The Hiding Place (33 page)

Found your mother then? he asked.

Amongst other things, I thought, but didn’t say.

Where you takin’ me, girls, the driver said, as they waved me goodbye.

~

And then I did it. I moved the bed into the corner of the room and wedged the table up against the window. Where it belonged. Got a chair from the kitchen. Opened the curtains
so that in the dark of the night I could still imagine that the Jacksons’ house was inhabited, full of dirty children and a dog in the doorway. Sat down where I used to sit with my mother and
the ironing to be done and
True Crime
to be read and hidden away, and I took out the photograph Eva gave me. On the back, I made my list.

I ran out of space, but I only needed to add one more thing: blame can be twisted like a flame in a draught; it will burn and burn. Ask Fran.

~

I take my list and I put it in my bag. No mother behind me shouting instructions: I’m not going to the shop to get something on tick, just a taxi to take me away. At the
top of the hill are two figures, one walking behind the other. Their shadows grow long and short under the street-lights. It’s Louis I see first, ambling towards me looking pleased and
sheepish. I’m glad to see him.

I was just about to call a cab, I say. And then I recognize her. She’s crabbing along the road behind him, pushing a trolley full of bags; she looks like a refugee from a war zone.
She’s wrapped in too many layers, her hair’s all lank and hanging in her face. Mud-brown hair. She sends the trolley skittering in the gutter and walks towards me, her arms held out
straight in front of her, as if she expects to be handcuffed. She’s showing me something.

Did I do the right thing, Aunty Dol? asks Louis.

I have no answer for him. Her face looks animated, her lips open as if she’s about to say something. Her arms are bruised and liverish, but in the tint of the
street-light, I see upon the dirty skin a faded blue crucifix, an inky stain spelling FRAN.

T
REZZA
A
ZZOPARDI
was born in Cardiff and lives in Norwich.
The Hiding Place
is her first novel.

‘The narrator has a cool, observing eye, and she leaves the reader to imagine the characters’ emotional responses to various dramas . . . Azzopardi has produced a
confident and evocative work’
Andrew Biswell,
Daily Telegraph

‘[It] proceeds at a cracking pace, full of neat but unobtrusive gestures at the horrors beneath . . . Sharply written, full of
crisp little vignettes and cameos’
DJ Taylor,
Guardian

‘Keenly observed, full of small quiet details that capture the harum-scarum lives of Dolores and her family’
Elle

‘Azzopardi is an assured magician when it comes to tricks to keep the readers turning the pages . . . An astonishingly accomplished book’
Independent

For my mother

acknowledgements

Thanks to Derek Johns and Linda Shaughnessy at AP Watt, and Mary Mount and Peter Straus at Picador.

Special thanks to Rita Isaacs and Andrew Motion.

Extra special thanks to John Kemp for tirelessly retrieving the songs; David Hill for reading it, reading it, reading it; and Stephen Foster, for leaving it alone.

First published 2000 by Picador

This edition published in 2001 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2010 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-52659-3 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52616-6 EPUB

Copyright © Trezza Azzopardi 2000

The right of Trezza Azzopardi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, words and music by Cole Porter © 1973
Chappell-Co Inc/Assigned To Buxton-Hill-Music Corp, Warner Chappell Music Ltd.
Reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.
‘You Make Me Feel So Young’, words and music by Mack Gordon & Josef Hoe Myrow © 1946
Twentieth Century Music Corp., USA/Bregman-Vocco & Conn Inc., USA.
‘Buonasera Senorina’, words and music by De Rose/Sigman © 1950,
renewed and assigned to Major Songs Co. and De Rose Music.
‘Needles and Pins’, words and music by Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche © 1963
EMI Catalogue Partnership, EMI Unart Catalogue Inc, USA. Worlwide print rights controlled by
Warner Bros Inc, USA/IMP Ltd. Reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.
‘Is you or is you ain’t my baby?’, words and music by Billy Austin and Louis Jordan © 1944
by kind permission of Universal/MCA Music Ltd.
‘Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens’, words and music by Whitney and Kramer © 1947
by kind permission of Universal/MCA Music Publ. Ltd.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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