-Ellie-
Now, where’s that hammer? There’s just time to nail the pandas back into the wall, so to speak, before I have to set off to Will’s lecture. Appropriate, pandas, seeing as we mate as rarely as they do. I thought we might have a chance for a lazy i.e. sexy get-up this morning – a little adult bonding after I shared the news about Sophie, and to rejoice in the fact we know the whole Felicity Stephens thing is nonsense. But Will left early, said he had to check over some points in his office. Good job I believed him over Flick (stupid nickname – just makes you want to flick her right in the forehead, although actually it’s likely that’s more to do with the fact she’s a bitch than with her name). A less secure woman might think that Will had sneaked off now to spend more time with his lover. Or that the reason we haven’t been having sex is because he’s been getting enough of it in another bed. That someone else has been enjoying that naked torso, those firm thighs, that glancing collar-bone, that I so much miss being pressed against me. But no. Not me. I know when my boy is telling the truth. It’s like he said: no more secrets.
Seriously, where can it be, the hammer? It’s not in the toolbox, it’s not in the garden, and it’s not lying around in any of the rooms, so far as I can tell. Will must have hidden it somewhere. I pick up my phone to ask him but then put it down again. He won’t want to be interrupted in the final preparations. I’ll try Sophie again instead, to fill in the time. I can ask Will about the hammer and sort out the pandas later. I wish in a way I hadn’t had to tell him about my mother-finding. But I was so furious, you know? That he’d apparently been hooking up with old whoreface while I was tracing his roots. Obvious, now, that he hadn’t been. But when you see something like that on Facebook, you don’t think logically, do you? Anyway, I do kind of wish I’d been able to keep it a surprise like I’d planned. Much more fun that way. But he’s obviously totally delighted that I’ve tracked her down. You could see this extra sparkle in his eyes, like the sparkle in Sophie’s ring. Maybe he could even be best man! He could give her away like she gave him away. Even things out, in a jolly, ironic, sort of way. I can hear the jokey wedding speeches now. I dial Sophie’s number. Nothing. The aggressive French ring tone just burrs coldly on.
So I guess I’ll just have to head off to Will’s lecture! When I say ‘just’, I don’t mean it like that. It’s a big deal, this, his first public lecture. Geared to the students, of course. And I might be the only public that’s there. But still. A big deal. And he seems to have been working on it for ages – almost as long as I’ve been pregnant. He’ll be giving birth to it only a matter of weeks before I give birth to Leo! Although he keeps postponing it, to get it just right. You can’t postpone a birth.
Just grab my coat, the mustard yellow one I think and – ow! One of those pains, again. Like contractions. But they can’t actually be contractions. I’m not due for another two months. Just little Leo wriggling around, giving Mummy’s pelvis a good kick. I give him a little pat, in utero. Naughty Leo, giving Mummy pain like that. Won’t hit him after he’s born, of course. What sort of mother does that?
And I open the door to that sort of mother. OK, maybe she didn’t hit him, but it’s all part of bad mothering. Gillian. Gillian and her bloody Audi. Just sitting there, outside the house, engine running, window half down. What can she possibly want now?
“Going to the lecture?” she calls out to me.
“Obviously,” I say. Damn. Of course, open to the public includes open to ex-mothers.
“Let me give you a lift,” she says.
“I’d sooner die,” I say. I’d only meant to think it, but what the hell. Then I get another one of those pains, down below, and it stops me short. Gillian stops the engine on her Audi.
“You OK?” she asks.
“It’s nothing,” I say. But the Audi starts to look more tempting. A walk then a train then a tube less so.
“Come on,” she says. “Get in.”
I walk along the pavement, as if I’m not interested. She keeps pace with me in the car. I keep walking, as quickly as I can. Which is not very fast.
“I’ll tell you why I was in Dartington.”
“I think it’s kind of obvious why you were in Dartington.”
“I really hope it’s not,” she says, pushing open the passenger side door.
I look at it. Inside, there are nice plush comfy seats. Cream seats. At least if I am going to go into labour early, or the worse thing, the m-word, I will get the satisfaction of doing it on those seats. Maybe even manage to get some fluids on that sodding green jacket of hers, which I see has come out for the occasion.
“I reserve the right to get out at any time,” I say, as I climb in.
“Of course,” she says.
I place the seat belt carefully under my bump, like the NHS Choices website says I should, and Gillian starts the car.
“So,” I say. “Dartington.”
There’s a pause. So, she’s reneging on her promise already. What a surprise.
“Let’s take a step back,” she says. Oh, great. Corporate speak. As if I need another reminder why I don’t want to start hanging round in offices, whatever Will says. Bet phrases like that were popular with Gillian’s fellow interior designers, as they survey walls ripe for fresh creations, but they won’t wash with me.
“Comes a bit late from you, doesn’t it? Where was all your stepping back when Will turned eighteen and you should have been telling him he was adopted? Have you any idea what these last few months have been – ”
But she cuts me off, the bitch. “Motherhood is all about protection. Protecting the ones you love. Would you agree?”
I shrug. “It’s an element, I suppose. Along with nurturing and supporting and encouraging honesty at all times.” She’s not going to out-mother me, this non-mother.
“Sure. But the thing is, Ellie, that if you know something about your child, something that will traumatise them throughout their life, you don’t let anyone know about it. More than that. If anyone does know, you make damn sure they don’t tell anyone else.”
“What, you’ve spent your whole life putting the frighteners on everyone who wanted to tell Will he was adopted? Bit late for that in Dartington, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not talking about Will being adopted. I’m talking about something else.”
I notice she doesn’t deny putting the frighteners on people though.
“So come on, Dartington. What was that all about?” Hiding your sordid love match with Max Reigate? I ask in my head. Then I think what the heck, why not, I’m pregnant, I can get away with anything, and I owe this woman nothing. I ask it out loud too.
“Yes, I was close to Max Reigate.”
Ha! Thought so.
“But I was close to Sophie too. We were next but one neighbours and great friends. Both thought we were bigger than Dartington, and told each other we were. I was Will’s godmother. You know what that means, being a godmother? If the child’s parents die, you have to…”
“Yes, yes, you have to look after them,” I mutter, irritated. I’m all over this stuff. We’ve been deliberating Leo’s prospective godparents since forever.
“But they never tell you what’s to happen if the child kills the parents,” Gillian says.
What? If the child kills…
I shake my head. I can’t have heard her right.
“I’m sorry?” I ask.
“They don’t tell you what the responsibilities are if your godchild kills one of his parents. His father.”
I can’t stop staring at her. What does she possibly mean? Does she mean Will –? But no. That would be ridiculous. He was only four when Max died.
“Gillian, if you’re trying to tell me Will killed his father, that’s mad.”
Gillian shakes her head. “I wish it was.” There are tears in her voice.
I pause for a moment, trying to work out how to respond. But that’s obvious, isn’t it? Incredulity. She is trying to tell me my husband murdered his father!
“It’s another of your crazy stories, another way to try to keep Will in some made-up world. What next – you’re going to say his mother put him up to it? Which is why he shouldn’t go looking for her?”
“The reason he shouldn’t go looking for her is that she won’t be able to bear to see him. Would you be able to look at your son if he’d murdered your husband? Wouldn’t you give him away?”
My brain is whirling and my pelvis is cramping, but somewhere in the swirl and the pain, what she says makes a horrible kind of sense. Sophie Travers had made the family friends look after her child, because the child had killed the father. And she could no longer look upon his face. But, come on, no, he was four. Max was thirty. How could that happen?
“If, if, what you’re saying is true, how does a four-year-old boy kill a thirty-year-old man?”
“With a hammer,” Gillian says. “With a hammer, in a tantrum. While daddy is fixing the sink.”
I gag. It sounds horribly plausible. I stroke Leo, despite the pain he is giving me.
“Gillian, I – Look, how can I believe this is true? And why the hell are you telling me? You hate me!”
“I’m telling you because you need to understand why Will shouldn’t try to find his mother. Which I believe is what you were helping him do in Dartington. I don’t want to imagine how she will react when she sees him. What if she tells him? It will destroy him.”
It would make sense, Sophie hanging up as soon as I called, as she had done. Sophie not wanting to be found.
“And as for whether what I say is true, it’s all in there.” Gillian gestures at the glove compartment. I stare at it. What could possibly be in there? A bloodied hammer, with Will’s infant fingerprints on it?
“The transcript of the inquest. Never released publicly. To protect Will.”
I fumble to open the glove compartment. My fingers don’t seem to be working properly. The catch keeps slipping beneath my grasp. Finally, I get in there. I see a sheaf of paper in a plastic covering. With shivering hands I take it out.
Gillian drives silently as I read. As I take it all in. Because it’s all there. How Will murdered his father.