Ann Troup - The Silent Girls

As he walked away her words of farewell seemed to hang on the air like the smoke from a cigar. She felt like she had given in to something, let him win in some way – but win what? Surely she was the one who had gained by maintaining their connection. Whatever. She pushed the strange feeling away and walked into Bryers and Brynt in search of bedding.

***

Alone in the house after Edie had gone, Sophie looked around the kitchen and contemplated washing up the breakfast things. She supposed that she ought to really if she wanted to show some appreciation for the food in her belly and the roof over her head. Washing up was probably the chore that she had loathed most at home, mainly because ‘stepdad’ number seven had chosen to use his half eaten meals as an impromptu ashtray. The memory of cigarette butts protruding from uneaten piles of cold food like little gungy stalagmites turned her stomach. As did the thought of him with his sly leers and wandering hands. With a shudder she turned her back on the dirty dishes and headed upstairs, taking a roll of black bags, a pack of cleaning wipes and a pair of rubber gloves with her.

Beattie’s room might have been less cluttered than the others, but it had suffered from the same degree of neglect, and the faint, musty smell of mushrooms lingered in the air. Dust coated every surface and the desiccated carcasses of dead insects peppered the edges of the room. The windowsill alone looked like a moth and fly graveyard. Sophie grimaced at the thought and decided to start with the wardrobe and build herself up to dealing with the dead bodies.

The wardrobe doors sighed and sagged open at her tugging. They were swollen with damp and once ajar, released a foetid lull of air, which felt to Sophie like the breath of history curling into her face. Beattie’s particular history hung in the form of a few simple dresses and one good coat, which dangled limp and lonely from a rusted hanger. She gathered them up and bundled them unceremoniously into a black bag that initially refused to play ball and resisted her by folding in on itself and twisting away. She gruffly forced it into submission and rammed the clothes inside.

If she had been more patient, and looked at the clothes, she would have had to picture the shape of the woman who wore them. Having their owner manifest in her mind was too much; she didn’t want that, and quickly followed the clothes with shoes and a handbag made of stiff dry leather. She tried the clasp, but it was old and obstinate, much as she imagined Beattie had been. Everything in the wardrobe found its way into the black bag, including a faded, moth-eaten felt hat with a cluster of age-paled wax cherries on its brim. It crowned the heap of apparel in the bag and was sealed away with all the other things long past their wear-by date.

Despite her conscious refusal Sophie couldn’t help her mind constructing a picture of the woman who dressed in black crepe and who thought that a hat with cherries on the band was the height of haute couture. Sophie wasn’t entirely sure about haute couture, it seemed to be something for posh people with more money than sense. Beattie had not been posh; she had resoled her battered leather shoes, and kept mothballs in the pockets of her coat. Even now the faint tang of camphor hung in the air like a waft of bad breath.

Beattie seemed to have lived a life of frugality and austerity in a room so free of fripperies that it resembled a nun’s cell. The only nod to vanity was a tiny glass dish on the tallboy, containing a few hairpins. It was situated directly under a pock marked mirror, which distorted even Sophie’s fresh young face with its cuts and bruises. The room felt sad, lonely and almost punitive to Sophie – it was hard to imagine the demeanour of a woman who would choose to live like this. Even through the barrier of the loose rubber gloves she could feel the essence of the old woman’s despair penetrate her skin and seep into her bones, where it sat like a winter chill, brooding, ready to pounce and make her heartsick. It wouldn’t take much, she was heartsick already.

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