The Hidden Girl (7 page)

Balancing on a bumpy crop track, she slipped and stumbled her way up to the donkey and, with the torch in her mouth, fumbled to unknot the rope.

‘Come on, boy,’ she said, desperate to get back inside.

She tugged and, to her relief, the donkey came meekly through the gate to the garage. Opening the doors and switching on the bare bulb, Hannah saw the animal was pale grey and skinny, with sweet, sorry-looking eyes.

‘Who did this to you, hmm?’ she asked, rubbing its nose. Its fur was tufty, like Will’s hair when he got fed up with it and sheared it short. Some patches were bare.

Hannah looked around. The garage was a mess. It looked as if the house-clearance people hadn’t touched it. There were oil patches and dried mud on the floor and old smears of paint, and that same strong smell of petrol or diesel. The removal men had piled up their gardening tools and bikes in the corner.

Hannah tied the donkey to a wall-hook and removed the soaking blanket, watching out for its back legs.

Something red fluttered above her. It was the corner of a blanket hanging from under the roof. It seemed to be on a shelf. Curious, Hannah spotted a ladder nailed to the wall. Testing it first, she climbed up. At the top there was a large storage shelf that stretched the width of the garage, just three feet under the arched roof. On it lay a dusty red blanket, some empty vegetable crates, a bucket, a deflated bicycle tyre, three packets of unopened crisps and a scattering of grain. This was useful. Will might be able to store equipment up here.

She took the blanket and bucket back down, tied the blanket on the donkey with their gardening twine from London, then washed out and filled the bucket with snow. The donkey’s thin ears shot up momentarily.

‘Now, listen,’ she said, patting its neck and untying it, ‘you’ve got to be quiet, or your owner will notice you’re gone and tell the police I’ve stolen you. And that would be bad, before I get a chance to explain, OK?’

She shut the garage doors behind her, and ran back to the house with the wet blanket, desperate to get warm.

Hannah pushed the front door.

It wouldn’t budge.

She stood back. ‘What the . . . ?’

It was locked.

She pushed again, uselessly. If she was stuck outside in the snow, she was in trouble.

The snow ploughed into her, coating her eyelashes and filling her nostrils. She felt her internal temperature dropping further.

Think.

There was nothing else for it. Hannah found a rock in the flower border, wrapped her hand in her coat sleeve and smashed the window.

She cleared the glass and leant through.

The latch was down. How had that happened – had it slipped?

Back in the freezing hall, she threw off her wet coat and boots and regarded the broken window.

Great. Now the front door was not safe tonight, and there was another problem to fix before Barbara came.

Muttering crossly, Hannah fetched a plastic bag and Sellotape from the kitchen, and taped the bag over the broken window to keep out the snow. Then she searched in a box and found the triangular wooden doorstop that she used when travelling. She jammed it under the bottom of the front door for extra security, wishing Will and her parents were here. She’d had enough today.

She hung the blanket up to dry on the upper banister, then went to her bedroom. Her teeth were no longer just chattering, but slamming together now. Remembering her emergency training at work, she stripped off her wet clothes and wrapped herself, naked, in the soft wool blanket from the guestroom. She climbed back under the duvet. Long shudders racked her body.

She lay, listening.

There was one – less noisy – bray from the garage. Then another.

Just when Hannah had resigned herself to a very long night, finally it stopped.

She should have felt relief, but she didn’t.

This was a disaster. First the boiler, then the window, on top of being forced to abduct a donkey.

As her shaking decreased, Hannah turned over, trying to sleep. Yet an uncomfortable thought kept her awake. Eight months ago, if she’d found an animal in those conditions, she would have rung the RSPCA in the middle of the night and waited with the donkey till they arrived.

She wouldn’t have worried about talking to the neighbour first, or about the consequences for herself.

Hannah shut her eyes more tightly and summoned her decorating schedule.

Will woke in the Smart Yak studio that Tuesday morning with his first hangover in years. He stretched out his back on the lumpy sofa, feeling the old familiar parched mouth and the tightness in his temples. It was worth it, though. He and Jeremiah had cracked ‘Carrie’ last night. In fact, he hadn’t felt this good about a track for ages – probably because he hadn’t been able to concentrate for so long, thanks to Hannah’s obsession with the move out of London.

Around 1 a.m. Jeremiah had had the brilliant idea – without realizing he’d been led there by Will’s two-hour listening session – of singing his Gothic tale of a girl lost in the Arkansas forest in his Stevenage accent. Immediately, the track had a new resonance. Carrie was no longer an imaginary redneck girl, but a girl from sixth-form college in Stevenage, who’d run into the forest to escape Internet bullies and was never seen again.

‘Carrie’ was starting to sound interesting.

Will stood up stiffly, found the spare clothes and toothbrush he kept for late sessions and went to the shower room, yawning.

Smart Yak was unusually quiet. He checked out the window. The weather was even worse than yesterday. Two people below pushed a snow-covered car back into a parking space, as the driver spun the wheels uselessly.

The reception area downstairs was deserted. It was only when he returned from the shower that Will heard a sound. Coming up the stairs was the top of a Cossack hat.

‘Morning,’ he called.

Clare glanced up. ‘Oh, hi. You stayed then?’ She reached the top. ‘Listen, I wasn’t sure if Matt would make it in.’ She held out a polystyrene cup and a brown packet. ‘I got this for you, in case. It’s all they had.’

Will opened the packet. Inside was a croissant. ‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Though I don’t know how fresh it is . . .’

‘No, it’s good.’ Will tried to think of something to say to be polite and realized he didn’t know much about her. ‘So did your son make it back from Surrey?’

Clare was removing her hat. Ice fell onto her hair. He was right; it definitely looked blonder than it used to. He’d also assumed she was his age, mid-thirties, but close-up now, he suspected she was younger.

‘Sussex, no. God, Will, have you not seen the news?’

‘What?’

‘The airports are shut, and the motorways. They’re saying maybe Friday for the trains to start again.’

For reasons Will didn’t want to think about too deeply, he felt relief.

‘So, no, Jamie’s still in Brighton.’ Clare’s nose was pink. She wiped it with a tissue. ‘I can’t remember: do you have kids?’

That question.

‘No.’

Before Clare could enquire further, he turned the handle of his studio door. ‘Right, thanks very much, missus. I owe you.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she smiled.

He’d never seen Clare smile before. She had a nice smile. Sunny. It reminded him of the nurse who’d looked after him when he’d had his tonsils out as a kid, around the time the old man left home. The nurse had brought him water for his throat in the night, and had smiled as she tucked him back in. His memory was that it lit up the dark.

Clare walked to the end of the corridor and opened her studio door. There was an explosion of colour as the silk rolls and glass that she used for her floor lights burst into view.

With her back to him, she pulled off her winter coat, revealing a fitted denim dress that sat tight into her waist. Too late, Will caught himself imagining his hands there. He opened his own door and slammed it behind him. What the hell was that? He’d never thought about Clare in that way.

Wondering what was up with him, he counted back. It must be three months since he and Hannah had had sex. That was probably it. And even then, that last time had been crap, with her lying there, tense, looking like a martyr; and him hating it, but not wanting to stop because, God, it had been so fucking long.

He sat down and picked up his phone. One new message from Hannah.

He knew he should ring back to check she was all right in the snow, but something stopped him. Hannah had survived in worse places.

He sipped his coffee.

No, the break was doing him good. After last night he was starting to realize how much Hannah’s obsession with Barbara and moving house had been distracting him from work.

She could get on with her manic decorating.

It was her idea, anyway, not his.

He’d ring later.

Hannah spent the first part of Tuesday morning standing by the bathroom sink, recalling last night’s bizarre episode with the donkey. The electric heater on the wall burnt her head. Every time it became unbearable, she moved into the sub-zero chill for a few seconds of relief, then back. In between she washed her body in hot water that she’d poured from the kettle.

Then she returned under the duvet and piled on her own clothes, and another dry jumper from Will’s box. When she could bear it, she made a run through a blast of ice-air from the broken hall window to the kitchen, where she turned on the oven and hob rings and stood for another full five minutes, with a cup of tea in her frozen hands, unable to move.

God. How was she going to stand another day of this? She looked out of the window. The soft ridge of snow on the wall was twice its previous height. She prayed Will would find a way home tonight. She couldn’t get the house ready all by herself.

To stop herself panicking she ticked off yesterday’s entry from the schedule, then walked around the kitchen to find a phone signal.

There was still no message from Brian, or from Will. To her relief there was, however, a new message from Laurie, asking if she was all right in the snow. Apparently she and Ian were cut off, too, over in Thurrup. There was no plumber’s number on the message – either Laurie had forgotten or Will hadn’t asked her yet. Hannah sighed. If Thurrup was cut off, then a plumber wouldn’t make it out here anyway.

No. The snow would go eventually. She’d just have to be practical.

Hannah picked up her marker pen. Today’s reworked entry on the schedule, written last night before bed, had been optimistic. Day 11: Tuesday, PAINT SITTING ROOM. She struggled to think straight about what to replace it with. In the end, she replaced SITTING ROOM with DINING ROOM.

First, however, she had to deal with the donkey.

After another cup of tea for heat, she grabbed a carrot, dressed for outside and forced herself into the freezing garden.

The air was thick with icy fog, and her feet crunched on a shell of newly formed hoar frost towards the garage.

Inside, the little donkey looked up at her hopefully.

The red blanket was gone. The loosened twine lay on the floor.

‘Where’s your . . . ?’ she said, looking around. He hadn’t eaten it, had he? She held out the carrot. The donkey plucked it from her with yellow teeth and ate it, as she mucked out into the field, looking around for the blanket. Had he kicked it somewhere?

She checked her watch: 8.30 a.m. This had to be sorted out. If she went now, she could start painting at nine, latest.

Pulling her coat close, Hannah returned to the field. Through the fog she saw that one light from last night belonged to a grey farmhouse, about a quarter of a mile away. The other belonged to a grain shed of some kind. There was no doubt then. The donkey’s owner lived in the farmhouse.

As she passed by its shelter, she saw that it was even more pathetic than she’d realized last night: a few pieces of wood hammered onto badly erected gate posts. They’d clearly done it in a hurry, to move the donkey – and its snow-protest honking, presumably – away from their own bedrooms.

The old sense of injustice sizzled inside her. How could people behave like this?

Hannah wrapped her scarf around her mouth and stomped across the field. Yet ten minutes later, to her surprise, she still hadn’t reached the farm, and her legs were tired with the effort of balancing on the narrow crop tracks. Thank goodness she hadn’t attempted this last night. Distance was difficult to judge in this flat Suffolk landscape.

A few minutes later she reached a scruffy farmyard. Snow-covered machinery was parked around it. The house was built of ugly grey stone and was exposed to the elements. There were no trees or hedges, just fields and barbed-wire fences. Looking back, Hannah saw that the Horseborrows must have planted trees around their property when the family moved in, nearly a hundred years ago. Only the roof and two bedroom windows were visible through the bare branches of the tall oaks and ashes around it. In summer, she suspected, Tornley Hall would be completely obscured.

Hannah knocked on the front door. A cacophony of barking started up.

‘Who is it?’ a gruff voice shouted.

‘Hannah – from . . . across the field.’

There was a pause. The door scraped open, and an unsmiling woman stood in the doorway. Instinctively Hannah stepped back. She was enormous. Over six foot tall, with broad shoulders, like a cage-fighter. She was dressed in men’s cords, a man’s checked shirt and an insulated waistcoat. Her face was red and sore-looking. Dry skin flaked around her nose. Dark-grey hair was pulled back in a tight bun. In one hand she had a piece of toast; in the other, a rifle.

‘Hi,’ Hannah said in the friendliest tone she could muster. ‘I’m Hannah. I’ve just moved in across the field – at Tornley Hall?’

‘H’llo.’ If the farmer was interested in her new neighbour, she wasn’t showing it. Two large hunting dogs pushed behind her. One barked, and the other joined in.

‘Shut-uppp!’ the farmer yelled. She split the toast, and threw it on the ground. The dogs pounced.

Hannah tried to ignore the gun. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but do you own a donkey?’