The Hidden Girl (6 page)

Jeremiah headed off through the maze of rental rooms that comprised Smart Yak Studios.

‘Fu-uck me,’ Matt whispered. ‘The thing is . . . I’m not too hot on that idea . . . man,’ he drawled, mocking Jeremiah’s sensitive whine.

Will folded his arms.

‘So, what now?’ Matt said.

‘Hard to tell them anything at that age,’ Will said. ‘I was the same. Pain in the bloody arse. What is he – nineteen? He hears some alternative American folk band and wants the sound, but he doesn’t know the genesis of it.’

‘So . . .’

‘So . . .’ Will made a clueless face. ‘We work the magic.’

Matt stood up. ‘Want a beer to help you with that magic, sir?’

Will did want a beer, but the old habit of drinking in the studio was creeping back recently. ‘Coffee, if you’re going, mate. Cheers.’

As he tried to think of how to stop Jeremiah sounding like a pastiche of an Appalachian folk singer, he realized that Matt was holding the door open, talking. A woman’s coat was visible. It was Clare, the lighting designer, who rented the smallest of the Smart Yak studios.

Matt popped his head back in. ‘Clare says they’re cancelling trains.’

‘What?’

Will jumped up and headed to the corridor. ‘Is it that bad?’ He wiped the window and saw a white blizzard below. Dark figures hurried through Shepherd’s Bush. There were no cars anywhere.

‘Where’s it you’ve moved, Will?’ Clare said, placing a fake-fur Cossack hat on her head.

‘Suffolk,’ he said, distracted.

She grimaced. ‘God, well good luck. Jamie’s stuck in Brighton at his dad’s. Just as well his school’s closed.’

‘Do you want to head off?’ Will asked Matt.

‘Might do, actually. What about you?’

‘I’ll crash here, I suppose. Jem might be up for another session, anyway.’

‘Well, good luck,’ Clare repeated, heading downstairs.

They waved ‘bye’ to her, and returned to the studio.

‘I didn’t know they’d split,’ Will said, sitting back at the desk. ‘Wasn’t he in the pub, at Christmas?’

‘Broke up on New Year’s Eve.’ Matt pulled on his jacket. ‘You need to spend more time in the kitchen. Right. Sure I can go?’

‘Yep. Let me know if you can’t get in tomorrow.’

‘Will do.’

‘Cheers.’

As soon as Matt left, Will turned on his mobile. Hannah was going to go mental. Excellent.

The message sign was lit. He counted. One, two . . . five. All from Hannah.

The first voicemail cut out almost as soon as she spoke, leaving him none the wiser. The rest weren’t much better, both garbled and intermittent. Even so, he could make out that irritating hyper-quality in her voice. Something about the broadband engineer cancelling, and . . . a . . . broken boiler? Will swore. A boiler would cost a grand, plus. This house was going to eat every penny he made for the next ten years. At this rate he’d never be able to build the studio. He’d be on that bloody train from Woodbridge for the rest of his life.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Clare came in. She held out a six-pack of beer.

‘Forgot my gloves – your lovely Matt asked me to bring this up from the shop.’

‘Did he?’ Will said surprised, taking them from her. ‘Thanks.’

‘You want to hang on to him,’ she said, pulling on a black leather glove.

‘You’re telling me.’ He scratched his upper arm and saw her eyes flicker to his tattoo, then away again.

‘Long night then?’ Clare said, nodding at the old leather sofa that Hannah’s parents had given him when they’d sold up to move to Spain. ‘That looks comfy.’

It wasn’t, but a bad back was starting to sound preferable to another evening of Hannah’s insane decorating schedule.

‘It’s all right. I need to catch up anyway, so . . . Where are you off to?’ He realized he knew nothing about her.

‘Oh. Me and Jamie have just moved round the corner.’ She paused as if this might be something Matt had told Will. He nodded, clueless. ‘So getting home without falling on my arse again is pretty much the plan for tonight.’ She turned and pointed to a wet patch on her backside. ‘Wish me luck!’

He grinned. ‘Good luck.’

Clare pulled on her other glove. ‘By the way, he’s very sweet, your little guy out there, with his pipe. Though he keeps getting snow in it.’

Will laughed, and she waved goodbye again.

What was different about her? he wondered, opening a new file on the Mac. Her hair colour or something. In the six months or so she’d rented a studio here, she’d always walked down the corridor with a shut-off look about her; friendly enough, but self-contained, like she had something on her mind. Taking of which . . . Reluctantly he dialled Hannah, and waited for the bollocking he knew was coming.

Five minutes later Will sat in the same spot, staring at the wall. His conversation with Hannah had broken up so many times, due to the crap signal, that he hadn’t heard most of it. The few words he did hear were seared into his head.

‘Why did you get . . . the bloody train if . . . snowing? I can’t do . . . all . . . my own. We’ve only . . . eleven . . . now. . . a bit.’

In the end she’d disappeared altogether whilst talking about ‘plumbing’ and, annoyed, Will had pressed ‘End call’ instead of waiting for the signal to cut back in.

If she said ‘bit’ one more bloody time . . .

The door opened again. Jeremiah walked in. ‘All right, man?’

‘Yup, all good,’ Will said. ‘Listen, Jem, you up for another session tonight?’

‘Yeah, no problem, man.’ Jeremiah blew on his cold hands, as if he’d just jumped off an American railroad car.

‘There’s something I want to play you,’ Will said, reaching up for an old Delta blues record. Twenty-four hours suddenly stretched ahead, of doing what he wanted, when he wanted, without hearing the words ‘Barbara’ or ‘Tornley-sodding-Hall’ or hearing Hannah cutting days up into fussy, stupid little ‘bits’.

And with that feeling came an old impulse. Will reached forward and took a beer.

No, maybe the snow wasn’t a bad thing. He needed this. Twenty-four hours away from Hannah and her bloody schedule.

He turned off his phone.

Hannah stayed up painting the rear guestroom till well after midnight, cursing Will every half-hour. Eventually she climbed down the ladder and appraised the walls. Like the smallest bedroom, it now looked fresh again. A few prints on the wall, a vase of fresh flowers . . . Hannah practised her speech for Barbara next Friday out loud. ‘Yes, so this is the spare room, where my parents and Will’s mum are going to stay when they visit. It’s going to be fantastic having all this space for our families, and they’re excited about coming to stay and be part of—’

She hesitated.

It was becoming more difficult to stop herself imagining the future, now she was here. More difficult not to tempt fate.

Now she’d stopped painting, the biting cold gripped her again. She could swear snow was seeping through the walls of Tornley Hall. The oven and gas hobs helped to warm the kitchen, if she kept the door shut, and the electric wall heater was on full blast in the bathroom, but the rest of the house was now a series of freezing, inhospitable no-go areas.

Shivering, Hannah washed her paintbrush, forced herself to do her teeth and jumped into bed fully clothed, too cold to undress. Under the duvet, she smelt the salty odour of her own body again. It reminded her of those press trips she ran to precarious places, when social niceties quickly disappeared among the journalists she looked after, as they lived in hot tents or ramshackle hotels, in pursuit of a story. Maybe it was a good thing Will wasn’t here. It must be three days since she’d showered.

Hannah watched the snow outside the window. Was it only eight months since she’d stopped doing the press trips? It felt like eight years.

She suspected the skills she’d needed to run a foreign press trip under pressure were already out of date, her hard-earned network of contacts quickly fading. How long would it be before she forgot the basics? Would she still know the best time during a period of political unrest to shift up to armoured transport; or how to track down and protect locals who wanted to speak to the foreign press; or when – and when not – to bribe police when they were stopped on the road? Would she remember all the little tricks she’d learnt from Jane about how to secure a dodgy hotel door with a triangle of wood, and when to produce a bottle of whisky for her group after a tough day?

The reward had been to read their campaigning stories in the newspapers back home and know that she’d helped to make it possible.

It had been the best job of her life.

Now it was gone.

Without even the low murmur of a radiator, the bedroom was completely silent, apart from the soft thud of snow on glass. In fact, now Hannah thought about it, she’d hardly heard a sound all day – not a car, or even a plane – and, apart from Dax and Bill in Tornley, she hadn’t seen another soul.

The setting was idyllic here, but the isolation was going to take some getting used to.

Hannah picked up her phone, suddenly wanting to hear another voice. The clock said 1.08 a.m. She listened to the messages she’d received earlier, from Mum and Dad in Johannesburg, wanting to know how the house-move had gone. She heard the concern in their voices that they were not there to help her and Will. She wished they were here, too. She’d had a bad feeling from the start that the endless delay in completing on their London flat would cause the move to clash with her parents’ annual trip to visit her brother in South Africa.

There was another quick call from Jane, who was at a conference in New York, checking she was OK and telling her they were all missing her, back at the TSO office.

Nothing, however, from Brian about the keys, or from Will.

Hannah rolled over, hoping the studio sofa wouldn’t do Will’s back in again. She needed him fit for decorating. She imagined him right now, lost in one of his late-night sessions, that intense concentration on his face as he listened to playback, his long tanned arm pushing the faders up and down. Will never looked as at home anywhere as he did in that studio. She thought about how far he’d come. How proud she was of him.

Snow flew faster past the bedroom window. She didn’t want to think what would happen if he couldn’t get home tomorrow either.

Yawning, Hannah went to shut the curtains, then stopped. Walking along the lane today in thick snow had reminded her how it felt when nature took charge, when there was no option to travel underground, regardless of the storms or blizzards above. Here, nature ruled your days, and it had felt strangely restful, handing over that responsibility.

Hannah burrowed into the warm. No, Mother Nature and she had not been on good terms for a long time. It would be a relief to make peace again; to fall back into the rhythms of the seasons and the natural cycle of the day. And to start with, tonight, she would sleep with the curtains open, now that there was no light pollution to keep her awake. It would be nice to wake gently with the dawn, instead of being rudely prodded by the alarm.

Turning over, Hannah summoned the decorating schedule to lull her to sleep. She was just dropping off when a noise exploded into the bedroom. Her eyes flew open.

The bedroom fell silent again.

She waited.

What was that – the boiler?

Nothing happened.

She exhaled. It must have been a dream.

Uneasy, Hannah shut her eyes.

The noise burst into the room again, forcing her upright.

It was horrible. An agonized honking.

Then she knew.

An animal.

It was the braying she’d heard when they arrived on Saturday, but much – much – louder.

Hannah wrapped the duvet around her and shuffled to the window. The noise came from the field to the left, behind the garage. She traced her finger down the condensation, swaying as her eyes closed again.

Maybe it would stop in a minute.

The insistent roar blasted into the room again. Then again. Every minute or so.

No one could sleep with that. She remembered a story Ian told them at Nan Riley’s funeral about weekending Londoners asking Suffolk locals to stop their cockerels crowing at dawn. She’d laughed at the time, but this wasn’t funny. This was the middle of the night. Cursing, she padded downstairs, turning on lights, and pulled on a coat, gloves and Will’s wet frog wellies. She took a torch from the toolbox, placed the door on the latch and stepped outside into the freezing night.

Screwing up her eyes against the snow, she followed the bellowing towards the garage, her lips and fingers turning numb. Spitting snowflakes from her mouth, she shone the torch on the fence behind the garage and saw a space, just a few feet wide.

She sighed. This was ridiculous.

With no choice, she squeezed into the gap and sidled along the farmer’s fence. Weeds brushed against her clothes, soaking her further. There was another deafening bray, much louder now. A second later her beam caught the end of a long nose lifting up through the snow on the other side. There was a trembling of nostrils and then another honk.

A
donkey
?

Hannah approached carefully, trying not to frighten it.

‘Hello,’ she called softly. The donkey looked young. It was small – its back as high as her chest – and was wearing a thin waterproof jacket inside a makeshift wooden shelter. The shelter was hardly bigger than its body, and left its hindquarters and nose exposed.

This was appalling. The animal was clearly distressed.

The donkey brayed again, showing teeth. Hannah sheltered her eyes from the snow, and tried to see where the donkey had come from. Two dim lights shone through the flurry across the field. Both could belong to farms, but it would be impossible to know which one owned the donkey.

It brayed again, so loudly that she put her hands over her ears.

Snow drifted into gaps in her clothes and she felt her body temperature falling. Both farms must be a ten-minute walk across the exposed field. It wasn’t safe to set off in this weather. Nobody even knew she was out here.

Hannah shone her torch on a gate further down the field and headed for it. ‘OK, boy. Hang on.’