Hide and Seek Read online

  And because my soul keeps shouting this to me, I look around the room expecting to see him, my father, my Max Reigate. Real, living, breathing, playing Max. But of course, I’m alone. There is only the music. Rising, mounting, crashing – ya da da, ya da da, ya da da. Your dada your dada your dada. It corrals me into that almost unbearable climax. YOUR DADA YOUR DADA YOUR DADA YOUR FATHER YOUR MAX. Then it leaves me silent, alone, until I replay the track.

  And behind this man, behind this piano, there must be my mother. This Sophie Travers of the birth certificate. Perhaps even now they are touring the world together. Perhaps they are stars. Perhaps in newspapers I don’t buy, or in supplements I don’t read, they are there: Max Reigate and Sophie Travers, musical impresarios. From concert hall to concert hall they go, wowing audiences. The only thing that saddens them about their success is that their little son was not there to share it with them. They were impoverished artists at the start maybe, and although it broke their hearts they could not afford to keep their boy. They sacrificed him to their art; they made sure he had a better life. And OK, so maybe it’s been a fake life. But it’s been a comfortable one. Maybe Max and Sophie chose well. Made a brave and noble decision. Now, now we are all grown up and successful, we can be reunited. I can go to their concerts; they can come to my lectures. They can meet their grandchild. We can find a new family identity together.

  “Ellie! Ellie!” I cry out. “Come here!”

  There are running feet and in she comes, her eyes anguished. My words will sweep her anguish away.

  “I’m going to find them, starting now! I really am going to find Max and Sophie. And they’re going to give me the answers. Explain themselves – because they sure as hell need to do that. But also explain me. Everything I’ve just lost, it will be filled again, by their answers. They can tell me all about my upbringing in those early years, show me the photos. And we can see that Reigate nose you’re so obsessed with! Let’s go on-line, find Max’s agent, find his next concert. I can be there! They’ll be so surprised, they’ll have to tell us everything!”

  I kiss Ellie but she doesn’t return my passion. OK, fair enough, they aren’t her parents. Oh. In fact. How insensitive of me, maybe – she has only just lost her parents. Here I am, rediscovering mine. Tactless? But no. Ellie is selfless. We share everything, all emotions, everything. She’ll understand.

  “Why don’t you just start off with Wikipedia?” she says. There’s a flatness about her tone. “And before you do, Will, remember that I love you.”

  Odd. She said that to me before, when she handed me the adoption certificate. I get a little shiver of foreboding. But then, I guess, she does love me, so why wouldn’t she say it? She hands me her phone. So I type in ‘Max Reigate, Wikipedia’. And yes – there we are! An entry, just for him. How exciting to have a father like this! Oh, he’ll be able to tell me so much. I click on the link.

  Max Charles Reigate – aha, there we go, M.C.R., like Ellie said! – was a classical pianist and composer…

  Hold on.

  Was?

  I look up at Ellie. She isn’t looking at me. Her gaze is fixed on the floor.

  I look back at my phone. I continue to scroll down. My heart is thumping and there’s a nausea rising in my throat.

  It tells me Max Reigate composed a highly applauded concerto. That he was tipped by critics to be the next big thing.

  That he died in 1984. In the recording studio, while he was making his second album. Died of a blood clot on the brain. Leaving behind him a wife and son.

  And the entry ends.

  I sit staring at the phone trying to process. My new dad is dead. The new dad, that I have only just discovered, who was going to give me the answers to so many questions, who was going to help me to rediscover who I am, is gone. He died when I was four. To a blood clot – ironically, the very meat of my current existence (the kind caused by violence, anyway). The dream, my dream, of a new identity, is over. The answers I sought, they will remain just questions. There’s only the mother, Sophie Travers. Only half a unit. She’s not part of a musical double-act, redeemed for her decision to put me up for adoption because it allowed great music. She’s a widow who couldn’t cope and gave away her son. Abandoned me. She won’t want to talk. Will she? And will I even want to make her, if the main prize, Max Reigate, is lost? Because somehow I think I’d understand, better, what he had to say. Now that I’ve communed with him, through his music.

  And then I look up. I look up at Ellie. Who may well be my non-wife, it seems. Because there is a betrayal here. She is looking at me now, but it is too late. There are tears in her eyes but they mean nothing. There is only one thing that means anything.

  “You knew,” I say, my voice breaking.

  And she nods.

  She starts to speak, too, like she has the right to say anything to me now. Now that I know what she has been withholding.

  “There’s something else,” she says.

  It’s too late, I think again. You can’t make up for it. There’s a little blood building up against my ears as I look at Ellie. No information you can give me will make up for what you failed to tell me, I say to her in my head.

  “Something I overhead when we were at Gillian and John’s. What they were saying, while you were shouting.”

  I don’t want to listen. Particularly if it’s to do with my non-parents. But there’s an urgency about Ellie’s tone that makes me give her my attention, for just a little longer. I keep my face blank, though. She will not see my interest. I will not give her that reward.

  “John said to Gillian ‘We should tell him.’ So I thought he meant – well, because I knew, I thought he meant tell you that Max is dead. But then Gillian said ‘No! We can never tell him what happened that day!’”

  Ellie looks at me, letting her words sink in. I’m not sure she knows what they mean. I’m not sure she cares; she just wants to redeem herself by total recall. But I know. As they sink in, my brain starts to piece it all together, like it’s pieced together so many scientific puzzles in the past. All this new information I’ve learnt.

  And this is what my brain comes up with: something happened to my father. Something caused his death. Something violent. And all of a sudden, there are more questions, even than I had a few moments ago. Questions for Sophie Travers. Whether she wants to answer them or not.

  PART TWO

  DEVELOPMENT

  Chapter One

  -Sophie-

  One more sip, and I’ll go. Really. But I take a sip and think the same again. This beer is my treat, after all. And everyone needs a little treat. To keep them sane. Particularly in exile. There are worse places to be in exile than the peace of Quai de Jemappes in Paris. Even though the sun has started to pale and the glory of its reflection on Canal Saint-Martin that tempted me into the after-school indulgence has faded. But mon dieu I deserved it today. Those children at the elementary school! Why can they not get the right notes in their scales? It must be deliberate. They must know by now there are no sharps in C Major; I’ve taught them the rules often enough. How I wanted to smack their little fingers each time they reached for a black note. Pas de dièses! Smack. And in English too, so they got their daily bilingual quotient. No sharps! Smack.

  I didn’t though. It’s all about restraint, I’ve learnt. Repression. There’s to be no violence, now. And besides, it’s not allowed. I might not be sacked, might be ‘lucky’, be sent off to some robust lycée to teach the rough secondary-schoolers. There, it would be a different sort of sharps to forbid them from. A far more dangerous sort. That I well recall.

  As I take another sip of my beer, a man walks past me, whistling a tune to himself. A joyful little melody. A different man, a different key signature, from what I was used to. But such a familiar activity. And suddenly, there I am again, with Max. As he pottered from room to room, or from house to restaurant, or studio to home. Always the whistling, so annoying, yet so beautiful. So Max. And now here he is again in my mind. T
hat whistle penetrating all. That’s what I get for my ‘treat’, my indulgence in this afternoon beer. The past, now present again.

  Oh, why can I never remember how difficult it is to forget? Why could I not have known back then, as I perforated myself with the same number of pinpricks as those little dots of lights made in the sky, and me just as high, while I lay on that night-time grass in Bois de Boulogne? Why did I never remember that all you lose is a few days, not your real memories, the ones that (unfortunately) matter? Guillaume, or Will, if we’re being English, seemed to have found it easier. Although I suppose he might have started to remember, after I ran. Little Guillaume. Comme il était mignon. So very sweet. I remember when he was first born. Well, of course I do. I’m his mother (am I, still, does it count, when you’ve left your children?). You couldn’t forget bringing your son into the world. In the maternity ward, back in London, we took it in turns to cradle him. Max, bearded then, scuzzing his face against little Guillaume’s so that it tickled the baby into gurgles. So intimate, so loving. So back then. I drain my glass. It doesn’t do to reflect too much. I must focus on the moment. There are English tests to mark and written scales to correct.

  “Tu veux une autre, Sophie?”

  I shake my head and smile, walking away from the bar. I don’t want another beer. If I have one, the later memories, of that day, before Max went to the studio, will not be repressed. It will all hit me again. I know. Not like in the first six months, before I ran, when it was with me all the time. Whatever highs, whatever lows. The guilt, of leaving, and of everything.

  “Domage!” says the barman. “À demain, ma petite rose!”

  I do a casual wave over my shoulder. See me tomorrow? You wish. I have someone else lined up for that. Alain, my new beau, I’ll have you know. Except I don’t say that. I just swing my hips a little bit. Well, why not? The barman’s following me with his eyes again, I bet. Guilt and drugs do wonders for the waistline, for keeping a pallid complexion, and chemicals for keeping the hair that deep black-brown. Back when Max was alive, I’m sure I was rosier, rounder. Never fat, of course. But less European. If I went back now, none of those English schoolteachers, or the orchestra gang, would recognise me. Or look at me, even if I introduced myself. I know the English – married one, didn’t I? Even though his passions were distinctly more France than Angleterre. Yes, I know exactly what they would be like, those teachers, if I went back. They would stare at the floor, or talk about the weather, until one of them, envious of my figure, would blurt out an accusation. The others would tut and hush and apologise, and talk some more about the weather. But they would all look at me with that same accusation. The orchestra people would be horribly underhand – there’d be whispers in the second violins, gossip in the woodwind, and the odd hissed slur just before the conductor raised his baton. I wouldn’t be safe, even when the music started. Over-zealous bow movements would knock me in the face. My music would mysteriously have the critical page missing. My perfectly tuned violin would untune itself while I visited the bathroom.

  And so I had to come back here and I have to stay. Away, safe, untroubled. At least by external influences. And of course, away from Guillaume. He won’t find me here. However hard he looks. I was anxious for a whole year, when he turned eighteen. That’s when people start looking, isn’t it, for their ‘real’ parents? But no. Nothing. And so, thirty years after it all happened, I can continue my life. No one here knows, no one will drag me back, no one will ask ‘And what do you think your son looks like now?’ Or, worse, ‘Oh, doesn’t he look so much like his father?’ And so I don’t have to think about it. If I try very hard. And I mean to keep it that way.

  Chapter Two

  -Ellie-

  OK, so maybe I should have told him about Max Reigate being dead earlier. But he wasn’t going to engage brain with my theory, was he, that way? Not very interesting to speculate over whether your mother may or may not have had an affair with a dead musician. No real outcome, no real hope. Plus why bother him with mourning the loss of his father when we didn’t know conclusively it was his father? I know what that loss is like. You don’t want to mourn it if you don’t have to. So it was all from the best of intentions, really. I wasn’t to know he was adopted. At least I gave him the extra Gillian tit-bit, even if I’ve no idea what it means. An olive branch. He should be grateful for that.

  It’s a shame most of this is addressed, in my head, to Will’s back as he lies apart from me in bed.

  Part of the purdah that he’s put me in.

  Oh, it’s not an official purdah, of course. Officially, I’m forgiven. We had the showdown. We had the ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ And we had my very cogent explanation. Perhaps not as cogent as the one I’m addressing to his back. I more gave him a summary – ‘I thought I needed to help you to the truth, and I needed to do it in stages.’ He was still upset, though, of course. I’d let him believe in a future that didn’t exist, get excited about a father he’d never meet, a man he’d never become etc etc. But I never knew he would turn out to be adopted, did I? I still thought his mother was his mother, just that there’d been a bit of a fling with a sexy pianist. Still would have been a bit of a headfuck, I guess, but not this much.

  And you know, he bought that, I think. I thought. Began talking at mealtimes again. Making little jokes. I thought I was out of the doghouse. I thought maybe a bit of sex would help seal our reconciliation.

  No.

  He is tired a lot. Suddenly. The yawns appear as soon as I initiate anything.

  Might be unconnected. Might be my belly. Might be – a general downness, I guess.

  But whatever it is, it’s not great. Evenings are too quiet. Too soft. We can’t do the ‘sex makes amends’ bit.

  It’s not all bad, though, I guess, this place we are now. I am kind of enjoying practising my nurturing and mothering skills on him. If I can’t practise my other skills on him. Good timing, in a way. Is the ickle boy sad? Shall I cheer him up? Of course I don’t actually say that, do I, and nor would I. Bit odd. But I guess that’s what I can say to little Leo, when he starts being his own person. So it’s fine to think it, as I bring Will Rich Tea biscuits and tea, like my mum used to bring to me when I was sad, and it was too early in the day to simply say the next morning would wash the grief away. Plus he hasn’t really got a mummy at the moment, has he? Never had one, in the real sense. May have to work on the Sophie Reigate née Travers bit, in due course. But for now, he has me. I need to look after him. And I guess maybe I do need to practise. Because it’s not long now, until I’m due to pop. Three and a half months. Three and a half months to learn how to look out for a defenceless little person. Learning how to let it feed on you. For it to get enough sustenance without sucking you and your existence totally dry. Oh, Mum – the eternal postcard: I wish you were here. I would give up all the antenatal classes in the world for half an hour of your wisdom.

  It would be better, of course, if I didn’t also have to practise the sleepless nights bit right now. It’s like, really, thanks Will, thanks for lowering the balance of my sleep bank before I’ve even become so huge that I can’t sleep at all. Or before we’ve even got a wailing sprog to attend to. Because, honestly, I challenge anyone to sleep through Will’s sleeping. Quiet evenings, maybe, but not quiet nights. He’s never been much of a snorer, but he’s sure as hell making up for it now. Not by snoring. No, that would be fine. It’s the tossing and turning, and the drumming, and the muttering that get me. Like really sinister muttering, if you didn’t know him. ‘Mummy’ he’ll murmur, which would be a bit Norman Bates if you didn’t have the back story. Plus ‘talk and die’. Ghoulish to anyone else. But I know he’s worried about his lecture, I’m sure of it. There’s only so much compassionate leave you can get out of a case like this and time is ticking before he needs to deliver it. They’ve already rescheduled to make allowances for him. Understanding his bad sleep etiquette doesn’t make it any less annoying, though – just as you’re about drifti
ng off to sleep, there comes another ‘drum drum drum’ of his fingers on the bed posts, or he’ll roll right over onto you and your precious load, and sleep is suddenly hours off through fear of foetal crushing. I guess it’s maybe a blessing when he’s turned away from me, like he is at the moment. If he were hugging me in his sleep, like he always used to, little Leo would have been tapped to death by Will’s fingers by now.

  But it can’t go on, can it? Because what I’d need, if it were little Leo I was looked after, is a solution. That was always Dad’s role. I’d come to him as a teenager, whinging about something, and he would just say: “Look, wipe away the tears, and tell me what you’re going to do about it.” Practical and pragmatic. Shame he didn’t have time to do anything practical when the other car came ploughing head-on, the wrong way down a dual carriageway. But now. Follow Dad’s advice. Don’t cry about it. Be proactive. What am I going to do, about Will, about this sleeplessness?

  And I think I have an idea. Yes, there we go. That’s what I can do. It’s in two parts. The first, I can find in my medicine cabinet.

  Chapter Three

  -Will-

  Ellie, she thinks she has all the answers. All the explanations for everything. For her own behaviour, for everyone else’s behaviour. But for all her knowledge, all her senses, all her knowing, she doesn’t feel what I feel. If she did, she would never have told me those lies. She would never have let me imagine a life with Max Reigate. Right from the start, right from when she looked him up and found his initials, she should have told me. I don’t know when the rules changed. We always tell each other everything. Or at least, we did. But there are apparently different rules now. Apparently we only have to tell each other everything when it suits us. Full disclosure – but only when convenient. After it actually fucking matters. After you’ve actually emotionally fucking invested in a new future.