The Horse Dancer (33 page)

‘Good.’

His pupil had stuck her head around the door.

‘Beth, can you make us two cups of tea, please? Sugar? No sugar in either. Thank you.’

Abruptly, he changed the conversation. He talked about his adult children, his rediscovered passion for yachting. They discussed a lawyer they both knew who had recently been involved in a legal-aid scandal. ‘Actually,’ he went on, ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while. We’ve been attempting to restructure things here, change the balance of our chambers. And we’re likely to have a vacancy.’

She waited.

‘I’ve been watching your career with interest. I liked your work in Richmond versus Turner, and the case you did with the abduction triplets. A lot of the instructing solicitors I speak to mention your name and they have only good things to say.’

‘Thank you.’

‘If a vacancy were to arise here, might you be interested?’

Natasha was taken aback. When she had been in training, Harrington Levinson had been held up as the epitome of a modern, progressive chambers with a fearsome reputation. Now Michael Harrington, the founder, was actively seeking her out. ‘I’m very flattered,’ she said. His pupil came in with the tea. They waited until she had closed the door behind her. ‘I should tell you that there is a possibility I’ll be made a partner at my current firm.’

‘I’m not sure that’s the best move for you. You know that many solicitor advocates are now choosing to move into full-time advocacy?’ he said. ‘The stepping-stones are in place. And we would be happy to have you as a probationary tenant. You could be at the bar in less than two years.’

She tried to digest what he was saying, its implications. She would leave the day-to-day chaos of her solicitor’s job behind, and adopt the more distant stance of a barrister. There would be none of the daily involvement with her clients’ lives that took place now. Since Ali Ahmadi, she had no longer known if that mattered. ‘Michael, this is a big move, obviously,’ she said, thinking of Conor. ‘I’ll need to consider it carefully.’

He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘My numbers. Don’t try to reach me through the clerks – they guard me like mastiffs – but do speak to me. Any questions you want to ask about our set-up – money, pupillages, offices, anything.’

‘Would you want references?’

‘I know everything about you that I need to know.’ He smiled. ‘Where are you off to next? Another con?’

She stared at the pink ribbon, forcing herself to remember what it was supposed to symbolise. ‘Something like that,’ she said finally, and put her cup and saucer on the desk. ‘I’ll ring you, Michael. Thank you. I’ll consider your offer very carefully.’

There had been little to mark it out from the other modern, flat-fronted houses, in an ugly maroon brick, the doorbells at the entrance the only clue that these little dwellings were subdivided into even smaller flats. But on the pavement, still blowing forlornly in the wind, the crumpled dirty length of incident tape under the privet hedge told its own story. Its contrasting colours offered a clue to the gravity of what had gone on behind that door.

She stood on the pavement, looking up at the blank, net-curtained windows. Where would Sales Assistant, 26, be now? Was she there, peering out from behind the curtains, or still in hospital? Was she too afraid to return home? Had she wondered about the trail of events that might have led the young man to her?

What had made Ali Ahmadi pick this particular address? How had his epic journey from the other side of the world ended with six short steps up to this particular front door? How had one small omission on her part, on someone else’s part, led to such a cataclysmic event?

An old lady passed her, pushing a tartan shopping trolley. Natasha, stepping aside, attempted to raise a small smile, but the woman merely glanced at her with rheumy eyes and continued on her solitary, determined route.

Natasha felt a lump in her throat. Perhaps she was not there for clues. Perhaps it was to offer a mute apology. I should have checked him out, she told the woman silently. If I’d checked the name of the town, the distance he claimed to have walked, I might have saved you. In doing nothing to save him, I could have saved you.

She was interrupted by her phone.

‘You haven’t forgotten your four-fifteen? I thought you’d be back by now.’ It was Ben.

‘Postpone it,’ she said. She stood by the car, gazing two girls who pushed buggies past on the other side of the road. Both were talking into mobile phones, apparently oblivious to the babies and each other.

‘What?’

‘Cancel it. I’m not coming in for the rest of the day.’

There was a lengthy silence.

‘What do I tell Linda? Are you okay?’

‘Yes. No, actually, I don’t feel great. I’m going home. Say I’m very sorry. Reschedule for later in the week. It’s Stephen Hart. He’ll understand.’

It was after she’d disconnected that she remembered going home was no longer an option.

Jessica Arnold had had twenty-three boyfriends, fourteen from her year, four from the year above, and the rest out of school, from the Sandown and surrounding estates. Her current boyfriends were older men, who waited outside the school gates in low, souped-up cars that roared off down the road, pulsing with loud music, the instant she climbed in. She had slept with most of them – this was not an idle boast, as was much of what was said of who had ‘experience’ in their year – but detailed in scrawled messages in the toilets, and the empty pill packets, which had been known to drop from her satchel, and in the faces of the men in the cars. They were not the kind of men to be satisfied with a long-drawn-out kiss on a park bench. Jessica wore the purple marks on her neck like a badge of pride. She had to behave like that, as if it was of her choosing, as if it was what she had wanted, or she would simply be a slag.

If Jessica was at one end of the spectrum of year ten’s sexual activity, Sarah was lurking at the other, with Debbie Dermott, who wore thick glasses and braces, and Saleema, who had to wear a burkha whenever she was outside school and never spoke to boys, let alone kissed them. It wasn’t that Sarah was ugly, just not very interested in them.

The boys she knew would not want to hear about Boo and his steady progression from the moves of
basse école
to the more complicated demands of
haute école
. They would not want to come to the yard with her and share a bus ride home. They would make stupid remarks about the yard smelling, shout and worry the horses, and smoke near the straw. They wouldn’t understand her life.

She had never told Papa but sometimes, in the few aching moments late at night when she did feel overwhelmed and her body was filled with a sense of loss for something she didn’t understand, she pictured herself at Le Cadre Noir. She would be the finest rider they had ever seen. There would be a handsome young captain in his black uniform with the gold epaulettes. He would be a brilliant horseman, and would understand everything she wanted. He wouldn’t drive multi-stickered uninsured cars around the estate, boast of the number of ASBOs or TWOCs he had notched up, and offer slobbery kisses that tasted of kebab and chilli sauce. It was a chaste, horse-driven romance, with huge gaps in knowledge at its heart, gaps that Jessica’s satchel and the graffiti only hinted at.

This was what she had always assumed was her future; she had known it as clearly as she had known Boo’s. But she had seven pounds fifteen pence from the sale of her CDs and ornaments, Mac’s ten pounds, and a Premium Bond certificate that would take at least three weeks to redeem, and only then with her grandfather’s signature.

That knowledge gap looked as if it would close sooner than she had thought.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘You got my money?’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘So talk.’

She nodded across the yard to where his men were standing. ‘Not with them here.’

He was packing away his grooming brushes, each one gleaming, immaculate, as if it had never seen the dust on a horse. He shoved the last one into place and now looked up at her, registering. ‘What do you want, Circus Girl?’

She lowered her voice, twisted the strap of her schoolbag around her left wrist. ‘I wanted to know,’ she said, quietly, ‘how much . . . how much you would let me off . . . if . . .’ He didn’t answer at first. He didn’t smile. He didn’t show surprise, pleasure. He didn’t, as she had half hoped, burst into noisy laughter and tell her he was only joking and what kind of man did she think he was?

He nodded a little, as if confirming something to himself, then looked at her and turned on his heel. He walked over to his men, who were standing around the brazier, the cold air clouding their breath so that you couldn’t tell what was smoke and what was simply the cold air. He was gesturing at them, muttering something she couldn’t hear. They shrugged, patted pockets for keys and cigarettes, flicked waste paper into the fire. Ralph looked at her from across the yard as if he was reassessing her. Perhaps it was just jealousy that she had Sal’s attention, but she suspected she was someone else in his eyes now. Not the granddaughter of the Captain, a mate with whom to share the odd adventure, just someone to be traded, of no value. He did not look at her as he left.

She walked up to Boo’s stable and let herself in, fiddling with his rug, laying her head against his warm skin to glean some comfort from it. His great head swung round to investigate her, to work out what she was doing, and she stroked his face, her fingers tracing the bones beneath the soft skin.

She could see Sal through the doorway, walking jauntily, a cigarette held lightly between thumb and finger. He saluted, shouted something in Maltese as the men disappeared through the gates. Then as the last car pulled away, he wedged them shut, pulling the heavy chain through in a loop. It was dark now, and Sheba paced restlessly at their base, perhaps waiting for Cowboy John to return.

And then he was walking up to Boo’s stable, whistling like someone who hadn’t a care in the world.

‘So,’ she said, trying to sound tough, when he stood at the door. She tried to mimic the girls from Sandown, the ones she heard screeching at the boys on bikes. Hard. Nonchalant. As if nothing could hurt them. ‘How would this work?’

He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. He took a deep drag of his cigarette, then walked into the stable and shut the door. Boo had lost interest in her and gone back to his hay, chewing steadily behind her. Only the sodium light from outside the yard crept in now. It was hard to see his face, although she saw that the light illuminated her, turning her body a ghostly orange.

‘Take off your top.’

He said it so casually; as if he’d asked her to lock the gates.

‘What?’

‘Take off your top. I want to have a look at you.’ He took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes not leaving hers.

She stared at him. Not
now
, she thought. I’m not ready for this
now
. I just wanted to work out what you were suggesting. ‘But—’

‘If you don’t want to sort this out . . .’ He made as if to turn away, his face closing. ‘You’re just playing kids’ games. You let me think I could take you seriously.’

He took his cigarette from his lips with two fingers and flicked it out on to the concrete. It glowed briefly before it was extinguished by the wet. Then she saw the cold, hard set of his face and her mind raced.

Almost before she knew what she was doing, she pulled her top over her head. She had been wearing a sweatshirt. Without its fleecy lining she felt the cold air licking at her, the draught through the door penetrating with icy fingers what had been warm and protected.

He turned. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them on her, extracting every last bit of what he would decide was her value. It was, apparently, not hers to define. She felt invaded by his gaze, as if he could see past her bare skin to the raw flesh underneath.
It will soon be over
, she told herself, forcing herself to stand straight, almost defiant in her posture.
And then I will owe him nothing. It will all be okay.

‘And your brassière.’

He spoke slowly, but it was a command. The voice of someone who only ever got what he wanted.

She checked she had heard correctly. ‘But what do you want—?’ she protested. ‘You haven’t said—’

‘You’re telling me what to do now? Dictating terms?’ His voice hardened.

She was shivering, goosebumps rising on her arms.

She closed her eyes. Her heart thumped so loudly she could barely hear him.

‘Take it off.’

She swallowed hard, then reached behind her, her jaw clenched to to stop her teeth chattering, out of fear or cold, she wasn’t sure. Without opening her eyes, she removed her bra. It was a cheap, flimsy thing, slightly too big. Papa had been buying socks at the same time, and she had been so embarrassed at the prospect of him noticing her purchase in the department store that she had run out without trying it on. He took it from her now, dropped it to the ground at one side of her. She was naked from the waist up. She felt the cold air on her skin, her nipples tightening in protest. She heard his sharp intake of breath, the footsteps bringing him closer, and realised she had toppled into an abyss. One she hadn’t even known was there.

She couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t breathe. She stood there, a thing, a nothing, extracting herself from her body so that this was not her, Sarah, standing bare in the stable, with Sal’s new horse whinnying in the next arch and the dog barking outside and the sound of someone talking on the street. This was not her, with this man’s hot, dry hand now sliding across her cold skin, his warm breath near her face, his foul, alien words murmured into her ear. A strange, alien scent in her nostrils, his sharp belt pressed painfully against her hip as he pushed her back against the chilled stone wall. The real world receded until it was just him and those words and his insistent, relentless touch that was not hers to stop. It was not her. Not her. What had happened to Sarah anyway? This was no longer her life, her family, her future. She had no say in any of it. So what difference did it make to have this man now claiming possession of her, inch by kneading, explorative, hot-breathed inch? She was hypnotised, absent, a nothing.