So, a little voice inside me says, you can see where she’s coming from.
I shake my head. It’s nonsense. I’ve had the most stable upbringing of anyone I know, with two parents who love me. Ellie just can’t get it into her head that I’m not some spoilt object of guilt – I’m just loved. Maybe she’s still mourning for her own parents, and wants to deny everyone else a cosy family too. But killing other people’s happiness can’t increase her own.
She’s not giving up, though. She’s following me up the stairs. I only notice because the voice saying ‘It’s true’ is too feminine to be coming from inside my head. I should turn round to her, laugh it off, but do you know what? I’m pretty angry right now. Not only is it a slur on my mother, it makes Dad seem like an idiot too. We’ll row it out later, it will all be fine, but for now I’m going to focus on this crib. The crib for my son with his crazy mad mother.
When I get to the top of the stairs, Dad is standing halfway up the loft staircase.
“What kept you?” he asks.
“It was my fault, Mr S,” says Ellie, all smiles and politeness. “I was reminding him what to look out for on the crib.”
“As long as it’s structurally sound, I don’t care,” I say. “Thanks, Dad, for helping me get it out.”
I follow him up the stairs into the loft. Ellie comes with us.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait downstairs, Ellie?” I ask. “Seeing as you’re already so well acquainted with the crib?”
“No,” she smiles. “I’d like to see your reaction to it.”
If Dad has noticed the tension between us, he doesn’t let on. He is over in the far corner of the loft. I follow him. And there it is. The crib.
There is no heart-stopping moment. No sense of realisation. I do not turn to Ellie and say ‘Darling, you were right’. Because it is just a crib. It is white, wooden, with slats. It is designed to keep a baby secure and asleep.
“Wow, Dad, it’s amazing!” I say.
He turns round and looks at me, carefully.
“It’s just a crib, son,” he says.
“Yes, but, you know, it’s my old crib – triggers so many memories, you know?”
“Does it?” he asks, quickly. There is intensity in his voice, concern.
“Not really,” I concede. “But it might do, in time.”
Dad turns and looks at the crib. “Yes,” he says, thoughtfully. “I suppose it might.”
“Perhaps of his father’s face, hanging over him in the cot, hey, Mr S?” Ellie says. There’s a false warmth in her voice.
I change the subject. Dad would be humiliated if he knew what she was driving at.
“How shall we get it out, Dad?” I ask, glaring at Ellie.
“It’s true,” she mouths, taking advantage of Dad’s turned back.
I turn away from her, to face Dad.
“Let me take one end,” I say. “We can take it down together. Bit of father and son removal work, hey?” Then I have a thought. “By the way, while I remember – you don’t happen to have the hammer from our toolbox do you? We were trying to find it yesterday.”
Dad looks at me strangely, like I’m mad.
“Why would we have that?”
“Well, it wasn’t in the toolbox, so I thought maybe you’d borrowed it, before you gave us the toolbox.”
Dad shrugs. “Not me,” he says.
“Maybe Mum?” I ask.
He nods slowly. “Maybe. Bit of an odd thing to…but maybe. I’ll ask her. See if we’ve got a spare, anyway, downstairs.”
Hammer question sort of answered, we turn our attention back to the crib. We each pick up one end. As I lift up mine, I catch sight of the initials. They are as Ellie said: M.C.R. – engraved into the wood. As we bring the crib into the light and down the staircase from the loft, I see something else. I lose my footing on the stairs.
“Will!” shouts Ellie, putting a hand to my back to stop me falling. It’s enough for me to recover my footing.
“All right?” asks Dad, from his end.
I nod and we carry on. I don’t want to trip again. So I avert my eyes from what I saw. A small sticker, next to the initials, of a piano. Ellie is right. This crib was his.
But that means nothing, I tell myself, as we carry the crib into the living room. So, maybe the crib belonged to Max Reigate at some point. Maybe he gave the crib to my parents as a christening present, complete with a piano blessing. Maybe anything.
We all assemble in the living room and stare at the crib. Mum joins us.
“It’s rather dusty,” says Dad (because I’m still calling him that, strange crib notwithstanding).
“Not dusty enough to hide those initials!” says Ellie. I turn to her and shake my head.
“It’s a lovely crib,” I say. “Thank you.” I give Mum a squeeze on the shoulder. She lays her chin against my hand. We stay a moment like that.
Then Ellie breaks the peace.
“Now, time to look at these photo albums!” she says. She is still clutching the third, unfamiliar album.
“I’ll get the others from the dining room,” I say. I don’t know what is in her mystery album, but I don’t trust it, or her. If she has some idea of a family showdown to end the evening, assembled round her ‘proof’, I don’t want any part of it.
“No need,” says Ellie, waving the album.
“Where did you get that?” demands Mum.
“From the loft, with the others,” says Ellie, all innocence.
“It’s a personal album,” Mum says. “There’s nothing of Will in there.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ellie says. “I had a quick look, and I thought there’d be some stuff he’d like to see. You in the 70s, the old Dartington family home. Your friends.”
Ellie’s eyes are shining. She is working up to a Poirot moment, I can tell. The right timing as well – Sunday evening, prime ITV3 crime viewing. And à la the famous sleuth she assembled us all here, in what could pass for a drawing room. She’ll show us whatever photo she’s found, list a stream of mad conjectures, probably produce a murder from somewhere, and then she’ll never be welcome in the house again. At least Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’ functioned properly, unaddled by whatever pregnancy hormones are taking hold of Ellie’s brain.
Ellie is starting to open up the pages.
“You know,” I say, “I’d much rather just see the pictures of when I was little. Not sure I need to study Dad’s kipper ties.”
“No, Will. I think you really need to see your father’s kipper ties.”
Mum is advancing towards the album. “Ellie, darling, Will’s right. And it’s getting late; some of us have to work tomorrow, remember?”
Oh – Mum shouldn’t have done that. Play the ‘job’ card. Guaranteed to piss Ellie off.
“OK, Mrs S,” says Ellie sweetly. “To speed things up, how about I just show Will the particular photos I found that I think would be of special interest to him?”
She