Hidden Hours

by Sara Foster

  She falls onto her bed and drifts into a doze.

  The next time she comes to, every single thing in the world seems to have changed.

  46

  running

  Preston Harlen puts down the paper with a sigh. Every time he sees The Atlantic mentioned in conjunction with Arabella Lane’s death, he can’t help but squirm with embarrassment. He has already had the coppers round asking him about drugs in the restaurant. The whole thing is terrible, but he’s worked for years on this menu, this business plan, his clientele, and he doesn’t want his dream crashing because of the friggin’ notoriety of some politician’s daughter.

  ‘You understand where I’m coming from, don’t you?’ he says as he explains all this to his wife.

  Mia smiles vaguely, choosing to tactfully ignore him, since Arabella had masterminded her book campaign.

  Eleanor is squashed into a corner seat on the first deck of one of London’s red-top buses, watching the city go by. The world outside looks the same as yesterday, but things are changing for Eleanor. She can no longer resist the avalanche of memories. Her experience of time is not the steady ticking of clock hands any more, nor the solemn click of a turning number. She is unaware of the drizzle on the windows. As the bus judders along, she puts her fingers to the pulse on her wrist, counts the beats of her heart, trying to reset herself against that steady rhythm. But despite the crush of bodies all around her, she is far away, back in the darkened recess of Solomon’s house, on the night she woke up there in her nightdress, shivering.

  No.

  She shifts in her seat, fighting the memories. She is only twenty-one years old and already she has witnessed two terrible deaths. Why is it that the one she needs to remember is a gaping blank; while the one she wants to forget is imprinted above all else in her mind?

  When the police let her go, she had read sympathy in the faces of Kirby and Prashad. It seemed as though they believed her. That should have been a relief, but it hasn’t made their questions or their revelations any easier to bear.

  She had turned down a ride to Harborne Grove. She was dreading going back there. Once outside, she had called the only friend she could think of. ‘I realise I’ve been acting a bit crazy today,’ she had said when Will answered. ‘Do you have time to meet me? I need . . . I need a friend.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Will, the kindness in his voice making her cry. He had given her step-by-step directions to a pub in the city. His local, he’d said. He’d be there as fast as he could.

  She focuses beyond the steamed-up bus window. Solomon had once said he was from London. Had he strolled down Bond Street years ago, young and carefree, no inkling of the future, of how things would end for him half a world away? Don’t think too hard, she wills herself, or you will summon his ghost. She shifts her focus again. Outside, she can see men in anoraks and women in beautiful woollen coats. Men in smart overcoats and women in puffa jackets. Kids are bouncing rainbows of colour. Most of the shops and houses are festooned with tinsel. There are lights everywhere. Soft fairy lights frame the edges of windows, or wind around Christmas trees, indoor and out. Decorations glint on lampposts, or dazzle where they are propped in the middle of roundabouts. Smears of colour bounce from car lights and phone lights and buildings. They make streaks of brightness that flare for a moment like fleeting thoughts, and then disappear as quickly as they come. Some people move in groups, huddling close, talking and laughing. Those alone travel purposefully, heads down, keen to reach the places they belong.

  And where was the last place Eleanor had truly belonged? Could it really have been in a dead woman’s art room eleven years ago?

  Perhaps. It’s certainly not on the top floor of a townhouse, choking each night as the questions rise like hot air to overwhelm her. Nor had it been in the sheds and houses of the outback. And even though she and her mother had lived in their modest townhouse for nearly a decade, Eleanor had never felt she belonged there either. When is she going to find a place she can feel fully herself?

  The swaying bodies in the bus are cramped together, sharing oxygen in the damp air, shoulders hunched over handheld devices, only one or two people talking. A week ago Eleanor would have found it all fascinating. Now it is overwhelming. She’s giddy, wants to call out to everyone and everything to cease moving until her head has stopped spinning. She would close her eyes, but she is afraid of drifting off and missing her stop. However, while she remains conscious she is terrified of the ghostly faces crowding in on her. They are whispering things she doesn’t want to hear.

  As the bus progresses slowly with the heavy traffic down Tottenham Court Road, Eleanor longs to curl up and sleep. She doesn’t know how she’ll find the energy to even get up out of her seat. Finally, the bus reaches her stop, and she drags herself to her feet and heads down the stairs, squeezing past the people who are packed into the aisles. The cold air rushes to greet her as she jumps off the final step onto the road, and she pulls her scarf over her nose and mouth, then heads down one of the side streets, away from the main road, until she sees the Mighty Oak pub on the corner.

  As she approaches the pub a blast of nerves makes her pause. How is she going to explain everything to Will? Why does she want to, when he was a virtual stranger a week ago? But he’s the only person reaching out to her, he’s the only person who seems to care about what she might be going through, and she’s desperate for someone to talk to. Suddenly, she thinks of her mother, and realises that Gillian hasn’t been in touch at all today. Now she thinks about it, her mother hadn’t contacted her yesterday either, had she? She frowns, forgetting everything else for a moment. That can’t be right – Gillian never leaves her alone for this long. A new pang of fear strikes her. Please don’t let there be something wrong back home too.

  Her hands begin to tingle. It’s the cold, she tells herself – but it’s also an unwanted reminder of the anxiety that kept her trapped in her room as a teenager, refusing to go out for weeks or sometimes months. Until she was taking the medication again. She reaches the door and steps inside quickly, before she can dwell on this neurosis, unwinding her scarf and pulling off her gloves.

  She spots Will straightaway, but he doesn’t notice her for a moment – he’s staring into his pint looking solemn. She pictures herself going across and putting a hand on his, or an arm over his shoulder. She imagines leaning forward and feeling his warm breath close to her cold lips. She remembers what he said on the phone – I want to take you ice skating again after all this is over, so I can hold your hand – and the way he comforted her and held her hand as they headed to the memorial. These small things suggest something more between them, and yet the lure is making her nervous. He’s attractive, certainly, but is that what draws her to him, or is it that he’s the only one offering her support?

  She hesitates, but then, as though he can feel her eyes on him, he looks up and sees her. She waits for him to smile as he waves her over, but he doesn’t. His face is serious, and full of questions.

  Her legs grow less steady as she makes her way past the early-evening drinkers towards him. As she reaches the table Will jumps up and puts a hand on her elbow as she slumps into her seat.

  ‘Eleanor? What’s happened?’

  His voice is full of fear. She glances up at him, can feel her chest rising and falling as she says, ‘I saw Arabella, Will. I was there – I may have witnessed what happened.’

  The colour drains from Will’s face. ‘Have you remembered something?’

  ‘No. The police, they showed me – they have CCTV. I ran away, Will. They think she waited for someone at a monument on the Embankment – they called it Cleopatra’s Needle. There’s some footage of a man going towards it, but he’s holding an umbrella, you can’t make out who it is. What if I stood and watched when I could have helped her? How come I can’t remember it?’

  She leans over, puts her head in her hands, breathing hard, trying not to break down.

  ‘There was a man there?’ Will repeats, as
though he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. ‘They’ve seen it on the CCTV?’

  ‘Yes. What if Nathan waited for her after the party? What if he followed her when everyone else had gone? They’ll have to question him more now, won’t they? I’m scared of what he might be planning for me if he wants to cover this up.’

  She is trembling now, and Will jumps up and comes around to her. ‘Come on,’ he says, his tone a mix of concern and urgency, ‘we can’t stay here while you’re like this. Let’s go back to my place. We’ll order some food and try to figure out what next. Don’t worry, Eleanor, it’ll be okay.’

  She gets up and lets him lead her out of the warm pub. Once in the frosty evening air her mind begins to quieten, even though she’s still trembling. They don’t talk much as they travel through a few quiet lanes, until eventually, they arrive at a tall brick building. ‘As you’re about to see, my place is pretty cosy,’ Will says, opening the main door with a pass key. ‘Come on in.’

  She follows him up a flight of stairs and a short way down a long featureless corridor. At one of the doors Will stops and rummages for his keys. ‘Here you go.’ He opens the door and holds it so she can go in first. Once they are in, he locks and deadbolts the door behind them.

  The apartment is not as small as she’d expected. There’s a lounge area, with plush furnishings, a large flat-screen TV and evenly spaced speaker system. A small dining area adjacent to a gleaming white kitchenette. Next to that, a door leads to what she suspects will be the bedroom and bathroom.

  ‘Sit down,’ Will says, ‘and I’ll get you something to drink. Do you want a hot drink or something stronger?’

  ‘Tea, please,’ she replies.

  ‘See, you’re picking up our English habits already,’ Will calls as he walks over to the kitchen.

  She settles back onto the comfortable sofa, staring at the blank screen of the TV while Will makes the drinks. This all seems so normal. For these few moments she could almost forget that the rest of her life is a nightmare.

  Eventually Will comes across with two mugs of tea, sets them down and says, ‘Okay, fill me in, from the beginning.’

  The beginning.

  It sounds so simple. She tries to picture her life as a storybook, its chapters laid down one after the other, like stepping stones through a stream. Instead she sees torn pages strewn across parched grass as the ground begins to burn. She watches them smoulder, shrivelling at the edges, going up in smoke before she can find the one she wants.

  ‘Eleanor?’ Will touches her arm. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then I need to start at my beginning,’ she murmurs, turning to him. ‘I need to tell you why this doesn’t feel like the beginning of a nightmare to me, but the end of one.’

  Will frowns as her thoughts tumble backwards, flailing until she begins to speak. She describes the move to the country, when she was nine. She outlines the cracks that slowly appeared in the family, ‘. . . until one night, when the house was almost finished, my mum and dad decided to go out.’ She takes a long, slow breath, readying herself to say the next words.

  ‘And when I woke up, I wasn’t in my own bed.’

  September 2005

  When Solomon brings her round she screams at the shock of being so far from home. She is rattling the door to Lily’s room, trying to unlock it again even though she has no key. Solomon is in his pyjamas, gently shaking her. ‘Eleanor? Eleanor?’ She looks down in the dim moonlight to see that her feet are bare, her toes caked with mud.

  ‘What’s happened, Eleanor?’ Solomon asks urgently. ‘What are you doing here?’

  But before she has time to answer, the world behind them explodes.

  47

  protection

  September 2005

  Solomon and Eleanor freeze as flames shoot high into the air, beyond the ridge of the hill. The fireball rises and falls, gone so fast that Eleanor might question if she had seen it at all, but for the flickering glow that remains in the distance.

  Solomon recovers first and staggers away from Eleanor towards the hill. As he stumbles up in his pyjamas, Eleanor watches, unable to move. When he reaches the crest of the hill he doesn’t hesitate, turning on his heel, running back down towards her, shouting, ‘Get in the truck, Eleanor! In the truck now!’ When she still doesn’t move he comes across and grabs her roughly by the arm. ‘We need to go.’

  He half-helps and half-drags her away from the house towards the waiting vehicle. His grip is surprisingly strong. Eleanor is trembling as he pulls her with him.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks once they are inside and Solomon has gunned the engine. Her body is still shaking violently; she can’t seem to stop it.

  ‘Are your family in the house?’

  Eleanor tries to focus. Her head still feels strange, both heavy and fuzzy. ‘My brother is, I think. My mum and dad have gone out, but they might be back by now.’ She gathers enough composure to look at the clock on the dashboard – nine-thirty – and tries to remember what they said. ‘I’m not sure if they’ll be there.’

  ‘Let’s hope they are; let’s hope to god they saw that.’

  Eleanor shakes her head to try to dispel the grogginess, but this whole scene is so disorientating, she cannot clear it. ‘What was that?’

  ‘My shed – going up in flames. My side’s clear, but there’s a lot of fuel on your land. I told your dad he needed to work on his fire breaks – why didn’t he listen to me? Bloody city cowboys, think they know everything.’

  ‘Should we call the fire brigade?’

  ‘I don’t have a phone.’ Solomon’s rough voice wobbles as they travel fast down the bumpy corrugated driveway that leads away from his property.

  ‘I thought everyone had a phone.’

  ‘Not everybody needs one!’ he shouts.

  She doesn’t dare say anything.

  ‘Let’s go and get your family, get your phone.’

  ‘He didn’t have a phone?’ Will cuts in, incredulous.

  Eleanor shrugs. ‘He was an old man, with no family, no visitors. Perhaps he couldn’t afford it. I wonder from a few things my parents said if he was actually really poor. When I think back to that winter we lived there, his house was cold, he was wearing so many layers of clothing . . . I just didn’t connect the dots at the time.’

  She stops. She can tell some of this story, but not all of it. Not yet.

  Will seems to sense how distressed she is. He strokes her back and passes her the cup of tea, and she tries to steady herself by taking a few long, slow sips. Even so, she is not really in this small room any more, but still rattling along in the dark in Solomon’s car, hanging on as he drives erratically over the unsealed road.

  September 2005

  A ute races by in the opposite direction, heading away from the house way too fast. Eleanor turns to watch it go, and remembers Aiden’s friends.

  ‘Running away, no doubt,’ Solomon mutters darkly as he drives. ‘I knew those boys were up to no good, messing around down there with all my stuff. I shoulda stopped it long ago, before this could happen. But I didn’t, you know, because I thought they might turn nasty. And now look what’s happened.’

  Eleanor’s not sure what he’s talking about, but to her horror, as they draw closer to the house the car begins to be softly pelted with debris, some black, some still glowing orange. Their new house, the house her father has built by hand, is an ominous silhouette, framed by a background of flickering orange light.

  ‘Where are they all?’ Solomon grunts, pulling up but leaving the engine running. The smoke and the darkness make it hard to see anything, but Eleanor feels an inexorable pull towards the house. She goes to open the door of the car but Solomon stops her. ‘No, Eleanor, it’s too dangerous. Wait, let me think.’

  She watches more of the embers float towards the ground. Ahead of them, a few patches of grass begin to smoulder.

  Solomon
winds down his window. ‘Aiden!’ he calls. ‘AIDEN! GILLIAN! MARTIN!’ But there is no answer. Even from the passenger seat Eleanor can feel the wind, uncomfortably warm.

  The embers come faster and stronger. Outside it is raining fire.

  ‘What do we do?’ Eleanor begs. ‘Where are they?’

  And then there’s a new flare of fire, bursting into life right on top of the roof. Eleanor screams. The roof of their house is burning. What’s happening inside? Where is Aiden?

  Solomon climbs out of the car. ‘Stay here,’ he says firmly, and he stumbles into the smoky gloom.

  Alone and terrified, Eleanor waits. Time ceases to exist. She thinks she can see flames inside the house now. But the smoke is stronger; she can hardly see the house at all. The embers are raining down on the car, glowing orange spots skitter across the bonnet. What if one of them sets the car alight? It will blow up! It will blow up with her inside!

  Suddenly her parents’ car pulls up next to her in a fierce spray of gravel. As she opens the passenger door her father jumps out, so close she could almost touch him, but he’s completely unaware of her presence. He is screaming, ‘Oh no no no no no!’ as he races towards the house. Her mother sprints from the other side calling, ‘Eleanor! Aiden!’ To Eleanor’s horror they both disappear from view, and Eleanor can wait here alone no longer. She jumps down from the vehicle in her nightdress, wailing in the searing heat, her arms over her face to protect herself from the ash and embers that rain down on her, stinging her skin. She runs blindly towards the house, as a group of people re-emerge in a huddle, and when her mother spots her she screams ‘Eleanor!’ and comes at a run with her arms wide open, and Eleanor is lifted as she hasn’t been since she was a toddler, wrapping her legs around her mother’s waist as her mother dashes away with her to their car, and pushes her into the back seat.