The Art of Hiding

by Amanda Prowse

  One night after passing out with exhaustion, she awoke when her dad had crept into her room, pulled the duvet up over her back and smoothed the curls from her cheek, like she was still a small child. Bending low, he kissed her gently on the face and whispered, ‘There is no sleep as sweet as the sleep taken after a hard day’s work, Nina . . .’ She had never forgotten it.

  Her plan had been to find a job in Bath, once her dad had secured a role, and then on that fateful day, Big Joe chatted to the man in charge, the young, flashy Finn McCarrick, construction company owner, he had noticed her, and her life changed instantly. She’d sat in the front of the van shyly eyeing the young man in his sharp suit, who happened to be looking over her dad’s shoulder and straight into her eyes, nodding distractedly as if, while giving Big Joe’s request only the smallest of considerations, he had his mind on a bigger prize. She smiled at him, and just like that, all her plans went out of the window and she began to walk a different path.

  It was hard to believe that was so long ago. Her dad had thought it wonderful that a man in Finn McCarrick’s position was interested in his daughter. Gran, however, had offered stark words of warning that were still imprinted in her mind: ‘You’ll be better off sticking to your own kind.’

  ‘I want to find a career,’ she’d enthused to Finn after only a few weeks of dating. ‘I think I might try to get into nursing, I’ve always fancied that.’

  ‘You won’t have time for a career!’ Finn had chuckled dismissively. ‘You’ll have the wedding to plan and the renovations of the house to oversee and then who knows’ – he had run his fingers over her stomach – ‘maybe a baby to look after?’

  Her face had blushed at the prospect. And she’d felt a mixture of guilt and sheer joy knowing the kind of life she could have with a man like Finn.

  ‘You are more valuable to me at home.’ He had kissed her firmly on the cheek.

  What about what was more valuable to me, Finn? Again she shook her head, thinking of how quickly, with the implicit trust of youth and in the first throes of love, she had capitulated, believing that a man like Finn McCarrick, an older man, a successful man, must know best.

  The four of them ate fish and chips out of the paper with their fingers. Nina tried to enjoy her food, but she was painfully aware that she’d spent twenty precious pounds on it. Connor left half of his fish and she found herself calculating in her mind just how much that waste had cost her. She made a resolution to shop first thing and buy smartly, avoiding spur-of-the-moment takeaways in the future that had cost so dear. An image of the jam-packed freezer in The Tynings floated into her mind.

  I need to get a job, tomorrow. I need a job . . .

  After dinner, Nina paced between the cold rooms that carried the scents and echoes of the previous tenants. She pulled their bed linen from the suitcases and made the beds. She put the laundry hamper under the sink in the bathroom, and the two bar stools against the narrow counter-top in the kitchen. She arranged her toiletries on the pale wood bookshelves in the corner of the main bedroom and put the boys’ suitcases and boxes in their room, awaiting their attention.

  ‘I know this is not what you planned, but it’s nice to have you back,’ Tiggy offered as she prepared to leave. Nina bit her lip to stop herself from ruining the moment with the fact that she wasn’t staying; that this was temporary.

  Nina closed the door behind her sister and walked down to the bedroom. Her eyes roamed over the saggy double bed that had been her great-aunt’s. She plugged in her bedside lamp and put her clothes in the walnut-veneered wardrobe, placing two more boxes of her possessions in the corner of the room. She would sort them another time. Nina couldn’t remember coming into this bedroom as a child, but clearly recalled her aunt leaving the cold sitting room to come and delve into a cupboard in here, returning with a vivid patchwork quilt to throw over Nina’s chilly legs, snuggling her to bring warmth. It had felt lovely. Aunty Mary told her that the different fabrics had belonged to members of her dad’s family, an aunt’s favourite apron and a cousin’s bridesmaid dress, amongst other things. It was the first time she remembered being aware that half of her blood was from her dad’s family here in Southampton. Prior to this, she could only see herself as Danish, where her mamma had come from. Funny, that.

  Fatigue now pawed at her senses; she was sorely tempted to submit to it, but wanted to check on the boys before climbing into the lopsided bed.

  Hovering on the landing outside the boys’ room, she spied through the small opening and listened to Declan’s chatter. ‘I think I saw a sign for a zoo on the way here. We could go and visit it, couldn’t we?’

  Nina saw Connor on the top bunk, facing towards the window and ignoring his brother. Declan persevered with another topic. ‘I liked the fish and chips. It reminded me of going to the seaside with Daddy and eating them in the car and that time he threw chips out of the window and the seagulls swooped down and caught them before they hit the ground, do you remember? I thought they were going to come in the car. I was really scared.’

  Nina pushed open the door and smiled at her son, ‘I remember that, Dec, and Daddy said their squawks were gull-speak for “Too much salt! Too much salt!”’ She did her best gull-speak.

  She heard Connor’s sigh of irritation.

  The bedroom was long and narrow with no furniture other than the bunk beds that, sadly, were too long to fit widthways in the room, which would have given the whole place a more spacious feel.

  Declan pulled out his jeans, hoodies and sports kit from his bag and looked around at the bare walls. ‘Where can I hang my clothes?’

  ‘You can’t. There’s no wardrobe.’ Connor growled his irritation from the top bunk, keen to point out yet another shortcoming.

  Nina closed her eyes briefly; every disgruntled, negative observation caused the knot of stress in her gut to tighten. She thought back to when she had shared a room with Tiggy in circumstances not dissimilar to this. ‘I can show you a neat trick.’ She went into the sitting room to fetch a bunch of clothes hangers. She came back and popped Declan’s hoodie on a hanger and then hung it from the base of Connor’s bed so it hung down over the end of Declan’s. ‘Look, if we put all your clothes along here like this, when you climb in, it’s like having a cosy curtain that hides you and keeps you snug.’

  Declan smiled and proceeded to hang up his clothes. ‘This is a bit like when you built me a wigwam out of clothes in the garden in the south of France, isn’t it, Mum? And Connor found a toad in his wash bag.’

  ‘Yes, my darling, it’s a bit like that.’ Nina took a crumb of hope from the fact that no matter what happened, her boys had had a short lifetime of wonderful experiences, enough to stave off the darker moments of want, something that she knew would have made her own childhood easier to bear, had she been able to dip into a pocketful of glorious memories. She wished she had more memories like this of her own mum, wished that she hadn’t been so young when she’d lost her; at three, she was too young to properly know how to store a lot of memories and was far too busy learning about the world. Curiously, she recalled the feel of her mother holding her, wrapping her in love, but couldn’t remember the exact colour of her hair. She could remember the deep earthy scent of the wood smoke that filled their little home in Frederiksberg, but wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it easily on a map. In her mind, it made her mum a shadowy figure, a presence rather than a real person.

  ‘Are you going to be okay tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Declan responded.

  Her heart flexed with love for her baby, who was showing maturity beyond his years. ‘Well, I’m next door if you need me. Just the other side of the wall.’ She looked up towards the top bunk. ‘Night-night, Connor.’ She reached up and patted his back.

  He ignored her. She could feel the tension coming off him in waves.

  Nina stood at the sitting-room door, taking a second to reacquaint herself with the shape and layout of the room. It was rectangular with a defunct bro
wn-glazed tiled fireplace in the centre of the main wall, and alcoves either side of it. Tall metal-framed doors opened out onto a Juliet balcony that she vaguely remembered being open in the summers of her youth. They were now covered with old-fashioned lacy net curtains that were very worn, stained in places and frayed in others. The carpet was yellow, red and brown, a hideous pattern of swirls and loops that reminded her of the ketchup and mustard mess that was left on plates after a crowded hot-dog supper. It felt sticky underfoot and was so full of nylon that her hair stood up with static. The wallpaper was smooth and could best be described as oatmeal in colour with a slight sheen to it. Two bare light bulbs hung at either end of the room, casting noose-like shadows on the walls.

  Sadly, the kitchen was just as she had remembered: a chunk of the sitting room that had been commandeered decades ago for the purpose, with a stud wall separating a six-foot square space that housed a cooker, fridge, a sink and a couple of loose-doored cupboards, all of which had seen better days, but were nonetheless functional. The red linoleum floor was also the original, and she pictured her little feet standing on it, waiting for the treat of a boiled sweet to be placed in her hand, a little gift of sugar that meant so much in a world of deprivation. Closing the door, she made her way along the dark hallway and into the bedroom, where she stood at the window, squashed between the wall and the bed. Her sobs came in great gulping bursts. She felt like she was drowning. ‘What’s happened to us? I’m here with the kids in this cold, miserable place and it’s happened so fast I can’t think straight.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I have been so bloody stupid. In the early days I let you bulldoze me, never questioned anything because I wanted to believe you, wanted the life you promised. But that set a pattern, didn’t it? And that suggests I wasn’t smart enough to see it happening. And I don’t want to be that person,’ she whispered, taking a breath and lifting her head to look out at the street beyond the window. ‘I don’t.’

  Her eyes took in the neon sign outside the window that flashed the word ‘OPEN’ as cars and delivery motorbikes whizzed by. The pink-haired woman, now baby-less, hurried along the pavement with a holdall under her arm. The thrum and squeak of engines and brakes drifted in, along with music from stereos and shouts from further down the street. After the silence and peace of The Tynings, she found the noise deafening and knew the boys must too. The thought fuelled her next bout of tears.

  Nina let the thin, dusty lace curtain fall over the glass and stared ahead, exhausted at the end of the long and trying day. She shivered in the cold, but knew that with her brain whirring and filled with distress, sleep was not going to come easy.

  EIGHT

  Despite her exhaustion, Nina slept fitfully. The misshapen mattress, the cold and damp air, the bus that stopped outside their window, all interrupted the rest she desperately needed. The bus’s air brakes screeched at each approaching stop, making collections and drop-offs of drunken revellers, paying no heed to the fact that others might be sleeping in the middle of the night.

  ‘Joshy! Joshy! You dropped your scarf!’

  She jumped up from the mattress at an ungodly hour to see a blond boy holding up a burgundy knitted scarf and his tall, dark-haired friend – Joshy she assumed – walking back to retrieve it with a lilt to his gait that suggested drunkenness.

  ‘Cheers, Liam!’ Joshy shouted. ‘See you later!’ As if it were mid-afternoon. If she thought there wasn’t the risk of waking her kids, she would have found the courage and yelled at Joshy and Liam to be quiet.

  Giving up on any more sleep, she stretched her aching back and put on her slippers, not only to stave off the cold but also because she was wary of going barefoot in this strange environment, where unfamiliar bare feet had also ventured. Softly she trod the narrow strip of carpet in the hallway. Pulling the light switch in the bathroom, she sighed. For some reason this room bothered her the most. She tried not to picture her luxurious mirrored bathroom at The Tynings; tried not to remember the joy at stripping off her clothes and stepping into the cavernously deep bubble bath, the room lit low, with scented candles glowing, and the promise of her fluffy, luxurious bathrobe afterwards. One of her greatest pleasures had been soaking in a bath and then climbing into bed, with its expensive, pretty white bed linen and goose-down pillows.

  Nina winced as she pulled the creaky door, her fingers flinching on the icy-cold doorknob. She ran a bath, hoping and praying that there would be hot water and recoiling as her skin touched the scratchy plastic base of the bath. Bath time here would be functional, a means of getting clean, all joy and luxury removed. She sank into the tub and tried to relax, but it was no use. She scrubbed, and pulled the plug. The moment she climbed from the warm water, her skin was instantly peppered in goosebumps. She couldn’t pull her underwear, jeans, shirt and jersey on quick enough, cursing the cold.

  After two strong coffees, from a tin of her favourite brand, brought from home and one she knew would be replaced by something cheaper when she ran out, Nina paced the kitchen, placing items on freshly wiped shelves, driven by a nervous energy. Declan woke early, and was washed, dressed, fed and sitting on the sofa, playing on his laptop with his sweatshirt pulled over his hands by 7.30. When Connor eventually appeared, he carried two dark circles under his listless eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Con.’ She tried to sound upbeat, to hide her very distress at the sight of him.

  He stared at her. ‘There is absolutely nothing good about it.’

  ‘How did you sleep?’

  ‘On and off. Better once I’d got up and put my cricket jersey on and a pair of thick socks.’

  She nodded. There was no denying it was cold. She pointed towards the gas fire that pumped out heat in a limited circle. He went and stood close to it.

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea, a glass of juice?’

  He shook his head. ‘What are we supposed to do here?’ He looked at the sofa where his brother sat.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, how are we supposed to spend our days in this tiny space, without a TV or room to move or a car to get around or any friends to call on? What exactly are we supposed to do?’ His voice had a wobble to it.

  She wanted to remind him that she, like lots of people, had grown up without a car, but knew the timing wasn’t right for this life lesson.

  ‘Well, for a start you can have a bath and then unpack your bits and bobs and then you can walk up to the supermarket with me and we can get the groceries we need. Or you can go for a walk, explore the area.’

  ‘Go for a walk? Have you seen it out there? There’s homeless guys and junkies and traffic and shit everywhere!’ he spat.

  ‘Please don’t use that word in front of your brother, or in fact in front of anyone.’ Still she plumbed for a neutral, appeasing tone, wanting to keep things as pleasant as possible for Declan and knowing that this was far from easy for her boys. ‘And I think you might be confusing Portswood with a war zone. You are quite safe, Connor.’ She hoped this was true.

  ‘And I think you might be confusing Portswood with somewhere that I might actually want to spend a second of my time in! I hate it here!’ Connor shouted, and fled the room.

  Unable to think of a helpful response, Nina continued to unpack, piling crockery in the cupboard and putting the cutlery into the drawer. She silently hated having to place their lovely items into the worn units where strangers’ hands had scrabbled around for years.

  ‘What are we going to do today, Mum?’ Declan chewed his bottom lip.

  ‘We are going to unpack and I am going to start looking for a job!’ She placed her hands on her hips, trying to make it sound as much like an adventure as possible.

  ‘Why don’t you become a teacher? I think you’d be really good. You could teach at my new school and then I would get to see you during the day.’

  Nina walked over and sat on the sofa with her boy in her arms, quashing the feelings of inadequacy and shame that washed over her. ‘I wish I could be
your teacher and I would like nothing more than to see you every day, all day. My sweet boy.’ She kissed his head. ‘But I think being a teacher is a bit beyond me.’ I am sorry, Dec. Sorry I didn’t pursue my dreams of nursing, didn’t push harder, didn’t have the courage. Things would be a lot different for us now if I had . . .

  By late morning, wrapped in jackets and scarves, the boys set off to explore the high street. She gave them strict instructions to stick together, not to talk to any strangers and to stay on the one road that was busy. Connor gave her a stern look that suggested her lecture was being added to the list of things he hated about her and his life. And frankly she was at a loss how to respond.

  She set open Declan’s laptop on the counter, and took a seat, looking around at job websites. It was discouraging, to say the least. The sites burst with roles that she had no hope of attaining: Senior Brand Manager – minimum four years in similar role or recent Marketing graduate. She swallowed and moved her finger down the screen. Pharmacy Assistant: Qualified Pharmacist wanted for busy hospital dispensary. Nina felt her stomach shrink: these were all so far out of her league. The job titles continued to come at her thick and fast and she only had the vaguest idea of what some of them meant.

  Switching sites, she trawled the local online paper. This looked a bit more promising. She got to work, firing off applications for every kind of job from estate agent to traffic warden, and one about which she was most optimistic she read aloud with enthusiasm: ‘Data Entry Clerk wanted for busy hotel chain in their centralised booking office.’ If there was one thing she knew about, it was staying in hotels. Her heart and spirit lifted, and as her eyes scanned the details – ‘twelve pounds an hour, flexible hours to suit’ – she felt her face break into a smile. And then the line that deflated her hopes instantly: ‘Second language a must – Spanish/French/German/ Dutch/Portuguese/Polish. Contact us today!’