LITMIR.BIZ

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birth, or death, or something to our first attempt at a child, obviously!” I wheeze. “And oh, to tell him not to kill Sophie!”

      “What?”

      Gillian puts her own phone down.

      “Don’t put down the phone, Gillian! Call an ambulance. Or a porter! We’re right next to a bloody hospital, aren’t we? Please. I can’t do both!”

      Gillian is silent. She doesn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. How can she not? How can she just be standing glaring at me rather than calling an ambulance. 1-2-3 breathe!

      “What’s this about Will killing Sophie?”

      “He’s written it in his lecture notes, the idiot. He’s gone to Paris to kill her. He thinks she murdered Max. So I’ve got to call him, tell him the truth.”

      Gillian comes closer to me.

      “You’ll do no such thing,” she says.

      “What?” 1-2-3 breathe! Come on, come on, where’s that ambulance – can’t they just be summoned by my pain?

      “You are not going to tell Will the truth!”

      Oh fuck it, she’s talking nonsense. I don’t need nonsense. I need a medic. And probably an epidural.

      “Of course I’ve got to tell him the truth. He’s about to kill someone! He’s about to become a murderer. A real murderer – an adult one!” I prod at my phone again, managing to unlock it.

      Gillian snatches it from my hand.

      I look up.

      “What are you doing, Gillian? I need to speak to – ” Another pain. Come on, come on, breathe it through. 1-2-3. “I need to speak to Will. And you, we, somebody needs to call an ambulance!”

      “You are not telling Will that he killed his father. You promised, remember? We have to protect him.” There’s a fierceness in her eyes.

      “Oh, Jesus, what, Gillian? You want him to murder his mother and spend the rest of his life in prison?”

      “At least then he’ll have closure,” Gillian says. “He won’t be satisfied unless he does this.”

      “Only because he thinks Sophie is a murderer! If he knew what had really happened, he wouldn’t want to kill her. Himself, maybe, but not her.”

      “Exactly. It would destroy him. So he mustn’t know. Just like he should never have known he was adopted.”

      God, there’s this horrible mad glint in her eye. Like the sort people get in films when they suddenly develop superhuman strength and resolve. I think I need to be frightened, but the pains, they are coming so quickly that I’m not sure I can spare the emotion for extra Gillian-caused fear.

      “He’d find out, Gillian. In his murder trial for God’s sake, all the past would come out. And that will devastate him even more.”

      Gillian shakes her head. She still hasn’t called the ambulance, or the porter, or whatever, and I need it, we need it, me and Leo – now!

      “They won’t look that far, the French courts,” says Gillian. “They’ll just see an injured national and a crime scene and a perpetrator.”

      I shake my head at her, trying to focus on what she is saying, what I need to say. But it’s so difficult, because I’m shaking and sweating and panting and this shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening now.

      “Gillian, listen to me. Listen to yourself. I get that you want to protect Will. But you’re making him into a murderer. He’s just all fucked up now, really fucked up.” Christ, that’s an understatement. “He needs us to intervene, get him home, set him right. See his son, if you will get me a fucking ambulance so that there is some small chance that our poor premature Leo gets into the world alive and doesn’t kill me with him.”

      Gillian comes closer to me. She’s actually standing in the watery goo at my feet. But she doesn’t stop there. She leans in towards me and wraps her hands around my wrists. Tight. OK, so I was wrong. I do have room for fear.

      She speaks to me, very softly, but very firmly.

      “You are not leaving this room until you swear on Leo’s life that you will not tell Will the truth.”

      I protest, because this is ridiculous. Her whole motherhood notion, her failed conception of what it means to protect someone. Her horrible horrible desire to blight my future life, Will’s life, Leo’s life, if he has one.

      “Ellie, unless you swear that, I am not calling an ambulance. And I am not giving you back your phone. No one will come. You will stay in this room until whatever happens, happens. I will protect Will, like I have always done.”

      And I look into her eyes, and she looks into mine, and I know that she means it.

      The pain comes sharp. The world starts to cut out a little. I need medical attention, and I need it now. So I do it. I sell out on Will. I commit him to murder. And I barter the life of my son.

      “I swear,” I say. “On Leo’s life. Now call me an ambulance.”

       Chapter Three

      -Sophie-

      I try to focus on the children. I try to focus on their scales. I try to give a shit – or even notice – if they are playing sharps or flats or anything at all. But since the call, I cannot. I cannot focus on anything except the thought that maybe, today is the day. The day that everything crumbles.

      I am being ridiculous, I tell myself, as I sink into a chair. She won’t come here, English Ellie. All the way to Paris. To speak to a woman who hangs up during phone calls. Who hasn’t even admitted to being the mother of Guillaume, of this ‘Will’. But that isn’t what really frightens me, the Ellie part. It is that he knows. Because if she knows, he must. You can’t keep that kind of thing a secret. And so what could really happen, is that he could come looking. That’s the thought that makes fear grip my stomach. Just like it gripped my stomach that day. When I came into the kitchen and saw him. With the hammer.

      Because that’s the other thing. I can’t stop seeing him now. Everywhere there is that horrible horrible child, that Will, with the hammer, hitting his father over the head. There is me, walking into the room, seeing my Max prostrate under the sink, seeing the hammer at his head. And I’m shouting, shouting at Will to stop being so naughty. Of course, he just screams at me, in the middle of a tantrum, and he hits Max another time, then another. So I do all I can do – I run over and I smack Guillaume and I grab the hammer from his hand. He cries and cries and cries, while I lean down and check whether Max is OK.

      And Max, the idiot, the silly genius idiot, tells me I’m making a fuss over nothing.

      “He’s just playing,” says Max.

      And because I have seen what Max has not seen – that red angry face filled with the rage of a thousand men older and angrier than a little four-year-old should ever be – this maddens me. So I shout, I shout at the man who my son has just attacked.

      “Imbecile! You refuse to understand he needs attention. You sit at that stupid piano, all day every day and you expect our son to be well-adjusted? You know so little about being a parent that you think this, this hitting you on the head with a hammer is normal?”

      And then he shouts back. Rubbing his head, where the hammer has hit, he says “Well, I’m not at the piano now, am I? I’m mending the sink, like you told me to!”

      “Asked, Max, asked. And I wouldn’t have had to ask if…”

      And so it went on. The argument. While I didn’t know that my husband, my Max was dying. There he was, lying in a pool of water on the floor, while in his brain a pool of blood was accumulating. He went off to the studio in a flurry of slammed doors and foul tempers.

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