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It’s been thirty years since it happened. A lifetime, for some. Yet I still hear his cries. I still feel eyes on me. Still hear the whispers: I know what you did.
I’ve spent so long hiding that I barely remember what it’s like to be seen – to be known for who you really are. But all that must stay where it’s buried. For better, for worse.
No-one can ever know what happened that day. And no-one ever will. Because they can seek all they want, but this is a secret I’ll take to my grave. No matter who comes knocking.
The chilling second part of Hide and Seek by Amy Bird: a new novel, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, SJ Watson and Liane Moriarty. Is finding the truth worth losing everything?
Also by Amy Bird
Yours is Mine
Three Steps Behind You
Praise for Amy Bird
‘This novel contains many shocks and turns, it’s filled with emotion and makes for an addicting and fast read’ –Uncorked Thoughts on Yours is Mine
‘There were moments that goosebumps spread across my arms…the last chapter left me a little breathless.’ – Katlyn Duncan, author of The Life After Trilogy on Yours is Mine
‘… there are twists and turns in here that you will never see coming.’ – Emma Kerry, Emma Kerry’s Notebook on Yours is Mine
‘I honestly cannot recommend this book enough! It is fast paced and thrilling, and will have you gripped from beginning to end.’ – Amy Nightingale, Compelling Reads on Three Steps Behind You
‘As a psychological thriller this works extremely well…it is perfectly paced with some real heartstopping moments and a terrific exciting finale. I enjoyed it very much, it appealed to my darker nature and I will definitely be looking out for more from this author.’ –Liz Loves Books on Three Steps Behind You
‘For those of us who love a dark read, this is just perfect.’ – Christine Marson, Northerncrime on Three Steps Behind You
‘I couldn't put this book down.’ – Kelly White, Waterstones bookseller on Three Steps Behind You
‘A novel full of twists and turns. Readers will be surprised who they end up cheering on. Highly recommended.’ – Rosemary Smith, Cayocosta72 Book Reviews on Three Steps Behind You
Hide and Seek Part Two
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: 9781474007528
Version date: 2018-06-27
AMY BIRD
Amy Bird lives in London, where she divides her time between writing and working as a solicitor. Hide and Seek is her third psychological thriller for HQ Digital. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London, and is also an alumna of the Faber Academy ‘Writing a Novel’ course, which she studied under Richard Skinner. As well as novels, Amy has written a number of plays, including The Jobseeker which was runner-up in the Shaw Society’s 2013 T.F. Evans Award. She is a member of the Crime Writers’Association. Her husband, Michael, writes too and one of their favourite pastimes is to ‘fantasy cast’ films of their novels while cooking up new concoctions in the kitchen. For updates on her writing follow her on Twitter, @London_Writer.
The following must be thanked for the creation of Hide and Seek: Messrs Alkan, Beethoven, Grieg and Tchaikovsky for the concerti that helped me imagine the music at the heart of this novel; my talented editor Clio Cornish for helping me find that heart’s true beat; the rest of the HQ Digital team for their passion in bringing the book to readers; my fellow HQ Digital authors who have spurred me on, both on-line and in person; my legal colleagues, who have indulged my authorial leanings; the friends, family and enthusiastic readers who championed Three Steps Behind You while I was working on Hide and Seek. And finally, love, gratitude and joy to my husband Michael. You are with me in all creations.
Contents
Cover
Blurb
Book List
Praise for
Title Page
Copyright
Author Bio
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Endpages
About the Publisher
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. That 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 drifting 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.
Count to ten. Come on, remember – mother of your child. No arguments causing miscarriages. Retrieve the hammer out of the crib and install it in the toolbox. Go back upstairs, into the nursery, with its ghoulish dead-father crib, and smile at your pregnant wife.
Looking at her, through my smiles, I know she doesn’t feel how I feel about something else too. Doesn’t feel as I feel about a mother who simply thought ‘Hey, this is all too difficult since my husband died. So even though my little son has just been left fatherless, I’m going to make him motherless too, by just giving him unfeelingly away.’ You’d think she would. With her own mother, up on the almighty pedestal she’s now deified on, and with her own impending motherhood, you’d think she would have as little sympathy for Sophie Travers and she does for Gillian.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I test her out again. But no. Same old response. Ellie just goes on about the blood clot again. “There may have been an accident,” she says, seated on that sex-cum-nursing chair like it’s a judge’s bench. “That might be what Gillian was referring to. Or someone attacked him. Imagine how Sophie must have felt. Like she couldn’t be a mother at that moment; just a grieving widow.”
But I don’t want to imagine it. I haven’t got the mental space to imagine it. The only things I have space for are this: the concerto; hatred of my non-parents; sorrow, true horrible devastating sorrow, of my life not lived; Ellie lying to me; and the blood clot. The phrase Ellie heard Gillian use: What happened that day. Because, you see, I haven’t forgotten those words. Or how they link to the blood clot. And there, again, I know more than Ellie. Partly because, you see, I am an expert in this area. So I know these blood clots. I know what they mean. The violence they entail. And I also know because there is now not a single page of the internet that mentions Max Reigate that is unread by me. I know that when he left home, he was fine. I know that when he started to record that album, he was fine. And I know that mid-way through, he died.
And I know what that means.
Talk and die.
I know it’s not just a blood clot, of course, the talk and die phenomenon. Christ, if anyone knows that, I do. But these people who write these Wikipedia entries, they’re not going to be able to differentiate. Say to the average person: there was an epidural haemorrhage, a build-up of blood between the brain and the skull, and they’ll say oh, right. You mean a blood clot. Not getting, in their ignorance, the fatal beauty – sorry father, my dear departed father, but I mean from a scientific point of view – of the pressure of the bleed from damaged blood vessels around the skull trauma just building up, building up, until gradually gradually the pressure on the brain gets too much. An almost perfect murder, it would be, in some regards. If you gloss over the fact you need everyone not to notice you hit the victim on the head, and need to get the pressure just right, plus cross your fingers a lot that they won’t just pass out concussed immediately or, even more disappointingly talk and…talk.
So, what I mean is, Wikipedia saying ‘blood clots’ isn’t going to rule out talk and die, is it? I mean, a mighty coincidence if it was that, what with that being my area of academic specialism and all. Unless that’s what subconsciously got me interested in the area? You might say I could just find Sophie. Ask her. And I will do. In due course. But I’m a scientist. I like to develop my thesis and my research. I like to make my scientific case. And so before I put her to the test, before I get her to confirm my theory, I will get my facts. Then we’ll see what she has to say. About whatever happened that day, with my dad. My dad, Max (still getting used to it). With my background, perhaps I should be the last person to say ‘But healthy pianists don’t just collapse in the middle of recordings!’. But, you know, healthy pianists generally don’t just collapse in the middle of recordings. What perhaps happens is that before the recording, at home, say, like one of those typical domestic epidural haematoma cases, someone –
But part of the protocol, it seems, for my present situation, is if I start to share these theories or appear a little agitated, Ellie pops open the valium. Not for her, in her present condition, but for me. To quieten me. So before I can fully get my head round the theory of the special clot, of who might have caused it, tablets that Ellie has found from goodness knows where are in my hand. And because I still just about trust her – even now, after what she kept from me – it’s only after I’ve taken two in one swallow that I ask her what they are.
“Don’t fight it,” she says, leading me into the bedroom. “Just lie back and succumb,” she says, as she switches off the lights and leaves the room. And so before I know it I’m being raped by the valium, forcibly relaxed into its grasp and my eyelids they’re going going go…
I’m on a piano. Not playing one – on one. But it is not an ordinary piano and it is not an ordinary me. The piano is the size of a large ship. In fact, it is a large ship. It crosses a stormy sea, waves crashing on it and over it. I’m standing on one of the white keys. I’ve shrunk – not just in stature, but in years. I’m a little boy again, wearing shorts. With my small fingers, I’m clutching onto the lip at the edge of the piano keys. The giant hand of an unseen person is pressing down on the keys, one by one, getting closer and closer. Each time a key is pressed down, a huge chasm opens up. It isn’t just a gap between the regular keys and the one being pressed, like it would be on an ordinary piano. As each key is played, it falls, down down into the sea, down to the hammer-like engine pistons of the ship, and below them to the sea, with a great splash. I can see them as they fall, see the gap opening up below me. The sea churns beneath the piano – slam, slam, slam into its great legs that stretch out over the waves. The beat of the sea is not regular though – it has strange riffs and rhythms. Max’s rhythms, of course.