The Hidden Girls Read online

  For my mum, Jean Whitney, who holds us together.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgements

  The tapping has been going on for days now. It’s coming from behind the sink in the downstairs toilet, where a walled-up recess runs under the stairs. Ruth puts her hand to the surface, feels the vibrations from the other side; a persistent banging, like someone’s trying to get out.

  ‘Tam?’ she says with her mouth close to the wall. ‘Is that you?’

  Tap. Tap-tap.

  Ruth tries to work out the code, but her thoughts are whirling so fast they won’t land on anything tangible. Ruth and Tam always knew what the other was trying to say, though, communicating sometimes with just a look, a sort of telepathy passing between them. That’s how it is with sisters or how it had been with the two of them, right through to their teens, Ruth only a year younger, so close in age people used to mistake them for twins. And now, after all this time, Tam’s come and found Ruth. Clever Tam.

  Tap-tap-tap. Tap.

  Ruth puts her lips on the wall, lets the vibrations run into her. ‘It’s OK, Tam,’ she says. ‘I think I understand.’

  Another noise is coming from the lounge, something else that needs Ruth’s attention, although she can’t grasp what it could be. She opens the toilet door to look. There, on the floor in a Moses basket, is a baby – oh God, Ruth’s baby, Bess; she’d forgotten all about her – and the little girl is making the worst noise of all. Ruth puts her hands over her ears, squeezes her eyes shut, tries to balance her spinning head, but the crying is so loud it’s inside her, filling her up to almost drowning. If Bess quietened, even a little bit, Ruth would have space to think, only the baby never ever stops. Tam would know what to do, though. Tam always knew how to sort things out.

  Behind Ruth the tapping has become a thump, like Tam’s beating her fist against the wall.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ruth calls back to her. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  In the kitchen, Ruth opens the utensils drawer and takes out the largest knife, the one she and Giles use to slice watermelon or carve the chicken for a Sunday roast. The knife is a single piece of metal from end to end, part of an expensive set given as a wedding present from Ruth’s workmates. Ruth grips it, the cool handle almost painful in her burning palm, and she takes it back through to the lounge where the baby’s watery eyes follow her, little mouth wide and wailing, face a painful pink. Is she even mine? Ruth thinks. After the caesarean four weeks ago, Ruth was so out of it, the surgeon could have passed her anyone or anything – an alien child perhaps, or the devil.

  ‘Shhh.’ Ruth tries to make her voice gentle, but the noise comes out spitty and Bess’s cry grows hysterical. Ruth wants to help this baby, she really does, but she’s terrified to touch her because the little girl is so small that Ruth could crush her with one hand. ‘Please, please, just be quiet.’

  Ruth edges past the baby into the downstairs toilet and slams the door, sealing the crying away from her on the other side. Above the sink is a shelf of moisturizers, nappy-rash creams, liquid soap. Ruth clears them off with one swipe of her wrist and the bottles scatter on the floor. Now she has the room she needs. She launches at the wall with the knife, paint chipping and flaking under the blade as it bites into the surface.

  ‘I’m coming.’ Ruth’s breath is ragged with the effort. ‘I won’t leave you this time, Tam.’

  The wall is made of plasterboard, not brick as Ruth had thought, and the dent quickly widens and deepens as she attacks it with a feverishness, elated that getting Tam out is going to be so much easier than she’d imagined. After only seconds, the knife breaks through. Ruth stands back, expecting a rush of water as the hidden recess empties itself out, but there’s not even a drop. She brushes her hand across the damage; the wall is bone-dry.

  ‘Tam, are you there?’ Ruth puts her mouth over the hole. ‘I’m sorry, OK? But you should have let me tell them.’

  Silence on the other side. Ruth moves her eye to the gap. Inside it’s dark, but there’s an elusive occupancy to the space, like something just passed by and disturbed the air. She pokes a finger through. Her skin connects with warm flesh. Ruth screams, yanks her hand away, knife spinning out of her sweaty palm and clattering to the floor. She takes a breath, crouches, grabs the sharp shiny blade and glimpses in it the reflection of a woman, crazier than anyone Ruth’s seen in her life.

  ‘Christ.’ She touches her face that’s salted with paint, and her reflection in the knife follows suit. ‘What is happening?’ This strength she possesses, and her wild rushing thoughts; she could do anything to anyone – even that baby – and it would all be out of her control.

  1

  A scream splits the 3 a.m. silence, two long bursts, high and wild. A woman’s scream. Even as Ruth listens, propped up in bed on soggy pillows with her colicky six-month-old sucking the last from a bottle, she doubts the scream exists; it’s just her sleep-starved brain tossing out fantasy again. But she’ll have to call the police, if only to confirm the noise is her imagination.

  She lays Bess next to Giles in the bed and takes the phone into the next room. Her little girl mustn’t wake, and Ruth hasn’t the energy for Giles’s judgement.

  ‘Where did you say the noise came from?’ the controller asks, after Ruth tells her what she heard.

  Ruth’s eyes turn to the ceiling as she recalls the daytime noises that carry to her house: the intercity trains speeding past allotments at the back, a constant rumble of traffic on the North Circular, men’s voices who work the car wash at the end of her street.

  ‘From the petrol station,’ she says.

  ‘Was it from inside the building?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s not a petrol station any more, it’s a car wash during the day now. But the noise came from thereabouts. I mean, I think I heard something. Has anyone else reported a disturbance?’

  ‘No, madam, just you.’

  Details are taken, the call ends, and Ruth returns to her bedroom to wait at the window with the curtains open. The old gym T-shirt she now uses as a nightie trembles with her fluttering pulse, the sensation in her chest similar to the butterfly of her baby’s first movements, only it’s travelled up to her heart, as if she’s pregnant with anxiety. Ruth will cry if she gives the feeling much attention, so she pushes her face against the cold glass to concentrate on outside. In the netherworld of the night the minutes warp and flatten until eventually a blue light blinks on the tarmac – a premonition of the response car that follows. The vehicle cruises into view, and from inside the car, officers shine their torches over the hedgerow that lines the opposite side of the street. Ruth imagines the policemen or women cursing and their tired eyes blinking as they follow up another of her calls. The car passes out of sight, then the noise of the engine turns into the dead end at the top of the road where the terrace numbers reach the early hundreds, before the vehicle glides back past her house, leaving behind a silence somehow emptier than before.

  She waits for a few minutes to see if the police return. They don’t. She shuffles into the small space left over in the bed where Bess fidgets between her mum and dad, the little girl in a feathery sleep. If Ruth moves her to her cot, she’s bound to wake, so it’s better to lie in discomfort than have her baby cry any more. T
he clock shunts on in slow minutes. Ruth palpates with exhaustion, yearning for the old habit of sleep, but her off-button’s been taken away and she’s being forced to watch the static. In less than three hours it will be time to get up again.

  Eventually Ruth’s breathing slows and a small dream settles – a circle of trees swinging in a dark wind, a figure running through the undergrowth, just out of Ruth’s reach as she chases behind – only to be disturbed again by another scream. This time Ruth doesn’t react. The police have confirmed the noise is simply her brain malfunctioning, another aftershock from the illness she suffered since giving birth. Now she’s certain of her uncertainty, she feels a small camaraderie with this auditory hallucination, or paracusia as she’s learnt it’s called. Nothing else exists in this witching hour except for Ruth, her baby and the scream; all other members of the sane world are dreaming of sex or sorrow, or yesterday’s faux pas. Ruth wonders what would happen if all the forests caught fire, smoke and ash blanketing the sun, and this darkness remained. Nothing would grow. Supplies would run out and she’d be forced to forage for food with her daughter strapped to her back, this being to whom she’s bound with the greatest urgency, but is yet to love. Which of her neighbours would be first to take up the pickaxe? How long would they all go hungry before they started eating each other?

  She squeezes her eyes shut against the spiralling thoughts and attempts to mould the pillow into a comfortable shape. Giles turns to face her and Ruth peeks at him; a dream-smile flickers on his lips. She grinds her teeth at his brand of tired, of having a tough day at the office with too many tasks and not enough time. She remembers feeling that way herself and thought there was nothing else to measure the exhaustion by: the flop on the sofa with a glass of wine after the assault of the week, moaning about office politics and clients’ expectations, while privately acknowledging she’d aced the lot. That was before this new type of wipeout, a need for sleep that buzzes inside every cell of her body but is rarely satisfied. She is wired with tired.

  Giles mutters and chuckles as if he’s continuing a fascinating conversation at the pub. Ruth puts out a hand to settle him in case he wakes Bess, but she’s afraid that too might disturb their little girl, so she pulls back to let Giles ramble on. In Japan they say a child is a river that flows between the parents, completing their landscape, but the valley that’s been carved in Ruth’s marriage is canyon deep. The couple call to each other from opposite sides of the divide, each of them straining to understand their partner’s new language.

  It’s a 6 a.m. start to the day and Bess wakes with a cry that’s impossible to ignore, unless you’re a sleeping father. This petty carving up of time – who gets what and how much – deflates Ruth. It’s not the person she wants to be, nor is it any part of herself she recognizes from the past, though it would bother her less if she had the energy to turn it around. She takes her daughter downstairs for a feed and sits with Bess on the sofa, her mind revisiting last night’s call to the police, the shame more resonant for having opened up her fears to public scrutiny again. She’s been well for several weeks now, was convinced she’d finally cheated the monkeys who’d set up in her head after Bess was born, but it seems the old paranoias still have some power. Or perhaps it’s simply the insomnia that’s brought them back. She can’t tell any more.

  Ruth keeps the TV on low in the background, the rolling news repeating images of a bobbing island of plastic junk, backlit by blue sky and sunshine. At least the world’s still turning outside of Ruth’s four walls, though what it’s turning into, she despairs. Giles ambles down an hour later and the couple share a breakfast of sorts. He makes tea and toast and holds charred jammy triangles up to Ruth’s mouth in between sending work emails. Her mug sits on top of paint charts and brochures for kitchen and bathroom fittings, the renovations they started with such enthusiasm having since stalled through lack of time and money. Before Bess, she and Giles had been too busy establishing careers and having fun to possess the foresight to save up a decent deposit, always assuming they’d get on the property ladder when the market settled, but it never stopped going up. Then, with a baby on the way and Ruth about to go on maternity leave, the couple dashed from a spacious rented flat with friends round the corner and cafes nearby to an affordable area too far away for anyone they knew to pop in. Ruth spends her days staring at bare plaster walls and woodlice that lurk where the skirting board should meet the floor.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ Giles says with a smile so small it’s almost invisible. ‘You’re looking a bit brighter. The new medication must be really suiting you.’ He mimics the sing-songy tone that all the medics use, dumbing themselves down to what they believe is Ruth’s level. ‘Perhaps we could go on a bit of an outing this weekend?’

  His polite caution sinks inside her; an ice cube creeping towards her stomach. She wonders if she and Giles have ever really known each other, or if they’ve always been children playing at grown-ups. Before Bess was born, a passion for adventure and faith in love was their cornerstone, only now that things have got serious, the best Giles can muster is a polite peck on the cheek. She wants to shake him and shout, ‘Remember when we laughed at couples on Valentine’s, eating at candle-lit tables in silence?’ Giles’s back is straight in the armchair opposite, legs together, hands clasped at his knees as if bracing himself for some new terror that might need containing.

  The baby’s bottle slips in Ruth’s sweaty hand. She tightens her hold. ‘Yes, I’m feeling really great.’ Her tone is bright, magnified. She checks it down a notch. ‘Getting back to my old self.’

  A frown glances across Giles’s face before he disguises it with his newly learnt toothy grin. Ever present in the room with them is Ruth’s illness, a feral child who dragged them to unspeakable places, only recently tamed. Neither she nor Giles signed up for this rebranding of love to duty, though both are unable to escape. She stays because Bess is her new reality, and Giles can’t leave because he’s responsible for his wife and, in turn, the safety of their daughter.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK for a bit today?’ Giles says, leaning over to hug Ruth with limp arms. She smells his bed-hair and a memory rushes in of long lazy weekends, box-set marathons and takeaways, retreating to the bedroom whenever they chose, whispering to each other because their love had the volume to knock them sideways. ‘I’m only popping into the office,’ Giles continues. This last month he’s been testing leaving Ruth for periods alone, like a toddler dropped at nursery for a few hours at a time. ‘I can come home if you need, you just have to call.’ She knows this, it’s the same shtick he gives her every time he’s about to go, his face trained to a blank, but Ruth reads his itch to get out of here and sample normality. The weeks spent managing his wife were never supposed to be part of the bargain, and the stress has taken its toll. But the fact that he gets to take a break and dip into the real world is a hot coal of resentment in Ruth’s fist. She can’t blame him though, she’d run for the hills if she had a choice.

  ‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ Ruth says, her words always out of step with the truth, a habit of self-sufficiency with a longer history than the duration of this relationship, her stoicism more of a compulsion, dating back to her teenage years when she’d had to muster every ounce of strength to lift herself out of a tragedy of her own creation. More recently though – having fallen so short of expectations – pretending to cope like she used to has become her only dignity. She envisages the lonely hours that stretch ahead, the death of a day where she’ll be consumed by chores that reanimate as soon as they’re completed – the nappy changing, the feeding and washing, the laundry and cooking – like fungus resprouting from a cracked pipe.

  ‘Righty-ho then.’ Ruth’s not heard Giles say this before and she goes to tease him about it, imagining the chuckle that would rise in his throat, the giggle they’d share. But this new medi-speak, along with his clumsy brightness, defeats her, although at least he’s trying. She’s grateful he cares because who
else ever did?

  Giles pats Ruth’s arm before going into the downstairs toilet. There, fixed to the wall above the sink, is the medicine cabinet. His cough isn’t loud enough to mask the squeak of the doors opening, where inside he’ll be checking she’s taken today’s prescription. Ruth’s been on the tablets for nearly five months now, and even though she’s over the worst, taking them every day keeps her illness in check. Whole tranches of her memory have been erased by the psychosis, leaving only one sure image from that time: the sister she thought had been bricked up in the recess under their stairs, who Ruth imagined communicated with her by tapping on the wall. Ruth once tried to get her out. ‘Do you feel trapped by motherhood?’ asked the psychiatrist who diagnosed Ruth. ‘Walled in by expectation? Is there a part of you that’s waiting to be rescued?’ Only now, on the better side of illness, is Ruth able to absorb the totality of the message she was sending herself.

  So these current nips at independence are a huge step forward from Ruth’s weeks in the mother-and-baby unit, followed by round-the-clock home supervision, and in light of where Ruth’s illness took her tiny family, Giles’s monitoring of her medication is understandable, only she can’t help being humiliated by the necessity of any of it, which amounts to nothing other than her constant and irreversible failure as a mother. The muscles of her jaw are already aching this early in the day. As soon as Bess has finished feeding, Ruth will need to fetch her night guard or she’ll end up grinding her teeth to stumps.

  Presumably satisfied her dose is on target, Giles comes back into the lounge and stuffs his computer and coiled accessories into bicycle panniers, then straps on his cycle helmet. The edges of the hard plastic hat squeeze his face, pushing his cheeks towards his nose, and random grey hairs poke from the sides of the helmet. He’s aged a year for every month of their daughter’s life, partly a result of having had to work a job from home that needed him full-time at the office – though mostly it’s the worry that whatever has taken his wife from him may never give her back.