Hide And Seek. Amy Bird

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       Chapter Three

      -Will-

      “I still can’t believe I broke my son’s bed,” I say to Ellie, as she peels herself off me. I take a covert look at her bump. It really is becoming impressive now. She’s a mother way before I’m a father.

      “What, you broke me?” Ellie asks in mock consternation, looking down at herself.

      I laugh, but I’m serious. It’s not a great portent of my ability as a father, is it, getting so carried away in a show of my shoe prowess that I damage his new bed? If I do that to furniture, how am I possibly meant to help keep the child alive, in those precious two weeks of paternity leave?

      Ellie sits on my lap, side-on, and wraps her arms round my neck for support.

      “We’ll get it fixed. Reclaim our hammer from your parents. Stick some superglue in the cracks, then give it a really good precision blow.”

      A precision blow sounds good. I consider saying this to Ellie, but she might take it wrong, like I didn’t just enjoy the sex. I did. Obviously (and I’m hoping the chair has survived unscathed). But she keeps saying that if I find the bump too big or unattractive, we can be intimate in other ways. So she might think the request for a precision blow (job) is a pointed one. That sex is no longer fun.

      So instead, I just nuzzle her neck and tell her she is wonderful.

      “We’ll be good parents, won’t we?” I ask her.

      She nods her head. “We’ll still be you and me. So we’ll be the best.”

      “You already are the best,” I tell her. “But I really do need to do some work on my lecture before my parents come over.”

      Ellie looks at me. “Really? Post-coital work? That’s a first.”

      “It needs to be done,” I say. “Just like you did.” I kiss her and gently nudge her from my lap. I ease past her out of the room. “I’ll take the bedroom, if that’s OK?”

      “Such bad sleep hygiene,” she says. I can hear the roll of eyes in her voice.

      “So are babies,” I retort.

      “Touché,” says Ellie, with what must be a smile.

      Good. Banter situation normal. No blame for my crib-breaking (which is good of Ellie because, really, spending £400 on a crib only to break it is not ideal).

      I shower, get dressed, then prop myself up on the bed, surrounded by my papers…and nothing really happens. I’m still annoyed with myself about the crib. It’s silly, really. Such a small thing. And it can’t have been a very good crib if me hitting it with a shoe damages it. Really I was just health and safety testing it. Imagine if little Leo, banging it with a plastic beaker (because that’s what they do, isn’t it, babies, bang things?), had been able to break the nail-housing, and the nail had sprung out and blinded him. Or the side of the crib had given way, letting him roll out, then roll down the stairs – unthinkable. The ultimate parental nightmare. So really I should be pleased with myself. And just buy another crib. Or take it back. Say it was defective.

      But before that, I really must try to work on my lecture. I’ll kick myself if I’m up on the podium, staring out at the audience, and just thinking back to the afternoon when I couldn’t be bothered to work. I have some of the bullet points already. I just need to flesh them out, then add the extra research my student is doing.

      ‘Intro – Natasha Richardson’ the first bullet says.

      Fine, I can deal with that. I speak softly to myself, practising.

      “The world was shocked when actress Natasha Richardson – wife of Hollywood legend Liam Neeson – seemed perfectly fine after a skiing fall, carried on acting normally and then, hours later, died. That phenomenon, which we are studying today, is known colloquially as ‘talk and die’, medically as epidural haematoma, and is my area of specialism. It occurs when a head trauma leads to blood building up between the skull and the dura mater, causing pressure on the brain and, if unrelieved, that pressure can be fatal. In Natasha Richardson’s case, it was. She was unusual, though, because hers was caused by a skiing accident. The vast majority of cases in reality are caused by a violent act – so your classic baseball bat or hammer-blow to the head.”

      Or a hit with a shoe, I could add. But it’s not a comedy. And I can’t dumb the thing down any more. It’s already pretty simplistic – film star’s wife, skiing… Maybe I should just invite them to eat popcorn. But the faculty head said I had to make it accessible. Start with a human interest story, reel them in. Which is what I’m doing. And I chose skiing specially – one of the jollier examples. Well, not jolly exactly – I still can’t watch films with Liam Neeson in without feeling sorry for him. But a skiing accident is in a sense jollier than the usual causes of our friend epidural haematoma – the domestic row between husband and wife escalates to a saucepan on the bonce, or the burglar gets carried away with his baseball bat. At least with skiing, no one is inflicting the pain. I chose well. So why the self-doubt? Have I been working too hard? I suddenly feel tired. Exhausted actually. Overwork and tiredness, that’ll undermine anyone’s self-confidence. I have had pretty disrupted sleep, I guess, over the last few months, what with Ellie getting up in the night, then all the tossing and turning as she tries to find a position comfortable for sleep. And sex, you know, is tiring – I read that men are hormonally conditioned to be sleepy after sex. Plus maybe I tired myself out from that other hammering too, with the shoe. I don’t know where that came from – all that energy, all that force. Maybe sexual tension. Maybe Ellie knew I needed some kind of release. Wherever it came from, it’s not there now.

      So I put my papers to one side, and curl up in foetal position on the bed. Max Reigate’s music floats back to me from the car journey, and all those other times we have listened to it. That moment, after the climax, the great build-up, where everything is calm again. The chords are in harmony, surrounded by happy little triplets of notes lilting about, rather than the aggressive earlier accents. And all is resolved. That’s what I need. To absorb that calm, from the CD. But then Ellie will know I’m not working. So I’ll just have to curl up here and secretly let the imaginary music calm me. Even though the refrain in my head will be hard to drown out. The refrain that says: ‘You don’t know how to be a father. You don’t know how to deliver a public lecture. You’re not equal to what lies ahead.’