The Hidden Girl (3 page)

‘Some signposts would help.’

‘Yeah, then the place would be full of your lot. Bloody Londoners.’

A barman handed Laurie her change and gave Will a curious look.

‘Chris!’ Laurie said. ‘Meet Will, my cousin – your new regular. He’s just moved into Tornley Hall.’

‘Have you now? Hello!’ Chris said, shaking Will’s hand. ‘That explains it. My wife Gemma does your post. She was wondering why there were lights on in the old place.’

Laurie frowned at Will and shook her head. ‘No, they just moved in today, Chris.’

‘Is that right? Oh, don’t tell Gemma that – she’ll think she’s seeing ghosts!’ he laughed.

‘That’ll just be the estate agent getting it ready,’ Laurie said. ‘Getting the electric back on and stuff, won’t it, Will?’

Will sipped his beer. It tasted good. ‘Maybe.’

He didn’t know and he didn’t care.

He and Laurie found a booth, by the window. Will clinked his cousin’s glass. ‘Cheers for sorting out the keys this morning, missus.’

‘You’re welcome. So?’ She bounced on her seat. ‘Did you get my text?’

He had. He’d read it in the service station on the way here, while Hannah was in the loo. ‘Yeah. What’s the big thing?’

‘I’ve been there before!’ Laurie squealed. ‘We both have!’

‘Where?’

‘Tornley Hall!’

Will sipped his beer. It was definitely taking the edge off. He shook his head. ‘I haven’t.’

‘You have!’ she said, her eyes widening behind her square black glasses. ‘I remembered as soon as I walked in. That massive hall with the black-and-white tiles. And the stained-glass window. Nan took us there!’ She waited for him to react. ‘We were about six or seven? Nan was probably collecting something for the WI – do you remember that we used to go round to people’s houses with her, around the villages, and get biscuits and juice?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Will, you wet your pants in the hall.’

‘Fuck off, Lor.’

She giggled. ‘You did.’

To his surprise, a vague memory did return of warm pee running down his leg onto a red rug, and him looking to Nan, ashamed. And someone – a woman – giving him a toffee and telling him not to cry.

Laurie watched him closely. ‘Do you remember?’

‘I don’t know. I remember Nan taking me into this freezing old toilet and wiping my leg . . . and you being there, being a pain in the arse. No idea where it was, though.’

Laurie banged his arm. ‘Oh my God, you’re right! It was there – I remember that. An old toilet covered in blue flowers? I couldn’t reach the handle. Is it still there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tornley Hall could have six toilets covered in blue flowers. He hadn’t noticed.

‘Isn’t that weird?’ Laurie babbled on. ‘Anyway, I can’t believe you’ve bought that place. I didn’t even know it was there. Can you imagine Nan’s face? She was always boasting about you at the post office: “My boy, up in London, mixing with the stars, you know . . . ” She’d have had a field day with this. And God, the garden’s amazing! I couldn’t get the kids out of it this morning. I’ll warn you, they’re going to ask you if they can have a trampoline on the lawn. We haven’t got room, and . . .’

Will waited for Laurie to remember. One, two, three . . .

‘. . . and . . . anyway. So.’ On cue, Laurie’s cheerful expression disappeared. ‘So, no Hannah, then? Did she not fancy a drink?’

She watched him with the unabashed affection that had made him uncomfortable as a teenager, but now made him grateful every time he saw her.

He waited to feel guilty about not being honest with Hannah about where he was right now, but didn’t. She never stopped talking about that bloody house. He needed a break.

‘No. She wanted to get sorted. But she says hi. And thanks for the food.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Laurie said, unconvincingly. Will had seen his cousin watching Hannah by his side at Nan Riley’s funeral: suspicious, a cat guarding her owner’s garden.

‘But, so yes. What an amazing house,’ she said, subdued.

Will sipped his half-pint, wanting a proper one. He also wanted to tell her that Tornley Hall was a complete shithole, and he’d known the minute they arrived that he should never have let Hannah talk him into either the house or coming back here.

‘You don’t want to know how much the mortgage is, Lor. Needs a lot of work, too.’

She nudged him. ‘You should get Ian over with his power-spray. He cleans everything with it. Fences, walls, bins, kids, me . . .’

Will knocked back his half-pint, checking the bar clock and wondering how long he could push it, before he had to go back.

Laurie scratched her nose under her glasses. He saw the words teetering on her lips.

‘No,’ he said, putting her out of her misery.

‘No, what?’

‘We haven’t heard anything.’

‘Oh, OK. And how’s Hannah?’

Where would he start? ‘You know,’ he said. ‘Got her plans.’

‘Well, tell her if she needs any help . . .’

He wondered, if Laurie did actually spend time with Hannah on her own, how long she’d be able to act polite.

‘How are the kids?’ Will asked, before he said something about Hannah that he’d regret.

He saw the relief on Laurie’s face that she could now mention them without worrying. He forced himself to smile, as she reeled off the recent achievements and funny things said by Daniel, Caitlin and Sam. Then he did what he had done his whole life and summoned a song into his head, to drown it all out.

In the end Will stayed for one more drink, ignoring Laurie’s glance of disapproval as he ordered a full pint alongside her half. Later he found his way more easily along the dark lanes back to the bald hedge and the crooked gate with the red rope, and turned right.

The ‘Tornley’ sign appeared, and he bore right again, past the terrace of three cottages. That was better. He knew where he was now.

Will slowed down, scrabbling around in the side-pocket to find chewing gum to disguise the alcohol on his breath.

Something moved to his right.

He braked, tensing for a thud.

A tall, lumbering figure ran towards him from the direction of Tornley Hall at a clumsy half-trot, wearing a black hoodie and tracksuit trousers, head bent forward.

He waited for the runner to look up into his headlights and wave an acknowledgement that they’d seen each other, but they just kept going, diving into the long beam of the car’s headlights, then onto the verge, before disappearing.

Wanker. They’d get hit out here, wearing that at night.

Will turned the last bend. The illuminated gables of the old house appeared through the bare hedge. The ridiculousness of what he’d let Hannah do – buying this rundown old dump – hit him again.

He drove up the drive, parked and entered the house.

A pile of cracked air fresheners lay on the hall floor, as if they’d been chucked from upstairs. Behind their collective stink, he detected a new smell.

She must be joking.

Picking his way through all the crap in the hall, Will found Hannah up a ladder in the kitchen. She was running the roller over the dark-green walls, pushing white emulsion into cracks and over cobwebs.

‘What are you doing?’

Her strokes travelled in all directions – out to the side, diagonally, then straight – as she covered the surface as fast as she could. She had found the radio in a box and had turned it up. It wasn’t even music she liked, just generic shit. There was a burnt smell. A dried-up tray of pasta sat on the hob, pitted with the carcasses of olives.

‘Why did you take so long?’ she shouted over the music.

‘Shop was shut – I had to drive to Thurrup,’ he lied, holding out the beers he’d persuaded the guy at the Fox to sell him. ‘Bumped into Laurie.’

‘How’s she?’

‘Good.’

‘Where’s the milk?’

‘They’d run out.’

‘Of milk? Really?’ She took a brush and sloshed paint around the yellowed light switch. It dripped onto a hastily laid dust-sheet below. ‘I’ve put the decorating schedule for next week on the worktop. Do you want to check it? I’ve tried to divide it up, so you can finish off the high bits like the ceilings in the evenings, and lift the heavy things into the rooms with me.’

And, in that second, Will saw that this was never going to end.

This house was not going to fix things, as she had promised. It was just going to fuel her obsession.

‘It’s eight-thirty,’ he said, wearily.

‘I know, but it just looks so bad, with all the Horseborrows’ furniture gone. And I didn’t even think about the garden – that’s going to add at least a day. We’ve only got thirteen days now, so I thought I might as well . . .’ Her words trailed off as she stretched to cover a missed patch.

Will found a plate, and pointed at the burnt pasta.

‘Is this Lor’s?’

‘Yeah. It’s all right, if you take the top off.’

His stomach rumbled through the gas of the beer. He sat down and surveyed this monstrous kitchen that he now owned. It must be as big as Mum’s whole flat in Salford. Their table looked like an island in an ocean of flagstone. He opened his third beer of the evening, promising himself it was a one-off, and excavated the pasta with a fork until he found some edible sauce.

Hannah was wiping paint from her nose. She was so close to the bare bulb that it made her skin look wrung-out, like a wet sheet, and her pale hair a harsh reddish-pink. She’d scraped it back. She turned, and Will waited for the sharp edge of her cheekbones to soften, as they always used to at this angle, but the hardness remained. Her upper lip was pulled in tight with concentration. He wondered when she had started to look like this.

‘Listen, I don’t want to stress you out,’ she said, ‘but I think, if you’re going back to work on Monday, we need to start now.’

Will froze, a fork in his mouth. ‘You want me to start painting? Now?’

‘If you take over the ceiling, I could do the walls, and we could maybe get half of the kitchen done tonight. That would claw back a half-day later on, for the garden.’

He chewed and the cold pasta sank down inside him.

He saw Hannah thinking of ways to reword her request, to make him do what she wanted. She did it a lot these days, as if now that she wasn’t using her negotiating skills at work, she needed to use them on him.

‘I know you’re tired. I am, too. And I know it’s not on the schedule, but I thought we could go over to the garage later and talk about the studio.’

Ah, the sweetener. She always finished with a sweetener.

Hannah leant down and rubbed Will’s head. He felt the rare touch of her skin on his and wanted it, but he also knew it would disappear as quickly as it had come, as she pretended to need to scratch her nose or pick up a boiling pot. Every day he had to stop himself grabbing her and hoping that, if he held her for long enough, she would relax and stop moving. That she would listen to him when he told her to stop doing this, and believe him that it would all be OK.

Yet Hannah’s hand had already gone. She was climbing off the ladder and walking towards the kettle.

Will watched her go, knowing he was losing the ability to believe he could make anything right for her any more. After all, he’d told her it would all be OK once before, and he’d been wrong.

‘Let me eat this,’ he said.

Hannah’s schedule sat on the table. Fierce red capitals filled the cramped spaces, scored-out and struck-through. A window into Hannah’s head. A place he was no longer invited to go.

Will sipped his third beer, and eyed up the fourth. It was less than two days till he was back in London. He realized he was already looking forward to it.

In the meantime he would continue to do what he’d done for the last eight months, and do what she asked, just to get through.

For the rest of the weekend Hannah remained glued to her paintbrush.

Thank God, Will had stopped protesting. After dinner on Saturday night he’d begun painting the kitchen ceiling with fast, wide strokes, and then taken over the walls, while she transformed the kitchen cupboards with a cheap version of a posh grey eggshell that she’d had colour-matched in a DIY store. She didn’t bother with the greasy, scuffed insides. Barbara would never look in there.

They finished at 2 a.m. and started again at 8 a.m. on Sunday. By Sunday afternoon they had applied a second coat in the kitchen and scullery, and then, when there was still no answer from Brian about the missing sitting-room keys, they moved upstairs to the smallest of the five bedrooms. Will had continued with the roller, moving quickly over the elderly, porous wallpaper with its faded pink roses, covering yellowed patches and rips and nail-holes. He played the music so loud that they couldn’t talk, but she didn’t care. Whenever Hannah suspected he was lagging, she brought coffee and sandwiches.

For much of the time she followed behind, her strokes growing less and less dainty as she pushed her rapidly splaying brush into the rotten window frame, which the surveyor had warned needed ‘attention’, and over the picture rail, skirting boards and original fitted wardrobes. When the dark hairs of the exhausted brush began to escape, she painted over them.

Up close, she knew it was a mess. It would have to be redone, but for now it looked fresh and clean at first glance, and that’s all that mattered.

At some point that evening Hannah went to make yet another coffee.

In the hall outside their own bedroom, she noticed a new pile of boxes Will had found on his last trip downstairs. She saw as she descended that he’d taken them from the pile by the stained-glass window. The pattern on the window was becoming exposed.

She picked her way through to look. She loved this window. Next to the grand, silver fireplace in the locked sitting room, it was the most beautiful Victorian feature in the house: a turquoise glass peacock, wrapped in intricate strands of ruby roses. That first time they’d walked into Tornley Hall last summer with Brian, it was the first thing they’d seen. The sun had just hit the side of the house and was blasting through. It had felt like a beacon of hope. A sign that Tornley Hall would make things right again.