‘Morning,’ he called.
Clare glanced up. ‘Oh, hi. You stayed then?’ She reached the top. ‘Listen, I wasn’t sure if Matt would make it in.’ She held out a polystyrene cup and a brown packet. ‘I got this for you, in case. It’s all they had.’
Will opened the packet. Inside was a croissant. ‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. Though I don’t know how fresh it is …’
‘No, it’s good.’ Will tried to think of something to say to be polite and realized he didn’t know much about her. ‘So did your son make it back from Surrey?’
Clare was removing her hat. Ice fell onto her hair. He was right; it definitely looked blonder than it used to. He’d also assumed she was his age, mid-thirties, but close-up now, he suspected she was younger.
‘Sussex, no. God, Will, have you not seen the news?’
‘What?’
‘The airports are shut, and the motorways. They’re saying maybe Friday for the trains to start again.’
For reasons Will didn’t want to think about too deeply, he felt relief.
‘So, no, Jamie’s still in Brighton.’ Clare’s nose was pink. She wiped it with a tissue. ‘I can’t remember: do you have kids?’
That question.
‘No.’
Before Clare could enquire further, he turned the handle of his studio door. ‘Right, thanks very much, missus. I owe you.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she smiled.
He’d never seen Clare smile before. She had a nice smile. Sunny. It reminded him of the nurse who’d looked after him when he’d had his tonsils out as a kid, around the time the old man left home. The nurse had brought him water for his throat in the night, and had smiled as she tucked him back in. His memory was that it lit up the dark.
Clare walked to the end of the corridor and opened her studio door. There was an explosion of colour as the silk rolls and glass that she used for her floor lights burst into view.
With her back to him, she pulled off her winter coat, revealing a fitted denim dress that sat tight into her waist. Too late, Will caught himself imagining his hands there. He opened his own door and slammed it behind him. What the hell was that? He’d never thought about Clare in that way.
Wondering what was up with him, he counted back. It must be three months since he and Hannah had had sex. That was probably it. And even then, that last time had been crap, with her lying there, tense, looking like a martyr; and him hating it, but not wanting to stop because, God, it had been so fucking long.
He sat down and picked up his phone. One new message from Hannah.
He knew he should ring back to check she was all right in the snow, but something stopped him. Hannah had survived in worse places.
He sipped his coffee.
No, the break was doing him good. After last night he was starting to realize how much Hannah’s obsession with Barbara and moving house had been distracting him from work.
She could get on with her manic decorating.
It was her idea, anyway, not his.
He’d ring later.
CHAPTER NINE
Hannah spent the first part of Tuesday morning standing by the bathroom sink, recalling last night’s bizarre episode with the donkey. The electric heater on the wall burnt her head. Every time it became unbearable, she moved into the sub-zero chill for a few seconds of relief, then back. In between she washed her body in hot water that she’d poured from the kettle.
Then she returned under the duvet and piled on her own clothes, and another dry jumper from Will’s box. When she could bear it, she made a run through a blast of ice-air from the broken hall window to the kitchen, where she turned on the oven and hob rings and stood for another full five minutes, with a cup of tea in her frozen hands, unable to move.
God. How was she going to stand another day of this? She looked out of the window. The soft ridge of snow on the wall was twice its previous height. She prayed Will would find a way home tonight. She couldn’t get the house ready all by herself.
To stop herself panicking she ticked off yesterday’s entry from the schedule, then walked around the kitchen to find a phone signal.
There was still no message from Brian, or from Will. To her relief there was, however, a new message from Laurie, asking if she was all right in the snow. Apparently she and Ian were cut off, too, over in Thurrup. There was no plumber’s number on the message – either Laurie had forgotten or Will hadn’t asked her yet. Hannah sighed. If Thurrup was cut off, then a plumber wouldn’t make it out here anyway.
No. The snow would go eventually. She’d just have to be practical.
Hannah picked up her marker pen. Today’s reworked entry on the schedule, written last night before bed, had been optimistic. Day 11: Tuesday, PAINT SITTING ROOM. She struggled to think straight about what to replace it with. In the end, she replaced SITTING ROOM with DINING ROOM.
First, however, she had to deal with the donkey.
After another cup of tea for heat, she grabbed a carrot, dressed for outside and forced herself into the freezing garden.
The air was thick with icy fog, and her feet crunched on a shell of newly formed hoar frost towards the garage.
Inside, the little donkey looked up at her hopefully.
The red blanket was gone. The loosened twine lay on the floor.
‘Where’s your … ?’ she said, looking around. He hadn’t eaten it, had he? She held out the carrot. The donkey plucked it from her with yellow teeth and ate it, as she mucked out into the field, looking around for the blanket. Had he kicked it somewhere?
She checked her watch: 8.30 a.m. This had to be sorted out. If she went now, she could start painting at nine, latest.
Pulling her coat close, Hannah returned to the field. Through the fog she saw that one light from last night belonged to a grey farmhouse, about a quarter of a mile away. The other belonged to a grain shed of some kind. There was no doubt then. The donkey’s owner lived in the farmhouse.
As she passed by its shelter, she saw that it was even more pathetic than she’d realized last night: a few pieces of wood hammered onto badly erected gate posts. They’d clearly done it in a hurry, to move the donkey – and its snow-protest honking, presumably – away from their own bedrooms.
The old sense of injustice sizzled inside her. How could people behave like this?
Hannah wrapped her scarf around her mouth and stomped across the field. Yet ten minutes later, to her surprise, she still hadn’t reached the farm, and her legs were tired with the effort of balancing on the narrow crop tracks. Thank goodness she hadn’t attempted this last night. Distance was difficult to judge in this flat Suffolk landscape.
A few minutes later she reached a scruffy farmyard. Snow-covered machinery was parked around it. The house was built of ugly grey stone and was exposed to the elements. There were no trees or hedges, just fields and barbed-wire fences. Looking back, Hannah saw that the Horseborrows must have planted trees around their property when the family moved in, nearly a hundred years ago. Only the roof and two bedroom windows were visible through the bare branches of the tall oaks and ashes around it. In summer, she suspected, Tornley Hall would be completely obscured.
Hannah knocked on the front door. A cacophony of barking started up.
‘Who is it?’ a gruff voice shouted.
‘Hannah – from … across the field.’
There was a pause. The door scraped open, and an unsmiling woman stood in the doorway. Instinctively Hannah stepped back. She was enormous. Over six foot tall, with broad shoulders, like a cage-fighter. She was dressed in men’s cords, a man’s checked shirt and an insulated waistcoat. Her face was red and sore-looking. Dry skin flaked around her nose. Dark-grey hair was pulled back in a tight bun. In one hand she had a piece of toast; in the other, a rifle.
‘Hi,’ Hannah said in the friendliest tone she could muster. ‘I’m Hannah. I’ve just moved in across the field – at Tornley Hall?’
‘H’llo.�
� If the farmer was interested in her new neighbour, she wasn’t showing it. Two large hunting dogs pushed behind her. One barked, and the other joined in.
‘Shut-uppp!’ the farmer yelled. She split the toast, and threw it on the ground. The dogs pounced.
Hannah tried to ignore the gun. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but do you own a donkey?’
It sounded so ridiculous she almost laughed.
The woman glanced over to the field. ‘Escaped, has he?’
‘No. No, it’s just that last night I found him outside, in the field.’
‘Got out of his shelter.’
It was presented as a statement, not a question. Hannah held her nerve.
‘Yeah. No. Sorry – no, he didn’t escape. He was braying really loudly last night, and it woke me up. I found him outside, with a lot of snow on him. I was a bit worried, so I put him in our garage overnight. I wasn’t sure if there’d been a mix-up and no one knew he was outside, or something.’
The woman squinted at the distant field. The dogs pushed behind her, brushing Hannah’s legs. ‘Where is he?’
‘In my garage,’ Hannah repeated, wishing the woman would put down the rifle. ‘At Tornley Hall – the thing is … I’ve worked in hot countries, and I’m pretty sure that donkeys aren’t very good in cold weather. I think they need shelter. I just wanted to check that someone knew, and that, um …’
How much more bloody diplomatic could she be? To her dismay, Hannah heard the farmer swearing under her breath.
‘Sorry?’
The woman pointed the rifle downwards. ‘You can’t walk onto farmland and take animals. The police’ll have you for that.’
Damn. This was exactly what she didn’t want.
‘Oh. No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything to upset anyone. I just – it was late, and cold, and I didn’t know what else to do.’
She couldn’t believe the words she was hearing come out of her own mouth.
The woman softened a tiny amount. ‘It’s all right. Just put him back, please.’
Hannah bit her tongue. So much for her negotiation-skills training. This woman was walking all over her.
The farmer watched Hannah with expressionless pale-blue eyes lost in pockets of loose skin.
Hannah forced herself to remember Barbara, and why they’d come to Tornley. She couldn’t damage their chances for this. She pointed to a barn. ‘I mean, could he go in there, maybe – till the snow’s gone?’
The woman banged her gun down. Hannah jumped.
‘That shelter’s fine. My sons built it. And, as I say, you don’t just walk onto land and take livestock, or tell people what to do with theirs.’
‘No. No, I didn’t meant to … Sorry – I’ve just come from London, so …’ She knew she sounded pathetic.
The farmer stood her ground, unflinching.
‘OK. I’ll put him back,’ Hannah said. ‘No problem – you’re probably right.’
She waved goodbye, but the woman didn’t react.
Disgusted with herself, Hannah returned to the field. If Jane and her other TSO colleagues could see her now, they’d never speak to her again. She put her head down as a fresh flurry started, and climbed back onto the crop ridges.
Behind her came a shout. ‘Take the road, please, not my field!’
The thought of Jane and her uncompromising brown eyes finally galvanized Hannah. She kept her head down and pretended she hadn’t heard; partly because she wasn’t used to giving in to bullies, and partly because if she tried to navigate her way back to Tornley Hall by the unsignposted roads, she knew she’d end up in Ipswich.
Hoping the farmer wasn’t allowed to shoot her for trespassing, she continued the way she came.
Midway across the field she allowed herself a glance back, and saw a second tall figure in a dark jacket, boots and a woollen hat arriving beside the farmer. Her son? The farmer was pointing towards Hannah.
Hannah quickened her step. She’d have to stay away from them. It was too risky. The last thing they wanted Barbara to discover next Friday was that Will and Hannah had fallen out with the gun-wielding madwoman next door, and that Hannah had been arrested for donkey-rustling.
She pulled out her phone to tell Will what was going on.
When he didn’t answer she left another message.
This was becoming annoying. Where was he?
Back at Tornley Hall, Hannah fetched the donkey’s coat, took it out to the garage, then led the animal shamefully back to its pitiful shelter. The donkey fixed its woeful eyes beyond her, and blinked with long lashes as the snow fell into them, as if accepting its fate.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, rubbing the donkey’s head. ‘I just can’t get involved right now, but I promise that when this is all over, I’ll have your back, OK?’
Her mobile buzzed.
‘Brian’ popped up on the screen.
‘Yes!’ Hannah hissed. A text appeared: H/clearance ppl shd have put keys back in cupboard under scullery sink. Brian.
Hannah ran back to the house, trying to put the donkey out of her mind. Under the scullery sink was a cupboard they’d checked previously. She now saw, however, that inside it was a small box, painted the same green as the walls, with no handle. They’d missed it. She prised it open with her fingernails.
Two silver keys appeared, along with a bunch of old-fashioned brown ones, one of which she guessed belonged to the attic.
She took them to the sitting room. The first silver key turned in the lock straight away.
Yes!
Hannah’s mind flew to her schedule. This was fantastic. She could start painting the sitting room today after all, with the duck-egg blue. She opened the door, fired up again.
The room lay in shadow. The diesel smell was even stronger inside. The only light came through an old cream blind on the square rear window that led out to the side-alcove.
Hannah opened the first of the three sets of wooden shutters on the grand picture windows. Blue-tinged light rushed in, along with the great view of the lawn. Exhilarated, she turned to take in the dramatic effect.
Her eyes flew to the shelves on either side of the fireplace.
No!
There were books. Everywhere. The house-clearance people hadn’t taken them.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Hannah yelled. Her plans were being thwarted at every turn. Every space on every shelf was packed, right to the ceiling, with volumes piled horizontally on top of upright ones.
Ironically, in the gloom she could already see that the rest of this room was in better condition than the others, with smooth, papered walls, that stunning Victorian silver fireplace and the polished wooden floor. But it would take her hours to clear all these books before she could paint.
Over by the side-window there was also a pile of black rubbish bags that the house-clearance people had left.
Frustrated, she started to open the second set of shutters.
In her peripheral vision a black bin bag moved.
At first it was a rustle of plastic, like a spider or a mouse, then all the bags seemed to rise up right on top of each other.
Hannah’s heart dropped through her stomach.
Someone was in here.
Forcing her legs to move, she ran to the door, almost horizontal in her attempt to stop the intruder catching her. Breathless with fear, she swung round into the hall and slammed the sitting-room door shut so hard behind her that the handle nearly came off. Fumbling, she turned the key back in the lock.
Hannah jammed her feet into Will’s trainers by the front door and ran out into the snowy garden. The driveway looked a mile long.
Was he behind her?
Shaking, she stumbled through the snow blizzard towards the lane.
How did he get in there?
She reached the oak trees, and kept going. Panicked thoughts flew at her.
If she hid in the bushes, he’d see her footprints in the snow and find her.
The house next door was shut up.<
br />
No cars came down this lane.
Tornley was a quarter of a mile away.
If he came for her, she couldn’t get away.
Hannah tripped, steadied herself and kept going, trying to remember what to do.
First rule in a dangerous situation: alert someone.
She grabbed for her phone as she reached the gate.
A growling noise came out of nowhere.
With a gasp, she jumped sideways into the bushes, waiting for a hand on her back.
Then she realized it was a car. After forty-eight hours of near-silence, the engine cut through the garden like a chainsaw.
A red pickup truck with huge, broad tyres swung through the gate and skidded to a stop, sending snow and gravel into her legs.
The door flew open.
A man jumped out.
Hannah was so shocked, it took her a second to recognize him.
Dax.
He was still wearing an oily boiler suit and black gloves. If he was cold, he didn’t show it.
‘Aye-aye. Bit chilly for gardening, in’t it?’ He had that bemused expression on his face.
Hannah stood up and walked out of the bush. Her knee stung. It was bleeding.
‘Right,’ Dax said, marching away. ‘Let’s see this boiler.’
She found her voice. ‘No! Don’t! There’s someone in there. In the house.’
He halted.
‘They’ve broken in. There’s someone in the sitting room.’
Dax gave her a quizzical look.
‘Please, it’s not funny,’ she said brushing off snow. ‘I just unlocked the sitting room and there was someone in there.’
‘Who’s that then?’
‘I didn’t see. He was lying on the floor under bin bags, and when I walked in he stood up, and I ran.’
Dax glanced down at Will’s size-eleven trainers and back at her face. He shrugged. ‘Vagrant, most like.’
‘A vagrant?’
He marched towards the house. ‘Get ’em, round here. Pain in the bloody arse. Where is he?’
‘No!’ Hannah called, following him. ‘No, Dax. Please. I locked him in. We need to call the police.’
Dax snorted. ‘You’ll be waiting all day then. Police don’t waste time on that lot. Too many of ’em.’ He turned sharp left through the front door and, to Hannah’s horror, unlocked the sitting-room door and walked straight in.
The Hidden Girl Page 6