The Couple at No. 9(63)

Dread descended over me. I didn’t want her to go. ‘You can’t jump to conclusions. Not yet. Not until you know more,’ I said, trying to pacify her, even though I knew that if it was me I’d want to run away too. ‘Don’t go back to your job at the pub. Lie low for a while.’

She nodded, her shoulders hunched around her ears.

‘It will be okay,’ I said, over and over again as we strode home through the dark. I wish I’d been right.

Daphne was too scared to leave the house. She seemed on edge every time there was a knock at the door or a movement on the road outside. Her face was pale and drawn, and she smoked even more than usual. I spent hours trying to reassure her and, as the days passed, I felt I was getting through to her and that maybe she would stay.

And then one day, while you were at playschool, she came to me while I was dusting the living room.

‘I need to cut this off. It’s too identifiable.’

Her hair. Her beautiful thick straw-coloured hair. The hair I envied. The hair I dreamed about running my hands through.

I stopped what I was doing. Her big deep-set eyes were pleading. ‘Will you help me? I don’t want to go to a hairdresser.’

I stepped away in horror. ‘You are joking? You want me to cut your hair?’

‘Please.’

How could I refuse when she was looking at me like that? I wanted to help her. To keep her safe. To keep the three of us safe. But I was no hairdresser. I trimmed your fringe once and made a right mess of it – it was still growing out.

‘I’ve got a box of dye too. Chocolate brown. It was the only colour they had at the corner shop. I bought it a few weeks ago, just in case. He’s less likely to recognize me with hair like that. I’ve had long blonde hair most of my life.’

My heart sank. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Positive.’ She stepped forward, so close I could see the faint freckles on her nose, the flecks of green in her irises. My heart fluttered. And then she reached for my hand. ‘Come on,’ she said, leading me out of the room and towards the stairs. ‘Let’s do it now before you have to pick Lolly up.’

It didn’t look too bad. Better than I’d thought it would. When I was growing up, my neighbour had been a mobile hairdresser and I used to watch, fascinated, when she cut, using her two fingers as a kind of ruler against the scissors. The style really suited Daphne’s elfin face, even if I did have to keep going back to even it out. She didn’t care, though. She seemed totally disinterested in how she looked. I understood. I was the same since leaving my old life behind. It was about survival.

But when you saw it you cried. ‘No, Daffy. Boy!’ you said to her, your little face crumpling. You always did this after I changed my hair too. Daphne looked devastated and I told you off for being rude. You ran to your room in a strop. I assured Daphne you’d get used to it. And, of course, you did.

By that weekend, the first in March, the snow had almost melted, leaving only remnants on high ground, like discarded white washing. On Saturday Daphne left the cottage for the first time in a week, more confident after changing her hair. When she returned she announced she had found another job.

‘At the farm,’ she said, as she shuffled out of her coat. She kept her stripy scarf wrapped around her neck. The cottage was still ridiculously cold and the weather seemed a few degrees chillier than it had been the previous week. I had the fire on in the front room but it still made little difference unless you were sitting right in front of it. I kept meaning to install central heating – it just never seemed like the right time to employ strangers, to let them into our cottage, our safe house, plus there was the expense.

‘But that’s a bit of a trek,’ I replied. The farm was on the other side of the village. ‘What kind of work will you be doing?’ I asked, as she handed me a mug. It was so cold in the kitchen that I could see the steam rising.

‘Odd jobs. Grooming the horses, mucking out, that kind of thing. I prefer being with animals to people. Apart from you and Lolly, of course.’ She sipped her tea, regarding me over the rim of the mug, and my heart melted.

So Daphne went to work at the farm. Trudging the mile and a half there and back every day, her crocheted hat pressed down on her new hair, whatever the weather, coming home smelling of horses and straw but happy, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. Free, like a tiger released into the wild after being kept at a zoo, roaming around the farm, happy to be outside rather than cooped up in the pub, felt up by landlords and leered at by drunken punters. I was relieved to see she appeared less anxious about being found.

‘Why don’t you do it too?’ she said, after she’d been there a few days. ‘It would be fun working together. I’m left to my own devices a lot, can keep my head down. It’s so nice not having anyone asking questions. The farmer, Mick, is gruff, lets me get on with it. There’s another guy there, Sean. He’s new too, handsome, if you like that kind of thing.’

But it was hard for me to get a job. You weren’t due to start school for two more years.

‘Maybe when Lolly starts school,’ I replied.

I had calculated I had enough in savings to do a few repairs on the house with some left to tide me over until then. I didn’t charge Daphne that much for her room – after all, the cottage was hardly luxurious – and she paid a third of the food bill. But she was good with money, I’d noticed. She was frugal, always making sure to buy bargains wherever she could; tins at the corner shop that were going cheap because of their sell-by dates, not to mention the money she saved me on clothes for you by knocking up patterns on her sewing-machine.