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.’
-Will-
I’m woken by Ellie shaking me.
“Come on, lazy bones,” she says, flooding the room with light. “They’ll be here in a minute.”
REM is still with me. “There was a piano,” I say. “And some hands, and I don’t know, maybe some water and…”
“You probably just needed to go to the loo,” Ellie says. “I always dream about water when I need to go. Always wakes me up, thank goodness – nobody wants the Yellow Sea in their bed.”
She kisses me, then leaves the room. I try to recapture the dream, but it’s too far away from me. So I come back into the now. I stretch out and look at my watch. 4pm! I’ve been asleep for two hours and my parents are indeed due. I feel a bit groggy, in need of some sugar, before we entertain. But no – there’s the doorbell. I pull myself off the bed, rake a hand through my hair in a bid to make it look a bit less like I’ve been in bed all afternoon – whether through sex or slumber – and canter downstairs.
Ellie hasn’t let them in. Apparently that’s my job. I take the chain off the door, open it up, and we’re both immediately engulfed in celebration.
“Congratulations darlings!” Mum says as she launches into the house. She gives me a hug and a kiss, waves at Ellie’s belly, then does a kind of air-hug at Ellie herself. “Don’t want to squash the son and heir!” she says. Her beaming face suggests she is over any angst about being a grandmother. She’s even wearing the dark-green linen ‘occasion jacket’ (I used to call it the ‘snazz jacket’) that she always wore for important client meetings.
Dad follows, less loudly, but with a firm handshake and a slap on the back. “Well done, Ellie. Well done, Will,” he says.
Mum leads the way through to the dining room. From her bag she produces twenty-week scan cupcakes and Appletiser (apparently that’s the done thing in Surrey these days). And she is beaming at us.
“Such happy news! Do let me see the scan.”
Ellie of course obliges, and we get into the family resemblance discussion again.
“Doesn’t he look like Will, though?” she asks, rhetorically.
And they agree, my parents, because they have to. If Ellie’s parents were here too, then maybe there’d be more debate. But of course, they’re not.
Then Ellie makes me hold the scan photo and stand next to Dad, so that the three of us Spears family males are in a line. She puts her head to one side.
“Hmm, don’t see it you know. Will and baby maybe, but not getting the cross-generational resemblance thing,” says Ellie.
Dad peers at the photo. “Ah, you know what it is? The baby already has more hair than me.” He rubs his balding head ruefully.
And then Ellie does her party trick. I should have seen this coming, really, she’s been