The Hidden Girl (23 page)

Then she heard a sound behind her. Pounding feet on the pavement. As she entered the rose gardens, she turned. Will grabbed her from behind and put her under his arm, supporting her as she stumbled, sobbing, into the park.

They walked fast, in no particular direction. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she wailed.

He squeezed her tight. ‘It’s OK.’

‘No. It’s not.’

Will guided her to a bench by a rose bush and sat her down. She fell against him, crying, neither of them speaking. They sat there for a while, as the implications started to hit her in waves. Her child would not inherit the strange-coloured hair Hannah shared with her own mum, grandmother and Danish great-grandmother. She would never look at her child’s face and see Will’s beautiful brown eyes. Everything would be lost – nothing passed on.

Then, from the hill behind a rose bush, there had been a rattle. A skitter of wheels. A girl appeared at great speed on a scooter, racing downhill. She was around nine years old. She wore a black leather jacket, bubblegum-pink leggings, stripy leg-warmers and a bobble hat. She scootered as if she was skiing, with grace and speed and extraordinary balance, bending her hips expertly to the side as she took each bend. As she whizzed towards them at an impossible-looking right-angle, they both put out a hand to catch her, startled. She missed them by inches, came upright effortlessly and chuckled, glancing back with mischievous eyes. She kicked a baseball boot on the ground and shot on by.

A teenage boy followed, a phone to his ear. ‘Leah!’ he yelled at her, then returned to his phone conversation. ‘Nah, my sister. She’s doing my fucking head in!’

Hannah couldn’t help it. She smiled through the tears.

Will pointed after the girl. ‘She’s cool. I want one like that.’

Hannah’s smile slipped and she pulled away from him again, hurt. ‘Will! Why would you say that, when they’ve just told us that—’

He cut across her. ‘We’ll adopt.’

Hannah stared at him.

Adopt.

She’d never allowed herself even to go there. Not while the IVF treatment was happening.

‘Would you even do that?’ she asked, wiping away a tear.

‘I said I would, right at the start.’

She remembered. He had – and she hadn’t listened. Hannah took Will’s hand and pressed it against her cheek. She sighed a long sigh, and sat back against him.

‘You know, it sounds mad, but there’s part of me that’s relieved,’ she said.

‘About what?’

She pointed in the direction of the clinic. ‘Well, that all this is finally over. That we don’t have to do this any more. No more clinics and drugs and waiting for test results and spending huge amounts of money we haven’t got.’

Will punched the air. ‘Yes! We can eat again.’

She smiled. ‘True.’

‘And you’ll stop yelling at me.’

She sniffed. ‘Sorry.’

Will put his arms back around her. ‘I tell you what, if – no,
when
– we adopt, we’ll come here one day. We’ll bring the kid, and their scooter, and we’ll sit here and watch them.’

Hannah wiped her nose. ‘That’s a nice idea.’

Will held out his hand. ‘Deal?’

She shook it. ‘Deal.’

‘Good.’ He stood up. ‘Right, Han, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’ He leant down and kissed her, then headed off.

She sat back on the bench, and watched the funny little girl with the scooter weaving through the rose bushes into the distance, realizing that for the first time in years of hoping for something that never happened, she might finally be able to see the future again.

And here they were. Three years later, and nearly there. They just had to hold their nerve for a couple more days.

Hannah carried on up the lane, imagining taking photographs of her own family, for their own Tornley albums.

Suddenly, to Hannah’s left, there was a flash of red. On the other side of the hedge. Hannah peered through. It was Elvie again, walking along the field twenty yards ahead of her, carrying a huge sack, her head bent forward. It looked as if it weighed a ton.

Then, from a distance, Hannah saw another figure hurrying towards Elvie, across the field.

Farmer Nasty.

Oh no.

Hannah ducked down. She didn’t want any trouble with her, certainly not this week, with Barbara coming.

Almost immediately shouting filled the air. Madeleine’s arms flew up, aggressively.

Hannah frowned. Not again.

Madeleine flew up to Elvie, shouting. ‘What you doing . . . stupid . . . What . . . I tell you? In the barn, not out there . . . Lazy . . . fucking . . .’

Shocked, Hannah turned her phone to video mode. Personal problems or not, Madeleine couldn’t behave like this. Apart from anything else, Elvie was clearly vulnerable.

She turned and started filming through the bushes. Someone needed to be a witness to this. What she did with the footage she’d have to decide later on, after Barbara had been.

Then, as Hannah watched in the viewfinder, Elvie dropped the sack.

From the momentum, Hannah knew that she’d tried to put it down, but let it go too fast. It slumped forward and down with a thump, and tipped sideways.

Elvie’s eyes stayed on the ground, her shoulders slumped.

To Hannah’s horror, Madeleine rushed at Elvie. Yet this time her leg shot out and she kicked her hard. Then, without a pause, her hand flew up and hit Elvie in the face.

Once, twice, three times.

Before Hannah could process what she was seeing, the farmer grabbed Elvie’s hair and pulled her close, talking intently in her ear.

Hannah sat on the verge, her mouth open, not believing what she was filming. This woman was a maniac.

But before she could even think what to do, Elvie bent down to pick up the sack and its contents and walked back the way she had come.

Madeleine spun off in the other direction.

Hannah played back the footage to check she was not dreaming.

For five more minutes she sat by the side of the road, biting her thumbnail.

Madeleine was clearly abusing Elvie when Tiggy and Frank weren’t around.

Hannah watched the footage again and again, her stomach churning. Her instinct told her to run after the farmer and tell her that she’d been caught. To ring the police and act as a witness. Instead she stood up and forced herself on towards Graysea.

Barbara would be here in just two days.

She would do something, but not now. She couldn’t.

Distracted, Hannah marched on for a mile down to the sea. She found the path Dax had shown her and walked quickly, hardly noticing the scenery. When she reached the shingle beach there was nothing there, apart from a large ship sitting far out on the horizon. She skimmed stones across the flat grey water, working out each permutation of the action that she could take right now.

The image of Elvie’s bent head and shoulders returned to her. The leg shooting out. The hand flying up. The menacing words in Elvie’s ear.

An hour later she arrived back at Tornley Hall, just as the light was dying. There was no sign of Elvie’s red shirt out in the fields now. Hannah started up the driveway towards home – then knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ignore this. At the very least she needed to check Elvie was OK.

Turning back, she stood outside the electronic gate next door and pushed the intercom.

No answer.

Hannah took a closer look. At the bottom was a small glass circle.

A camera.

She pressed again and placed her ear at the speaker.

She heard the tiniest hint of a noise. A rustle.

‘Elvie?’ Hannah said, peering into the camera. ‘Are you there? Can you hear me? Could you just open the gate, or answer me?’

There was another rustle, then silence.

‘Elvie, listen, I just wanted to check you’re OK, with Frank and Tiggy being away?’

Nothing.

‘OK, well, listen – I’m just next door. If you want a chat, come and find me through the gate in the wall. OK? Come for a cup of tea. And a biscuit.’

She walked away, working out dates – it was Tuesday; Frank and Tiggy wouldn’t be back till Friday.

Three days. What if Madeleine assaulted Elvie again, and worse this time? How long had this been going on for?

Hannah thought for a second. Then it came to her. There was one other option.

As she reached her driveway, she walked past the bottom and continued towards Tornley.

For the second time she heard Dax before she saw him.

He was working on the motorbike again, in the shed behind his cottage, a giant spotlight on in the dark, a dirty rag in his hand.

He squinted to see who was coming.

‘Aye-aye. Your husband know you’re here?’

She arrived at the door. ‘Why?’

‘Oh – he don’t like me.’ He winked, and to her annoyance she blushed.

‘He was just worried about where I was that night.’

Dax threw the rag down. ‘So, what do you want then – not your bloody boiler again? Jim been up?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ Hannah peered into the shed, to ensure it was empty. Lights were on in all the cottages behind them. A television was on in the window of one. To her surprise she saw the tall, red-faced man called Samuel, from the beach tyre-shed, walking around in the kitchen of the cottage on the left, next door to Dax’s. He must live here, too.

‘What’s up then?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Dax. This is awkward. Do you know that farmer?’ She pointed towards Madeleine’s field.

‘Mad?’ he said. ‘What’s she been up to – spraying too close to your garden?’

‘No.’ Hannah prayed she could trust him. ‘No. Actually, I’m not sure how to say this, but I think I’ve just seen her hit Elvie, the woman who lives next door to us. She has learning difficulties?’

She waited for Dax to make a smart-arse remark, but he didn’t.

‘What do you mean, hit her?’

Hannah swiped with an open palm. ‘Three times.’

For the first time since she’d met him his face became serious. ‘That’s no good. When’s that happened?’

‘A couple of hours ago. And she didn’t just hit her – she kicked her, too. I mean, hard.’

‘Right.’ Dax blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, Mad’s got a temper on her – you don’t want to cross her on money – but I’ve never seen her hit no one. You sure?’

‘Yes,’ Hannah sighed. ‘I wish I wasn’t. The thing is, I just can’t get involved, Dax. We’ve got the social worker I was telling you about coming on Thursday, and I can’t get mixed up in neighbour disputes and police reports. She’s coming to make sure this is a safe environment for a looked-after child, and if I tell her there’s someone violent next door, she might have no choice but to halt everything, just in case. So what I really want to do is have a quiet word with Frank and Tiggy, and let them deal with it, but they’re away till Friday. I’m concerned that Madeleine might be doing this regularly and Elvie’s not telling them.’

‘Well, she’s an odd one, that’s for sure,’ Dax said.

‘Elvie? In what way?’

‘Difficult. Got a temper on her, herself.’

‘Elvie?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Dax snorted. ‘When that one goes, she goes. You want to stay out of her way.’

‘What – like tantrums?’

‘Summat like that.’ Dax turned off the spotlight. ‘See, if you’d told me you’d seen Elvie kicking off, I’d have believed you. Maybe that’s what you saw? Elvie kicking off, and Mad telling her to shut up.’

‘No, I definitely saw what I saw.’

Dax scratched his black curls. ‘So?’

‘So, I’m sorry to put this on you, but I wanted to ask if you knew how to get hold of Frank and Tiggy, and if you’d tell them what was going on. That way I can stay out of it – officially at least. Someone needs to tell them to come home and speak to Elvie.’

Dax shut the garage door. He pointed to the other cottage, on the right. ‘Bill’s got Frank’s mobile number. We’ll call him tomorrow.’

‘Really?’ Hannah said relieved. ‘You don’t mind?’

He locked the garage door. ‘No. Now you go home to that husband of yours, before he thinks you and me’s up to something. And get that baby of yours sorted out.’

She smiled. ‘Thanks. And I’m sorry to put you in this situation.’ She walked backwards down the lane. ‘First new people in the house for a hundred years, and already we’re creating trouble, eh?’

‘Bloody Londoners!’

Hannah set off down the lane to go back to Tornley Hall, already feeling better.

Hannah finished up in the sitting room at midnight that night and went to bed. She lay there, going over the disturbing images she’d seen in the field, of Madeleine assaulting Elvie.

Now that the heating had been on, and turned off, the radiators creaked as they cooled.

With Will not here, every noise made her sit up and check the room again, searching in the shadows.

She dropped off a few times, then woke up. Disorientated, she rolled over to see the clock.

3.11 a.m.

She adjusted her eyes. The room was dark. What had woken her?

In the corner there was a pale strip on the floor. Light was trickling under the bedroom door like rain.

Hannah’s heart jolted against her ribs. She had definitely turned off all the lights tonight.

She took her phone from the beside table and scrabbled for Dax’s number. Could she really call him in the middle of the night? She’d have to be sure something was wrong.

Then she saw that it didn’t matter either way. The screen was dead.

‘Idiot,’ she mouthed. The charger was in the hall.

Trying to put her sleep-addled brain into gear, she crept out of bed and tiptoed to the door, double-checking with a quiet turn of the handle that it was locked.

She put her ear to it, listening.

Earlier in the evening, on the phone, Will had told her he was making good progress on ‘Carrie’. Maybe he’d finished and caught the midnight train from Paddington. If he’d rung to tell her, her phone would have been dead.

She shook her head, exhausted. She needed to sleep, and if she was scared like this, she never would. There was no point worrying all night, for no reason.

Hannah pulled on some clothes, then gently unlocked and opened the door, inch by inch to stop it creaking.