The Hidden Girls

by Rebecca Whitney

  ‘I need to go,’ Giles says. ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine.’

  ‘Be careful out there.’ It’s the joke they used to share before they became parents. ‘Don’t die or anything.’

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ He laughs. He still finds it funny. Leaning closer, he whispers in her ear, ‘I love you, Ruth.’

  She pauses to process the phrase, replying a moment too late, ‘I love you too.’ She hopes she does, she knows the feeling can’t have gone far; it’s buried somewhere, that’s all, and when she has the headspace she’ll send out a search party.

  Giles kisses Bess’s head. ‘Goodbye, munchkin.’ His eyes glisten with love. ‘Be good for Mummy.’ He strokes Ruth’s cheek and leaves.

  She watches him through the front window as he unlocks his bike in the concrete yard of their Victorian terrace. Their property search had always been couched in terms of finding the right fit and falling in love, but in the end the decision to buy this micro London house on the edge of railway sidings was steered as much by budget and urgency as it was by any DNA the house might possess. Giles pushes his bike through the gate, straddling the saddle with the excitement of a boy going out to play. With a grin, he mouths, ‘Have fun,’ then he disappears down the street to his job at the charity he fought hard to win.

  Bess, sated and exhausted, drops her head back from the bottle, keeping the teat in her mouth for comfort. Her cheeks are wet and her eyelids jitter in a junkie-haze of food. There’s huge pleasure in the peace that follows feeding, and sitting with a quiet, milk-heavy child in her arms allows a pulse of love to pass from Ruth to her daughter. The feeling’s elusive though, disappearing as soon as Ruth’s fears worm back inside. Bess’s velvet skin, doll-sized features and the biscuity warmth of her little head are all laid out in front of Ruth like an abstract code she’s yet to decipher. She kisses her daughter, lips barely brushing the baby’s fontanelle. ‘I’m getting better,’ Ruth says. ‘Things are really going to change round here.’ She wishes more of their time could be as simple as when Bess is sleeping.

  Outside, the flash of a white car passes on the street. Ruth’s stomach seizes – was it a police car or one of those big white SUVs? Ruth’s neighbour Liam bought a white Range Rover recently, but he lives at the beginning of the street, and Ruth’s house is too far up for him to chance a parking space. If it’s the police, it means something’s wrong, perhaps something to do with last night’s scream, a threat that might hurt Bess. Ruth strains her neck to see out of the window as a man passes in the opposite direction to the car, cigarette in mouth, plume of smoke the volume of his lungs. It’s Barry from next door, one of the many dog walkers who amble up and down the street rather than bothering with the local park. He checks over his shoulder in the direction of the car. There’s no panic to his step, no concern on his face. The emergency Ruth imagined was simply her trigger-happy adrenaline.

  She reaches for the cup of lukewarm tea, trying not to unlatch her little girl from the bottle as she stretches. Bess wakes, starts to cry, face turning red in an instant, and Ruth decides it’s easier to forgo the drink. There’s a corner of toast next to the tea, slathered in butter and jam, just as Ruth likes it. Her mouth salivates. With the medication has come a lust for sweet, starchy foods, and her body has mushroomed over her trousers. Stretch marks on her stomach and thighs are battle scars from a war she’ll never win. She still wears her elasticated maternity clothes because they’re the only things that fit her new outline, and she’s no money to buy new stuff since her leave has run out and Giles has become the solo breadwinner. A bobbly cardigan she hates and has thrown away on more than one occasion always ends up being taken out of the charity bag because nothing else is as easy to wear. Ruth’s never been concerned about putting on weight, it’s simply that she’s always been slim, and now she finds the shape she’s grown into is such an unknown she doesn’t recognize herself. Part of her identity has been lost with the change, exiting at such speed, it’s as if she’s gone to seed.

  A knock at the door. Ruth shuffles to the entrance with one hand still holding the empty bottle in Bess’s mouth so her baby doesn’t wake again. Their front door opens directly into a little galley kitchen and standing outside is a uniformed woman with POLICE COMMUNITY SUPPORT OFFICER written across her jacket.

  ‘Mrs Woodman?’ the officer says, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s me. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing to alarm you, I’ve just come to give you this.’ The woman holds out a business card. ‘It’s a number to call in non-emergencies. It’s my extension. You can leave a message if I don’t answer or try 101.’

  Ruth stares at the card, wondering if she should explain that since Bess there’s no such thing as a non-emergency.

  On the other side of Ruth’s garden gate, two neighbours walk the pavement with their baby in a pushchair – Sandra and Liam, the friends she and Giles made when they moved in. Sandra’s hair is a silky black curtain reaching halfway down her back. She turns to Ruth with a little wave, mouthing, ‘You OK, honey?’ Sweet Sandra, Ruth’s guardian angel, the only friend who’s truly looked out for Ruth even though she has her own baby to take care of. Their friendship’s been tricky recently; Ruth’s noticed a cooling off from Sandra’s perspective – phone calls rarely answered, and when she does pick up, noticeable pauses when Ruth suggests meeting, any plans she tries to put in place cancelled last minute – perhaps understandable in light of Ruth’s neediness as she’s never been able to pinpoint an actual moment of offence. Ruth’s reassured now by this tiny exchange, and she wonders if again she simply got it all wrong, that Sandra’s still there for her and always has been. She nods quickly at her friend before ducking inside the door, hoping to hide her shabby outfit and unwashed hair, feeling guilty even though she hasn’t done anything wrong, fault hardwired into her. Her worry is the couple will think she’s been shoplifting – or worse, hurting her daughter. They know she’s been ill. She wouldn’t blame them for jumping to conclusions.

  ‘Mrs Woodman?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The card.’ The policewoman thrusts it forward.

  Sandra’s already walked away. A kindness, Ruth thinks, to intuit her need for privacy. Liam has one arm round his wife’s shoulders and he pushes the buggy a little awkwardly with his other hand, like a butler to his princess. He’s overattentive to his family and there’s something false about his need to play the part of perfect dad in front of this audience. He stops and holds his phone up to take a selfie of them all. Such a good-looking couple, with an air of confidence that it’s all going to come their way, disappointment not even a word in their life vocabulary. As Liam goes to take the shot, Sandra stops him and repositions herself to get her best angle, then he holds the camera up again and gives his wife one of those awkward schmaltzy kisses, reminding himself and all his followers of the power of his love and the treasure of his possession. Not for the first time, uneasiness flits through Ruth at Liam’s need to assert ownership over his family. Inside the pram is their quiet little boy, Ian, who always sleeps when he’s supposed to, who eats buckets of food that fill out his cheeks, who’s sunny and smiley to be around. Ruth’s failure flares momentarily – it’s not fair. She presses her lips together, hoping she’s not actually mouthing the words.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ the officer asks.

  Ruth snatches the card. ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘Next time you hear something, just ring this number, please, Mrs Woodman. We’ll get to it when we have time.’ The officer smiles but her eyes don’t match the uplift of her mouth.

  ‘I’m really sorry. I was sure I heard a scream.’

  ‘The call-log from your house has become prolific this last month and we need to save our manpower for real events, not suspicions. If we receive any more false alarms, I’m afraid our next course of action will be a fixed penalty notice.’ The officer shifts her balance to the other foot, speaking in the same lightweight tone. ‘There can only be
so many paedophiles living on one street.’

  Behind Ruth’s lips her brain gallops: I used to be someone. I had responsibilities, budgets, an assistant. I did lunch and shopped at Liberty. Even in the last days before Bess was born, Ruth didn’t rest, she’d have been bored within seconds of putting her feet up anyway. Her talent had always been hard work, the trickiest clients, the longest hours.

  The officer pats Ruth’s arm with a smile, and Ruth suspects that this time some of her words had been audible.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Woodman.’ The woman’s voice slows and she annunciates each syllable as if she’s teaching phonetics. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just routine in these situations. Is there someone I can call? Do you have a friend nearby who could be with you?’

  The last person Ruth wants to know about this is Giles, who’ll clock her failure with his usual tired resignation. Plus he thinks she’s improving, and she can’t bear to disappoint him. The only other friend available is Sandra whose petite figure is already shrinking into the distance with that quick-footed, breezy pace, as if she’s filled with helium and Liam needs to hold her down. If Sandra came over, Ruth could inhale a little of that buoyancy, but today it’s better to be alone than have her own inadequacy laid bare. Ruth’s imposed too much already, and she senses Liam’s irritation at the amount of Sandra’s time she absorbs; a mute rudeness emanates from him whenever they meet and Ruth’s constantly trying to second guess what he’s thinking. Everyone else Ruth knows is at work, their lives set to a different clock, but even if they weren’t, there’s not a single one of them Ruth would want to sit with this morning. If she’s going to fail, she’d rather do so with no one watching. Letting people in, admitting her need, has always been a challenge, and even in the past, those who had the potential to be solid friends only seemed to end up as acquaintances. ‘You are hard to know,’ a colleague once told Ruth, but since her teenage years and the black hole that opened in Ruth’s universe, she’s needed to keep a piece of herself back. No one would ever be able to get as close to her as her sister.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ruth replies. ‘I won’t call any more.’ She takes a big breath and looks the policewoman directly in the eye. ‘I really have to go now.’

  As she reaches to push the door shut, the PCSO leans towards Bess. ‘So sweet! Your daughter is beautiful.’ The woman strokes Bess’s head and glances at Ruth. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist.’ Another smile, this one more gentle. ‘It’s lovely when they need you all the time, isn’t it? I never wanted mine to grow up. This is the best age, don’t you think?’

  Ruth discovers tears are falling down her cheeks. She rubs them away but they keep coming; somehow it’s always easier to open up in front of strangers whose sympathy she can bear because she’ll probably never see them again.

  ‘It’s just so hard.’ Ruth laughs a little through her tears, annoyed at herself as now the officer will think she’s a time-waster. ‘I mean, it’s like I’ve become invisible, and I’ve forgotten what normal feels like. How come everyone else knows what to do and I don’t?’

  The woman puts her hands in her pockets, bedding in for the kind of session she hadn’t expected and – by the look on her face – doesn’t want. ‘I know it can feel like it at times, but no one’s keeping score.’

  ‘Well, they are of me.’ Ruth’s hand hovers over her mouth, wanting to take back the volume.

  The officer leans away a touch. ‘One day you’ll look back on all this and wish you’d cherished these moments. Before you know it you’ll have a grumpy teenager on your hands who won’t want to know you any more.’ The radio attached to the PCSO’s jacket crackles into life and she fiddles with the knob, bending an ear to listen, eyes rolling to the sky. ‘Never a dull moment, eh!’ Ruth wants to hold on to the woman, keep her there for a little longer with all her access to life outside Ruth’s tiny courtyard. Instead, Ruth presses her nails into the heel of her hand; any harder and she’d draw blood. ‘Be kind to yourself, Mrs Woodman,’ the officer says. ‘Make yourself a cup of tea. Relax for the rest of the day. And please, please, leave the policework to the police.’

  The tall wooden gate squeaks shut behind the officer as she walks up the street, back to her car and her full life. Ruth closes the door, returning to the laundry-filled lounge, and she navigates unpacked boxes containing books and knick-knacks, some labelled ‘kitchen’ and ‘bedroom’ stacked three high against the wall. Several containers have been ripped open, the cooking and cleaning essentials scavenged from the top. She looks inside one box: a wedding photo in a cracked frame, a jar of antique marbles bought from a charity shop. So much junk that Ruth forgets what it all is – certainly nothing she needs or misses. She may as well put everything of her old life in a skip rather than get it out to gather dust. If the fog of medication would lift, at least there’d be the impetus to tidy even if the opportunity didn’t present itself. How can one tiny being take up so much time?

  A stack of old magazines is on the floor next to the sofa. Sunlight staggers across their spines, illuminating a series of small golden steps. Ruth holds up her phone and pivots the viewfinder of the camera app to get the best shot. Her fingers twitch as if they’re waking up. She presses the shutter and the moment freezes on the screen, the frame elevating the mundane into a moment of beauty. When Bess was first born, Ruth had posted her shots on social media, but she’s banned from Instagram and Facebook now; all that self-comparison kept dropping her down to rock bottom. Then when she’d been really ill, she lost any filter for her bitterness. ‘Your diatribe is poisoning my feed,’ one now ex-friend messaged. Without an online presence, though, Ruth feels like she’s disappeared from most people’s lives, or at least that her experiences are seen as less valid – even to herself, even if what she had posted in the past was lies – because she never gets those little endorphin hits of approval from the ‘like’ button. But neither she nor Giles made any rules around Ruth taking photos for herself, and she fantasizes that one day, on the other side of all this, she’ll exhibit these pictures, the images by then history, and she’ll be able to reflect on how far she’s come, the mountain she conquered.

  Bess pumps her tiny legs up and down and her face turns red. Her squawks are ones that can’t be satisfied by milk. The doctor says it’s wind – it’s been this way since she was a couple of weeks old – and no amount of patting will bring anything up. The only method that works is holding Bess over Ruth’s shoulder and pacing the room until she settles. Ruth puts her phone to one side and takes her baby into the kitchen where she boils the kettle to make a fresh cup of tea, stirring in three sugars. The drink spills and burns Ruth’s one free hand. Tears spring into her eyes, but she refuses to give them any attention when the day is sure to bring bigger and badder problems. She puts the cup to one side to cool and walks the well-trodden avenue through the mess in the lounge, tripping over her dressing-gown cord and resigning herself to another day stumbling at the coalface of motherhood.

  2

  It’s 10.30 a.m. when Ruth finally leaves home, each earlier attempt frustrated by another feed or nappy change. From her gate she takes a right to walk the remaining forty terraces that line one side of the street towards the petrol station at the end of the road, the business now decommissioned and used as a pop-up car wash. After that, she’ll carry on to the high street to cruise the charity shops and pick up a coffee.

  Morning sun dissolves last night’s fears and the scream is consigned to the background of Ruth’s thoughts. She’s revived by the chilled air and picks up pace, the buggy’s wheels over paving stones acting like a train on tracks, lulling Bess, and Ruth exhales into the peace of believing she can be the mum she wants to be.

  There are rules to follow since recovering from her illness and leaving the house unaccompanied would be a black mark. Walking, though, is one of the few things that blocks Ruth’s anxiety. Since Giles has started returning to work for periods of time, she reasons with herself that getting out is justified; s
he won’t go far, she won’t get lost, she’ll take supplies. Before she was diagnosed, she used to love taking Bess for a spin round the block in the pram, even though post-caesarean she should have been taking it easy. But as her illness quickly progressed, the act of forward motion became mesmerizing, so that on several occasions Ruth found herself stranded miles from home with no money and no idea how she’d got there. Night had been coming in as she’d made bewildered calls to Giles to rescue her, with Bess hysterical as Ruth’s head had been so full she’d forgotten to feed her. The third time it happened, Ruth was sitting in the car after Giles had tracked her down, and she’d turned her hands over and over, staring at her skin that had become hypersensitive from the elbows down, as if her limbs were no longer her own. A terror had gripped her; what might these hands be capable of now they were out of her control? She begged Giles to stop the car, slap her face, bind her arms, anything to bring her back into her body, but only the speedometer reacted, spinning up to 50 as Giles jumped amber light after red light, driving her straight to the nearest A&E. No one had prepped Ruth or Giles for the outside chance of post-partum psychosis, and even if the couple had been warned, things like that didn’t happen to normal people who’d just sunk their limited savings into a little house and were happy to be making a family. The bread-making, finger-painting and picnicking fun Ruth had planned was all wiped out in one diagnosis. From there on, all Ruth’s energy was poured into keeping afloat. That was just under five months ago.

  To Ruth’s left on the pavement is a tall hedgerow that hides the back gardens of houses on a parallel street. Last summer, the bush had chattered with life as birds zipped in and out of the leaves. Now its winter branches are knotted and bare. To Ruth’s right she glimpses her neighbours’ front yards through slatted fences, like a Victorian zoetrope, though there are no dancing gymnasts or running horses here, only bins and overgrown gardens. When she and Giles moved to the road, they loved the spiky horsetail plants that sprang up in their raised flower beds, only what they didn’t realize then was that the shoots quickly turned shaggy and brown. So they set about clearing the plants from their garden, but each time Ruth pulled one up, another two grew in its place from the network of roots underpinning the whole street, the subterranean empire widening daily, and it soon became clear why most of their neighbours had given up weeding. The boggy soil would need to be poisoned half a mile in each direction to bring the infestation under control.