The Horse Dancer (18 page)

‘Is your grandfather’s health improving?’ The headmaster’s expression had softened.

If she was a different sort of person, Sarah thought, she would have cried – everyone knew Phipps couldn’t bear girls to be in tears. ‘A bit,’ she said.

‘It’s an unsettling time for you. I do understand that. But you should see school as a constant in your life, something to lean on. If you’re struggling, Sarah, you should talk to us. To me or your teachers. Everyone here wants you to succeed.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘What you can’t do is take time off to see your grandfather whenever you want to. You’ll be starting to think about exams soon, and this time is crucial in your school career. There are a few subjects you find difficult, aren’t there? So you need to keep your attendance up in order that, whatever else is going on in your life, you leave here with a solid education behind you.’

She nodded, not meeting his eye.

‘I want to see an improvement, Sarah. A real improvement. Do you think you can do that?’

Cowboy John had been there the last time. He had been to see Papa and the first thing he had said when he stepped through the gates was that he was letting her off the back rent. He would tell Maltese Sal, and she would be square. She just had to start afresh when Sal took over. She could tell from his face that he had thought she’d be relieved. But she had felt the blood drain from her face. She knew what this meant: that he no longer believed Papa would be able to pay him back.

He no longer believed that Papa would come home.

‘No more skipping class, Sarah. Right?’

She raised her face. ‘Right,’ she said, and wondered if Mr Phipps could see straight through her.

Natasha jumped when she found him in the kitchen. It was a quarter to seven. When they had lived together he had barely stirred until ten.

‘Got a job up in Hertfordshire. Publicity shot. Makeup, hair, the full works. It’s going to take me a good hour and a half to get there.’ Mac gave off a faint aroma of shampoo and shaving cream, as if he had already showered. She had heard nothing, she thought, as she covered her shock by making breakfast.

‘Hope you don’t mind. I used the last of the teabags.’ He lifted a hand, waving a piece of toast. He was reading her newspaper. ‘I’ll get some more while I’m out. You still drink coffee, right?’

She closed the cupboard door. ‘I guess I’ll have to,’ she said.

‘Oh. And you know I told you I’d be away Thursday for a couple of days? Well, the job fell through so I’ll be here after all. Are you okay with that?’

‘Fine.’ He had spilt some milk on the worktop.

‘You want this?’ He motioned towards the newspaper. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to muscle in.’

She shook her head. She tried to work out where to sit. Opposite him, and they risked touching feet. On the adjoining side of the table, she might seem to be cosying up to him. Paralysed by these two choices, Natasha remained standing by the kitchen units with her bowl of cereal.

‘I’ll keep the sports section. You can have the main. Any news from the estate agent? I meant to ask last night.’

‘There are two couples coming round at the weekend. Incidentally, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t smoke dope in the house.’

‘You never used to mind.’

‘Actually, I did. I just never said. But that’s not the point. If we’ve got people coming to the view the house, I don’t think it’s a good idea for it to smell like an Amsterdam café.’

‘Noted.’

‘And the agent has keys so you won’t have to be here.’

He adjusted his chair so he could see her better. ‘
I
don’t have to be here? You’re away again?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a lot of weekends away. Where are you going this time?’

‘Does it matter?’

He held up both palms. ‘Just making polite conversation, Tash.’

‘I’m going back to Kent.’

‘Nice. You must like it. Conor got a place there, has he?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Doesn’t come here much, does he?’

‘I wonder why.’ She focused on the cereal.

‘You surprise me. It’s not like he was so worried when we were still together . . . Okay . . . okay,’ he said, as her head shot up. ‘I know. Year Zero. We’re not supposed to discuss What Went Before.’

Natasha closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. It was too early in the morning for this. ‘Of course we can discuss what went before, Mac. I just think life will be easier if we don’t make sarcastic comments about whatever went on in our marriage. Or didn’t,’ she added meaningfully.

‘I’m cool with it. I told you that if he wants to come here I can make myself scarce. We can have set nights, if you like. I’ll stay away Tuesdays, you stay away Wednesdays, that kind of thing.’ He studied something in the newspaper with great concentration, adding: ‘We can be modern.’

She reached across for her coffee. ‘I assume this will all be sorted out long before we start regularising “date nights”.’

Date nights. She felt the existence of the invisible woman keenly – she knew that at the weekends when she was not there, the woman was, even if Natasha no longer crept into the spare bathroom to confirm it. Sometimes she suspected she could detect her scent in the air. Other times it was just Mac’s demeanour. He was loose, relaxed – like he used to be after they had spent much of the day in bed. You’ve been having sex all weekend
in our house
, she would think, then curse herself for it.

The cereal had turned claggy in her mouth. She finished her mouthful and pushed the bowl towards the dishwasher.

‘You okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine again. Not finding this too hard?’

Sometimes she felt he was testing her. As if he wanted her to say she couldn’t bear it, and leave. Don’t leave, Conor had warned, despite his feelings. The moment she left the house she would lose the moral and legal advantage. If Mac had invested a lot of time and effort in it he might not want to leave as much as he told her he did.

‘He’s the one who wants to sell it,’ she had protested.

‘That’s what he wants you to think,’ he had replied. Conor could see subversive possibilities in almost any kind of behaviour. He viewed Mac’s presence as one would that of an occupying enemy. Don’t give an inch. Don’t retreat. Don’t let them know your plans.

‘Not finding it hard at all,’ she said brightly.

‘Great.’ His voice softened. ‘I did worry a bit about how it would work out before I came back.’

She wasn’t sure she believed this. Mac looked as if nothing worried him. That much hadn’t changed. ‘Well, as I said, don’t worry on my account.’

He was staring at her.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Nothing changes, does it, Tash?’

‘Meaning what?’

He studied her for a moment, his smile absent. ‘You still don’t give anything away.’

Their eyes locked. He looked away first and gulped his tea.

‘Oh, by the way, I bunged a load of washing in last night and there was some stuff of yours in the basket so I put that in too.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Ah . . . blue T-shirt. And underwear, mostly.’ He finished the tea. ‘Lingerie, I should say.’ He flicked a page in the newspaper. ‘Gone up a notch since we split, I noticed . . .’

Heat flooded Natasha’s face.

‘It’s okay. I put it on a low temperature. I know about these things. I may even have put it on the hand-wash setting.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t . . .’ She felt horribly exposed. The thought of it.

‘Just trying to be helpful.’

‘No. No, you’re not. You – you’re—’ She picked up her briefcase and pushed past him towards the door, then spun around. ‘Don’t touch my underwear, okay? Don’t touch my clothes. Don’t touch my stuff. It’s bad enough you’re staying here without rifling through my pants as well.’

‘Oh, get over yourself. You think the biggest thrill I could get is going through your laundry? Jesus Christ, I was only trying to help.’

‘Well don’t, okay?’

He slammed the paper down on the table. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t go anywhere near your pants in future. Hardly ever did anyway, if I remember.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she said. ‘That’s really, really nice.’

‘Sorry. I just—’ He let out a long breath.

They stared at the floor, before their eyes lifted, met and locked. He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ll do my washing separately in future. Okay?’

‘Fine,’ she said, and shut the door firmly behind her.

Sarah was bent low over her horse’s neck, her toes jammed in the stirrups, the wind whipping tears that tracked horizontally from the corners of her eyes. She was going so fast now that her whole body ached; her hands, braced on his withers as she gripped the reins, her stomach as she fought to maintain her position against the joint forces of wind and gravity, her legs as they struggled to stay against his sides. Her breath came in gasps, her arms pressed against his neck as he flew, the thunder of his hoofbeats filling her ears. She wouldn’t stop him. He had needed this for weeks, and here the marshes were wide and flat enough for her to let him go until he was tired.

‘Go,’ she whispered to him. ‘Go on.’ The words flew backwards into her throat. Boo would not have heard her even if she had shouted; he was lost in some purely physical world of his own, instinct telling him to relish this freedom, to allow his tight muscles to stretch, his legs to fly across the rough ground, his lungs to tighten with the sheer effort of maintaining such a speed. She understood it. She needed it too.

In the far distance steel pylons stalked the skyline, strung together by cables that traced a delicate progression across the city. Below them, on a thin strip across the marshes, raised on concrete pillars, the traffic moved in a never-ending procession. Several horns sounded at a distance; possibly at her, she could not focus long enough to tell. Boo was moving faster than the cars and lorries caught in the rush-hour traffic, and the thrill this gave her threatened to transmute into fear as she wondered whether she would be able to stop. She had never gone so far with him before, never let him run so fast. He swerved to avoid an old bicycle frame in the long grass, almost unseating her, and as she struggled to maintain her balance, she could feel his great quarters gathering under him as he pushed faster, now blurring her vision, causing her breath to stall in her chest. She lifted her head from his neck, spitting out the fronds of his mane that whipped at her skin, trying to gauge how much distance she had left. She pulled slightly on the reins, recognising that she had little strength left to pull him back, should he fight her. Some distant part of her hardly cared: how much easier it would be for them to keep going. To race up that grassy bank, straight across the motorway, skidding through the cars, his shoes sending up sparks. They would jump the cars, the fences. They would fly under the pylons, past the warehouses and car parks, and keep going until they hit the countryside. Just her and her horse, galloping through the long grass into some uncomplicated future.

But some part of Boo was still owned by Papa. Feeling the increasing tension in the reins, he slowed obediently, his ears flicking back and forth, as if he was trying to check that he had read her message correctly. Sarah allowed herself to sink back into the saddle, her body slowly becoming upright, reinforcing what she was telling him, to slow. To do as she asked. To return to their world.

Some fifty feet from the dual carriageway, Boo slowed to a walk, his frothing sides heaving with the effort of what he had just done, his breath leaving his flared nostrils in short, noisy bursts.

Sarah sat very still, squinting back at the distance she had covered. She was no longer in the wind, but the tears in her eyes kept coming.

Ruth, the social worker, was at the school gates. Sarah had been searching for loose change in her schoolbag when she caught sight of her. She was standing just to the side, her neat little red car parked across the road, as if she did not want to be obtrusive. Every single kid gawped at her as they came out of the gates. Sarah walked up to her reluctantly; Ruth could not have been more conspicuous if she had worn a tabard with ‘Social Worker’ in neon letters across it. They all had that look, like plain-clothes policemen.

‘Sarah?’

Her heart leapt as she grasped the possible significance of the woman’s presence. Ruth must have registered it because, as Sarah hurried towards her, she said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your grandfather. No need to worry.’

Her chest deflating with relief Sarah followed her reluctantly to the car. She opened the passenger door and climbed in. She had planned to see Papa tonight; half of her wondered whether she could persuade Ruth to give her a lift. It was then that she noticed the two black bags on the back seat. At the mouth of one she could see her tracksuit bottoms. Five weeks and two moves had told her what those bags meant. ‘Am I going somewhere?’

‘Sarah, I’m afraid the Hewitts have had enough.’ She started the car. ‘It’s not you – they think you’re a lovely girl – but taking responsibility for someone who keeps disappearing is too much for them. It’s the same story as with the MacIvers. They’re frightened something will happen to you.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ Sarah said, her voice tinged with scorn.

‘The school is equally concerned. They tell me you’ve been skipping classes. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on.’

‘Is there some boy involved? Some man? That’s a lot of time you’ve been disappearing for, Sarah. Don’t think we don’t notice. Between the Hewitts and the school we’ve added it up.’

‘No. There’s no boy. No man.’

‘So what is it?’

Sarah scuffed her feet in the footwell. She wished Ruth would just drive somewhere instead of sitting outside the school so that everyone could stare into the car as they filed out of the gates. But she was waiting for her to answer. ‘I wanted to see my granddad.’