Authors: Amy Bird
But whatever Gillian’s doing, she couldn’t stop me getting a clue, could she? About the school. God knows which one, or what I’m supposed to say when I get there, but I’m totally going to find out. I pull out my phone and open Google maps. Widen out the map picture until I find a school – and yes! There it is. Just call the number of the taxi firm that brought me here, and I’ll be there in no time. And maybe there, there’ll be a trace of Sophie. A trace I can follow. To bring back both her and my husband.
And oh, for God’s sake! What car do I see pulling out of the school gates when I arrive? Gillian’s, of course. What, has she bugged people’s doorframes? Or is this such an obvious move that I was bound to make it? Just one of the tracks that needs to be covered? As the taxi turns in, and her car turns out, I mouth an angry ‘What the fuck?’ at her and spread out my hands. If I thought she could lip-read properly, I’d also say ‘Why the hell are you trying to ruin our happiness? Don’t you understand, this is all I can think of to make Will take an interest in me again?’ But of course, I already know the answer. Happiness is her and Will. No one else. Not me. Not Sophie. Probably not even Leo. Gillian doesn’t do a witchy smile, like I thought she might. Just stares at me intensely, her lips set firmly into a line that’s not a smile, and turns her head in the other direction to check for traffic. Wish she hadn’t. Wish it just ploughed into her. My mind flashes to when I found out about the car ploughing into Mum and Dad’s car. I close my eyes for a moment. Maybe I don’t wish that even on Gillian. I wouldn’t want to witness it anyway.
So, anyway, I’m plainly not going to have the benefit of surprise. Still, I’m going to try to use the cover story I’ve come up with. Not too difficult. Woman with a bump. Means woman will have child (God willing). Means child will need a school. And oh look here I am, speccing one out.
I go into reception, and with as much of an air of complacent entitlement as I can manage, I ring the little bell at the front desk.
A woman appears. Will and the taxi driver seem to be the only men who have survived in Dartington. She smiles a greeting.
“Hi. I’m Ellie Spears,” I say. Although maybe actually I’m Ellie Reigate now. We haven’t discussed if Will is going to revert to his old name.
The woman’s smile disappears.
“Oh,” she says. “We were told you would come.”
So Gillian has been in here spreading her poison.
“Mothers-in-law, hey?” I joke. “Always nosing in where they’re not wanted.” Particularly when they are fake mothers-in-law, trying to stop you finding the real one.
My joke doesn’t get a smile. Perhaps because the laughter I tried to put in my voice can’t hide the panic. Panic that this day is turning out wrong. That I’ll go back home answer-less. Sophie-less. Back to the same.
“What did she say, my lovely mother-in-law?” I ask.
No response.
“Did she say I was looking for a school for my lovely little boy, in here, hey?”
That gets a response. “It’s a girls only school.”
Damn. If I hadn’t been so busy looking at Gillian’s ugly face when we turned into the gates I would have noticed that.
“OK, OK, I confess. I’m not here about that. I’m here about Sophie Travers. Sophie Reigate. I think she used to teach here.”
The woman starts to examine her fingernails. They could do with some examination – the red paint is chipping off. Then again, the pink on mine is too.
“We could both use a nail bar, couldn’t we?” I say, trying for sisterly camaraderie.
I obviously miss, because she just says “Lots of people used to work here. I didn’t know them all.”
“Can I see someone who did? Your headmistress?”
There is a slight shake of a head, as if I’m asking the impossible.
“Please?”
At first the head-shaking continues. But then, she seems to change her mind. “I’ll go and see if she’s available.”
I sense that she won’t be. That this is just a trick, a sop to a difficult almost-parent, like the difficult actual-parents they must get in here. Unlike Gillian, who is a just a non-parent. Perhaps they found her easier for that reason.
Still, her leaving the front desk gives me a chance to look around a bit. I step back from the desk and look at the walls. They are lined with pictures, those group shots with teachers on benches along the front, rows of girls standing behind. There are scores of pictures, going back across the years. Going back across the years! Maybe Sophie Travers is in here! My heart beats a bit faster, my energy returns. OK, OK, find 1984. We know she lived in the area then. I follow the pictures round the entrance hall. The 2010s, the naughties, the nineties, the eighties. There! 1984. Have to stretch a bit to see, and let’s look –
“That’s her,” says a voice behind me, and I see a finger pointing at a face in the picture. It’s not a (half-)lacquered fingernail this time, so it’s not my ‘friend’ of earlier. I turn round to see the owner of the face. It’s a woman with frizzy mousy hair, expect for the roots, which are grey. Bit of a moustache as well, if I’m honest. She has on a white shirt, tightly buttoned up to the collar, and a knitted cardigan over the top.
“That’s her,” she says again. “Sophie Reigate. She taught music. She played the violin. She was brilliant.”
I don’t know where my new friend has come from. Perhaps her ears pricked up at Sophie’s name. For I suspect I have uncovered something of a girl crush. But never mind that. I stand on my tiptoes to look at the face that is being pointed out to me. It’s beautiful. Younger than I thought. She can’t have been the same age at Max. She only looks about twenty-three, twenty-four. She has this wonderful mane of hair, so brown it’s almost black. That’s why Will goes for brunettes then. Me, and the one we don’t mention. Plus look at those wonderful pouting red lips. Sophie Reigate is a stunner. Almost a femme fatale, were she not a teacher.
There is the sound of shoes clicking along the corridor. Only one set. So not a headmistress. My new friend the Sophie-lover darts into the reception office, right at the back, from whence she must have come.
My non-friend breaks the bad news.
“I’m afraid the headmistress can’t see you now,” she says. “She is out for the day.”
I try not to let my disappointment show. To myself or to her. After all, I expected as much. And at least I know what Sophie Reigate looks like. Or looked like, thirty years ago. If I spend enough time staring at Google images, I might find a match. There’s a little twinge in my pelvis. OK, Leo. You’ve made your point. Not too much time sitting in front of computers. I promise.
“Would you mind just calling me a taxi, then?” I ask.
The woman looks down her nose at me. Perhaps it is not in her job description to order taxis. In fact, it definitely can’t be, because she asks my new friend to do it.
As I sit and wait, nobody talks. The two women click away in the reception area, doing whatever it is that the upkeep of schoolgirls requires them to do. I just stand and stare at Sophie Travers’ picture, fixing it in my memory. Then I realise I can do one better than that; I take a photo of it on my phone. Another one to add to the collection. I would love to call Will, or better still, send it to him. ‘Guess who!’ it would say or ‘I found your mum!’ Or ‘Roll over that bitch Gillian – here’s…SOPHIE!’ And part of me is tempted to. To abandon the secrets, to tell him everything. But secrets are OK when there’s a surprise at the end. A nice surprise, that is. Take note, Gillian. But what if, were I just to show him a photo, he shrugged and looked away? Or turned away from me and switched out the light? No. I need Sophie to really be there, in person. That’s how this goes.
There’s a hooting outside. I look up, and my new friend is standing up to see out of the window.
“Your taxi’s here,” she says. “Let me help you with the door.”
“No, it’s fine, really,” I say. I spare her the lecture about how I’m not completely incompetent just because I have a child growing inside me. She has been a bit helpful, after all.
“No, really, let me help you,” she says. And there’s something about her tone that tells me not to resist further. She comes out of the reception booth and opens the inner door. Then the outer one, where we’re out of sight from the reception booth. She whispers to me.
“Everyone said terrible things about her, all these rumours, when it happened. I never believed it. I stuck up for her.”
“Sophie?” I ask, in case we are talking about a different her. A Gillian her. The fervent nod of the head confirms it is Sophie. In fact, I imagine that in that head there is only one ‘her’.
“Here, take this,” she says. She pulls a tatty piece of paper from her blouse pocket – the breast pocket – and thrusts it into the pocket of my coat. Whatever it is nestles against my bump. “She made me promise not to tell anyone where she was. But that was anyone bad. You’re good, aren’t you? I can tell.” And she stares into my eyes. I haven’t been stared at like that since the time I made Will look me in the eyes and promise me it was over between him and
her
. A different her. It’s just as significant a moment.
“You know where she is?” I ask in a whisper.
“Is everything all right out there?” comes the call of my non-friend. The taxi hoots as well, so I have to move.
“Just look at it!” hisses my new friend again. “And give her my love.”
And with one last look of devotion, to me, to Sophie, to whatever it is she slipped in my pocket, she closes the door.
When I’m settled in the taxi, I pull the gift out of my coat pocket and take a look. It’s not, as I thought, a piece of paper, but an envelope. Addressed to Ms Miriam Spence. That must be old Miriam I met just now. Figures. She looks like a Miriam. I open the envelope and pull out the contents. Gently, because they are fragile. If I unfold the paper too quickly, it will disintegrate in my hands. It has probably been held next to this Miriam’s bosom for years.
I look at the top of the letter for an address. Nothing. Nor at the end of the letter. Just a big, bold ‘S’. For Sophie, one presumes. I read through the letter in case it tells me where she is. Nothing. Just emotion, no facts. ‘Thank you for believing in me, for understanding,’ it says. ‘You are one of the special ones. I know you will keep my destination a secret. I only ask that you tell no one. Or they might find me, too soon, before I have become invisible. But I know you will always see me for who I am.’
If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a suicide note. The ‘keep my destination secret’, and ‘find me too soon’, and ‘before I have become invisible’. Oh, God! Perhaps it
is
a suicide note, and poor mad doting Miriam has been convincing herself all these years that it just means Sophie is far away, somewhere this side of the curtain. And has just given me her most treasured possession to no end.
I look down at the envelope again. And then I see it. How could I have missed it?
Par avion
. And a post-mark. Miriam, you little genius. Sophie, I have found you. Or at least you in 1986, when this is dated. When it was sent, from Paris. To be precise, from ‘Ave. de l’Opéra’. Travers is not the old English version I thought; it is the French. You don’t sound the ‘s’. Will, you are going to be so proud. You are going to look at me with so much love. Or even just look at me. When I bring your mother home.
-Will-
Shame. Shame, shame, shame. That is what I feel as I sit opposite Flick in the Café Royal hotel bar. Shame as I take a sip of my whisky. Shame as I notice the long, crossed thighs that appear from the slit of her dress. Shame as I see that her cleavage is date-low. Shame as she caresses a flute glass and takes a languorous sip of a very pink drink. What am I doing? When can I go home to my Ellie? Or at least back to the office, to my piano?
“So, Will,” Flick is saying, running one manicured hand in a studiedly luxurious way through that beautiful black hair of hers. “Be honest. What is it that made you get in touch again, hey?” She kicks one leg up slightly, taps me on the knee. I can see stocking tops. I want to unsee them. I don’t want to be seduced. Sophie, I think. You are here because of Sophie.
“Well, if we’re being
honest
, Flick,” I say, throwing her words back at her in a way that may be described as flirtatious, “I was really after a favour.”
“Go on,” she says, now circling the rim of her glass with a burgundy talon. Or perhaps not a talon. That is unkind. Her fingernails are quite nice. But predatory. Certainly predatory.
Sophie. Think Sophie. And sympathy. Get the sympathy vote.
“What it is, Flick, is that I just found out I’m adopted.”
There is a gasp from her, and then the not-quite-talons appear on my arm. And there we have it. The sympathy.
“Will, that’s… You must be, well…”
She doesn’t know the right emotion, you see. Wants me to go first. As unsure of herself as ever. Despite the nails, the legs, the cleavage, the hair.
“I know,” I nod, bravely. “It really turns everything on its head. Gives you a whole fresh perspective on,” I pause, look at her, “everything.”
She gives a coy little smile.
“And the thing is, it’s not just that. I discovered that my birth father, he’s dead.”
This time, she knows how to respond. A hand flies up to her mouth. “Will, I’m so sorry. That’s horrible. Poor you!” The hand comes back to my arm again. “God, and there’s me, on the way here thinking, Christ, that bastard, calling me up after all this time, thinking he can just you know, click his fingers and I’ll come…running.”
“So why did you come here?” I ask, managing not to rise to her innuendo.
“I guess I must have known you needed me, mustn’t I? An old friend, to talk to.”
“Except we never were just friends, were we, Flick?”
She gives me a little smile. The lashes flutter down, brush against her cheek. The red lips go into a little pout. Sophie. It’s all for Sophie.
“Tell me about your father. What you know of him,” she says. It’s the seduction of kindness.
So I tell her. “He was a pianist. This amazing pianist. I’ve been listening to his music non-stop. And I tell you, those rhythms, those amazing rhythms – ”