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.
-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
