It was only when Hannah saw the marsh under the moonlight that she realized Elvie was taking them home.
‘No!’ Hannah called, twisting away. ‘No, Elvie! We need to go to the main road and get help. The other way.’
But Elvie was having none of it. She practically lifted Hannah off the ground, under her arm, and pulled her on. Her strength was unbelievable.
‘No, please! We need to stay and hide behind the hedges, and then find our way to Snadesdon.’
Elvie ignored her. She pulled and yanked Hannah, until she gave up and ran with her, her feet skipping along the ground.
Halfway down the track Elvie pulled her unexpectedly into the marsh and they crossed through the long grass. Soon Hannah saw where they were. It was a shortcut. They were almost back at Tornley Hall.
Hannah grabbed a branch and tried to hold on. ‘No, Elvie, please! Listen to me. We can’t go in there, Dax is going to—’
It was too late.
As they reached the end of Tornley Hall’s driveway the sound of engines appeared in the distance.
‘Shit! That’s him coming back. We have to hide.’
But Elvie dragged her on. She pulled Hannah up the driveway and in through the front door, which still lay open. The lights of three vehicles shone through the hedges as they came round the bend. Desperate, Hannah kicked out. Elvie was going to get them killed.
‘No, Elvie. We need the phone!’
Hannah tried to shut and lock the front door, but Elvie kept dragging her into the kitchen.
‘No, stop it – they’ll find us in here and . . .’
Elvie pulled Hannah into the scullery. What was she doing? They were going to be trapped!
The giant woman grabbed the fridge and started to pull. It moved with a screech across the floor. Elvie grabbed Hannah and pushed her down the side of it. To her surprise, Hannah flew through an opening into a dark space. Elvie came behind her and, grabbing the electric elements at the back of the fridge, pulled it back into place.
Hannah held the wall, her chest heaving, trying to catch her breath as silently as she could.
Where the hell were they?
From the vehicle sounds outside, the people in the cars were definitely here to find them. Doors slammed, and there was shouting. Engines restarted, and cars drove off.
Behind her, Hannah felt Elvie bend over. There was a click and a torch came on.
She peered, bewildered. They were in a small room with no windows. Pressing into her leg was a Victorian toilet covered in blue flowers.
There were blankets on the tiled floor, and food scattered around. The missing photo albums lay in the corner.
Elvie’s hiding place.
Elvie went to the doorway, which was now blocked by the fridge, and turned off the torch.
A tiny slice of light appeared on the wall to the right. There was a crack. A piece of brick was missing, Hannah guessed, under one of the scullery shelves.
Elvie stood back to let her see.
Stunned, Hannah saw Dax on the other side of the wall. He’d put the electricity back on.
‘Where the fuck are they?’ Carol was yelling in the kitchen. ‘What if they’re on the Snadesdon road?’
Dax shook his head. ‘Nah. Elvie’s never been out of the bloody village. Not in forty years. You’d have to sedate that fat cow to move her. She’s ’ere.’
He turned back to Carol. This close up, Hannah saw that his face was murderous.
‘Bill’s on the marsh with Craig. Tig and Frank are looking next door. We’ll find ’em. Tonight, or tomorrow. Don’t matter. Elvie won’t leave.’
Hannah turned. Elvie had sat, motionless, on the toilet seat.
Doors slammed around the house.
Frank and Tiggy appeared in the kitchen, now even more agitated than before. ‘They’re not next door.’
Tiggy’s hands swatted an invisible battalion of wasps. ‘You have to find them, Dax. Or they’ll know. They’ll find out. About everything!’
‘Oh, shut up, Tig! Always the same with you. Fine when it suits you having them working your bloody flowers all hours, while you’re swanning off to Spain, and then shouting your mouth off when it doesn’t.’
Tiggy’s face was puce, her voice hysterical. ‘Oh, don’t you blame me, Dax. It was like this when we got here. Olive and Peter started it, long before we were here . . . Do you remember?’ Frank tried to calm her, but she pulled away. ‘No, Frank! I told you all to get a doctor for Mabel, and for C.V. I was never happy letting those poor women pass away like that. I was never happy using those girls. Never. You just go too far, Dax. And I told you – I TOLD you – about storing that damn stolen farm machinery in here. Poor Frank, having to offer to cut that bloody grass every time the estate agent did a viewing, just to give you time to get it out. Ten times it must have happened. He nearly burst a blood vessel. I warned you that you’d get caught. I told you outsiders were on their way. I told you people would ask questions.’ She put her fists to her face and groaned. ‘And now – Hannah! We won’t get away with it. We won’t, Frank.’ Frank patted her back.
There was a sound outside. Another car was drawing up outside. Hannah saw them all glance nervously at the front door.
‘The taxi!’ Carol hissed.
‘Fuck!’ Dax grunted. ‘Get rid of ’im. Say you’re her, and you’ve changed your mind.’
Tiggy squealed and ran out the back door, followed by Frank. Hannah watched as Dax stomped out of the kitchen.
The taxi.
Hannah turned in the dark and whispered, ‘Elvie, the taxi’s here. That’s our chance. We have to go . . .’
Elvie shook her head.
‘Please?’
Hannah knelt down and took Elvie’s hands. ‘Elvie, it’s OK. Come on, I’ll be with you.’
There was a look of complete terror on the woman’s face. ‘Not allowed to go Ipswich.’
‘Elvie, that’s not true. You
can
go there. I’ll look after you.’
Elvie stood up, checked the crack and pushed the fridge quietly. She disappeared and the light turned off in the scullery. A second later a long arm came back into the dark and pulled Hannah out.
The scullery window was open.
Elvie pointed to the sink and Hannah knelt on the worktop, holding her shoulder. She turned sideways through the gap, rested her foot on the windowsill, then jumped down onto the bench.
‘Come on,’ she whispered.
But Elvie shook her head through the window.
‘Please, Elvie – quick!’
There was a sadness in Elvie’s eyes.
She couldn’t leave, Hannah realized with a jolt. She didn’t know how.
‘OK, I’ll come back for you,’ she whispered. ‘Hide!’
Then she ducked down and crawled to the side of the alcove.
The taxi was parked, lights blazing, by the trees.
She heard voices at the front door. Carol was saying it had been a mistake, and the driver was arguing, saying that she’d need to pay anyway. Carol was shouting in her grating voice for someone to fetch some money from inside.
It was now or never.
Hannah moved on her hands and knees through the flower beds until she reached the sitting-room window. She poked her head round it and saw Carol furiously counting money.
The taxi was five yards away. A radio blared from inside. Its headlights were pointing towards Carol and the driver.
Knowing she only had seconds, Hannah continued on her knees along the edge of the side-lawn towards the dark shadows of the oak trees, then doubled back up behind the taxi. The front door of Tornley Hall was slamming, as Carol got rid of the driver.
Now!
Hannah dived down the side of the taxi and opened the back passenger door quietly, hoping the blaring radio would cover the noise.
Gravel crunched as the driver walked past the sitting-room windows.
Hannah eased herself in, hoping his headlights would also blind him to her movement, and pulled the door gently closed. She lay flat across the footwell.
The driver opened his door, shut it, turned down the radio, shouted something rude about Carol into his taxi radio, then swung round and headed out of the driveway.
He turned up the radio again and sang along tunelessly.
Hannah lay still. The dark tops of the trees whipped past the window. She sensed the fork in the road by the three cottages, and then the right turn at the T-junction towards Thurrup.
The driver accelerated.
She wondered at what point to tell him she was here.
The next day, it was as if the snow had never been. The rivers were full. The grass was a vivid green among the puddles of mud. It was a fertile land, unfrozen.
Signposts pointed down thin lanes to places most people would never go. To houses, hidden up isolated lanes. To suburbs, with bolted doors and drawn curtains.
Hannah leant her head against the train window to cool the thump of her headache.
It was time to tell the truth.
One hour to London.
She rubbed the bruise on her cheek. In her hand sat Daniel’s phone and a scribbled number.
A sign for Essex appeared ahead, and the future she’d dreamt of in Suffolk dropped behind, and then away.
She rang the number, knowing there was no choice. Not because of what was about to happen later today, but because it was the right thing to do and, for a while, she’d lost sight of what that was.
A voice answered six rings later. Hannah hoped she hadn’t pulled her from a meeting.
‘Barbara, it’s Hannah.’
There was a tentative tone in her social worker’s voice. Her instincts were probably finely tuned. ‘Hi, Hannah, how is everything?’
‘Actually, that’s why I’m ringing you . . .’
And then Hannah started. She told Barbara everything. She told her about Tornley Hall and the mess she’d got into, and about Will walking out. Her lie about him being in Thurrup, when he was actually in London. And how she had been so desperate to be matched that she’d ripped apart their carefully built lives in London, without making sure it was what Will wanted too. And now that she didn’t know where he was.
Barbara listened, then related her own shock and sympathy for Hannah, at what had happened in Tornley.
There was a pause, and then Hannah made herself say it, even though she didn’t want to hear the answer. ‘Barbara, are we going to lose her?’
‘Hannah,’ she replied, ‘listen. Go and find Will, and sort things out. I’ll ring her social workers and explain what a mess you’ve been thrown into, and why. And I’ll ask them to give you a couple of weeks to sort out what’s happening with the house. But try not to worry. Right now, I promise you, she’s not going anywhere. They’re very keen.’
Hannah watched a dad further up the carriage, with a sleeping toddler asleep on his chest, face sweetly squashed to the side, as he read a book. ‘The thing is, I know it’s her, Barbara – I don’t know why. But I think it’s why it didn’t work out last summer. Because we were waiting for her, and we didn’t know it.’ Tears came into her eyes as she watched the scatter of houses start to gather together and build into towns. ‘God, I’ve messed up, haven’t I?’
Barbara sighed. ‘Hannah, listen. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m an adoptive parent, too. Trust me, we all want to be perfect.’
Hannah arrived at Paddington just before six. Her stomach rumbled painfully, and she realized she hadn’t eaten for twelve hours, apart from a cup of tea and a biscuit at the police station this morning. She entered the first place she saw, a bar serving food, and ordered at the counter.
Even though the police had warned her it was going to happen, it was surreal to see Tornley House appear on the television screen at the end of the bar. A customer with a beer looked up at the TV.
She took her drink over and sat on the next seat. A reporter stood at the end of the driveway. He was speaking to an anchor-woman back in the studio, on the six o’clock news. The house looked shabby and rundown, the driveway unwelcoming.
‘Yes, Alice, it’s a strange one, this one. We understand that police raided a number of properties in this quiet corner of Suffolk last night, after a tip-off that a woman has been living in domestic servitude in this hamlet. Even more extraordinary, allegations are also emerging that the woman’s mother and grandmother may have been kept here too, by three local families, and that this crime may reach back many, many decades. Police are questioning eight people, and are investigating reports that a recently deceased brother and sister, Peter and Olive Horseborrow – the former owners of this house behind me, which was built by their father, the Suffolk ship-builder John Horseborrow – were also involved.’
Hannah sipped her wine, as the anchorwoman asked the reporter for more details. The man at the bar shook his head at her.
‘Strange world,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied.
The reporter was speaking again.
‘Well, it’s early days, Alice, but we understand the woman the police discovered was found hiding in a toilet. This is the extraordinary thing. We understand this woman may be as old as forty, yet she has never left Tornley. Let me be clear, however. There is no suggestion that she was physically held here. This appears to be a case of vulnerable women being coerced into doing free labour, under psychological duress. I should be clear, too, that this story is just breaking. We understand that a second local woman was abducted and escaped last night, and that tomorrow police divers are starting a search around Graysea Bay. I’ll keep you updated as we receive more news.’
Hannah finished her food, and made her way to the Tube. She got off at Shepherd’s Bush, and put her head down as she made her way through the early crowds arriving for a gig at the Empire.
Although it was dark, the air was balmy with the promise of spring. She walked the route home, which she’d walked hundreds of times, towards Will, not knowing what she would find this time.
The receptionist of Smart Yak, Aleisha, was packing up for the evening when Hannah arrived. They had met a few times, but Aleisha shifted uncomfortably today, as if she didn’t know what to say.
Hannah walked up the stairs, then checked behind her. As she suspected, Aleisha was phoning ahead.