HIDE AND SEEK

Eva always liked to hide. I often told her she was the silliest person I knew and she loved that.

- A short story by Louise Swanson

We met in a children’s play area. Fitting, you could say. She was there with her nephew and I had taken my niece. I thought the little boy was alone, was about to ask where his mum was, when Eva burst out of the kaleidoscopic ball pool next to him and cried, “Boo!”

I laughed too and we got talking, about uncle/auntie duties and where we liked to holiday and our favourite comedy shows.

The first date we had, when I left the restaurant table to go to the bathroom and came back, she had disappeared. Sad and a little mortified, I wondered if I'd said something offensive, been too dull or was I just unattractive? When her head popped up like a jack-in-the-box next to her chair, grinning like a five-year-old, she cried, “Boo!” and started laughing. It was infectious. How could I not smile too? She had been crouched beneath the table, not embarrassed at all.

Once I learned that Eva was an aspiring actress, the playfulness made sense. “My dad was big in the theatre,” she said, proudly. “It was all fun and games in our house. He would disappear and the first to find him was rewarded with a gold star. When we hit 20 of them, he would take us to see a show. It kept us going when life was tough.”

His death when she was just 13 left her with a compulsion to make people laugh, just as he had her — to hide and surprise. And she always did.

She moved into my flat after six months. The first night I got home, the place was quiet, shadowy. I frowned, wondering if she had changed her mind about our future life. But her boxes were on the kitchen worktop, unopened. I searched through the rooms, mystified. “Boo!” She burst out of the wardrobe and I almost had a heart attack.