The Silent Girls

Chapter Four

Lena’s kitchen was cluttered but clean, full of the paraphernalia that marked out a busy and productive existence. Edie was surprised at the quality of some of the equipment and assumed that Sam was the culprit, treating his mother to labour-saving devices and goods that would make her life a little easier. It must be nice to have a son who dropped in frequently and who cared about your day. Edie thought of Will and felt a pang of longing as she considered the distance between herself and her son. It wasn’t only the gulf of the Pacific that separated them, but his dogged loyalty to his father. She had always felt that Will though of her as a loving fool, just a doting, laundry-doing, food-cooking mum who needed no nurture and who could survive on that role alone. Edie sighed, whichever vantage point she chose to stand at and look at her life, the view always appeared to be half-baked and wanting. She plunged her hands into the scalding water and let the heat seep into her skin and creep into her bones in the vain hope that it would travel to her heart and start a thaw.

When she returned to the sitting room Lena was dozing in her chair, slack jawed and snoring. Edie considered fetching a blanket to cover the old lady, but something told her not to, that the intervention would not be welcome. The way that Lena was clutching at the arms of the chair in her sleep was jarring and it made Edie want to look away. She walked softly into the front room and, like many before her, peered out through the net curtains. This side of the square seemed quiet at night, all the activity took place in the communal garden and outside the pub where the smokers were gathered. Edie watched as they downed their drinks and laughed, then she turned her attention to the garden, where a group of kids, or what looked like kids to Edie, were busy clambering on a bench with the apparent intent of dismantling it. Was this what had caused Dolly to shut the world out?

The unexpected clatter of a skateboard on the paving slabs and the sudden appearance of a boy whizzing by sent her scurrying back into the dimly lit room, her heart pounding. The noise had shocked her and had seemed to come from nowhere. The grating rattle of loose wheels faded and her heart slowed as her senses came off red alert. All that she could hear now was the ticking of the clock and Lena’s gentle snores. The clock told her that it was five past nine, too early to go to bed and too late to do any more work in Number 17. She thought of ringing Rose and asking her about Matthew Bastin, but decided against it – if she rang after nine Rose would think something was wrong and what could Edie say, everything is wrong and I don’t know how to put it right?

With another sigh she headed for the stairs, a long bath and an early night seemed like her only option. While the hot tap thundered water into the tub she opened the window to release the steam and peered down into Lena’s yard. None of the houses had gardens as such, just a yard that used to house an outside toilet and a coal shed. Each yard backed on to an access lane where modern residents squeezed their cars to load and unload. Someone, Sam she supposed, had knocked down the old structures in Lena’s yard and had created a little seating area with a few pots and a small barbecue. Edie smiled at the thought of Lena’s huge family crammed into the tiny space, eating chargrilled burgers amidst the busy lizzies. The smile was wiped from her face when she spied a movement in the shadows of Number 17’s yard. Something was moving about down there. Her first instinct was to assume that an urban fox was rummaging about amongst the mountain of Dolly’s uncollected bin bags, but whatever it might be seemed too large to be a fox, and too noisy to be a burglar. Not that any burglar would find much, except maybe a bad dose of e coli poisoning and a fit of asthma. Nevertheless, Edie felt obliged to investigate, especially as she had a sneaking feeling that she hadn’t locked the back door. She thought of the kids in the square and their bid to vandalise the bench. Number 17 was in enough of a state, without the addition of graffiti and saboteurs.

Abandoning her half run bath, she made her way quietly down the stairs and was relieved to find Lena still sleeping. Logic suggested that Edie should ring the police, but knowledge equally suggested that by the time they arrived the house might be wrecked – though it would be hard to tell the difference. In Lena’s kitchen she cast about for a weapon in case she needed to indulge in a little self-defence, knives were definitely out, although brandishing a meat cleaver might look dramatic and terrifying Edie felt she’d be more likely to damage herself with such a thing than menace anyone else. In the end she settled for a hefty rolling pin and a weighty Maglite that had been conveniently left on the windowsill. Armed and ready she made her way through the back door and out into the alley at the back of the house. Her first shock was the discovery that Lena’s house had been fitted with outside lights, which were triggered by motion. Having her progress suddenly illuminated for all to see was almost more unnerving than the fear of facing a roomful of teenagers hell bent on wanton destruction. For a moment she froze, unsure of the wisdom of her mission and feeling faintly ridiculous, armed as she was with baking equipment and a torch. The prospect of facing a vandalised house drove her on while the security light projected her shadow on the yard wall, where it loomed like some monstrous parody of a Victorian villain.

The yard of number seventeen was littered with junk and did not benefit from security lighting. Even in the weak beam of Lena’s torch Edie had to pick her way through the detritus and fight the smell of rotting rubbish. As she had suspected, the back door had been left open and her heart sank and floundered like a landed fish.

Whoever was inside hadn’t turned on the lights so she paused and strained her ears in a bid to pick up auditory evidence of a wrecking party. There was nothing, only the distant wail of a siren and the muffled hum of the square. Feeling increasingly apprehensive she stole through the door and found the kitchen empty of vandals and the same as she had left it, except for the presence of a back pack that had been placed on the kitchen table. Edie shone the torch beam on it. The bag was old and worn and emitted a pungent smell of old dirt and rotting daffodils – why the prospect of facing one of the great unwashed was less fear provoking than a houseful of rampant teenagers was beyond Edie, but for some reason she felt less tense about the anticipated encounter. Until a loud, house-shaking thud from upstairs caused her to drop the torch and cling onto the rolling pin with both hands in a primal stance of abject terror. The torch rolled on the floor, its thin beam making a kaleidoscope of shadows dance across the walls, to the extent that she felt surrounded and assailed by the ghosts of her own fears. Taking a deep breath she moved into the hallway and crept towards the stairs. Her heart was beating so loudly that she became convinced that the intruder would hear it, consider it a war drum and consequently see it as a call to arms.

From the bottom of the stairs she could hear no further noise, the house was menacingly quiet – as if waiting with bated breath along with her for someone to leap out and break the silence. For Edie the absence of any sound was more terror provoking than anything else, a cacophony of joyous destruction would have been less menacing, at least then she could have sallied in and used the impetus of an unexpected interruption to halt proceedings. She faltered at the foot of the stairs, remembering a history lesson in which the teacher had explained that in defending a castle, the soldier descending the stairs always had the advantage. Whilst she pondered her own disadvantage, the realisation that the bathroom light was on penetrated her consciousness, as did the recognition that whoever was up there was groaning in what sounded like pain. Tentatively Edie peered around the newel post and looked up. A thin hand protruded over the highest tread, it twitched, the fingers jerking and clutching at the air. It didn’t look like the hand of a man.

Aware that unless the intruder had set a trap she was safe enough, Edie took the stairs, still keeping a tight grip on the rolling pin while the other hand slid up the bannister, twitching against it almost as nervously as the one she could see at the top of the stairs. The groans had become weaker and fear changed into concern as Edie’s ascent revealed the presence of a girl. Her thin body was curled onto the landing floor in a state of collapse and she was half conscious and bleeding.

Edie’s immediate response was to drop the rolling pin and lurch towards the girl, all fear and reservation having fled in the face of this unexpected situation. As she knelt beside her, the girl’s eyelids fluttered and she seemed to register Edie’s presence, though she tried to roll away and use her free arm to bat Edie away.

‘No, leave me ‘lone,’ she groaned.

Blood had trickled from her nose and had congealed on her face below a pulped and bruised eye. ‘What happened? Can you sit up?’ Edie said as the girl flailed. ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt you, what happened?’

The girl groaned again and rolled onto her front. ‘Fainted, don’t like blood, feel sick.’

Edie noticed a blood stained towel on the floor – one of her own, and a thing that might have irked her under other circumstances. She grabbed it and rolled it into a rough pillow and pulled the girl onto her side in a rough approximation of the recovery position, or as much of it as she could recall from her Girl Guide first aid course. She put the towel under the girl’s head. ‘Lie still, wait for it to pass. I’m going to get something to clean you up.’

The bathroom was smeared with blood and the smell of vomit rose from the toilet, forcing Edie to wrinkle her nose and recoil as she rummaged through Dolly’s bathroom cabinet looking for something suitable that she could use to clean the girl up. The search yielded nothing except an ancient flannel and a dribble of antiseptic in a bottle probably older than Edie. She used the antiseptic more to ensure that the flannel was clean than any hope that it would have any healing properties for the girl’s face. An old crystal fruit dish purloined from a side table on the landing served as a suitable bowl for the concoction once it had been rinsed free of dust.

She returned to the girl, who now lay less rigidly and who peered at her from her un-swollen eye with increasing consciousness. Wringing out the flannel, first Edie began to dab at the girl’s face, unsure of which was the most unsightly – the blood, the bruising or the grime that adhered to her skin. Once she had cleaned most of the mess away the damage didn’t seem too bad. A bloody nose and a small cut above the swollen eye. ‘Who did this?’ she demanded, knowing that what had happened to the girl’s face had been no accident.

The girl winced as the flannel passed over a particularly tender spot. ‘I fell, doesn’t matter.’

Edie had heard it all before, she had walked into a fair few doorframes herself whilst married to Simon. ‘What, you fell into someone’s fist?’

The girl pulled her head away. ‘Doesn’t matter, anyway who the fuck are you and where’s Dolly?’

Edie sat back on her haunches as the girl hauled herself into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.

‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that question? Who are you and what are you doing here?’ Edie said, less evenly than she would have liked to. The girl was clearly on her uppers, scruffy, dirty and smelling of unwashed flesh, neglect and sadness. Sadness had a smell all of its own and was too familiar to Edie for her to mistake it for anything else. It had the scent of misery and the tang of salt.

The girl attempted a scowl, but it clearly pained her. ‘Where’s Dolly?’

‘She died, three weeks ago. She was my aunt.’

The girl shook her head slowly and winced as the movement hit home. ‘Shit, poor Doll. I didn’t know she had family.’

It felt like an accusation and Edie herself wanted to wince away from it. ‘We weren’t close,’ she muttered. ‘How did you know her?’

The girl shrugged, her face crumpling in pain as a reaction to the movement. ‘Just did, she used to help me out a bit, you know.’

Edie didn’t, but could guess. The state of the girl told her everything she needed to know, at first she had suspected drugs but the thin arms showed no signs of needle marks, just the evidence of homelessness and malnutrition. ‘Is that why you broke in, because Dolly used to help you?’

‘I didn’t break in, the door was open.’ the girl said, cringing again.

‘Look, I’m going to go next door and get you some painkillers – don’t move, I won’t be long.’ It seemed pointless to do anything else, the girl was clearly suffering and Edie wasn’t going to get much further with her at this rate.

The ever organised Lena had painkillers in her kitchen cupboard, in the same plastic tub where Edie also found sticking plaster, dressings and antiseptic cream. She assumed that Lena wouldn’t mind and took what she needed, fully intending to replace it all when she could. While she rummaged she considered the good chance that the girl would have gone by the time she got back. If she had, she had, but on the off chance she also took a tin of soup and a few slices of bread.

To her surprise the girl had remained exactly where Edie had left her, looking pale and weak. ‘I thought you might have done a runner,’ she said.

‘Nowhere to run to.’ the girl answered blandly.

Edie dressed and taped the cut above her eye, fed her two analgesics and dampened the flannel with cold water so that the girl could hold it against her eye. ‘Reckon you can make it downstairs? I brought you some food.’

A faint flicker of enthusiasm wafted across the girl’s battered face. ‘Food would be good, I haven’t eaten since yesterday.’

When the girl was at the table, drinking down her soup with a vigour that belied her fragile state, Edie decided that it was time for answers. The girl’s plight had brought out her sympathies, but she wanted to know who this young woman was and why she had walked into Dolly’s house broken and bleeding. ‘So, now you are patched up, fed and watered – are you going to tell me what happened and why you came here?’

The girl mopped up the last trickle of soup with a crust of bread and swallowed it whole. ‘Got kicked out of my gaff, had nowhere else to go – I figured Dolly would bail me out for the night. She sometimes would, depended on what mood she was in.’

Edie nodded. ‘What happened to your face?’

The girl shrugged. ‘Got smacked by that bastard Johnno, reckoned I was losing him business.’

Edie didn’t say a word, just looked at the girl in confusion.

The girl sighed. ‘Not very streetwise, are you? One of the girls said I could kip on her sofa for a few nights, Johnno didn’t like it – I gobbed off at him and he gave me a smack. Best to get out of the way when he’s on the warpath.’

Edie’s mind did somersaults and the girl must have noticed the mixed bag of reactions flit across her face.

‘I’m not a tom if that’s what you’re thinking, I’ve had me moments but I don’t charge for it, and I’m not doing drugs either. Some of the girls are mates, they help out.’

‘So this Johnno is a pimp?’

The girl laughed ‘He’s a bastard, that’s what he is.’

Edie thought about the girls across the square and what their lives must be driven by, just a constant reel of unnamed men, drugs and money. ‘Where are your family, your parents?’

The girl snorted. ‘The woman who gave birth to me is currently shacked up with bloke number forty-two, and the bloke who donated the sperm is somewhere round here… so I’m told. I wish I knew who he was, I’d give the bastard a right piece of my mind!’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Sophie – do you?’

‘Edie.’

The girl laughed, ‘Jesus, your mum must have hated you more than mine did me! Edie, short for Edith – right?’

Edie felt herself begin to blush, then she saw the humour. ‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘So, Edie, what’s the deal with this place?’ Sophie looked around the kitchen. ‘I can see you’ve cleaned it up, you moving in?’

‘No, clearing it out before it’s sold.’

Sophie nodded and hiccupped. ‘Fair enough, I wouldn’t want to live here either if I had the choice. Reckon it’s worth much?’

Edie felt herself bristle. Being quizzed by this stranger with attitude didn’t sit well. ‘I’ve no idea, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.’

Sophie held her hands up. ‘Sorry, none of my business eh?’

Edie folded her arms. ‘Not really, no.’

Sophie looked down at her empty bowl then gently touched the dressing on her forehead. ‘Guess that’s my cue to fuck off then. Cheers for the soup and stuff.’ She reached across the table to retrieve her pungent backpack.

‘Where will you go?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Dunno, best get off the square though, Johnno sees me again he’s going to give me worse than a black eye.’

Edie looked at her, she was thin, grubby, pale and devoid of anything that marked her out as a functional human being. On a whim she said, ‘You can stay here if you want, just for tonight anyway – just don’t steal anything and don’t let anyone else in.’

Sophie’s hand paused on the strap of her backpack. ‘I don’t nick – and besides, if you can find anything in this gaff worth my while you’re better than me. I’ll stay for tonight.’ she said it as though it was she doing Edie the favour. ‘Got any more of those tablets, me face is killing me.’

Edie found herself smiling as she tossed the rest of the paracetamol across the table. There was something about this tattered human that appealed to her on a fundamental level. ‘Here, don’t take too many and for Christ’s sake have a bath, you stink. I’ll be back in the morning.’ She stood to leave.

The girl picked up the pills and turned the pack in her hands. ‘You’re a gobby cow Edie, but you’re all right I reckon. I’ll kip on the sofa, them rooms upstairs give me the right creeps – funny fucker your aunt Dolly.’

Edie had to agree on both counts.

It was only as she slipped in to Lena’s kitchen, in a vain attempt to be quiet, that she began to question the wisdom of leaving a complete stranger of dubious origin and even more dubious morals alone in a house that she was responsible for. What harm could it do? There was nothing worth stealing and in her heart of hearts she felt sorry for the girl. Sophie couldn’t be much more than twenty by the looks of her, and even if she did steal something, good luck to her – it would be one less piece of junk that Edie had to deal with.

She put her hand against the teapot – it was hot and stung her fingers, which meant that Lena had woken up. With a feeling of trepidation that she couldn’t really fathom, Edie stuck her head around the sitting room door and spied Lena wearing her nightdress and dressing gown and perched on the edge of her chair. ‘Hi Lena, would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Just made it, let it brew. Where’ve you been?’

Edie felt like a school kid caught out in the midst of some nefarious act. ‘Next door…’ she hesitated, ‘umm, a friend of Dolly’s turned up, I said she could stay the night.’

Lena turned and gave her the full benefit of her scrutiny. ‘Oh aye, who would this friend be then?’

‘A young girl called Sophie, she looked to be homeless and had been in some sort of accident.’ Edie didn’t feel like elaborating on the nature of Sophie’s ‘accident’.

Lena narrowed her eyes. ‘That skanky kid, always hanging around the square and cosying up with the prozzies? What do you think you’re doing, letting scum like that stay next door?’

Grateful as Edie was for Lena’s hospitality and kindness, this critique of her decision rankled. ‘She was in a mess and had nowhere else to go, I couldn’t just throw her out on the street.’

Lena pulled her dressing gown across her chest and pulled a face. ‘Huh! Street’s the best place for the likes of her! You’ll regret it, she’ll have that place stripped clean before you know it, mark my words.’

Edie thought that Sophie stripping the place clean might be rather helpful, but didn’t say so. ‘Well it’s done now and if she can find anything worth having she’s welcome to it. Shall I pour that tea?’

Lena looked horrified for a moment, then seemed to collect herself, huffed and waved an acquiescent hand. ‘I’ll have a drop of brandy in mine, always do before bedtime. It calms my nerves.’

For Edie, bedtime couldn’t come soon enough. Lena’s attitude towards her actions had been unsettling yet understandable. Meeting with anyone’s disapproval had always been difficult for Edie and she was distinctly uncomfortable at the thought that she’d met with Lena’s. Yet the woman had been kind and Edie wasn’t in a position to argue, she felt beholden enough because of Lena’s hospitality. Perhaps tomorrow she would buy some bedding and move back next door. Lena was right, letting the street girl stay had been an entirely irrational decision. She sloshed a large measure of brandy into Lena’s tea by way of reparation and took it to the woman who had been so kind. Lena took it and sipped in silence. Looking at Lena with rollers in her hair contained by a chiffon scarf and hunched in her dressing gown with a look of pinched concern clouding her face, Edie was reminded of Mrs Tiggywinkle. With Lena’s veiny feet protruding out from under her nightie, and the firmly wrinkled brow, Edie saw the version that Stephen King might have written, had he been struck to anthropomorphise a hedgehog. The thought of it made her want to snort with laughter and she had to bite her tongue to avoid the disrespect.

She took her own tea to bed, but didn’t drink it and instead lay awake thinking of the task ahead of her and trying not to dwell on the brooding presence of Matt Bastin, or the equally brooding disapproval of the woman downstairs. All she needed to do was clear the house, hand the keys to an agent and leave. Rose could take care of the rest. How hard could it be?