The Hidden Girls

by Rebecca Whitney

‘It is the only way. I must, for Farah.’

  ‘I really don’t want you to do that.’

  ‘What else is there?’ Leila runs her nails along the seams of her trousers. ‘Tell me? What?’

  ‘But it’s not safe.’

  ‘Safe? I can never be safe.’ The girl jumps up, face scrunched in pain as she puts pressure on her foot. ‘You do not know what it is to always be afraid, to have no country, no choice.’

  ‘Leila, please, someone might hear.’

  Leila whispers, ‘You think I want to leave home? No one goes unless to stay is death.’

  Ruth opens her mouth to reply, but there are no words. Leila crosses her arms over her stomach as alarm breaks on her face. She runs to the toilet. Behind the closed door comes the sound of retching followed by a vomiting echo. Panic is bringing up the food Leila’s just eaten. The stew was the only protection Ruth had to offer, and now even that’s gone. Bess clings to her mum as Ruth picks up one of the baby’s picture books to calm her. The board-thick pages open on an illustration of a smiling girl dressed in red, basket in arms, stepping into the woods. How ancient and universal these myths are, Ruth thinks, the warnings, even in childhood, not to stray off the path to where wolves lie in wait. Where those who can will do what they please. Leila comes back into the room and sits stiffly, as if she’s preparing to sprint, as if the cut on her foot wouldn’t stop her, as if she had somewhere to escape to.

  Footsteps outside and Liam’s voice. He passes Ruth’s house, and there’s the swing and bang of the gate as he enters Frieda’s front yard. Ruth tiptoes to the window, peeping from the curtain. Liam is pacing his mum’s garden, talking loudly on his phone.

  ‘I’m here, mate,’ he says. ‘I’m waiting, so look lively.’ He’s early for the locksmith, keen to get inside his mother’s house and rifle through her things, itching to take advantage while Frieda’s absent, while she has no say.

  Ruth lets the curtain drop and turns back to the room. She had no concrete plan in bringing Leila to her own house other than sidestepping immediate danger, and what little safety she is able to offer is quickly being superseded. She urgently needs all these problems gone, and the only way for that to happen is to make it personal. Ruth says quietly, as if to herself, ‘You can’t go back.’ She moves towards Leila – mad enough to make this mess hers, sane enough to know there’s no other option – and speaks louder. ‘I’m going to get you a phone and some money.’ Her nerves settle in the relief of forward motion, the endless preparation for disaster and building anxiety finally finding an outlet. ‘Then we’ll set you up in a B & B. Frieda has some plan or other, something she’s expecting to arrive. I need to speak to her again, but I won’t be able to until tomorrow.’

  Leila’s fingers tremble over her eyes. ‘You would do this for me? Why would you do this?’

  ‘It’s the only practical way.’ Bess is scratchy with tears. Ruth puts a hand to the baby’s forehead; she’s teething-hot and desperately needs to be put in her cot. Ruth hasn’t got time to factor in a sleep, though. She remembers her promise to Giles after she drove around with Bess in the car that night, and the terror on his face when he thought something had happened to them, or that Ruth might have put their daughter in danger. ‘I’ll settle Bess for a sleep and you can wait here with her while I get you the things you need.’ Leaving her baby with Leila feels like the most rational decision Ruth’s made in months.

  ‘But Farah, I must go to her quickly.’

  ‘I won’t let you, OK? Not like this anyway, not yet.’ Ruth’s anticipation gathers pace. ‘We’ll find somewhere for you to stay when I get back. There should be enough time before Giles gets home.’ Bess’s finger snags on a knot in Ruth’s hair, and she pulls away. ‘Just give me one more day. At least we can try to figure out where Farah’s gone before you put yourself in any more danger. If you go back now, you’ll both be trapped. This way you’ll have a chance of getting her out.’

  With pen in hand she looks for a piece of paper to write her number on.

  ‘Here,’ Leila says, holding out her arm. ‘It is better here.’

  Ruth writes her mobile number on the soft inside of Leila’s forearm.

  ‘Promise you’ll be here when I get back,’ Ruth says. ‘And promise, on your life, that you’ll look after my baby.’

  ‘Of course. I am here with Bess. I will not leave.’

  Low clouds draw in an early dusk. From the rear-view mirror of her car at the kerb, Ruth watches Liam on his phone in his mum’s garden, the skin on his neck shiny and hot around the stubbly hair. He stomps from the gate to pace the pavement, the garden too constricting, and he stares down the alley from where Ruth and Leila made their earlier exit. Small dots of rain spatter Ruth’s windscreen, the snow melting fast, but the ghost of her footprints will remain on the shaded path. Liam’s phone drifts down from his ear to his thigh, and his head tilts to one side as he follows the trajectory of the prints. If he walks down the path, he’ll see someone’s been round the back of Frieda’s, and after that he’ll be able to trace those same steps in the opposite direction, directly to Ruth’s front door.

  Ruth jumps from her car and heads towards Liam, putting on her best smile. She pushes out her chest and places a hand on her hip. ‘Hey, Liam, how are you? How’s your mum?’ His previous flirtation adds power to her performance, and he takes an encouraging step forward until they’re a breathing distance apart. Ruth continues, ‘I’ve been really worried about her. Is there anything I can do to help?’

  Liam examines her face as if he’s choosing what to buy, and she turns girly eyes up to his, straining with the pretence, but there’s no depth to Liam’s expression; it’s almost bovine, impossible to read. ‘Anything come for my mum in the post?’ he says.

  ‘No, nothing yet.’

  His sightline passes Ruth’s shoulder to something more interesting, and she curls into the embarrassment of trying to play him at his own game. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing I need from you then.’ Men like Liam like to call the shots, and whatever interest he chose to turn on yesterday has vanished. The glimmer of a smile crosses his face, like he’s enjoying letting her know she was easy to fool. ‘But you can do something for Sandra.’ He almost chuckles, the noise weirdly wet like it’s stuck in his throat. ‘I mean, what else does she need to do to shake you off?’

  Ruth blanches, mouth open, shocked as well as shamed. Footsteps behind her. Ruth spins to see Sandra walking towards them, the bottom half of her face buried in the high-zipped collar of her padded jacket, and she’s wearing boots that lace up to her knees, the same ones Ruth remembers from when the couple came to dinner once, when Ruth’s wooden floor was still so new they were trying to keep it high-heel free. Liam had been the one to do up his wife’s boots that evening before they left, as Sandra put out one foot then the other – not asking, only expecting – and Liam had knelt silently at her feet to tie the laces.

  With only Sandra’s eyes visible, Ruth can’t tell if she’s smiling or angry, can’t unpick if Liam was simply trying to poison the friendship for his own sake or if Sandra’s in on the deal too. Sandra looks different, and it takes Ruth a moment to understand it’s the first time she’s seen her friend without make-up. She looks younger somehow, and prettier. A rash of old acne scars runs up her cheekbones and her hair’s wet and tied back – she must have come straight from the gym. Sandra’s squint flicks between Ruth and Liam, and Liam does little to hide his shrug at Ruth’s awkwardness. Ruth holds her hands together in front of her, arms straight, stepping away from Liam, who’s landed her with all the blame for standing too close.

  Finally Sandra lifts her head from her coat, mouth a straight, serious line. ‘Everything OK?’

  Ruth’s shoulders tense. ‘Yes, fine. I was just checking how Frieda’s doing.’

  ‘Where’s Bess?’

  ‘Oh, um . . . she’s with Giles.’ Ruth studies Sandra’s expression, searching for any sign of softness.

  ‘Really?’
Sandra holds Ruth’s stare, giving nothing away.

  Ruth’s head is so full of what she needs to do for Leila that she presses on. ‘Yes, Giles took the day off,’ she says brightly. ‘He’s taken Bess out.’

  ‘Nice.’ Even though Sandra’s smaller than Ruth, her poise creates the illusion of height. There’s a bruise on her jaw, the edges a little crusty. It’s recent, but not that recent, and would have been easily covered by the foundation Sandra normally wears.

  Ruth reaches out to Sandra’s face. ‘What happened?’

  Sandra jerks her chin from Ruth’s hand with a glance at Liam. ‘Oh, nothing, just my Boxercise class.’ She angles her jaw back into her collar to hide the bruise. ‘More’s the point, what’s going on with you? You look a bit edgy. Do you need me to call the doctor?’ Her words are clipped, and Ruth remembers that it was only yesterday Sandra likely witnessed the flirtation with Liam on her doorstep, and here, again, Ruth’s betrayed her friend in plain sight.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ Ruth says, guilt swelling. ‘Absolutely nothing to worry about.’ She tugs her coat across her chest, attempting if she could to hold her dignity inside, desperately wanting to tell Sandra that Liam’s not her type, that friendship is more important than flirting with a man like him, but then that would be an insult to his wife.

  ‘You sure you’re OK, hun?’ Sandra breaks into a smile and she strokes Ruth’s shoulder. ‘Haven’t been seeing people who aren’t there again?’

  Ruth warms a little at Sandra’s touch, but her cheeks redden too at the humiliation of being openly discussed in front of Liam. ‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ She laughs nervously, desperate to get away and get on with what she needs to do. ‘In fact, I’ve never been better. You really don’t need to keep an eye on me any more.’

  ‘Oh, honey,’ Sandra says, moving closer to Ruth with a wink. ‘I’ll always have my eye on you.’ Her bubblegum-scented words are delivered with such playfulness, it’s impossible to read them as a threat, so Ruth can’t understand why she’s uneasy. The way Sandra keeps blowing hot and cold in the space of only seconds has left her with nothing solid to hang on to. Sandra nods at the keys in Ruth’s hand. ‘Didn’t know you were driving again.’

  ‘Huh?’ Ruth looks at her hand in the surprise of being caught out. ‘Yes, got the sign-off from Giles. It’s great. Freedom at last.’

  ‘He must be so relieved he can trust you again.’ Sandra’s words are still gentle, delivering her blows with such sweetness. ‘Look at you, getting so much better.’

  ‘I am.’ Ruth’s totally disorientated and her voice comes out high-pitched, attempting to convince herself as much as them that she’s in control. ‘All back to normal.’

  The locksmith’s van pulls up at the kerb. Sandra’s attention follows the driver.

  ‘San.’ Liam’s voice is a bark. ‘C’mon, hurry up.’

  Sandra presses her lips together, head high and regal. ‘You what?’

  Liam blinks hard. ‘Sorry.’

  Ruth thinks that for a couple who are so much in love, their relationship contains a hefty amount of griping. Perhaps they like it that way, perhaps the conflict keeps them hungry, with fall-outs followed by crazy make-up sex. She calls back to them, ‘Look after the cat. Your mum didn’t want her to go to the vet’s.’

  Sandra stops, spins to face Ruth. ‘And what would you know about it?’

  Ruth looks at the ground. ‘Nothing really.’ She kicks at some frozen moss on the pavement. ‘She only mentioned it in passing one day.’

  Sandra nods slowly at Ruth, and Ruth heads quickly to her car. Behind her she thinks she hears someone say, ‘Mad as a box of frogs,’ but when she checks over her shoulder, there’s no one close, only the locksmith at the door and Liam, who’s pacing in and out of the gate in a cross between a saunter and a stride, like he’s cornered his prey and is itching for the kill. She hopes he’ll be kind to the cat, though Ruth has bigger concerns for now. She starts the ignition, revisiting what needs to be done: drive to the shopping centre, buy a phone, take out some cash, set Leila up in a B & B. Simple. Sandra’s marching back home as Ruth pulls out of the space and drives towards the end of the road, watching in her rear-view mirror as Sandra turns into her own front yard. Ruth waits at the junction, fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the steering wheel. Her neck prickles with the sensation of being watched, but she’s just a woman driving a car – there’s no way anyone can know what she’s got herself involved in.

  On the main road, the rain is falling harder now, the season having flipped within hours, its impermanence unsettling. Only the sooty bodies of snowmen remain, as unwanted as out-of-date currency. The sky darkens and Ruth grips the wheel, unpractised in the scrum of London traffic. Kids on bikes swerve in front of her and pedestrians launch themselves onto crossings. A Street light halos a figure in the car ahead as another vehicle zooms up behind, tailgating with headlights blinding her mirror.

  Time is closing in on four, long enough to get what she needs and return home. She picks up confidence behind the wheel, steering through an endless high street of tanning parlours, charity outlets and cafes. Tender vegetables, crated on pavements outside convenience stores, absorb the fumes. All the butchers and greengrocers have disappeared, the web of local trade that would once have made a village erased by super-chains and small cheap shops. Fields and farms have been bricked over to create a seamless cityscape with no edge at the end of the tarmac, no coast with sea stretching towards the horizon, nowhere clean and light and wide open . . .

  The minutes evaporate from her dashboard clock until finally she arrives at the shopping centre. She dives into a shop to pick out a pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts for Leila. A jumper with a butterfly on the front, a pack of bikini briefs and a new bra, a warm parka and some basic trainers. Things a teenager might wear, clothes that will make Leila look her age. The total comes to three times what Ruth would normally spend on herself, but the expense makes an armour of the clothes, a statement of Ruth’s care, and who would dare harm Leila if it’s obvious she’s loved?

  Ruth’s arms are buoyant and the carrier bag of clothes swings at her side as she strides across the concourse to the phone shop. Without a pushchair to hold on to or a baby to look after, there’s so much space around her body, and a nervy excitement buzzes in her chest. Waves of people cross in front of her and a late shaft of sun drops through a skylight to illuminate the hair of a woman caught up in the flow. The sun-flare makes the woman pop out in the sea of heads, as if she’s not of this world. Ruth strains for a closer look, her legs weightless in anticipation of a sprint: the woman is the double of Tam, or how Ruth imagines her sister would look now if she hadn’t disappeared; if instead of drowning all those years ago, she’d been picked up by a fishing boat, amnesia setting her on course for a totally different life. Or perhaps she was washed up on another shore and decided to wipe the slate clean, reject her family and reinvent herself. Anything, Ruth would accept any of those scenarios over the finality of her sister actually being gone. The tsunami of people in the distance swallows the woman in its wake.

  Ruth turns, continues to the phone centre where she paces the open-plan shop as customers fill out lengthy contracts with the few assistants available; young men and women with piercings and tattoos and hair that seems to have set in a strong wind. Her panic at having left Bess is growing – was it really right to entrust her baby to Leila? She calls home but the phone rings out. Of course Leila wouldn’t answer, she’d have no idea it was Ruth and not someone else. Ruth fiddles with a display handset to take her mind from the worry. The phone drops, thumping to the floor on its coiled security cord. An assistant flicks a look in her direction as Ruth shoves the handset back in its dock. She perches on a padded cube in the centre of the shop, legs jiggling with impatience. More out of habit than any desire to reminisce, she opens up her phone and scrolls through her photos, the distraction barely denting her anxiety, but doing something is better than nothing at all. She p
ulls up pictures taken when Bess was little, images with flares and strange shadows, and a wateriness to some of the underexposures, as if her house was submerged. Her obsessional hunt for a figure in the lapping darkness – her brain’s attempt to create form in the chaos – never turned up anything concrete.

  Among the stream of photos are the couple of shots taken over Sandra’s back fence, when Ruth had been paranoid enough to believe Sandra was hiding something from her. The inside of the house itself is unclear, only the figure of Liam visible in his white T-shirt, but a deeper shadow in a corner always niggled Ruth. She stretches the image with her two fingers to zoom in. The mottled image blurs to indecipherable then snaps back to the closest focus it will allow. Even in sanity, Ruth’s still questioning what’s possible, what could have been in Sandra’s house back then. She deletes the photos and shoves her phone to the bottom of her bag.

  One of the shop assistants is chatting and laughing with a customer at the counter. Ruth goes over to them. ‘How much longer until I’m served?’ She stands close to the assistant. ‘I’m in a real hurry. Please, I only need a pay-as-you-go phone.’

  Paperwork is spread across the counter and the assistant leans into her hand that’s placed on top of the pile. ‘Someone will be with you as soon as they can.’

  ‘But you don’t understand—’

  ‘You’ll have to wait your turn.’ The woman’s nostrils widen as the customer in front of her smiles at his feet. ‘Sorry, sir,’ the assistant says, turning from Ruth and pointing to the contract. ‘If you could just sign here . . .’

  Ruth walks to the door as behind her the customer says, ‘Who does she think she is?’ Ruth swivels to challenge them. The couple at the counter smirk at each other. She clamps her mouth shut; they’ll only take more time to spite her if she joins in their game.

  She stands at the exit, arms tightly crossed. A cafe with a seating area occupies the centre of the concourse. Customers ferry past a fridge filled with sandwiches and fizzy drinks before ordering their coffees at the till. Such immaculate normality that Ruth questions how it’s possible for Leila and all her problems to coexist, only a few miles from this bright, efficient world. She wants to shout at everyone to wake up. Or perhaps they already know what goes on behind closed doors, complicit through convenience, their guilt allayed by clean cars, painted nails, cheap vegetables and fantasies fulfilled. A young man in a suit sits opposite, feet tapping under the table as he flips the pages of a tabloid, taking more notice of his phone than the newspaper while he gulps his coffee. Would he pay to use a woman’s body? Would Liam? The level of devotion he shows Sandra seems possible only with an element of falsity or objectification, and Ruth imagines him separating out the respect he maintains to have for his wife from going to watch a stripper. But would he go that step further? Her stomach tightens, remembering his statement about Sandra wanting Ruth to leave her alone.