The Hidden Girls

by Rebecca Whitney

  She pulls the seat belt over Bess’s carrier, the seat higher off the ground than she’s used to, and she has to fumble around the space to secure the belt as Sandra’s gym bag is in between the babies. ‘Is Liam OK with you borrowing the car?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Ruth winces. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought he might need it for work.’

  ‘You set?’ Sandra asks.

  Ruth hesitates, giving her friend space to tell her not to worry, that she’s understood Ruth’s comment was just a gaffe and she’s not offended, but she doesn’t. Sandra does this evasive thing sometimes, and Ruth can never tell how far she’s overstepped Sandra’s line, or if her friend simply didn’t hear. Today, Ruth decides to try and be less needy – she did say the wrong thing, after all. She climbs into the passenger seat. ‘Absolutely.’

  Sandra turns to Ruth and smiles, and Ruth quickly returns the grin. Whatever just happened, if anything happened, it doesn’t seem important to Sandra.

  Sandra’s petite frame is a wisp in the car’s huge interior, and she accelerates noisily and pointlessly towards the junction where she has no option but to slow down. A Dyno-Rod van is at the turning, clearing the drains that seem to be permanently blocked round here, a stink hanging over the place, and images come to Ruth of fatbergs clogging up the sewers, condoms and baby wipes set in lard.

  Cars queue at the petrol station for their turn in the wash and, inside the shop, figures wait at the till. A woman swings a loaf of sliced white at her side while behind her a man stands in line reading the paper he’s about to buy. Everything normal, nothing threatening. As it should be. Ruth’s earlier exchange with the men who work there shifts forefront in her mind. She examines the incident from a safer standpoint, noticing the memory’s lost some clarity. With the benefit of a few hours’ distance, she’s convinced the man didn’t mention a scream at all; her own spongy brain simply soaked up what it wanted to hear to validate her crazy suspicions.

  Sandra pulls out onto the main road, the G-force pushing Ruth’s head back on the headrest, and her friend drives with a fluttering racetrack-excitement in this beast of a car. Sandra’s daring is infectious and Ruth fizzles with it, as free in this ounce of time as she’s ever been, slipping back momentarily into the person she used to be: confident Ruth, witty Ruth, Ruth who had the emotional space to care about people outside of her own tiny family.

  Sandra blows a bubble of gum, offering Ruth a cube from the packet of strawberry Hubba Bubba she always keeps in her bag. Ruth’s jaw aches as she chews, the pressure kinder than the molar against molar she’s used to. Sandra switches on the radio and they travel to the shopping centre with Sandra’s tone-deaf singing trouncing the terrible pop. Ruth leans into the back and checks the babies. Both faces are frozen in smiles of awe.

  They park in the multistorey and Ruth puts Bess into a papoose across her chest. Sandra loads Ian into a swanky pushchair.

  ‘That new?’ Ruth asks.

  ‘Yeah, the old one got a bit dirty. You know Liam, he’s a sucker for the latest model.’

  ‘He certainly is! Looks fancy.’

  Sandra crouches next to her son, wrapping a softer than soft blanket round his knees. Her reply comes a beat late – ‘Suppose’ – and again Ruth wishes she would stop coming out with such tactless remarks.

  Neon strips in the ceiling reflect in Ian’s eyes as Sandra finishes clipping her quiet, pliant little boy into his seat. The lights buzz inside Ruth’s ears and she imagines the electricity popping her brain cells. She holds a hand over Bess’s head as if it could make a difference.

  ‘You ready?’ Sandra says.

  Ruth snaps back to the present. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Anywhere in particular you want to go?’

  ‘Not really.’ She rocks from leg to leg to keep Bess quiet, staring at her own feet, the rhythm a comfort to herself as well as she stacks up a list of things to talk to Sandra about, normal stuff that’s not about her worries and failings, so as not to bore or scare her friend away.

  ‘Do you need anything from the shops?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Perhaps a bit of a wander then and a cuppa somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, why not? Great.’

  ‘You OK, Ruth?’

  Ruth flicks up her head. ‘Oh, sorry.’ She tries to laugh. ‘I’m a bit useless today. Can’t seem to get it together.’

  Sandra rubs Ruth’s arm. Her nails are long and newly painted, and Ruth feels safe in the care of this organized and capable woman.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m here for you.’ Sandra smiles and turns, already moving towards the entrance, and Ruth is drawn along in the slipstream of her best friend.

  Inside the mall, the two women wade through crowds of shoppers purchasing more than anyone surely wants or needs – a whole planet of Easter Islanders. They pass endless displays of perfume and crockery; obscenities of delights. Shop window after shop window attempt to outdo each other with a slightly different cut of trouser or frill of dress. Ruth relaxes in the outlets’ generic glow, assured by the sheen of money and order; nothing bad could happen here. She covets the Skandi crockery she’d once imagined using to serve up dinner to a group of friends, and the skinny jeans on an emaciated mannequin that would have fitted her a year and a half ago, but even if she could afford these luxuries, or had some place to use them, it’s not the jumper, coffee pot or lipstick Ruth wants; it’s the normality they represent, a fraction of which would remain with her at home until she peeled off the cellophane.

  Sandra glides across the concourse, stopping occasionally to point at a sparkly top in a window or touch a toy that’s excited her little boy. Through the sea of heads, Ruth spots a man she vaguely recognizes. He walks towards her with his arm round a woman. As he comes closer, his features snap into focus – he’s an old boyfriend. Ruth finished the relationship shortly before she met Giles, and the man had been heartbroken. She catches her reflection in a shop window, shocked at the disparity between what she wants to look like and the reality. Her back is hunched over the papoose, stomach sagging underneath. Thin, unwashed hair, face weathered by sadness. She turns swiftly towards the shop until the couple have passed behind. Her ex probably wouldn’t have recognized her anyway, but if he had, she’d have had to chat, and all the time he’d have been unable to disguise the pity in his eyes and his smile as he hugged his attractive new girlfriend, thinking, I got off lightly there.

  ‘You OK?’ Sandra touches her friend’s back.

  Ruth starts. ‘Yes, fine, just a bit tired. Need a coffee.’

  ‘OK, let’s go to Costa then, it’s the closest one.’

  Sandra nods at the cafe on the other side of the concourse and down an escalator. A drowning distance. Ruth ducks her head and pushes forward, focusing on the task ahead: get to the cafe, order a drink, have a regular conversation with her friend. She senses people staring and whispering, and checks herself for twitches, hugging her arms round Bess’s back. Being in a crowd amplifies Ruth’s differences that get worse the longer she’s out of regular company. Her failure as a human and a mother at times like these is an open wound, and she wishes she’d stayed home after all. Wherever she ends up is always less comforting than she’d hoped it would be, and at each new location she discovers she’s brought along her same sad self.

  Inside the cafe another group of mothers sit and chat while their babies lie in pushchairs rattling toys. Underneath the table is a minefield of raisins. The women sip biscotti-adorned lattes and wear suede ankle boots, ripped jeans and logoed sweatshirts; the uniform of the still connected. Since school, Ruth’s never felt hugely comfortable in a big gang, but even so, pre-Bess, she’d have held space on a table like this, with a silly joke and one special friend at her side. Now, the impossibility of being part of this sisterhood is a hunger. One of the women reaches down to pick up a biscuit her child has dropped and her eyes connect with Ruth. The woman smiles. Ruth intui
ts only judgement – she’s failed to make the grade – and she scowls back. The stranger’s face drops as she twists back to her coffee. It’s very possible that this contest – the difference between who Ruth wants to be and what she’s currently capable of – is hers alone, and if this is the case, she hates herself even more.

  Ruth finds a table away from the group and slumps down. A TV on the wall is showing an Arctic documentary on silent: an emaciated polar bear scavenges in a bin, icebergs airbrushed by soot calve into the sea. A subtitle scrolls across the screen: ‘The polar ice caps have melted faster in the last twenty years than in the last 10,000.’ Ruth imagines in the very near future how the rivers might burst and her road and the sidings will flood with water, turning into a lake, her house quickly filling up, and she’ll have to grab Bess and run upstairs to escape the rising tide until only the roof is left. And where to go after that? She catches conversational snippets from the tribe of women at the other table as they swap recipes for butternut squash casserole and Spotify playlists, as unconcerned that they are all going to die as Ruth is hardwired to the truth.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Sandra asks.

  ‘Coffee, please. And a muffin.’ Ruth’s fists tighten under the table. ‘Something big and sweet and fattening. I don’t care.’

  Sandra stares without blinking, pausing momentarily inside what she wants to say before sighing and drifting away. As she crosses to the counter she stops to chat to one of the other women, touching a toy, turning it over in her hand, probably complimenting the colour and asking where it’s from. Ruth’s sure Sandra doesn’t know any of them, but Sandra’s smiling anyway, and all eyes have turned to her. The group lean forward, some with their lips parted as if attempting to inhale a little of her glow, that knack she has of offering friendship even though Ruth’s rarely seen her follow through, choosing fat mad Ruth over this group of interesting women. Perhaps Liam’s possessiveness only allows his wife so much free time.

  Ruth slumps back in her chair, her perpetual failure boiling in her stomach. She bets that most of those women had drug-free births, unlike her who fell at the first hurdle by having an emergency caesarean, the shock of major abdominal surgery leaving her with a fear akin to PTSD. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ her health visitor had said during those early days at home. ‘The most important thing is that Bess is safe and well. As are you. You wouldn’t have a tooth out without an anaesthetic, would you?’ ‘A baby is hardly the same as a tooth,’ Ruth had replied, still so fresh out of the workplace that competing to meet targets – new ones she’d interpreted as essential from the antenatal facilitator: to resist intervention, to stay pure and present even through pain, even in an emergency – was the only system she worked to, as if after giving birth she’d get a promotion for endurance, unaware then that being a mother didn’t have a finish line.

  Bess’s cry irritates like a mosquito in a hot room. Ruth unclips her baby from the papoose to sit her on her lap, asking the passing waitress for a jug of hot water to warm the bottle of milk. Ian continues to sleep soundly in his pushchair as Sandra joins the queue at the counter, phone to ear, talking rapidly and gesticulating as if she’s commanding an army. The waitress trudges back to Ruth with a steaming bowl and Ruth immerses the bottle into the water before pushing both out of Bess’s reach. For a fleeting moment, her hand millimetres from the handle, Ruth imagines throwing the scalding water at a man sitting at the next table, and her muscles tense with capability. It would be so easy, the outcome so catastrophic. What’s stopping her? And if she could think of doing that to a stranger, might she be capable of the same impulse with Bess? She flinches in horror, pressing her palm flat to the table as she surveys the room of customers preoccupied with their coffees and conversations and smartphones. Each moment of every day, all these people make choices between impulse and rationale, between wrong and right. If her sister was here, she’d understand Ruth’s internal debate, this sideways thinking that’s her habit. They used to talk about taking chances, had a way of egging each other on, but never into real danger, at least that’s what Ruth believed at the time.

  ‘Everything OK, Ruth?’ Sandra’s standing at Ruth’s side with a laden tray.

  Ruth snatches her hand from the table. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘Really? You look upset.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Ruth rubs her arm. ‘It’s nothing. I just banged my elbow.’

  Sandra settles in her chair, eyeing Ruth. ‘Poor you.’ She places two muffins on the table and Ruth lays into one between gulps of her coffee. Such guilty pleasures in front of petite Sandra, but then two cakes have been bought today, so for once it seems her friend is going to indulge. Sandra sips a mint tea, the steam settling in a dew on her foundation, before she takes a Tupperware box from her bag. It’s a salad she’s brought from home. She pushes the other muffin to the centre of the table and smiles kindly at Ruth. ‘I won’t manage it, but if you want it, feel free.’ Ruth lays a hand on her stomach and waves the cake away as if eating two would be ridiculous, when really all she wants to do is cram the doughy blob into her mouth whole. Sandra says, ‘They made a mistake and put another on the tray. Only charged me for one, though. Might as well make the most of it.’

  ‘Really?’ Ruth looks at the harried baristas, all probably studying for degrees while doing a double shift. She places three pounds on the table. ‘Will that cover it? I don’t want anyone getting into trouble on my behalf.’

  ‘Ruth!’ Sandra says, removing the lid of her salad box. ‘You’re such a goodie two shoes.’

  The waitress stops next to the table and says to Sandra, ‘I’m sorry, madam, but you’re only allowed to eat food bought in the cafe.’

  ‘But my baby is lactose and gluten free. It’ll go through to my milk.’

  The young woman looks as though she’s barely resisting rolling her eyes to the ceiling. It’s probably the tenth time she’s heard this today. ‘Right.’ She clomps away.

  ‘I didn’t know you were still feeding?’ Ruth asks. ‘And when did you give up wheat and dairy?’

  ‘I haven’t and I’m not.’ Sandra pours vinaigrette on the leaves, the smell wincingly strong, probably all vinegar and no oil. ‘But I’m not going to let that Polish bitch tell me what to do.’

  Ruth holds her breath.

  Sandra chews and swallows. ‘Look at your face!’ She winks at Ruth with a little laugh. ‘I’m only joking, silly.’

  The moment to say something is now, but Ruth can’t think how to phrase her shock, unsure what tack to take if Sandra was only making a joke, a joke in very poor taste nonetheless. Even though she and Sandra have ridden out some tough times, it seems Ruth knows less about her friend than she thought, and any disapproval she voices will be a new angle to navigate. Ruth never used to find it tricky to be direct when something was so obviously wrong, but it’s different now she so desperately relies on this one person, a friend who’s been patient and generous with her too. Sandra crunches through her seeds and sprouts, making chit-chat about Ian’s weaning and Liam’s gym routine, as if by giving her previous comment no attention, the words have no charge, or perhaps never even existed. Ruth doubts herself yet again, but saying nothing makes her complicit. She tips her head to one side and opens her mouth, but before she can speak, Sandra snaps forward, her voice loud enough to be heard by anyone sitting close.

  ‘So, what’s been going on? You not coping at the moment?’

  Ruth’s jolted by the exposure, losing the thread of what needed to be said. She fumbles with crumbs on her plate, having hoped for more of a warm-up to this topic. ‘Well, it’s complicated.’ She’s never liked talking about herself, even less so now that everything is in the negative. She clears her throat. ‘It was night-time, that’s all, and I got confused.’

  ‘Not sleeping?’

  ‘Not really, but then Bess is still waking quite a lot.’

  ‘Really? I thought your health visitor helped you get her into a routine?’

  ‘
I got a handle on things for a bit, but . . .’ She sighs – this picking over the inconsequentialities that are the sum of her days ruins her almost as much as her catastrophizing. She closes her eyes a moment before continuing. ‘Every time I get my head around her naps, she moves on to another stage.’

  ‘Perhaps an extra dose of Calpol will do the trick. That’s what I do with Ian. Can’t hurt anyway.’ Sandra opens and shuts her eyes lazily, as if she’s worn out, and sips her tea. ‘And what about the other stuff? What were the police doing round your house?’ Ruth blushes. Sandra leans across the table and lays a hand over Ruth’s, saying more softly, ‘I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just thought you might want to talk about it. I’m here for you, Ruthie.’

  Ian makes a tiny cry and Sandra puts her salad to one side to lift her baby from his pushchair. ‘Oh, you’re such a bubba.’ She kisses him and pops him over her shoulder, rocking back and forth in her seat until he calms. ‘Such a little crybaby.’

  Ruth checks the room to see if anyone’s listening to their conversation, but no one is remotely interested.

  ‘So, what did they want?’ Sandra licks her top lip, her lipstick intact even after eating, and Ruth’s momentarily distracted by the magic of Sandra remaining so well put together. If Ruth herself learnt a few of these tricks, perhaps she’d be more attractive to Giles. Sandra carries on without noticing Ruth’s stare. ‘Of course, you don’t have to say if you don’t want to. But if you need to get it off your chest, you can trust me.’

  ‘Well . . .’ The crumbs on Ruth’s plate have grown fudgey under her fingertips. ‘You see, it was almost like one of the hallucinations I used to have, but it wasn’t. Don’t worry, I know the difference.’

  ‘Really? What happened?’