The Hidden Girls

by Rebecca Whitney

  The heat in the front room is stifling. Ruth breaks into a sweat under her layers of clothing and unbuttons her coat, but doesn’t take it off. Hung on one wall are a few framed photos of birds, the shots amateur-looking, probably taken with that camera in the kitchen. The other three walls are crowded with mirrors, plus more standing on the sanded wooden floor, and the small amount of late-afternoon sun creeping through the back window bounces off the reflective surfaces, brightening the room and expanding the space beyond its meterage. A blond-wood sofa and two geometrically patterned chairs sit around a low glass coffee table, and the remaining floor area as well as the windowsill are filled with plants: succulents and cacti, plus a few taller ferns, their leaves glossed with health. A couple of star-shaped decorations made from twigs, probably the ones Miss Cailleach collects from her allotment, are placed on the mantelpiece, and what looks like a craft table with string, scissors and scalpel has been pushed into one corner. On top is another twiggy circle with a few feathers attached. A hot, herby smell catches in Ruth’s throat, familiar and not unpleasant, like incense but more potent. Everything else, the configuration of the walls and doors, is the same as Ruth’s house, only set out in opposite. Known but different, like returning to a holiday home. A stovetop kettle whistles, followed by the chink of a teaspoon on china. Homely noises that settle inside Ruth, taking her back to simpler times when she’d been small and looked after and only had to think about having fun with her sister: making dens in their bunk beds, talking in their own funny language that used to wind Mum up. Her legs weaken as she edges towards the sofa.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ the woman calls from the kitchen, ‘sit yourself down.’

  Ruth flops instantly, feeling guilty at her betrayal of Sandra, uneasy too that she’s being so readily coerced by comfort. The muscles in Ruth’s cheeks have relaxed into a smile, a pleasant suppleness, and she’s filled with the memory of a different version of herself – calm with the space to be inquisitive, and that gentle confidence she used to possess – close but elusive. She shrugs off her coat as Miss Cailleach hands her a mug with leaves floating on the top.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman says, ‘I’ve run out of PG. Only got white tea left.’ Her hands are patterned with the liver spots of the pre-sun-screened generation. She must have been an older mum when she had Liam. ‘Anyway, you seem like you could do with some looking after.’

  Liam’s mother has off-white eyes and sunken cheeks, the skin loose at her jowls, but underneath, the structure of her face is pronounced. Here in her home where she can be herself, the lift of her head holds the grace of beauty, wholly at odds with the old lady Ruth had witnessed before. The woman takes the chair opposite and smiles at Ruth, who glows in this quick favour, tipping her face to the floor to hide her pleasure at the kind attention minus the usual concern. She reminds herself to stay alert, hasn’t totally forgotten what might or might not have been said the other day, but of all the medicine Ruth’s had, this is the most instant and gratifying she can remember. She blows steam from the too-hot tea, thinking that today is not the day to challenge this woman about what is very probably Ruth’s mental health issue.

  ‘My name’s Frieda by the way. Nice to meet you properly at last.’

  ‘Ah, right. Yes. I’m Ruth.’

  ‘And your baby?’

  ‘She’s called Bess. Bessie. She’s six months old.’

  ‘Such a bonny wee thing. A sweetheart.’ Frieda cups her scalding mug in both hands, like Ruth’s mum used to. Asbestos hands she’d called it, toughened up from years of domestic work. ‘It’s not easy, though, is it?’ Frieda continues. ‘Especially when you’re sensitive, like you are. No one understood it in my day either. Had them snooping around in my affairs all too often, telling me I wasn’t the right kind of mum, but you learn after a while to stay under the radar.’

  Ruth holds a confused smile, not sure of the correct reply to this woman’s sudden and intimate revelation. ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Did you get the present I put through the letter box for your wee girl?’

  Ruth glances over at the craft table and the half-made dreamcatcher. Of course. ‘That was from you? I didn’t realize. There was no card.’

  ‘Gifts are better given without the need for thanks.’

  ‘Right, yes. Well, thank you anyway.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me, hen. It was a pleasure.’

  Ruth swallows.

  Frieda continues, ‘So, how do you like living on the street?’

  ‘It’s OK, I guess. I’m getting used to it.’ Ruth’s so accustomed to her anxiety getting the better of her that it’s a surprise to find she’s relatively settled, even with the strangeness of this new person and her odd manner. Perhaps the antidepressants are working already after all, they’re certainly easing the chronic insomnia that’s been messing with her head. The sofa cushions are fat and soft, and Ruth sinks backwards. Behind the double-glazing, street sounds are muffled and the gentle rhythm of a clock wraps Ruth in its hypnotic certainty. More than anything, she wants to lie down on the sofa and curl instantly into sleep. ‘It’s just that . . .’ She fights the sudden heaviness in her body with a big sip of tea. The liquid burns her tongue.

  Frieda’s sitting to attention, waiting patiently for Ruth to continue. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, for a start no one can ever find the place when they come to visit. It’s a bit out of the way, I suppose.’

  ‘The energy can throw people off direction. The houses themselves are good, but not the land they’re built on.’

  ‘Really? How do you mean?’

  The neighbour leans forward and speaks quietly. ‘A lot’s happened here over the years, right under our feet.’ Her eyes don’t leave Ruth’s. ‘And not all good.’

  Ruth’s seat tilts a fraction and she holds the cushion with her free hand before realizing the gravitational upset is in her head. It’s the same unbalancing she experienced at the gate last time she talked to Frieda, but instead of heeding this warning, Ruth finds she’s closing the space between herself and her neighbour, like a horror film she can’t turn away from. She whispers, ‘In what way?’

  ‘Years ago, where we’re sitting was woodland. Highwaymen used to lie in wait for their victims.’

  ‘My husband told me about that.’

  ‘Can you feel them?’ Miss Cailleach lowers her cup. ‘That kind of evil gets stuck, like cold fat in a drain.’

  Ruth sits upright. ‘No, I don’t . . . I can’t.’ Tea splashes on her knuckles, her calmness so easily undone. She bites down, jaw hurting.

  The woman smiles weakly before looking away, as if she’s marking Ruth off her team. ‘Oh, don’t mind me, I’m always getting ahead of myself. Telling people things they don’t want to hear.’ The edges of her mouth are turned down even though she’s attempting to look happy, perhaps betraying the hardness Liam spoke of. ‘Too much mumbo jumbo, that’s what Rainbow tells me anyway.’

  ‘Rainbow?’

  ‘My son.’

  Ruth suppresses a smirk. ‘That’s an unusual name. Does Liam have a brother?’

  Frieda tuts. ‘Oh sorry, of course you know him as Liam. He never did like the name I gave him.’ Her fingers worry a thread on her trousers. ‘As soon as Rainbow met that woman, things started to change. He wanted to fit in, I suppose, but seems she thought he needed a complete overhaul.’ She talks quietly to her lap. ‘Nothing wrong with him before, if you ask me, but then he probably had no choice but to follow through with whatever she wanted, otherwise she’d put the thumbscrews on.’ Ruth’s neighbour turns her face to the ceiling as if the answer’s up there. ‘Liam was his father’s name, you see. I imagine Rainbow wanted something of his dad as he never got anything else out of the useless shite.’ Ruth blinks and the woman sighs. ‘And then when my boy got married, she got him to take her surname too, so now he totally belongs to her.’ Frieda’s eyes lock back on Ruth. ‘He wasn’t always ashamed of me, you know.’

  Ruth grabs at anything tha
t might get them back to a normal line of conversation. ‘We’re good friends, actually.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him round your place, with the lovely Sandra.’

  Frieda holds on to the ‘s’ in Sandra’s name as if she’s not sure where to spit it. Ruth can’t help but be intrigued by this spiked perspective on her friend, and it’s obvious now she thinks about it that the feeling would be mutual. Ruth’s protective of Sandra, though, and she collects herself to stick up for her. If it wasn’t for the fact that Liam is Frieda’s son, Ruth would tell her it’s him who’s the problem. She swaps a look with Frieda, each of them silently evaluating their own version of events.

  Perhaps sensing the need to justify herself, Frieda launches into more. ‘Sandra has her own set of rules. Baffling to the rest of us, mind you, but we’re still expected to follow them. One misstep and you’ll be cast aside for something you’ll never understand. You’ll no’ be the first and you’ll no’ be the last. She gets through people, that one.’ Frieda gulps her tea, blinking the steam from her face. ‘Rainbow – I mean Liam – well, we were very close. He used to be such a lovely boy, but you’d never know it now by the way Sandra talks about him. Puts the blame for everything at his feet, makes out he’s fussy and greedy, but he never used to be until he met her. It’s all lies, they’re all her own demands.’ Ruth’s conscious that Frieda probably doesn’t have many people to talk to, but she’s still worried about her own duplicity in not defending her friend and she opens her mouth to butt in – just as Frieda takes a big breath and carries on. ‘And now he spends more time chasing money than he cares to spend with me, so I never get the chance to make peace with him. He’s got his fingers in so many pies, I’ve lost count.’ A large leaf falls from a plant in the corner, hitting the floor with a surprisingly loud thunk. Frieda doesn’t flinch. ‘He’s only interested in me now if I do what he says, but I won’t bow to his idea of how I should live my life.’

  The woman shuffles forward on her chair, closer to Ruth, who’s stunned anew by being dropped so fast into this family dispute with its multitude of sharp angles. This sharing of secrets is now a recognizable Cailleach family trait, a trap Ruth doesn’t want to get caught in again. For the first time she understands why people falter when she herself shares too quickly, when her neediness to be close takes her beyond the etiquette of gentle introductions; it’s not rudeness, it’s shock.

  Frieda continues, ‘I’ve told him he’s no’ welcome in my house any more unless I can see my grandson. It’s a sad thing when your son takes the side of his wife against his own mother.’

  Ruth’s brain tries to catch up with all this information – perhaps the new medication’s making her confused – and she chugs through a list of potential replies, searching for a way to console this woman who’s been denied her grandchild, fearful too of being levered into a dispute beyond her sway.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she says. ‘They’ve always been very nice to me.’

  Frieda huffs with a squint at Ruth, as if she’s trying to read her small print. Ruth looks down to avoid the spotlight of her neighbour’s gaze, scared it will reveal she already knows of Sandra’s intent to keep Ian from Frieda. Glancing around, she tries to find the clock she can hear ticking, wanting confirmation of the time that seems to have rushed past, desperate for a reason to get away from this woman in whose issues she feels semi-culpable, too polite not to have a plausible excuse to leave.

  Frieda pats Ruth’s knee, the creases around her knuckles as defined as if they’d been drawn on with pen. ‘Of course they have, hen, of course. Well, if you ever need me to help with your wee one, I’m right here. I’ve got all the time in the world, you just have to say.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Thanks.’

  ‘You and me are cut from the same cloth, hen. Sometimes we have to be brave to protect those less fortunate than ourselves.’

  Ruth fidgets inside her unease, unable to connect the intensity of Frieda’s statement with her preamble. The whole mystic shebang about the energy of this place and the way Frieda keeps digging into the nub of what she wants to say, all flare Ruth’s neuroses, but since her illness, her people sensors have been screwed in sideways and it’s difficult to tell what’s normal any more. She glances at the door. It’s close. She could make it out of here in five seconds if she wanted. Fuck social niceties, any sensible person would get the hell out. She slides to the edge of the sofa. Momentarily and accidentally she’s millimetres from Frieda’s face. Even though the woman’s eyes are dull, the dark of her irises is intense; persistent and demanding. What must it be like to be Frieda’s age and so alone, having failed her only child who doesn’t even want to be associated with her by name? Ruth understands only too well how rejection feeds crazy thinking, how the membrane between fiction and reality can be thinned by loneliness. It’s no wonder fantasy fills in for company at Frieda’s house. Perhaps Frieda’s right, both she and Ruth are cut from the same cloth. Both are outsiders, and without a good friend it can be hard to break the cycle. Thank God for Sandra, Ruth thinks, she’s lucky to have at least one close friend.

  From above their heads comes a thump. Ruth’s eyes jump to the ceiling.

  ‘My cat,’ the woman says quickly. ‘She’s very old, and not well. You won’t have seen her because she doesn’t go outside. Can’t even handle the stairs any more, so she stays in my bedroom.’

  ‘Really?’ When Ruth was a toddler she’d been mauled by her auntie’s semi-feral moggy, and since then she’s never lost her fear of cats. Her eyes stay on the ceiling as she reaches to place her cup to the table, preparing her exit at last. The cup misses, tips over. Tea spills on the table. ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.’ Pale dregs drip through the gaps of the glass table, pooling on the floor and sinking into the rug.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Frieda stands and shuffles to the kitchen surprisingly fast, as if her body-memory is still set to before she was old. ‘Not a problem,’ she says as she returns with a tea towel.

  Ruth attempts to take the cloth to clean up for herself, and there’s a miniature tug-of-war as the woman refuses to let go. Frieda dabs the rug with her face too close to Ruth, and Ruth leans back, chin compressing into a roll at her neck as she tries to disappear into the cushions.

  Another bump from upstairs, bigger this time, and Ruth yelps. The floorboards creak as if something’s travelling over them.

  Frieda eases herself up from the floor, knees clicking. ‘The cat has a litter tray up there. If I take her to the vet, they’ll say I’ve got to have her put down.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Ruth brings the empty cup back to her mouth where it clashes with her teeth. Without looking, she takes a sip, but there’s only dregs left and a tea leaf catches in her throat. She coughs, searching the table for tissues.

  Frieda says, ‘I’m not sure what would happen to my cat if I wasn’t around.’ She snakes the damp tea towel through her hands as she sits on the sofa. Aside from the new tea stain, it’s the whitest cloth Ruth’s ever seen. ‘If I ran into trouble, I’d need someone close by to look after her, someone who was kind.’

  ‘Um, I’m sure nothing’s going to happen to you.’ Ruth’s tone is faux-bright. ‘I’m sure, you know, that Liam would step in if you . . . well, you don’t need to worry.’

  ‘He hates cats. Do you like cats? I’ve seen you putting out food for that fox.’ The woman’s head shakes a little, and Ruth wonders if she’s nervous, and what she has to fear from Ruth. ‘I know you do what you think is right, and not what others want you to do, like that Barry. I saw him laying some contraption in his allotment. Probably a trap for the fox. I’ve half a mind to go over there and drop a rock on it.’

  Ruth checks her wrist even though she doesn’t wear a watch. ‘I’m really sorry, but I have to go. Before it gets dark. My husband’s waiting for me.’

  Frieda clamps her mouth shut, eyes squinting. ‘That’s a shame, we were just getting started.’ She pats her knees a couple of times before pressing her palms to her thighs
and pushing herself to standing. ‘I’m sorry, like I said before. I’m always getting ahead of myself.’

  Ruth wrestles with the bulk of her coat, feigning a laugh. ‘Don’t worry about it. I just have to get home, that’s all. I told Giles I was only dropping the package in to you.’

  Frieda moves round to the back of Ruth to help guide her arms into her coat. She speaks quietly, as if someone might be listening. ‘It’s the same as that time we spoke at your gate. I said too much then as well.’ She circles to Ruth’s front and begins fastening her coat buttons from the bottom up. Ruth is frozen in the awkwardness of Frieda’s hands so close. ‘And I wanted to say I’m sorry I didn’t support you with the police. It would only have made things worse.’ Ruth balloons breath in her lungs in an attempt to keep herself steady as Frieda continues, ‘When you’ve lived in the kind of places I have, you learn to keep your head low, to behave. Everyone here is the same. It’ll take you some getting used to, I expect. Best keep the authorities out of it from now on. We don’t need them snooping around, pointing fingers at the wrong people. Find our own way to sort out the problems.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Ruth moves fast towards the door.

  Frieda raises a hand to stop her, as she did with Liam, her palm oddly commanding. Smoky breath drifts into Ruth’s face. ‘But you remember what I said and you know what you saw.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I didn’t see anything. It was just a dream.’

  Frieda pops in the last button at Ruth’s neck, the one she always leaves undone, and it squashes her windpipe. ‘Well,’ Frieda says. ‘If you ever want to discuss it or if you see anything else, no matter what time of day or night, I’m right here.’

  ‘I won’t need to, I’m fine. I’m getting better. There’s nothing wrong with me.’ On the kitchen counter the package she brought over has been opened and a sprinkle of dry leaves has spilt on the worktop. The smell clots the air, bringing with it a memory of teenage Ruth, getting stoned or high, attempting to blot out the pain of losing her sister with anything she could lay her hands on, messing with the chemistry of her already fragile brain and getting stuck in a loop of paranoia as her parents’ frustration and anger mounted. To her mum and dad, Ruth was escalating the family’s intolerable chaos, wilfully so, and the depression she subsequently fell into was deemed a kind of righteous penance for having brought the whole calamity upon them all. Ruth lunges towards the exit.