhaps this is a non-earthly issue. Perhaps the image is Max. I turn fully to look at it. But it has gone! Come back, Max, I shout in my head. Come back! Don’t force this premature vanishing on me again. Show yourself! Appear! Live!

  And there, there he is. He’s trying to hide himself from me. Silly Max. Blended himself in between a group of other people. I can only see his back. That broad, beautiful back. The back that would grandly swell when he played the climax of his tunes – he would fling himself back from the piano, arms aloft and raised, so that his shoulders were fully expanded, then plunge down onto the piano again for that final powerful chord or cadence. That back, that I so variously loved and hated, as I watched it from the door of the music room. That back, that would ignore me when I asked if he fancied a duet. That back, that ignored me when I told it dinner was ready. That back, that ignored me when I shouted that for God’s sake could he try just once to remember he was a husband and a father. If only he had ignored me one more time. Then he might not just be a spectre of the Métro.

  We arrive at République. Part of me wants to stay on the train. But the other part knows that if this is my own personal ghost, it will follow me off the train. So I alight, and I wait on the platform. And yes! I am right! Max Ghost gets off too. And there he waits, at the other end of the platform. Just staring at me. It’s like a film. I take one step forward, my eyes locked in his, then another.

  But then I stop. Because look at him. He isn’t Max. It isn’t Max. It doesn’t have his genius eyes. It doesn’t have his haircut. It doesn’t have the gentle curl of his lips. It doesn’t even have his slight pot belly.

  This is Guillaume grown up. This is Will. And I don’t think it’s an image.

  I turn and I run. I cannot look at him. I run past the passengers, and get their tuts and their ‘merde’s and their ‘elle est folle’s. Maybe I should shout out to them, beg their protection? But from what? What would I say. ‘I cannot bear to see my son. He is following me. I left him when he was four. I can’t bear to look at him. I don’t know what he wants – make him stop!’ They will ignore me, a madwoman’s ramblings. Or think it is a happy story of a family reunited. Not understand that I for some reason fear for my life. So I must just keep going. I must just get to my apartment, where I can shut myself in, shut him out.

  Up at street level, I dare a backwards look. He is there, still, following. I run on. I fling myself across the roads of Place de la République. The hooting cars behind me suggest he is flinging himself too. Down, down Rue Léon Jouhaux, I run. I look back. Not to see his face; to see his distance. He too is running. I must go faster. I must not let him catch me up. I can see the apartment now, across the canal. I must get there before him.

  My feet clatter up the footbridge. There’s a clatter behind me, too close. Find the energy, somewhere, find it, the power. Push on, push on. And I’m off the bridge. We’re both off the bridge. There’s the door. The code, the code, punch in the code. I must type the code quickly into the downstairs access door, slam it behind me. He will not get in. And I do, and it’s in, and the door, it is open. Then it’s shut, behind me, and I’ve won! But no, what’s this, the door is opening again behind me, and I look back. And it’s Gabriel, the little squat man from the basement flat, opening the door. He’s struggling with his shopping, and so the non-image, the real son, the horror Will is like a gentleman helping Gabriel through. And coming in behind him!

  I run up the stairs (no time for the lift) trying two at a time, but I stumble. I go instead for a quick canter. As I run, I pull at the zip of my bag to get out the key. Why won’t it open? Why won’t the key come out? The zip is stuck and I’m pulling and pulling and then pushing and pushing, and I hear a tear as the zip finally opens and is that it, in my hands, the key? Yes, it is, I have it! Put my key into the lock and then be in in in and keep him out. And just push, one more push, open the door. Slam it, slam it behind me –

  But no. He has arrived too soon.

  Silently, he puts a foot over the threshold.

  Shaking, I move backwards into the dark of the room.

  Another foot moves silently forward.

  Then just as I begin to think it is the silence that will kill me, he speaks.

  “Hello, Mother. Here I am.”

  Chapter Eight

  -Ellie-

  He cries. He cries which means, thank goodness, he is alive!

  I crane my head to look down the bed. A red messy thing is there. The same red messy thing that was inside me, now there. I’ve done it, with that final push. I sink back. I look up. There is Gillian, who has somehow reinserted herself into the room. She is looking at the little red mess intently. Not smiling though. Just staring. She has put her bag down on the chair, so that she can move in for a closer look. The bag that has my phone in. I could just –

  But here is my Leo. They are handing him to me. My shrivelly, tiny tiny tiny little Leo. So keen to meet me, to come out into the world feet first and find his mummy. Yes, yes, you were! Only one hour of labour, you impatient little thing. But now he’s here, he’s shy, not making eye contact. In fact his eyes don’t open at all, yet. I look up to see a circle of doctors standing round me. They all seem to be trying to make eye contact with Leo and scrupulously avoiding making it with me.

  “So?” I ask.

  “So we need to give this little one some special attention, Mrs Spears.”

  And then, he is lifted away from me, this little boy who I have only just met.

  “We’re taking him to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Get him the attention he needs, set him up in an incubator. We’ll let you know as soon as you can come and see him.”

  I want to stop them, to tell them that he is my son. That I own him. That if he is going somewhere, I must go there too. I move to get up but pain stops me. The midwife seems to notice my expression, as he starts examining my lower end.

  “We’ll get you some local anaesthetic and have you stitched up in no time. For such a little one, he’s knocked you about a bit.”

  As if that matters. As if anything about me matters at the moment. Having sex with Will isn’t at the forefront of my mind right now. Not if he is busy murdering his mother. And if my Leo, my little little Leo, doesn’t make it – then no, no I don’t think I would want to go down that route either.

  But I can’t explain that to the midwife, as he busies himself sewing me up.

  I look round for Gillian, but she seems to have drifted off somewhere. Haven’t seen her since they took Leo away, actually. Maybe the miracle of birth was too much for her. Maybe she’s finally understood why she can’t lay any claim to Will, not having done that for him. She certainly seems to have lost an interest in worldly goods – her bag is on the seat next to me. Her bag, holding my phone.

  “Nearly done,” says the midwife. “Then we’ll see if the doctors are ready for you to visit Leo. They might want you to breastfeed him, at some point.”

  He stitches his final stitch.

  “There!” he says.

  I take that as the moment to lean across to Gillian’s bag and extract my phone. And there it is. Right, let’s find the email. Searching searching, would you like to continue this search on the server? Damnit yes, I said I wanted the email, find it, phone! OK, OK, there it is. If I click through I will find the number. Yes, yes, there we go, and if I click on it –

  “Mrs Spears?”

  It is one of the doctors, flanked by Gillian. I thrust the phone unde
r the covers, lest I’m caught showing an interest in something other than my new son. Lest Gillian see me trying to break my vow.

  “We’re ready for you to come and see Leo now.”

  They get me out of the bed. Gillian passes me a bathrobe and slippers which she’s produced from somewhere. If she sees me slip the phone into the pocket of the robe she doesn’t register it.

  “Lead on,” I say.

  I follow as they take me to Leo.

  I fondle the phone in my pocket. If I ring and Sophie just hears silence, will that help? Probably not. Perhaps she is already in silence now. Perhaps Will has already been there. Done the deed. Now in custody. Or maybe Sophie has the hammer – maybe she has turned it on Will. Maybe she is threatening him. I must phone, I must phone.

  “Now Mrs Spears,” the doctor says, as we walk along. “Please don’t be alarmed by the number of tubes and things that Leo has attached to him. They’re all to give him the best chance he has.”

  Chance. So there’s a chance, then, that he won’t make it.

  The doctor confirms that is right. Leo is, after all, very premature. A real premmie. Totes prem, I guess, but no – humour doesn’t work, now.

  And when I see little Leo, poor little Leo, I can believe it, this idea he may not have a chance. Such a tiny creature in the middle of the open-topped incubator, surrounded by a mass of wires and bags and vents. There is a vent taped to his mouth, a whole riddle of tubes coming from his abdomen, and the rest of him is all swaddled up. He does not look well.

  “Hello, Leo,” I manage. I give him a little wave. He does not wave back. But he has one eye open now. So he is giving me a permanent wink. Don’t worry, Mummy, it says. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll put everything right. It will all be all right in the morning.

  Little ambitious Leo.

  Gillian appears at my elbow. She is hugging a pillow, I don’t know why. Perhaps she is pretending it is a baby, from her own belly; maybe it’s a surrogate for Will, now he’s rejected her.

  She leans over. I think it is to look at Leo. But then she whispers in my ear words that do not help Leo’s chances one bit.

  “You promised on his life. And I’m going to remember that.”

  I hold the phone so firmly in my pocket that I worry the screen may shatter. She is powerless, I tell myself. Powerless, and bitter, and wrong. I must phone Sophie’s apartment. After all, what can Gillian possibly do?

  Chapter Nine

  -Will-

  As soon as I enter the flat, Sophie retreats. I am left in the dark entrance hall, alone. I am just standing in a stranger’s home, carrying a hammer. I remain on the raffia mat, waiting for Sophie to return, to welcome me in. But she doesn’t. I start to feel vaguely foolish. The adrenaline of my research, the journey, and the run, start to fade. I wipe my feet on the mat and begin to unzip my jacket to hang it on the coat-hook by the door. Then I stop myself. The jacket conceals the hammer; the jacket must stay. However absurd this now seems.

  I advance through the corridor. It’s dark – not pitch black, just the grey half-light of afternoon, without electric lighting. I make out a bookshelf, a couple of vases. Ordinary things. As though it’s an ordinary home. As though I were an ordinary visitor. Here, in the quiet afternoon reality of Sophie’s home, I wonder if it would have been better to bring a bottle of wine in greeting, rather than a hammer. Although the quietness is not unbroken, of course. I have a theme tune, starting to run softly in my head. Hello, Max.

  I see a gleam of electric light from somewhere in the flat. I follow it, thinking it will take me to wherever Sophie is hiding. It does. Here she is, in a kitchenette. She has her back to me. She is hunched over the sink. Her shoulders are shaking.

  I look at her for a moment. I think about taking the hammer from my jacket, now, and hitting her over the head with it. That’s why I’ve come, isn’t it? But somehow it doesn’t do. The movements would be clumsy, static. And at this moment, they are not what’s in my mind. I am in the house of my mother. My mother who left me. My mother who killed my father. My mother, who has answers to the questions I don’t already know. The answer to me.

  “What was I like, when I was little?” I ask her.

  Sophie flinches. Maybe she didn’t know I was in the room. She doesn’t reply.

  “What was I like?” I repeat.

  Silence still. Then she turns to face me. She doesn’t look at me though. Her eyes stay fixed on the floor. Shame, no doubt. But I can see her. She is pale. Paler than in the classroom. Even those red lips have faded. And there are tears, running down her cheeks. Not poxy threats of tears, like Gillian’s, when we played her Max’s music. Actual tears.

  “They haven’t told you?” she asks. Her voice is thin, wavering, with a hint of French intonation.

  “No,” I say. “Not what I was like before. Before my life changed.”

  Sophie darts a quick glance at my face. Her features convulse, like a spasm. She looks down again.

  “That’s why you’ve come, to ask me about that?” she asks me.

  I shrug. “In part.” She doesn’t need to know about the hammer, now.

  She seems to have difficulty understanding the question.

  “You don’t want to know why I left? Anything about that…day?” she asks me. Again, a flick up with the head, a spasm, a look at the floor again.

  Perhaps the guilt really has got her. But if she thinks I’m interested in being her confessor, she is wrong.

  “I don’t need you to tell me. I know all that.”

  This time, when she looks up at me again, she looks at me for longer.

  “You know?” There is disbelief in her voice.

  “I know you hit my father, Max, over the head with a hammer. I know he suffered an epidural haematoma. I know he died, hours later, at the studio. Then you deposited me with Gillian and John, happy to start a new life alone.”

  She doesn’t deny my thesis. Good. The extra research was worth it. She is amazed by my diligence. Her jaw slackens. She stares at me, eyes wide. The truth is hard to stand. She turns away and I see her clutch hold of the sink.

  “You don’t know,” she says, in almost a whisper. “They haven’t told you.”

  Perhaps I have misjudged her. Perhaps she is not evil. Just slow. She seems to be having great difficulty understanding what I know, and what I don’t.

  “I need you to fill me in on the first few years, Sophie. What was I like? What was Max like?”

  “Max was – ” I hear her sob, then stifle it. She turns to face me. Her voice has that forced levelled quality of someone trying not to cry. “Max was like you are now.”

  I nod. So. The family resemblance. It strikes me, suddenly, that I am family with this woman, standing opposite me in the kitchen. Perhaps, before she dies, we should bond. Perhaps I should hug her? I take a step forwards. A slight drumming rises in my ears, like there is a new instrument in Max’s concerto. No. If I am to move towards her, it will be for something different. I put a hand to my jacket, to check the hammer hasn’t slipped.

  “Do you have photos?” I ask her. “Of me?”

  Sophie shakes her head.

  “No.”

  The drumming increases in my ears.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Perhaps she will tell me that she would have missed me too much of she looked at them. That they are all melted away in tears of remorse. If there is remorse, perhaps she is safe.

  “Drowned,” she says, finally.

  “What?”

  “Drowned in Canal Saint-Martin.”

  Why is she speaking in these crazy metaphors? What does she mean? She cannot mean…

  “I threw them in the Canal. I have no photos left of back then. Just Max’s music.”

  I stare at her. No photos? She destroyed them? She destroyed my life not once, but twice?

  But I don’t know why I am surprised. This is not a stranger’s home. This is Sophie’s home. Sophie who murdered my father. Sophie who left me with
out guilt. I start to remember why I have come. Physically remember. The hammer feels more alive at my chest. Max’s music beats behind it in my heart.

  “I have his music too,” I say. “In here.” I tap my chest. “And here.” I tap my head. Because I do. I can hear it. It’s getting pretty loud now. I start to hum the third movement, where I left off on the train. Sophie doesn’t join in at first. Then, with a wavering hum, she starts. We hum together, staring at each other. On, on the music goes. We stare, and we hum. We hum, and we stare. My lips and my brain buzz. We move closer, still humming. She reaches out a hand towards me. I stop humming. Her hand falls down. She turns away. The music continues in my head, softly though. Chords beating only quietly. Still, we haven’t got to the crescendo. There’s time, yet.

  “So if you’ve no photos, you’ll have to tell me,” I say. “What was it like, chez nous? With Max?”

  There is silence. I consider asking her again. She seems to have a problem with my questions. “I will always remember that afternoon,” she says, quietly. I hear tears again, in her voice. A good show, she is putting on. “I lost the man I was supposed to die with.”

  I consider telling her it was her fault. But I think she knows that. And I’m not here to counsel her. I’m here to get real confirmation, from a living witness, of who I am. Who I was. With Max. And of course, the vengeance. I wonder how it will work, with the hammer. Will I unzip my coat, all of a sudden? Flourish it, while she faces me? Or wait until her back is turned? Like it has been turned so many times already. And yet the hammer is still in my jacket, untouched.

  Sophie doesn’t seem willing to expand on her answer, so I help her out.

  “I sat at his feet, by the piano, didn’t I, listening to his music? I can remember that now, I think.”

  There’s a little shake of her head. I frown. What? She’s saying I have a false memory of all this?

  Sophie turns and I see a sadness in her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is soft, almost sympathetic. “You were permanently waiting outside Max’s closed music room door in some one-sided game of hide and seek. But he wasn’t playing.”