A Hidden Girl

by D K Bohlman

  After the soap opera, news, weather forecast and half of a quiz show, Katalin looked like she had fallen asleep first. Sarah stood up and stepped over to her bed and reached for the remote. Katalin’s hand snatched it back away from her and she glared at her with some hostility.

  ‘OK, OK, I switch off TV. Go back in bed. Please.’

  Sarah laid back down on the quilt and draped it around herself as best she could. No chance she was going to sleep tonight. The room was a bit cool. It smelt of body odour and cooking.

  There was another smell too, it was familiar but she couldn't put her finger on it right now. She could smell Katalin too. A mixture of sweat and some cheap fragrance. She supposed that meant she did get some things she needed. As the night dragged on into the early hours, and dawn still seemed a long way off, Sarah had one thing circling endlessly in her mind. It led her down myriad gloomy tunnels, always ending at the same question.

  Eight years of this?

  Marton has regrets

  ____________________________

  Marton was sat on his bed, thinking about the end of his life and what was to come.

  He hadn’t meant to keep her down there. Time had just passed. And he hadn’t thought of another way. Murder had never been an option for him. But there it was. And now there was another girl. A complication he’d hoped would never happen. For so many years, it had seemed Katalin would be the only one. It had been a real worry. What if she got sick? Really sick? At least she couldn’t get pregnant. And so far, he’d been able to treat her minor ailments via the pharmacy.

  Now it had happened again and it had overwhelmed him. He was too old and sick to deal with this. But he couldn’t say no. It might have aroused more suspicion if he’d refused to talk to her.

  If only Katalin hadn’t been to see him. But she had and so his life had been complicated for many years.

  But the hotel, all he had worked for, to have a good life, a fair life, one he could be proud of: that was what had kept him going. The hotel. His family’s name was still respected. He needed to make sure it stayed that way. That was going to be the hardest task of all.

  What Alfred had told him after he deposited the envelope and the watch with him, didn’t help now. What could he do with that revelation? It was too late, they were both too old and nobody would listen. It hadn’t stopped him developing a wave of furious anger towards his friend … and that was a word he wasn't sure he could apply to Alfred anymore.

  Aliz had sent some chicken sandwiches up to his room for lunch, delivered by a bell boy. He chewed his way slowly through the second one, feeling less hungry than he’d thought. But that was the norm now, he just didn’t enjoy food the way he used to. Somehow, the poison being spread throughout his body by the tumours had made its way into his saliva. The familiar flavours just didn't taste too good anymore. Only stale, acidic.

  He felt a little breathless and put the rest of the sandwich down.

  He coughed sharply. Two globules of saliva flopped out of his slack mouth onto the bedcover. They looked like little silvery bags of deep red blood. There had been more of these in the last week or two and it was getting harder to recover from his breathlessness. A couple of days ago, he felt like he was suffocating, unable to ease his breathing at all. It had suddenly cleared after a coughing fit, but he lived in fear now, of that coming back and choking the life out of him. Dying wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that for sure.

  A problem deepens

  ____________________________

  Marton was feeling particularly breathless the following morning.

  Getting washed, he had help with that, but it took a while. He still insisted on getting himself dressed and that took him the best part of an hour. In fact, it took so long he was worried he wouldn’t be ready to take Katalin’s food in from the bell boy. He’d thought about getting more food for the new girl. It concerned him, though: maybe someone down in the kitchens would think that a bit odd. As far as they were concerned, Mr Kovacs already had a double helping of all his meals. Fortunately, his rapidly failing appetite meant he didn’t need to bother. He just took an odd slice of toast or cut of meat and passed the rest down.

  As usual, he had the bell boy put the trays on his wheeled meal trolley. He took a look at the food, then put a piece of toast on a small plate. He stared at it, wondered how many more times he would eat a piece of toast with warm butter melted onto it.

  Something made him decide to treat himself and he picked a boiled egg from the serving dish and chopped it onto his toast. Then he sliced a wedge of butter from the block and smoothed it over the egg crumbles. He stared at it again. Maybe some fresh pepper. He ground a few twists onto the assembled dish.

  Then he ate it with the most exquisite relish. Every single mouthful was chewed and swallowed slowly. For once, his senses seemed to come alive and he tasted the food like he was a teenager eating paprika beef for the first time.

  He picked up a crisp white napkin and cleaned the butter from around his mouth, then leant back and burped with a satisfyingly loud noise. His heart was beating faster now, probably struggling to cope with digesting the food he had just taken in. He took quick, shallow breaths, like a dog panting on a warm summer’s day. Tongue loose, not wanting to move at all.

  But he did. He needed to get the breakfast into the waiter while it was still hot. Lukewarm food wasn’t appealing to anyone.

  He sat up and pushed the trolley with one hand whilst he wheeled his chair with the other hand. It was only a few yards but it exhausted him. When he got to the waiter, his heart was beating even faster and tripping into little beat runs that he felt in his mouth. He pressed the button to open the waiter’s door and started to push the two trays onto the shelf. He got the first one in OK. Then he tried to pull the second one towards the shelf and curled himself forwards as his chest began to hurt. It hurt a lot. He moved back and forth to try to rid himself of it, but it got worse. With his vision blurring, he gave the tray one more push and pressed the down button, falling backwards from the effort.

  Slumped in his chair, leaning sideways over his right arm, he felt very sick suddenly and spewed a thin brown liquid containing his breakfast onto the carpet. His arms felt like hot pokers as his blood seemed to pulse harder and harder in them. He spat a dreg of vomit out onto his arm as it dangled in front of him and he focused his failing vision on it. He couldn’t move, nor avoid the rising sensations all over his body. Now he started to gasp as he couldn’t get enough air in to satisfy his lungs. He struggled again to breathe in, his heart pounding with great weight as he panicked and fought what he realised now was inevitable. His heart spasmed with an electric mains shock of an impulse and stopped.

  Marton’s lifetime of shame and hiding was gone.

  Bad news day

  ____________________________

  It was the bell boy, returning to collect Marton’s trays at the end of the morning who raised the alarm. He went downstairs to tell Aliz after he’d had no reply. He’d knocked and knocked again, waiting for five minutes before eventually deciding he’d better call for help. His own master pass key didn't work on Mr Kovacs’ room.

  Aliz rushed back upstairs with him and unlocked the door.

  Marton was kneeling in front of his wheelchair, head towards the door and with his crown hard against the floor. There was vomit smeared around his hands which were propped under his bulk at a strange angle. He was absolutely still and silent. The clock ticked its relentless background rhythm as if counting down to something.

  Aliz moved quickly and quietly towards him. She called his name softly under her breath.

  ‘Marton. Marton.’

  She put her hand on his midriff and spoke again. The slight pressure her hand exerted was enough. Marton rolled away from her, trapping a hand awkwardly underneath his weight and snapping a brittle finger joint with a dry cracking sound. It broke in time with the clock tick.

  His body settled to a stop quickly and he lay on his side, faci
ng her, eyes wide open, staring at her. His tongue protruded a little out of his mouth, falling to one side, saliva mixed with a brown gruel coalescing into a glutinous drop on the tongue tip, not quite ready to fall.

  ‘He’s dead, he’s dead,’ shouted the bell boy, stepping sharply back from the body.

  Aliz nodded. ‘I think so. Go and call an ambulance, please. Be quick.’

  As the bell boy left on his errand, Aliz sat down cross-legged in front of Marton’s cadaver. A welter of mixed emotions flooded over her and settled around her shoulders. The weight was unbearable. She slipped to the floor and rested her head on the carpet, staring at the body of the man she had worked with, helped, occasionally admired and sometimes detested, for decades.

  Now, it was the unknown. It was not clear to her what would happen next. She would have to tell Peter. Marton had assured her that Peter would sort it all out. But Peter didn't know, did he? So how would that all work? Marton had always told her not to worry, that it was all arranged. But she did worry. Things that were cleverly planned could go wrong. Very wrong.

  She should tell Peter straight away. At least then whatever Marton had planned could start, she assumed.

  She stared a moment longer at Marton’s face, recognising this might be their last private time together. She drew his face into hers and kissed his forehead. It was the sense of a shared burden that caused her affection, nothing more really. Taking a mental snapshot of his glaring eyes, she rolled herself upwards and stood up, walked over to Marton's desk and dialled Peter’s number, which was scribbled on a reminder pad Marton kept by the phone.

  It rang four times, then Peter answered.

  ‘Father?’

  ‘No, Peter, it’s Aliz.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I recognised his private line number. Are you in his room?’

  Peter’s brain then caught up with the tone of Aliz’s voice. He’d heard, but not registered, what it said to him.

  ‘He’s bad? Or dead?’

  ‘Yes, Peter, I think he has just died. I’m with him. We are calling the ambulance, but I’m sure he’s dead. I thought I should call you straight away.’

  Peter took a deep breath and sighed quickly before his throat tightened. He ran a finger down the scar on his cheek.

  ‘Well, we knew he hadn’t long left, didn’t we? But it seems to have been a long time coming. Now I don't know what to feel. I’m sorry you had to deal with this, Aliz. I’ll be in Budapest as soon as I can get a flight. I’ll call you back and let you know, OK?’

  ‘Yes. It will be good if you can be here soon, Peter. I need your help now. I will tell Marton’s solicitor. He asked me to do that when this finally happened.’

  ‘Really? Well, I’m the executor … but fine, thank you, it will be one less thing for me to do. I need to ring the airline now. I will see you soon, Aliz.’

  Aliz nodded and replaced the receiver on the phone. She wondered how easy this was going to be, once Peter knew all of the story.

  Girls get hungry

  ____________________________

  Breakfast time was long gone now and as the clock ticked toward five in the afternoon, Katalin and Sarah were feeling hungry and had started a conversation in broken English about the no show of lunch.

  ‘He never does this. Well, it happen when you come Sarah, that day, but not another time.’

  Sarah grimaced. It wasn’t any help to her stomach to know this was unusual. In fact, it made her more worried than if it’d been a regular thing. Maybe he wasn't going to send them any more food. At all.

  ‘You have no cakes or biscuits? Or fruit anywhere?’

  ‘Hmm … some biscuits yes, in the cupboard.’

  She pointed across the room. Sarah didn’t need any second invitation. She found four large packets of biscuits, which seemed to calm her hunger pangs without even eating one.

  She opened a packet and offered Katalin one,

  ‘No, I wait now. See if dinner comes first.’

  ‘OK. I’m not waiting.’ She took five biscuits out and tied the packet up tightly for later. She started to nibble slowly on the first one, intending to make the experience last awhile. Not exactly any rush to do anything in this room.

  ‘What time can we watch TV?’

  ‘Seven. But dinner about six-thirty.’

  Sarah sighed and swallowed a small mouthful of well-chewed biscuit. She wondered how to fill the time to the evening. She rolled onto the floor, on her back and raised all her limbs slightly off the floor.

  ‘You done any Pilates, Katalin?’

  ‘I don’t think so … what is this, pirates?’

  Sarah laughed. It had been a day or two since she was last able to do that.

  ‘Get down on the floor, next to me … not too near, enough space to spread your arms out. I’m going to teach you some moves.’

  Katalin dropped to the floor. Sarah rolled her head sideways and looked at her. There was some trust now, she felt it. She knew they’d need that in the days and weeks ahead.

  ‘OK, we’ll start with some abs warm-ups. Just as well we don’t have full stomachs. Then I’ll teach you the delights of the hundred.’

  Katalin smiled, nodding.

  An hour later they were still lying on the floor but by now somewhat more alert, their core muscles pleasantly warm with exertion and their minds relaxed after the bouts of giggles that had punctuated their attempts to teach and mimic.

  They’d heard a little noise upstairs. But no food yet. It wasn’t far from dinner delivery time and as it got closer to six-thirty their relaxation turned into tension again. They found themselves watching the hatch intently. Katalin took Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. Six-thirty came and passed. So did seven.

  Katalin got up and switched the TV on. To her dismay, there was no picture. She turned towards Sarah.

  ‘Something is wrong. No food. No TV. Something is very wrong.’

  Sarah looked up at her, narrowing her eyes, then rolling them upwards. Somehow she’d gone from being at home in Scotland to undertaking some innocent research, to being held captive in a foreign city with a stranger … and now there seemed to be an even darker twist. Not the November she’d planned for herself. For the first time since she’d entered the room, Sarah began to contemplate dying in a foreign land. It sent a cold shudder into her and blew a sense of dread through her thoughts. She looked around the room once more, wondering how she might escape its clutches.

  A visit to the solicitor

  ____________________________

  Peter was in Bucharest Henri Coanda airport when his father’s solicitor, David Pasztor, called him.

  ‘Yes, yes, it is very sad Peter. I offer you my condolences. I knew your father for a very long time. I need to tell you all about the will, of course, but also I have to tell you there is an envelope that you must collect straight away from me. Your father made it clear this would be very urgent.’

  Peter had no idea what could be urgent now after his father was gone. Right now, nothing seemed urgent other than getting to the hotel and taking charge of things.

  ‘Well, I suppose I could pick it up on the way in from the airport? Are you central?’

  ‘Of course. We are on Aradi Street. You can collect it from me if you let me know when you will be here. I will keep the office open for you.’

  ‘Very kind. I’d expect to be there about eight o’clock. I’ll call you if I’m delayed … let me have your number.’

  *

  It was nearer ten when Peter’s airport taxi pulled to a stop outside Pasztor’s office. His bag had been held up in some kind of union go slow at baggage handling. He told the taxi to wait and wearily climbed the steps up to the front door and rang the bell. He was buzzed in and he walked through the unlocked door into an office that felt more like a home than a place of business. David Pasztor was sat in a comfortable looking armchair in a large room, off one side of the hallway. It was dominated by racks of books, together with cabinets and tables filled with antiques. La
mps, clocks, ornaments. Obviously a collector.

  The solicitor rose to meet him. ‘Good evening, Peter. I’m so sorry again. Please sit down.’

  Peter nodded and took a seat.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink? Scotch maybe?’

  ‘That would be wonderful. Neat please.’

  David rose and walked over to a carved wooden side-table, slugged a healthy measure of Chivas Regal into a tumbler. He handed it to Peter together with a large white envelope.

  ‘Your father wished you to open this immediately, in my company, and to read it.’

  Peter looked at David. The solicitor’s eyes gave nothing away. Maybe he was unaware of the content.

  He took a deep sip of the whisky, set it down and opened the envelope.

  He read it to himself, taking increasingly deep breaths as he scanned each line.

  Dear Peter,

  As you now know, I have finally had to leave you all.

  It has been a hard goodbye to write. I feel so sad doing this, but now I am dead and no longer sad or anything else.

  You have always been a good son. You have supported me when I needed you to. And I hope I have been a good father to you, Peter.

  Of course, since your mother died, you have been the named executor of my will. David will tell you all about this. It is burden enough. But there is something else I need you to deal with. I’m so sorry this has to come to you, but I have lived with this for some years already and I don’t know any other way. Please take the repair receipt in this envelope to the shop it was issued from. There you will find my watch. And something else in the envelope. It is for you only Peter. I hope you make the right decisions with it. You MUST do this today, even if the shop is closed. Just telephone the number on the receipt and Alfred will assist you. He is my very old comrade.

  Please take good care of the hotel, especially Aliz, she has helped me so much over the years. I wish you and all the family a happy life, my son.