The Hidden Girl (5 page)

Hannah gulped her tea and made herself imagine this was a press trip abroad. If a bunch of journalists was relying on her to fix the situation, what would she do?

‘Right,’ she said, standing up. Enough moaning. First thing she needed was a stronger phone signal – or, even better, a neighbour with a phone book and a landline.

Hannah jogged upstairs and threw on some warm clothes, followed by Will’s big jumper and his grey beanie. Her winter boots were packed in a box somewhere, so she pulled on the ‘green wellies’ she’d bought for Will as a joke, when he’d been invited to a pheasant shoot by a rich client who owned a Scottish castle. They were covered in neon-lime frogs. At size eleven, they looked ridiculous on her size-five feet, but would do for now. Nobody would care what she looked like here, anyway.

Insulated against the cold and snow, Hannah stomped out of the house into a garden that had transformed since yesterday.

It was so cold it hurt her lungs to breathe.

The falling snow had stopped, at least. The lawn was bathed in hush, as if the animals and insects had burrowed away to sleep it off. The ice-topped weeds looked strangely pretty too, like a field of giant snowdrops. Holding her phone in front to check for a signal, Hannah headed down the driveway, her footsteps echoing on the snowy gravel like gunshots.

When the signal did not improve, she turned right out of the driveway towards the high electronic gate next door. There was an intercom, with no name. She pressed it and scanned the eerily quiet lane behind, and the white marshes that led to the sea. They were so far from the nearest B-road you couldn’t even hear traffic.

There was no reply.

Trying not to feel defeated, she turned back up the lane towards Tornley, checking her phone intermittently. When two bars finally turned to three, she tried Will again and left a voice message about the boiler and another request for Laurie’s number.

The signal died again. She fought back her frustration and kept going.

The snow was pristine, untouched by car tracks. The only sign of life was the odd set of triangular bird footprints. It was beautiful. She’d never seen snow like this in London. As soon as it fell there, it was turned into snowballs, kicked away by sledgers fighting for space on the city’s few slopes, and melted by the traffic fumes and the hurried breath of eight million people. She’d seen snow like this as a child, though. A random memory returned of Dad pulling her sledge up on the Downs in Kent, with her in her red anorak.

Before she could stop herself, Hannah allowed herself to imagine the future here: her, and Will, and a small figure in a red coat on a sledge on this lane.

No
.

Don’t do it. Do not tempt fate.

Shaking away the image, Hannah continued up past Tornley Hall and around the bend, checking her phone repeatedly. There was a cough, and she glanced up to see an elderly man by the verge.

The sight was so unexpected that Hannah stopped dead.

The man was entering a field with a golden retriever. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. He was small – her height – and wore a hat with ear-flaps. His head looked too large for his shoulders. Thick lines were beaten into his face, and his cheeks were purple and veined.

‘Hello,’ she said, lifting a hand. The man regarded her impassively. ‘Hi, sorry, do you live here?’

His eyes were watery and blue, set in pink, creased burrows. ‘I do.’

‘Hi. I’m Hannah,’ she said. ‘We just moved in, up the road.’

That might have been a nod, she wasn’t sure.

‘Sorry, but our boiler’s just broken and I don’t have a land-line. I’m trying to find someone who might have a number for a plumber.’

The expression on the man’s face was so blank that she stopped short of asking to use his own landline.

‘Dax,’ the man said, pointing behind him.

‘Dax?’

‘That’s your man. Dax. In the cottages.’

‘Oh, really? He’s a plumber, is he? Or do you mean he’s got a phone book?’

The old man whistled. ‘Henny! Damn dog. Dax, that’s who you want.’ And with that, he entered the field and walked away.

‘Oh. OK. Thanks,’ Hannah called uncertainly.

She carried on. The snow was even thicker here in the dip of the road. She lifted her feet high, to stop it trickling inside Will’s boots. A scarlet-and-blue pheasant dived out of a hedge and disappeared into another. A faint engine noise filled the air. She passed the ‘Tornley’ sign, and arrived beside the terrace of three pink cottages.

The engine noise came from behind. Hoping she wasn’t trespassing, Hannah walked up the side of the cottages. A garage came into sight. A man in a blue boiler suit was bent over a motorbike, gloves on, twisting something with a spanner. He turned and regarded her. He had a prominent, straight nose and dark-blue eyes, with wild, oil-dark curly hair and thick eyelashes and brows. There was a challenge in his expression. He looks like a Fagin’s boy grown up, she thought.

‘Hi,’ Hannah said, raising a hand in greeting, in case she’d alarmed him. ‘Sorry. Are you Dax?’

The man turned off the motorbike and gave her a once-over.

‘Don’t know – am I?’

‘Oh, a man up the road said . . .’

‘Who’s that then?’ He rubbed his nose on his sleeve.

‘Oh. I don’t know. Wearing a hat. Had a dog. My height.’ She lifted her hand to her head. ‘In his seventies, maybe?’

‘Bill?’

‘Might have been.’

‘He won’t like you saying he’s in his seventies.’

She hesitated. ‘Oh, OK. Anyway, listen, I’m sorry, but I’ve just arrived from London and our boiler’s broken, and I need to find an emergency plumber, and the man – Bill – said that “Dax” might be able to help?’

The man in the blue boiler suit exhaled heavily, as if she were asking something very difficult. ‘This is your house in London you’re talking about, is it?’

Hannah blinked. ‘No. My new house, up the road.’ She pointed towards Tornley Hall.

‘Right,’ the man said, ‘well, that’s why I’m asking, because I wouldn’t know, would I?’

‘No . . .’

‘And it’s important to know, because otherwise I might come and fix your boiler in London, mightn’t I?’

Was he joking?

She tried to remain polite. ‘OK, good point. So would you be able to come?’

The man returned to the motorbike. ‘I’m busy right now.’

Hannah moved from foot to foot, cold air attacking every inch of her exposed skin.

‘Oh. Right. It’s just that we haven’t got any heating. And it’s snowing.’

‘It’s snowing, is it?’ the man repeated, as if she’d made a good joke. His teeth shone white in his grease-streaked face. As he said it, a light smattering of snow started again.

‘I mean, is there any way you might be able to come today?’

‘Is there any
way
?’ he repeated. ‘Got a million quid?’

‘Er, no.’

The man cleared his throat. ‘Have to be tomorrow, then.’

‘Really?’

She checked her phone. It was only ten-thirty. ‘OK. Well, if you could do tomorrow, that would be better than . . .’ She stopped, waiting for him to say he was winding her up.

‘Right you are,’ he said. He turned his back on her and waved with his spanner.

‘OK,’ she continued. ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow.’

She turned hesitantly.

‘Bye, Janice,’ he called.

‘Oh. It’s Hannah, actually.’

‘That’s good, or I might have gone to Janice’s house.’

She stared, not comprehending.

He kept his back to her. ‘Where do you live, Hannah?’

‘Oh, I see, sorry – up the road. Tornley –’ the next word sounded wrong in her mouth ‘– Hall. I just assumed that—’

‘That we’re all talking about you? Londoners moving in?’

‘No!’ she said, flustered. These cottages were similar to her childhood home in Kent. Tornley Hall had cost only £30,000 more than the tiny two-bed London flat she and Will had almost bankrupted themselves to buy in their late twenties and had then, to their astonishment, watched rocket in value. In Tornley, she now saw, that random financial luck had elevated her to a social position that made her uncomfortable. She’d have to order a new house sign; get rid of the ‘Hall’. Barbara might find it odd, too, as if she had misjudged who Hannah and Will had told her they were; what their values were, regarding work and money. ‘Tornley Studios’ sounded like a business venture, no different from a farm, or a riding school. ‘Tornley Hall’, on the other hand, might be interpreted as vacuous social aspiration.

The man stood up abruptly. He stared at her feet, shook his head, then headed down the garden path towards the middle of the three terraced cottages, before Hannah could think of a better answer.

She peered down and saw Will’s giant neon-frog wellies.

The snow fell more heavily as Hannah retraced her steps to Tornley Hall.

Dax was clearly going to be no help. She tried Will again, and left a further voice message suggesting that if he couldn’t get hold of Laurie to ask for a plumber’s number this afternoon, he should stop at the pub in Snadesdon on the way home tonight and ask for one.

As she continued up the lane, snow flailed Hannah’s eyes and lips so heavily that she could hardly see, so it was only when she was halfway back up the driveway of Tornley Hall, under the bare oak trees, that she noticed the footprints.

A second set, parallel to her earlier ones.

As big as the ones she’d made in Will’s boots.

Hannah slowed and surveyed the empty front doorstep up ahead, trying to think if she’d passed fresh vehicle tracks that might belong to a car or postal van. She couldn’t remember.

As she emerged from under the half-cover of the bare trees, both sets of footprints were already vanishing in the fresh snowfall. The second set tapered off completely by the side-lawn.

Maybe the next-door neighbour had answered the intercom too late and had come round to say hello.

It was freezing. Hannah marched on, desperate to get inside. She opened the front door and bashed the snow from Will’s wellies. There was no post on the mat. She threw off her wet coat, her teeth chattering. It was hardly any warmer in here. She lifted up a foot to remove one of Will’s wellies, and tripped backwards over a coffee table.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

This was ridiculous. They needed to get inside that sitting room.

Hannah peered through the keyhole again. It was still dark. Even in the daytime there was nothing to see.

The action, however, detonated a memory about locks.

The attic!

Brian had unlocked it on their first visit. She remembered now. It had been stiflingly hot, and packed to the rafters with broken furniture, old carpets and boxes.

Maybe he’d left the inner house keys in the attic door?

Hannah ran up to the wooden stairs beside the upstairs bathroom. They creaked heavily under her weight. To her disappointment, the attic door was ajar. There were no keys in the lock.

She peered round the door. ‘Wow,’ she said out loud.

The house-clearance people had taken everything, and the space left behind was enormous, even with the sloping eaves.

She turned on a light and walked in. This was exciting. They could easily convert this, maybe into an office for her, if she decided to freelance later on. Or even a play—

Hannah stopped herself for the second time today.

Don’t tempt fate.

Curious, she noticed a skylight at the rear that must have been covered before by boxes. Carefully she stepped across the rafters and undid it. Snow fell onto the roof tiles below as it creaked open.

Hannah stuck her head out and found herself looking right over the Victorian wall into the property next door.

Up until now she’d only seen part of its red roof from the rear-bedroom window. The rest was obscured by conifers. Now she understood what Brian meant when he said that their neighbour’s house had been built in the former walled garden of Tornley Hall.

The property comprised about an acre of land and was surrounded on all four sides by the high Victorian wall. But the house wasn’t the cosy little cottage Hannah had envisaged. It was a functional-looking, tidy 1970s-style bungalow, which sat in the middle of a smallholding. The garden was packed with rows of polytunnels and greenhouses. It looked closed up for the winter. The curtains were pulled, the driveway empty. Blue tarpaulins were draped over large objects on the front terrace, and held in place by stones.

Hannah shut the skylight. So if the new footprints on the driveway didn’t belong to her next-door neighbour, where had they come from?

Maybe Bill was more neighbourly than he had appeared? Maybe he had stopped in after his dog-walk to check she was OK and that she’d found Dax?

Hannah headed downstairs, cross with herself.

This morning’s events were distracting her from her goal. It was a pain about the boiler, and about the sitting-room keys, but it was not the end of the world. One would be fixed, and the other would be found.

She’d lost an hour of decorating time this morning already, and there were only eleven-and-a-half days now till Barbara came. She needed to focus.

There would be plenty of time later to find out more about the tiny hamlet of Tornley, and the people who lived here.

At 6 p.m. in London, after what had turned out to be a long day, Will exchanged looks with his assistant Matt and rapped on the vocal booth, where his latest client Jeremiah was strumming his guitar.

‘Nice one,’ Will said into the mic. ‘Let’s take a break, Jem.’

The track was a bloody mess.

They’d been working on it since 11 a.m., but the lad’s Gothic tale about a girl called Carrie who went into the woods and was never seen again still sounded flat and monotone. It was nowhere close to the wrenching, stark quality that Jeremiah’s record company wanted Will to inject into their new YouTube find.

‘Going for a smoke, man,’ Jeremiah said, appearing and rubbing his blond beard. Will avoided Matt’s eye. Jeremiah was wearing a nineteenth-century-style American woodsman’s hat. The fact that his real name was Paul, and he came from Stevenage and his dad was a bank manager, had no bearing on his determination to live out his artistic calling. That also included smoking a clay pipe.