The Hidden Girl (12 page)

She took a deep breath and boldly turned on the hallway light.

‘Yes,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve just rung the police. When will you and Bill get here, Dax? Two minutes? Great, see you then.’

She waited, her finger poised on Dax’s number, trembling. When there was no further noise, she crept towards the kitchen. At the doorway, she peered in cautiously.

The light came from the scullery. The fridge door was lying open again.

From inside came a very loud thump. Then a ‘click, click, click’.

The old-fashioned, noisy fridge motor was adjusting itself to the temperature outside the door.

Exhaling with relief, she walked over to shut it. The sight of the last bits of food turned her stomach, and she slammed the door. God, her nerves were frayed.

Knowing she wouldn’t sleep again, Hannah drank some water and folded a piece of junk mail, to jam under the fridge door. She’d spent ten years travelling in politically volatile countries, but two days on her own here had creeped her out more than anywhere she’d ever been.

Needing to hear another voice, she turned on Radio 4, then walked round the house, switching on lights, double-checking windows and doors. If any passing vagrants were still in any doubt as to whether Tornley House was occupied, they bloody wouldn’t be now. She glanced at the stained-glass window – remembering her nightmare. The thought of the maggots brought a hand to her mouth.

Back in the kitchen, Hannah sat down and checked her schedule.

Day 10 Wednesday, DINING ROOM.

She had to stay strong. Just ten days, and it would be over.

She rubbed her stomach. Had she eaten something bad?

She glanced at the paintbrushes and rollers in the scullery, and back at the clock.

If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well do something. She could even claw back a half-day for the garden next week.

When she was sure her nausea had settled, she turned on the hob again for heat and went to change into her painting clothes. Then she went to fetch the white paint from the study.

She stopped in the doorway, not believing what she was seeing.

The white paint had tipped over. The lid was off, and there was a thick streak of dried paint on the wooden floor.

‘Idiot!’ How could she have been so stupid?

She’d have to cover it with a rug.

Annoyingly there was also now a thick rubbery layer across the top of the paint in the tin.

Avoiding the temptation to burst into tears, Hannah carried it into the rust-coloured dining room that they would use to host Will’s clients one day, stuck a screwdriver in to break the rubbery skin, and brushed a stroke of paint onto the old wallpaper. No. There was no time to feel sorry for herself. As she had feared, tiny lumps had formed within the paint. They spread across the wall like a heat rash. Well, she had no choice now. She had to get on. The colour in this room was as dense as the bottle-green in the kitchen. It would need three coats probably. Three coats of lumpy paint.

Behind the sagging wallpaper were bumps in the old lath and plaster. Hannah began to concentrate so hard on spreading paint over them, like thick make-up on angry pimples, that the sense of being watched crept up on her slowly.

She turned to the window, and saw a figure.

She gasped.

Only then did she realize that it was her reflection.

Maybe it was fatigue, and the sickness, and the disorientation of the hour, but with it came a vision of herself here in the future, alone.

An old woman, looking out of the window onto a bleak garden full of weeds. The towering wall beyond only added to the sense of being buried alive.

Hannah shook herself. This was stupid. She was just worn out.

She climbed up and tied dust-sheets to cover the window, then changed the radio to an urban music-and-chat channel that reminded her of London.

Yet, even with the window covered, she still felt the same strange sensation of being watched. She pushed on, ignoring her nerves and grumbling stomach, trying to keep her morale up.

Somewhere, out there, right now, a child might be waiting for her and Will. A child who needed them as much as they needed him or her.

She had to keep going.

She could do this.

‘I’m coming,’ she whispered to a child who might or might not exist.

She tried to imagine his or her face but it was hidden in the shadows.

The next morning, in London, Will stayed in Jamie’s bed till he was sure Clare had left for her spinning class.

His sleep had been broken. He’d woken intermittently, feeling dehydrated, but had stayed in bed, not wanting to scare Clare by wandering around in the middle of the night to get water.

Instead, he’d lain awake for an hour at a time. Through the wall he’d heard a creak, and suspected she was awake too. Her bed, he recalled, was on the other side of the wall.

She was lying, a foot away, through the thin plasterboard.

Now, at eight-thirty, once he was certain Clare had gone, he stretched out his back and went for a shower. Hanging on the door was a plastic bag, with a note:
TV says trains not running again! Help yourself – and feel free to shower / eat / stay tonight, etc! C
.

That was nice of her. The bag contained men’s clothes. Dave’s, presumably.

The bathroom was small. He pulled back the shower curtain. Two bras hung on a clothes drier in the bath, alongside underwear and T-shirts. He lifted it out, awkwardly. One bra was purple with lace, the other darker with pink ribbon. This was definitely not like Hannah’s underwear. In fact, that first Christmas they’d gone out she’d cried with laughter when he’d presented her with lingerie in some misguided attempt to be a ‘proper’ boyfriend for the first time in his life. To tease him, she’d worn the red lacy bra outside her clothes, stuffed with toilet roll, and called him ‘optimistic’.

Will showered, then pulled on the donated underwear and T-shirt. They were big. He remembered Clare’s boyfriend now from the Smart Yak Christmas drinks. Spiky hair and a pink polo-shirt, talking about sailing a boat to France. A florid face, and a rugby player’s bulky size. Not the kind of guy he’d imagine with an arty girl like Clare.

Will pulled the front door shut behind him and walked to Smart Yak. It was still snowing. Another day’s reprieve from Hannah and the house.

He ordered coffee at the cafe and decided it would be polite to buy Clare a drink back. He picked camomile tea, hoping it was right.

To his surprise, he found Matt in the reception of Smart Yak, shaking snow from his coat. ‘You made it?’

‘Yeah, I walked to Victoria, and the Tube was running, so . . .’ Matt said, beaming at Will’s approval. He saw the second cup. ‘Is that for me – cheers.’

Before Will could stop him taking it, the kitchen door opened and Clare exited, holding a steaming mug. Her cheeks were pink, presumably from her spinning class.

‘Hey!’ she said to Will. ‘Did you find everything?’

He saw Matt’s face twitch.

‘Yeah, cheers for that,’ he said.

Clare looked at his chest. ‘And it fits?’

‘Uh, yeah . . .’

He pulled the T-shirt out from the stomach, and a handful of excess cotton came with it. Matt’s eyes swerved between them.

‘Oh, poor Dave,’ Clare giggled. ‘His pre-Weight Watchers T-shirt. It was all that comfort-eating, from the stress of having to live with me.’

Matt took the top off the second cup. His expression turned to confusion when he saw the camomile tea.

‘Ah, no, this one . . .’ Will said, swapping it for the coffee.

It was too late. The herbal fragrance filled the corridor.

‘They gave me the wrong one. I’ll go and change it,’ Will said.

Clare smiled. ‘Right. See you later.’

He went outside, and poured the hot camomile tea onto the pavement. A dark patch appeared in the white snow.

Now the lies had started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop.

Hannah finished painting the dining-room walls at around 6 a.m. on Wednesday.

The nausea had not returned, so she’d managed tea and dry toast, around 5.30 a.m.

It was as she was watching the navy sky brighten into day, waiting for the kettle to boil, that she remembered the donkey. Steeling herself, she walked out into the icy new morning and unlocked the garage.

‘Hello, boy.’ She scratched the donkey’s head. ‘Come on outside before Farmer Nasty catches us.’

But the little donkey was wise now. An obstinate glare entered its eyes. When she pulled on the rope, it refused to budge. She cajoled it for a few minutes, gave up, mucked it out, found some grass under the snow to feed it with, went back, cajoled it again and pulled, but the donkey wouldn’t move.

‘Oh, come on!’ Hannah snapped, exhausted. The few wasted minutes had allowed the sky to lighten into grey-violet. On the horizon sat a new shot of washed-out orange. ‘Quick. Or someone will see us.’

By the time she managed to drag the donkey back to its pathetic shelter, the new day was already up, yawning a pale grey. Hannah gave the animal a pat, then scurried away.

There was a movement to her right.

Startled, she ducked behind a bush.

There was someone at the distant edge of the farmer’s field.

It looked like a farm worker or maybe the farmer’s son, tall and bulky, dressed in a hooded top, carrying a heavy bag on bowed shoulders along the fence. He disappeared behind the barn. Hannah stayed still in the bushes, snowy branches soaking her head, till she was sure no one had spotted her.

Then she crept back to the house, fighting the urge to go and complain once again to the farmer. That woman couldn’t get away with this.

Even as Hannah said it to herself, however, she knew that wasn’t strictly true.

Thanks to her doing nothing, that’s exactly what was happening.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep when she returned to Tornley Hall. One minute she was warming up by the little fire she’d made in the hall; the next, she was falling off the sofa with a jerk.

Bang, bang, bang.

Hannah woke shivering. The fire had died.

What time was it?

Bang, bang, bang.

Someone was at the front door.

She sat up. Oh no. Had the farmer or her son seen her with the donkey?

Stumbling up, Hannah went to the hall window.

Dax’s red pickup truck was outside.

Relieved, she opened the door.

Dax stood on the doorstep, holding a pane of glass and a plastic bag. ‘Aye-aye. What you been up to?’

‘Nothing.’ She pushed hair out of her face, suspecting she didn’t smell too good. ‘I was sick. I’m fine. Gosh, is that glass for the window? Thanks.’

‘That’s all right.’ Dax rested the glass against the wall and handed her the plastic bag. ‘Your fella didn’t come back then?’

‘Oh. No,’ she said, opening the bag. Inside was milk and white sugar. She took it out, amused. ‘He still can’t get home . . . Thanks for this.’

Dax marched past her and bent to test the weight of a shelf unit.

‘Go on then – kettle on!’

She turned. What was he doing?

Dax lifted the shelves upright, experimentally. Then, with a groan, he lifted them a few inches off the floor.

‘Oh, Dax – right. No, you don’t have to . . .’

But he was already shuffling one of the shelf units through the study doorway. If Will tried that, he’d put his back out.

‘Here?’

‘Thanks.’

With a grunt, Dax placed the shelf unit against one of the four brown patches.

A welcome space appeared on the hall floor.

‘Oh, OK. Thanks,’ Hannah said.

Dax came back and tested the weight of the next unit.

She yawned, too tired to argue.

Leaving him to it, she put on the kettle and leant wearily against the worktop, trying to wake up.

She heard Dax grunting, and wondered if this was a neighbourly favour or whether he expected payment.

Right now, she didn’t care. Her stomach was sore, her shoulders and neck ached, her blister stung and she couldn’t get warm. She didn’t want to see another paintbrush or roller as long as she lived, and Will still wasn’t back. Talking of which . . .

‘Have you heard how long this snow is going on for, Dax?’

‘Friday,’ he called back.

She made the tea and took it through. In the hall she found Dax carrying the third shelf unit into the study, his forearms straining. The improvement in the hall was already dramatic. A large space had appeared between the boxes, finally exposing the black-and-white tiled floor. Perking up, she followed him into the study. Dax dragged the third unit beside the second. Too late she realized he’d scraped the wooden floor.

She decided not to argue. There was a big dried patch of white paint on it anyway now. They’d stick a rug on it for the moment. And without Will here, she needed all the help she could get.

Dax looked as though he had hardly broken sweat. He raised his eyebrows as he took the tea. ‘You keeping all them books in there?’ He nodded to the sitting room.

‘No,’ she said, sipping her own. The hot sugary liquid helped her dry throat. ‘The Horseborrows’ solicitor rang this morning – apparently they accidentally hired a house-clearance firm that doesn’t take books. They’re going to arrange a specialist bookshop clearance when the snow’s gone.’