The Hidden Girls

by Rebecca Whitney

  ‘Yes.’ Ruth should be being more friendly, but she really doesn’t have the time or patience. Monica mustn’t see her going through Frieda’s gate either. She’ll want to know why and might tell Barry, who’ll probably tell Liam. But if Ruth goes back home now, her courage will disappear. She stamps her boots on the ground, compressing the snow to ice.

  The pause lengthens until Monica says, ‘Well, anyway, things are calming down a bit for me now I’ve got Danny into a routine, so I’m around a bit more if you need anything. I know how tough it can be with your first baby.’ She laughs. It’s gentle, reassuring. ‘Wait till you have four, like me!’

  Ruth tips her head up in a weak smile as Monica pulls her gate closed behind her. People are nice, Ruth thinks; it’s her who makes the judgements, who is inaccessible.

  She checks up and down the road before entering Frieda’s yard, immaculate save for the postman’s footprints, now dusting over with fresh powder. Frieda’s lock is stiff and it takes a hefty rattle to get the door to open. Ruth walks inside to a pocket of warm air, the kitchen more ordered than last time she was here, as if Frieda had the foresight to tidy up. She flicks through the junk mail stuck in the letter box and, when she finds nothing of consequence, leaves the post where it is so Liam won’t notice the change. In fact, if she hadn’t have been so flustered, she would have thought to use Frieda’s back door instead. Next time – if there is a next time – she’ll use the other entrance so her footprints won’t show.

  She heads further into the kitchen, building up the courage to deal with the cat. A few padded envelopes are on the worktop, all addressed to Mr Smith like the ones Ruth’s taken in for Liam before. They’re unopened and Ruth decides it’s best to leave them where they are. Next to the packages is Frieda’s camera, back open and empty of film canister. Ruth closes the compartment to lift the heavy machine to her face, so much less portable than her phone, and she again wonders why Frieda bothers with this archaic contraption when digital is infinitely easier. With her eye to the viewfinder, Ruth adjusts the focus on the long lens. Even at its shortest focal point, the room is still a blur. She puts the camera to one side and checks in the fridge. A near-empty milk carton is in the door, but hardly any other food. Frieda’s daily trips to the shops must have been to stock up with only what was needed for the day, only what could be carried, a leftover habit from the pre-refrigeration generation perhaps, though she doesn’t seem that old, just old-fashioned.

  Ruth rinses and refills the milk container with water, which she then pours over the plants arranged around the floor and on the windowsill in the lounge; a few stems have wilted in the sauna of the room, not helped by the fact that all the curtains are shut, even at the back where they’d been open last time Ruth was here. Every light is on, though, and a halogen glow of fake sun glosses the leaves. Ruth unzips her coat to hold the baby monitor up to her ear. Behind the static is the faint in and out of Bess’s sleepy breath. Ruth sweats under the layers of clothing, but to take her coat off would imply permanence, which in turn would mean she’s comfortable having this chore expected of her. A voice comes close to the house. Ruth freezes, terrified that Liam’s about to march through the door. A baby’s cry starts up too – not Bess’s, though, Ruth would recognize that anywhere, and not Ian’s either; he only ever whimpers. The scream passes into the distance, before another noise thumps over the top, this time from inside Frieda’s wall – a loud thunk and grinding. Ruth holds a hand over her mouth to keep her shriek inside. The banging repeats then speeds up as, in the kitchen, the boiler on the wall whomps into life, radiators joining in the chorus. Ruth bends forward to regain her balance, her breath as choppy as her heart. The decrepit boiler is almost as old as Frieda, and it clangs and bangs like a one-man band, pushing hot water through creaking pipes buried inside walls and floorboards. In the lounge ceiling, another pipe clanks as it expands, making the same noise Ruth heard the day she had tea with Frieda.

  With the plants all watered, Ruth creeps up the stairs. ‘OK, let’s get this over with, puss-cat.’ She listens for meows or scratching, but there’s only silence; perhaps the cat’s already dead. Ruth imagines having to explain to Frieda that she didn’t get here in time, and it motivates her to press on. She turns into the front bedroom with the odd acclimatization of turning right rather than left to access this duplicate of her own room, though inside it couldn’t be more different. Walls are painted a deep red and taking up much of the space is a four-poster bed with patterned woodwork. The piece is worn and must have been an ordeal to get upstairs into this tiny room. No one would have bothered if it wasn’t loved; perhaps the bed was inherited from a mother or a grandmother. Generations of Frieda’s family have probably been conceived and born in this bed, maybe even Liam.

  The mattress is heaped with patchwork bedspreads and cushions. Ruth lifts the dangling covers to check underneath the bed. There, sleeping on a tatty blanket, is an ancient black cat. It leisurely opens one eye and takes Ruth in before resettling its head on its paws. Ruth leans back on her haunches, let’s out the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding and looks around the room. In the corner there are a couple of bowls, one with water and one with biscuits. Both are full to the brim. She drags the food towards the bed and slides it underneath, careful not to get her hand too close to the cat. The animal briefly sniffs the dry biscuits, then returns to its snooze. ‘C’mon, eat,’ Ruth says, prodding the bowl slightly closer. ‘You’ve not touched your food since yesterday.’ The cat remains asleep. A dusty metal box is also under the bed and Ruth nudges it into the cat’s blanket to try to get it to move. This time the animal cracks open both eyes and hisses. Ruth snatches her hand away, noticing the initials F. C. etched on the side of the box – they must stand for Frieda Cailleach. The container is full and the lid won’t shut over the stash of envelopes inside. One has fallen to the floor. ‘Express Photos’ is printed on the side and a couple of grainy shots of trees poke out from the sleeve.

  Ruth stands, dusts her knees, as the skinny cat ambles out from under the bed. A cushion on the floor holds the ghost of its shape. The animal settles into the round depression, neither too ill to move, nor too feeble from lack of food, and Ruth’s relieved that her not getting here sooner hasn’t resulted in the animal dying on her watch.

  She turns a circle in the room. On the walls, paintings of flowers and landscapes ping with colour, not the usual beiges Frieda chooses for her clothes. One bird in foliage is faintly cubist; another has a Mexican feel. A couple of photos of birds too, like the ones on the walls downstairs, fairly amateur and most probably taken by Frieda with her long lens. In one picture Ruth recognizes the streak of a train in the background; perhaps the shot was taken from Frieda’s allotment. Another image is of a kestrel hovering above the trees, taken from a different perspective, looking the other way, with the chimney pots of the terraces as its backdrop. Frieda could only have got this shot if she was on the other side of the fence, standing on the sidings, so there must be an entrance, which would explain the fires Ruth sees occasionally, the local kids getting their fix of wilderness; an antidote to the tarmac and bricks of their usual stomping ground.

  Two baby plants on the bedroom sill have the telltale feathery leaves of cannabis, and Ruth glows a little at this frisson of illegality as she waters them, though she has no desire to ever smoke again and return to that brand of paranoia. She makes a small gap in the drawn curtain to put the plants on the daylight side. Hanging from the window latch is a dreamcatcher, the same kind that was posted through Ruth’s door when Bess was born, the one she threw on the sidings only a few days ago.

  On Frieda’s bedside table is a photo of a much younger looking Miss Cailleach with a little boy at her side. He looks about seven, is chubby and cute and hugs into his mum, giving the camera a big smile. Frieda has an arm round him and she radiates happiness. Ruth picks up the picture frame. Underneath the boy’s puppy fat she recognizes a young Liam – or Rainbow as he would have been th
en. He and Frieda are on the allotment at the back with the railway fence behind them, the space overgrown with brambles and nettles, totally different to how it looks today; they must have just moved in. Liam has an earnest face, open and kind, and Ruth thinks she’d like to have a conversation with that little boy who seems innocent enough to have been unself-conscious about his name. She could ask him where it went wrong, and why, of all the paths he could have taken, he chose to reinvent himself into such a difficult man.

  Ruth puts the frame down, impatient to find and clean the litter tray so she can finally get home. She pulls on the latex gloves and steps onto the small landing where two other doors lead off the top of the stairs. She opens the door to the bathroom. Towels and flannels are stacked neatly in a cupboard. Dusty plastic flowers in a vase on the windowsill, and a strong smell of old-lady carbolic over a background of drain. No litter tray here. Ruth runs the hot tap and water steams into the plughole, taking some of the smell with it. Next off the landing, the final door is a mirror of Bess’s bedroom, the room that must have been Liam’s when he lived at home. Ruth tries to imagine a young Liam inside; even though she’s seen the photo of him, he’s the sort of man who seems forever grown, with no soft edges left over from childhood.

  She turns the handle, worried about where the cat’s been going to the toilet since it hasn’t been able to get inside this room. Her hands are wet from the bathroom and the knob slips in her latexed palm. The door shifts millimetres but no further. From across the baby monitor comes a grumble. Ruth turns up the volume to full, the reception poor this far from her house, but it’s still possible to pick out Bess’s movements. A rustle as the little girl fidgets on the sheets, then a grizzle as she resettles. Ruth waits to be certain she’s gone back to sleep, though it won’t be long until Bess is fully awake. She pulls off the gloves and dries her palms on her jeans to get a better grip on the handle, then with a shoulder to the door, Ruth pushes hard. The door is set fast. Now more than anything she wants to get inside and get it over with, and she shoves her full weight into the barrier. With one last bash, the door bursts open.

  A chair that was blocking her entrance splays on the floor. Ruth lurches into the small room. On the bed, directly in front of her, is a skinny girl with wide tear-filled eyes.

  Ruth screams and leaps back onto the landing. ‘Jesus!’ Her thoughts jump to Bess, home alone in bed. If this girl attacks, Ruth won’t get back to her baby. ‘What the hell?’ She presses herself to the wall, attempting if she could to push the space back a few millimetres.

  ‘Please.’ The girl is bunched up, arms tight round her knees. ‘She told me you would come.’

  ‘Who? Does Frieda know you’re here?’

  The girl dips her head into the well of her legs, voice muffled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Slowly, the stranger brings her mouth level with her knees. ‘Please, I am a secret.’

  Ruth is panting. She’s been tricked into Frieda’s house with this dangerous person. ‘This is nuts.’ She glances towards the stairs, her exit clear. Now is the time to run, to leave and never come back.

  As if sensing Ruth is about to bolt, the girl shouts, ‘No, don’t. I only need food.’

  ‘I’m not . . .’ Ruth edges towards the staircase. ‘I can’t do this.’

  The girl leaps forward and grabs Ruth’s sleeve. ‘You must help.’

  Ruth wrenches her coat away. ‘Get off or I’ll call the police.’

  With this, the girl lets go. Ruth bounds down the stairs, two at a time, feet scuffing the skirting as she grabs the handrail to right herself. The girl follows close behind. Through the lounge and towards the front door. Ruth seizes the latch, but the girl springs forward, leaning her weight against the barrier. Small grunts of determination bridge the air between them, each aware that no one outside must know they’re here. Ruth tries to pull the girl out of the way and drags a ragged nail down her forearm in the process. A line of blood springs up on the stranger’s skin.

  ‘Please,’ the girl says. ‘Just until Mrs Frieda gets home.’

  ‘No way, I am not getting involved.’

  ‘I beg you.’ She grips Ruth’s hand, her tremble running into Ruth. ‘There is no one else.’

  Ruth steadies, panting now, the boiler still grumbling behind. Tentatively, the girl takes a step away from the door. As she does so, Ruth lunges at the latch, and with her other arm she pushes the girl with full force, flinging her to the opposite wall where her head cracks against the architrave of the lounge door. The girl yelps and wraps two hands over her skull, curving her chest and shoulders inwards as if she’s attempting to shrink, to disappear if she could.

  Ruth pauses, flattens herself to the door. ‘My God.’ She did this, she is capable of this force. ‘I’m so sorry. Are you OK?’

  The girl is rigid, waiting to deflect more of what Ruth might send. Ruth’s fingers loosen round the door handle as she takes her first proper look at the young woman: a teenager, barely eighteen, possibly younger, dressed in Frieda’s clothes; bony shoulders under the green fleece, legs disappearing inside voluminous slacks.

  A whisper from the girl. ‘You saw me before.’ Her words are muffled behind her arms. ‘And you didn’t tell.’

  ‘When? When did I see you?’

  ‘Before, when it was dark. I was in your garden.’

  Ruth clasps her stomach over the invisible punch as the girl slowly removes her hands from her head to reveal her slender neck. Possibilities hurtle towards Ruth and she speeds through them, arriving in the twisted logic of being well enough to consider her illness. Even in the familiar terrain of her psychosis, could her mind be capable of such fantastical leaps, of summoning up a three-dimensional being who feels pain? A girl she imagined all those months ago living in a wall of her house, who’s now demanding to be fed. With what? With Ruth’s sanity? It can’t be possible.

  Bess grumbles over the monitor. Ruth’s baby is at home. She’s alone. Ruth needs to do the fastest thing to get out of here. She summons up words. ‘What do you want?’

  The girl hugs her arms round her waist. Tears collect at her chin and drop to the floor. She makes no sound.

  Again Ruth speaks, more forcefully this time. ‘How do I make you go away?’

  She won’t look at Ruth. ‘After you saw me, Mrs Frieda found me.’ Blood has trickled down her arm and blots her sleeve. ‘She said you were kind.’

  The sensation of raking a nail across the girl’s skin is still fresh in Ruth’s fingertip. An impulse had unlocked in her, giving her permission to do what was necessary, to create pain if need be, and the rush of it was barely within her control. She’d been hot with fear, of needing to win.

  She reaches out to the girl, whose skinny body is still compacted in terror. ‘Does it hurt?’

  The girl flinches from Ruth’s hand. ‘I only need food.’ She rocks back and forth, holding on to herself. ‘Frieda did not know the hospital would be so soon.’

  Noise bursts over the baby monitor. Bess is building up to a cry.

  The girl shakes, knees hard points under her trousers, words almost inaudible. ‘Soon I will go back.’

  ‘Back where? Into the wall?’ Even as Ruth says this, it sounds ridiculous, but the act of speaking the worst helps dismiss some of her fear.

  The young woman holds her bottom lip with her teeth, skin blanching with the pressure. ‘Are you mad?’

  Bess is crying hard now, anxiety tugging at Ruth to get home. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘I’m afraid I am.’

  There is no more space in Ruth’s life to absorb this new problem, and there’s not a single soul she can ask for help, her own fallible judgement all she has to rely on. She’s trapped between two people she’s responsible for, only one of whom she fully trusts is real. She needs to be well, to prioritize herself and her baby.

  Slowly, she turns, leaving this world in opposite, aware also that she’ll need to do more to make it disappear. Who would ever bel
ieve this girl is hiding at Frieda’s, and how can Ruth be sure, if she brought Giles or the police here, that the girl wouldn’t disappear? Either from Ruth’s imagination or by darting through the back door. Giles must never find out. If he does, what they rediscovered last night will evaporate. Wife and husband will again become patient and carer.

  She opens the door. The young woman’s mouth hangs open, palm pressed over the cut on her arm, eyes rimmed red. Ruth takes a last hard look.

  The girl says, ‘My name is Leila.’

  Ruth shuts the door behind her.

  12

  Ruth is stiff with tension as she lifts Bess from her cot. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetie.’ She kisses her baby’s head and hugs her close. ‘Mummy didn’t mean to leave you for so long, I’m really sorry.’ The little girl’s cheeks are slippery with tears. She calms a little in Ruth’s arms, but milk is what she needs.

  Downstairs, Ruth paces the room while the bottle warms, footsteps driving her thoughts as she goes over and again what’s next door and what is possible to believe. Ruth is getting better, is currently too healthy to have dreamt up another apparition, yet her mind hasn’t always been her own and she can’t completely discount the possibility of it running on auto again. There have, after all, been other hallucinations recently. But those times she’d been barely awake, and none of the visions had been like this: a talking, bleeding human. As soon as Ruth sits she stands again, legs jumpy with the energy of needing absolute surety.

  Bess cries and stretches for the floor. Ruth holds on tight to this living, squirming nugget of normality, the only creature she’s wholly confident is of this world. One-handed, she searches her wallet for the non-emergency number the PCSO gave her, and she seesaws the battered card in her fingers, pressing two digits on the phone, finger hovering to continue as she anticipates the irreversible connection she’s about to make. Would the police even register her concern if she rang? And if she insisted they come, those officers whose presence still lingers at the edges of her ineptitude, they’d sink into her sofa, watching, judging, waiting for the silence to be filled with Ruth’s stammer: ‘I found a girl in the house next door. The owner knows she’s there, so I’m not even sure it’s an issue. But the bigger problem is, I may have made her up.’ She cancels the call.