The Hiding Place Read Online Free

A tang of spent fire.
    Under her bed, Fran keeps a red oblong box. It used to have chocolates in it, and smells like Christmas when she prises off the lid. But now the plastic tray holds all her jewels from the
Square: jagged slips of sapphire; worn lumps of emerald; a single marble with a twisted turquoise eye. To mark my arrival, she has begun a secret collection which she stows in a cigar box my father
has given her. Not glass this time, but an assortment of cigarette stubs she picks up, when no one is looking, from the pavement outside our house. Tipped or untipped, flaky grey, or smooth menthol
white. Some are crushed flat with the weight of a heel, others are perfectly round and lipstick-smeared. Fran holds each butt to her nose before she hides it away.
    ~
    I’m stuck in the house with my mother: at one month old, I’m sickly and I must be kept warm. My mother brings the chest down from the bedroom and puts me in it,
smothers me in layer after layer of mothballed blankets. She drags a bucket of coal from the outhouse to the kitchen, bumping it against her knee until she gets to the hearth, where she pauses for
breath. She bends down, rattles at the grate; it looks like an age since a fire was lit in the kitchen: the ash which should be smooth and fine is clogged with stray hairs, clots of dust. Turning
the strips of newspaper neatly in her hands, she thinks: Joe’s man will call for the rent today, that kindling’s a bit damp, bet the chimney needs sweeping. The chest scrapes across the
tiles as she pulls it, pulls me in it, nearer to the hearth; two long thin scars, like a tram track, will remain to show what she did. My mother puts me at an angle in front of the fire: the sight
of the flames will amuse me.
    She turns to the table, hacks at a loaf of bread and sings in her sharp, tense voice,
    Don’t you know, Little Fool, you Ne-ver can Win
    Use your Men-talitee, Wake up to Re-alitee . . .
    ~
    Upstairs, my father is making music too, whistling through his teeth as he pulls a tie off the rail in the wardrobe, catching sight of himself in the mirror as the wardrobe door
widens. He looks Lucky. Today, Frankie’s choice is a black tie with a thin seam of gold running through it. He sweeps the length between finger and thumb, smooth and cool as water, then ducks
his head, flips the tie around his neck, folds back the stiff white collar of his shirt. He pauses in front of the mirror, pushes the door open to get a better view. It annoys him, this glass;
flecked and tarnished with oily orange patches beneath the surface – even in close-up, he can’t get a clear reflection. Frankie pauses. He hears my mother downstairs, shouting from the
front door.
    Celesta! Kids! Dinnertime! My father pulls on the jacket of his suit, casually stretches out his left arm, then his right, turning the exposed cuffs over the sleeves. A pair of gold cufflinks,
embossed with the rising sun, is now the only jewellery he owns. He lifts them from the polished surface of his dressing-table, chinks them in his palm for a second, and then puts them back. He
doesn’t feel that lucky. He takes his hat from the bed-post, pads downstairs, avoids my mother’s eyes. She weaves between the children in the kitchen as he makes for the living
room mirror.
    I won’t tell you again, wash those hands. Will you see Carlotta today, Frankie? Leave that. Eat your dinner. Frankie? Frankie, mouths my father as he steps up to the glass. Frankie, he
goes, flipping one end of the tie into a smart loop, taking up the slack, adjusting the knot, nice and tight.
    Do you hear me? shouts my mother.
    He’s going out, says Celesta, straddling kitchen and living room doorway and staring at my father. They share the same black eyes, hard as steel, and a stubborn squareness in their faces.
Celesta holds a plate of sandwiches high in the air, out of reach of Rose and Marina. My father grins at her in the mirror. She grins back, then suddenly retreats into