‘New Order. “Blue Monday”.’
Will stopped tapping. ‘Fuckin’ hell!’
The girl laughed, bunching the freckles.
‘Oh please, he’s just saying that cos he fancies you,’ said the grey-haired woman, handing the girl a wine menu and giving Will a good-humoured wink.
The girl looked startled. She mouthed ‘Sorry’ at Will, then dropped her eyes to the menu. Behind it, he saw that the rest of her skin had flushed the same tone as her sunburn. He found himself wanting to tell her it was OK.
‘You … you have a very interesting hair colour – where are you from?’ he shouted over the music, trying not to slur.
She looked up. ‘Nigeria.’
He hesitated. Was she winding him up?
‘You’re from Nigeria?’
She reached up to hear him repeat it. ‘No!’ she said, pointing to her suitcase. ‘Sorry, I thought you said where’ve I come from. No. I’ve just got back. From Nigeria.’ She turned to point out a bottle to her friend. The side-angle hardened her soft cheekbones unexpectedly.
‘Really?’ Will said, trying and failing to think of a more intelligent reply.
He couldn’t stop looking at her. Everything about her was unexpected. Nothing fitted together in a way that made sense.
She was small – maybe five foot two – but had a physical confidence about her, as if she could handle herself. And maybe it was his imagination, but she smelt a little of wee and day-old deodorant, and her hair looked greasy.
A word on her bag caught his eye: TeachersSpeakOUT.
Her friend left the bar holding glasses and a bottle, and gave him a cheerful wink. The girl waved, with an embarrassed smile, and followed the woman to a high table with stools near the bar. He watched in the mirror. As her friend poured the wine, the girl’s face turned more serious. She took a sheaf of pages out of her bag, and some photographs. He saw the words ‘Abuja’ and ‘Conference’ on the front. She and her friend knocked glasses, then bowed their heads over the material.
‘Mate?’ the barman said. ‘Do you want a drink or not?’
‘Yeah. Sorry,’ Will said.
TeachersSpeakOUT. Where had he seen that name before? Outside an office somewhere – up by the Tube?
As the barman poured his round, Will checked on the lads in the mirror. It had been a while since they’d all spent a weekend together getting wasted. He realized he was the only one still doing music. The rest had long ago drifted into IT, and a college course, teaching and a building site. Two were back home in Salford, one with a kid. If he wasn’t careful, he knew he’d be next.
Will carried his tray from the bar. He saw that the three girls he and the lads had been chatting to earlier in the evening had moved their drinks over to their table. The one he’d thought was quite pretty glanced at him through thick eyelashes, hopeful. Unlike the freckled girl at the bar, this girl’s skin was flawless, as if it had been airbrushed a deep tan. He suspected the effect had taken hours to achieve.
As he pushed unsteadily through the throng, Will felt a shift inside him that was so powerful he couldn’t identify it.
Maybe it was knowing that he’d blown it too many times, and that this chance to assist a producer he respected might be his last, or maybe it was because he’d just turned twenty-seven.
But suddenly, Will knew that it was time to stop fucking around.
The girl with the painted-on tan smiled at him with bleached teeth, and shifted to make room on the bench.
Stop fucking around, in more ways than one.
As he dodged the crowds, balancing his tray, he passed the girl with the sunburnt face. She was scratching her head, looking as if she needed a wash. He wanted her to see him, so that he could speak to her again, or even offer to buy her and her friend a drink, but her gaze was fixed intently on her documents. She was locked in a conversation that appeared to matter to her, the way his week at Smart Yak had mattered to him.
Maybe it was the four pints and two shots he’d had since six o’clock, but right then Will had a crazy thought. He didn’t want to buy the girl with the greasy hair a drink.
He wanted her to be his girlfriend.
‘Here you go, pal.’
Will paid for his pint.
In the mirror this lunchtime he saw a different man from the one he’d gone on to become with Hannah.
He saw his old man. Unshaven and hungover, in dirty clothes. Drinking in the daytime, and messing around with other women. A knob who walked out on his wife when she got clinical depression, and left his kid to do his job for him.
Will looked at the beer. What the fuck was he doing?
He banged the glass down and walked out.
At Paddington station every part of the forecourt was crowded with people like him, desperate to get home. He squatted against a wall, waiting for an announcement. When the trains to Suffolk finally started, half of London seemed to be trying to get there, and the service was painfully slow. There were no seats, so he leant against the luggage rack for three-and-a-half hours, budging every time someone went into the toilet.
Back at Woodbridge station the snow was melting. His car growled as he woke it from four days’ hibernation. At the supermarket he stocked up, then headed off on the A12. It was only then that he saw the real effect of the weather out here. Abandoned cars littered the side of the road.
Hannah had been out here without food or transport. She’d tried to ring him.
He hadn’t replied.
Will turned off the A12, speeding up. The B-roads were even worse. The snow was compacted, pushed to the sides like dirty ocean surf. It was 5.45 p.m. and the sun was starting to set. Will forced himself to concentrate on the new route he’d learnt, to Snadesdon via Thurrup, then on past the village green. For the first time he didn’t get lost. Three turns and he was back at the crooked iron gate with the red rope.
As he accelerated towards Tornley, he knew why he recognized that gate now.
They’d come here a few times, he and Laurie and a convoy of her young-farmer mates, after a night in the Fox’s pub garden. He remembered now. There was a meadow hidden up the track beyond the gate, in a hollow of trees. They’d parked their old pickups and Minis in a circle; turned up the music loud, drunk cider, put on their hazard lights and danced in the middle. One night, he recalled, he’d lain on the damp earth among the trees with a giggling posh girl called Phoebe, who lived in a vicarage and had smooth thighs. When she went home, he’d ended up in the back of a pickup with Laurie’s best friend, Bex, a tough farm girl, all peroxide hair and chewing-gum kisses.
Oh yeah, he’d thought he was the man that night.
Will banged the gear stick up into fourth as he hit the final straight. Last Saturday he’d hated being back on these roads. Maybe he just hated the dick he’d been then.
He drove through Tornley and around the bend, speeding up, needing to see Hannah.
When he turned up into the driveway, however, Tornley Hall lay in darkness.
He parked and opened the front door.
It was bloody freezing here. Hannah’s words about the broken boiler came back to him. This was bad.
‘Han?’
No answer.
The hall smelt of paint and wood smoke, and when he turned on the light he was amazed to see the hall not just clear, but the cracks filled and painted, too. In the fireplace there was evidence of a fire. How had she done all this?
‘Han?’ He tried the study and the sitting-room doors. Still locked.
Flicking on the lights, Will checked the kitchen.
‘Han?’
A blast of cold air hit him. The big window above the sink in the scullery was wide open. He shut it, and went upstairs.
‘Han?’
Each bedroom lay in darkness.
Where was she? She didn’t have a car.
A new thought sent panic through him. Had she left him?
He went to check her clothes in the wardrobe, knowing it was his fault
if she had.
Just as he opened the door there was the sound of a car outside. Will ran downstairs and out of the front door.
A red pickup with full-beam headlights skidded to a halt in the driveway, one foot from his car, scattering gravel everywhere, a radio blaring.
The passenger door opened and Hannah jumped out, looking at Will’s car.
Their eyes met.
‘Oh shit! Will.’
In the truck headlights her cheeks were pink. Her eyes were that soft navy blue they used to be, before they hardened last summer.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked.
The driver’s door opened and a cocky-looking geezer climbed out, a cigarette in his hand.
Instantly Will knew his type. He’d met enough of them, fronting bands.
Hannah stood in front of the man. Her voice sounded flat.
‘Will. This is Dax. Our neighbour.’
The tosser nodded. ‘Saw you in the Fox the other night.’
Will avoided Hannah’s quizzical look.
‘Dax’s been helping me with the house,’ she said.
I bet he has, Will thought. He regarded the guy.
‘Right. You’ll have to tell us how much we owe you.’
The tosser waved and got back in the truck. ‘We’ll sort it out.’ He shouted to Hannah, ‘Tell Jim: Dax says to get his arse down here tomorrow and sort that boiler out.’
‘I will – thanks.’
The guy slammed the door and drove off.
Hannah glared at Will and put her hands on her hips. ‘That was necessary, was it? To speak to him like that?’
‘Who the fuck is he?’
‘Oh!’ she growled. ‘Don’t you dare!’ She marched past him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here anyway, after last night.’
‘Han.’ He put out his hand. She swerved, but he grabbed her coat and grappled her backwards.
‘Get off me!’ she shouted, pushing him away. This time, though, he didn’t let go. He pulled her close as she struggled. He could feel that she’d lost weight around her waist and shoulders, even in a few days. Her hair smelt greasy, and of paint and the sea.
He buried his nose in it.
‘I was wasted,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Really?’ she snapped. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
She wriggled again, but he kept holding her tight, like he should have done a week ago, when he saw the fear on her face at the state of the house.
‘After what we’ve been through,’ she said, ‘it’s unbelievable. If that’s what you want, Will – if you want to have your own kids – then fuck off! Go, now. I don’t want you here.’
He kept her tight in his arms. ‘I don’t. I want a kid with you.’
He felt the fight go out of her and realized in that moment how much he’d scared her. He kissed her head. ‘I was being a dick. Sorry.’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t do that, Will.’
‘I know.’ He kissed the side of her face and held her for a moment. ‘Han?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You need a bath.’
She shivered and to his happiness, he felt her arms creep around his back. ‘I’m so cold. The heating’s not working.’
They stood there, swaying, for a moment.
He kissed her strange-coloured hair. ‘Han, it’s not easy for me, either. The waiting.’
She nodded. ‘I know.’ She pushed back from him, and he let her go this time. ‘Barbara says she has news. Can we go for it? Please.’ She pointed at the house. ‘I know it’s a dump, but we’re here now. Can we just do what it takes to make it work?’
He nodded, and put his arm around her shoulders.
They walked into the house, and he knew then that he couldn’t tell her about Clare. Not now. Not till after Barbara’s visit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
That evening was the first time Tornley Hall began to feel like home to Hannah.
She and Will made dinner together from the shopping he had brought, and she ate ravenously. He put on music and she lit candles.
Later she showed him the work she’d done in each room, and he made a good effort to look impressed. In the sitting room he glared at the Horseborrows’ books, as she had done.
‘Don’t ask,’ she said. ‘It’s getting sorted.’
‘OK.’ He threw a blanket on top of her head, which made her smile, then helped her pull the sofa to the fire, as she wrapped it around her shoulders.
‘Do you want a coffee?’
‘Please.’
Hannah stretched out in front of the fire. With Will out of the room, she allowed herself to think about her strange afternoon with Dax.
This morning she’d been terrified that Will had flaked out on her. Now she knew it was going to be OK. He was back.
They’d just had a crisis. It happened.
What mattered was that they were going to move forward again.
Will returned with her coffee.
‘Thanks,’ she said, lying back.
Will disappeared again, and she watched the flames flickering in the grand fireplace.
It was fine. Just a panic. They would carry on now. Put everything bad behind them.
She finished her coffee and watched the fire, drifting off. Next thing, Will was back, shaking her gently awake.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Come on.’
He led her upstairs.
She saw steam coming out the bathroom door. The kettle was outside.
‘What have you done?’
The bath was full. In lieu of bubble bath he’d used the lemon shower gel to create the illusion of bubbles, and had lit a red Christmas candle that he’d found in a box.
‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to get in a bath as much as I do now.’
Will lifted up her arms and pulled off two jumpers, three layers of T-shirts and a bra.
‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he said, wrinkling his nose.
‘Shut up.’
She lifted her feet to help him remove the rest of her clothes, kissing his head as his hair brushed her breasts. Then he held her hand as she climbed in.
The sensation of warm water on her frozen bones was almost unbearable.
She lowered herself, eyes half-closed, and dipped her head under. When she sat back up, Will was putting a towel on the toilet seat.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘In a minute. I’m just going to turn everything off.’
Hannah dipped under again and washed her face in the bath, forgetting about the shower gel.
Blinking as it went in her eyes, she felt for the towel and saw Will’s outline in the doorway.
‘I can’t reach it. Can you pass it?’ She held out her hand.
Will didn’t speak. She washed her eyes with fresh water from the tap and rubbed them with clean fingers.
‘Will? The towel?’ Her eyes cleared.
The doorway was empty.
‘Will?’
There was a distant clashing of pots, and then footsteps. ‘Yeah?’ his voice came from downstairs.
Hannah sat up. Alarmed, she jumped out of the bath, grabbed the towel, then peered down the corridor. Will appeared at the top of the stairs, with a glass of wine.
‘Why did you get out?’
‘Were you just up here?’ she asked.
‘No.’
She checked the hall again.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. The house has been creeping me out.’
‘That’s not like you.’
‘Hmm. Well, talking of that, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘What?’
She re-immersed herself in the bath, trying to think how to say it in a way that wouldn’t lead to more stress for either of them. She’d already decided not to tell him about Farmer Nasty, in case Will marched over there and started a neighbour dispute.
‘OK, well, don’t overreact,’ she said as Will
put her wine by the tap, ‘but Dax thinks we’ve had visitors.’
‘Who?’
‘Will, seriously. I don’t want you telling anyone. Definitely not Barbara.’
‘OK.
‘Somebody was sleeping here – casual workers. The ones who come for the season. Probably last summer. When I opened the sitting room, I found an old blanket and some food packets. And in the garage.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘No – Dax said there was no point. Apparently a few of them sleep in the sheds round here to save money, or because they’re illegal. They’re not criminals. They must have realized the house was empty and broken in.’
Will frowned. ‘Lucky you weren’t here.’
‘Hmm.’ She took the wine, avoiding his eye. Will pulled off a T-shirt she’d never seen before. ‘Where did you get that?’ The tracksuit trousers were odd, too. They hung off his waist.
‘Borrowed it.’
‘What, off the World’s Biggest Man?’
When Will’s face emerged from the T-shirt, he wasn’t smiling. He was clearly still thinking about the intruder. It was a while since she’d seen him naked. His shoulders were still naturally muscular, his torso lithe. She knew the effect he had on women. The irony of him being married to a woman who didn’t want to have sex was not lost on her.
Will climbed in behind her. She leant back into his warm, wet stomach, and his arms wrapped round her, resting across her breasts.
‘Maybe we should get an alarm,’ he said, ‘if you’re here on your own. We’ll need one for the studio anyway.’
‘Maybe. Though it’s not like they’re here to steal stuff. They just need to sleep somewhere.’
Will put handfuls of water on her hair and reached for the shampoo. ‘Where were you today then?’ He poured shampoo on her head.
She stiffened as he washed it. ‘I needed to get out of the house. I thought you’d flaked out on me.’
He kissed her shoulder. Instinctively she jerked away.
Will sighed. ‘Han, I’m not doing anything.’
She grabbed his hand and held it between hers. ‘I know. Sorry. I can’t help it. I don’t know why it’s happening. It’s just: all the treatment, and the social workers and the waiting. I just feel like this …’
The Hidden Girl Page 14