The Horse Dancer (12 page)

A new lock on a door was no problem, he told her, whistling through his teeth. Natasha had worked out pretty quickly that an emergency locksmith was beyond the girl’s means, especially as she was still fretting about the holiday money. Mac had brought an old one with him, and had taken less than forty minutes to get it into place.

‘Crista? It’s Natasha.’ And then, when she was met with blank silence, ‘Natasha Macauley.’

‘Natasha. Hi. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?’

‘I know. I’ve got a bit of an odd situation here. I need to find an emergency placement for a teenage girl.’ She outlined the facts.

‘We’ve got nothing,’ Crista said. ‘Absolutely nothing. We had fourteen UASCs – unaccompanied asylum seeking children – arrive in the borough yesterday morning and all our foster placements are full. I’ve spent all evening on the phones.’

‘I—’

‘And before you start with the Emergency Judicial Reviews, you might as well know the only place I’ll be able to put her for the best part of tonight is the local police station. You may as well save your time and a judge’s and take her straight there. We may be in a better position tomorrow but frankly I doubt it.’

When she went back into the living room, Mac had finished. He had brought an iron strip with him – God only knew where he kept all this stuff – and had screwed it to the door frame. ‘Stop anyone getting in again,’ he said, as he packed away the last of his tools.

Natasha smiled at him awkwardly, grateful for his practicality, for the fact that he had not issued one resentful word at being dragged out to do DIY in the middle of the night. Now he sat a few feet from Sarah on the sofa. He was examining her framed photographs – the first point of reference for Mac in anybody’s home. ‘So,’ he was saying, ‘this is your grandfather?’

‘He used to be a captain,’ she said. She had a balled-up tissue in her hand and her voice was low.

‘That’s a fantastic picture,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think, Tash? Look at the muscles on that horse.’

He had a photographer’s way of putting people at ease. There was almost nobody with whom he couldn’t adopt an immediate and easy intimacy. Natasha tried to look impressed, but all she could think about was that she had to tell Sarah that her next bed would be in a police cell. ‘Did you get a bag together?’ she asked. ‘School uniform?’

Sarah patted the holdall beside her. She seem a little uneasy, and Natasha had to remind herself that the girl did not know the people who had suddenly taken over her life. It was now half past midnight.

‘Where are we taking you, then, young lady?’ Mac asked, but addressed the question to Natasha.

Natasha took a breath. ‘It’s a bit difficult tonight. We have to put you in emergency accommodation until we can find somewhere a bit more suitable.’

They both looked at her expectantly.

‘I’ve been on to the people I know and, unfortunately, there isn’t much available. It’s the time of night . . . and there’s been a bit of an influx . . .’

‘So, where are we going?’ said Mac.

‘I’m afraid that tonight we have to take you to the police station. Nothing to do with earlier,’ Natasha assured her, as she saw Sarah’s face blanch. ‘It’s just that there are no foster-carers available. Or hostel beds. It’s unlikely to be for more than a few hours.’

‘The police station?’ said Mac, disbelievingly.

‘There’s nothing.’

‘But you must have contacts. You spend your life doing this kind of stuff, forcing authorities to put children up.’

‘And sometimes a few end up in police stations. It’s only for a while, Mac. Crista says she’ll be able to find her somewhere better by the morning. She’ll meet us there.’

Sarah was shaking her head. ‘I’m not staying in a police cell,’ she said.

‘Sarah, you can’t stay here by yourself.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Tash, this is ridiculous. She’s fourteen. She can’t go to a police cell.’

‘It’s the only option we have.’

‘No, it’s not. I told you. I’ll be fine here,’ Sarah said.

There was a long silence.

Natasha sat down, trying to think. ‘Sarah, is there anyone else you know? Any schoolfriends you can stay with? Other relatives?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you have a number for your mum?’

Her face closed. ‘She’s dead. It’s just me and Papa.’

Natasha turned to Mac, hoping he might understand. ‘This isn’t that unusual, Mac. It’ll just be for one night. But we can’t leave her here.’

‘Then she can come back to ours.’

She was as nonplussed by his use of the possessive as by the idea behind it.

‘I’m not going to dump a fourteen-year-old girl who’s just been burgled in a police cell with God knows who,’ he added.

‘She’ll be safe there,’ Natasha said. ‘It’s not like she’ll be in a cell with other people. They’ll look after her.’

‘I don’t care,’ he said.

‘Mac, I can’t take her home. It’s against every kind of procedure, every kind of advice—’

‘Fuck procedure,’ he said. ‘If procedure says it’s right to stick a young girl in a police cell rather than in someone’s warm, safe home for a night, then your procedure is fucking worthless.’

Mac rarely swore. It made Natasha realise he was deadly serious. ‘Mac, we’re not cleared as foster-carers. She’ll be deemed vulnerable—’

‘I’m CRB-checked. I had all that stuff done when I started teaching at the sixth-form college.’

He turned to Sarah. ‘Would you be happier at . . . ours? We can ring your grandpa and let him know.’

She looked at Natasha, then back at him. ‘I guess so.’

‘Is there any other procedural reason why she can’t stay?’ He pronounced ‘procedural’ sarcastically, as if Natasha was searching for reasons to be difficult.

My job, Natasha wanted to say. If it got round chambers that I was taking in waifs and strays my professional judgement would be called into question. And I don’t know this girl. I found her shoplifting in a supermarket, and I’m still not convinced by her explanation.

She stared at Sarah, trying not to think about Ahmadi, another young person who had seemed desperate, prompting her to go out on a limb. ‘Give me five minutes,’ she said.

She walked back into the girl’s bedroom and rang Crista.

‘I’m running late,’ Crista said, before Natasha could speak. ‘We’ve got a problem in one of the homes. I’ve got to pick someone up.’

‘It’s not that,’ Natasha said quickly. ‘Crista, I’ve got a situation here. The girl’s refusing to go to a police station. My . . . Mac doesn’t like the idea either. He – he’s CRB-checked and thinks she should stay at ours instead.’

There was a lengthy silence.

‘Crista?’

‘Okay . . . Are you family friends of this girl? Do you know her parents? Can we say they asked you to be the foster-carer?’

‘Not exactly.’

There was a long silence.

‘You know her at all?’

‘Met her tonight.’

‘And you’re . . . happy with this?’

‘She seems . . .’ Natasha paused, remembering the supermarket ‘. . . a nice kid. Capable. She’s just got no one at home and the flat’s been burgled. It’s . . . difficult.’

She could hear disbelief in Crista’s silence. She had known her for almost four years and nothing would have suggested that Natasha might be capable of such a thing.

‘Tell you what,’ said Crista, eventually. ‘Best advice I can give you is that we never had this conversation. There’s nothing in the log yet. If you think she’s okay, and you think she’s safer with you guys, and you’d rather not spend half the night down the nick then frankly I don’t need to know she exists until tomorrow. Call me then.’

Natasha flipped the phone shut. The girl’s room was neat and orderly, more so than you’d expect from a girl of her age. There were pictures of horses everywhere, large, free-with-this-magazine galloping horses in full colour, small photographs of a girl who might have been her with a brown horse. The backdrops of green meadows and endless beaches were oddly incongruous against the landscape outside the double-glazed window.

She was tired and closed her eyes for a moment, then walked out into the living room. Mac and Sarah stopped talking and looked at her. Sarah’s eyes, Natasha noticed, were shadowed blue with exhaustion and shock.

‘You’re coming to ours, one night,’ she said, forcing a smile, ‘and tomorrow morning we’ll get you sorted out with a social worker.’

She had gone to sleep almost without a murmur. She had been silent during the journey, as if the precariousness of her position had only just dawned on her, and Mac, perhaps guessing this, had gone to some lengths to joke and reassure her. He was barely recognisable as the man she had last spoken to: sweet, considerate, gently spoken. It was painful to see the best of him directed at someone else. Easier when she could remind herself of his deficiencies.

Natasha said almost nothing as she drove, unsettled by the conflicting emotions that the presence of Mac and the girl had brought up in her. The night had become increasingly surreal. He was so familiar and yet, after such a short time, alien. As if he belonged somewhere else.

She had forgotten how nice he could be to young people – because, apart from her sister’s children, they had been around so few.

‘Is the spare room made up?’ Mac asked, as she stood back to let them in.

‘There are some boxes on the bed.’ His books. Things she had sorted out on the days when she could face such a task. Mac was so absent-minded she had been afraid he would get them mixed up.

‘I’ll move them.’ He gestured to Sarah. ‘Why don’t you find out if she’d like a drink?’

‘Hot chocolate?’ Natasha asked. ‘Something to eat?’ She felt stupid almost as soon as she’d said it, like an elderly aunt who had no idea what the Young People Liked These Days.

Sarah shook her head. She glanced through the open door at the living room. Mac had been sorting out his photographic stuff: boxes of it littered the floor. ‘You have a nice house.’

Natasha saw it suddenly through the eyes of a stranger: large, plush, tastefully furnished. It spoke of high earnings, of things carefully chosen. She wondered if the girl could see the gaps, the clues to a man who had recently gone. ‘Can I get you anything before you go up? Do you want me to . . . iron your uniform?’

‘No, thank you.’ She held her case a little closer to her.

‘I’ll show you upstairs then,’ Natasha said. ‘There’s a bathroom on the landing you can have to yourself.’

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Mac said, as she came slowly down the stairs. ‘I made up the sofa-bed in the study.’

She had half expected it; she could hardly turf him out at this hour of the morning, not after everything he’d done. Still, the prospect of having him sleeping under the same roof was oddly disturbing. ‘Glass of wine?’ she said. ‘I know I need one.’

He let out a long sigh. ‘Oh, yes.’

She poured two glasses and handed him one. He sat on the sofa and she kicked off her shoes, then folded her legs under her on the arm chair. It was a quarter to two.

‘You’ll have to sort everything out tomorrow, Mac,’ she said. ‘I’ve got court first thing.’

‘Just tell me what to do.’

She observed absently that he couldn’t have any work or he wouldn’t have offered.

‘Write down who I should call, or where I should drop her. I might let her sleep a bit – she’s had quite a night.’

‘We all have.’

‘Nasty shock for her,’ he said. ‘Would have been hard even for an adult.’

‘She handled it pretty well.’

‘It was the right thing to do,’ he said, waving at the stairs. ‘It would have felt . . . wrong to leave her. With all that.’

‘Yes.’

They sipped silently.

‘So, how are you?’ she said eventually, when the weight of not asking became too burdensome.

‘Okay. You look well.’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Okay, tired, but good. The hair suits you.’

She fought the urge to touch it. Mac could always do this to her. ‘What are you working on?’ she asked, to change the subject.

‘I’m doing three days’ teaching a week, and commercial stuff the rest of the time. Portraiture. A bit of travel stuff. Not much, to be honest.’

‘Teaching?’ She struggled to keep the incredulity from her voice. ‘I thought I’d misheard you.’

‘I don’t mind it. It pays the bills.’

Natasha digested this. For years he had refused to compromise. When the advertising work had dried up, he had scorned her idea that he teach. He hadn’t wanted to be tied down, committed in a way that might stop him doing something more interesting at short notice. Even though it meant that his side of their finances was distinctly feast and famine, usually the latter.

Now he was Mac the Mature, Mac the Motivated. She felt cheated.

‘Yup. I got a bit disillusioned with the whole commercial scene. Teaching’s not as bad as I thought it would be. They seem to like me.’

Oh, surprise, Natasha thought.

‘I’ll keep doing it till I work out where I’m going. It doesn’t pay brilliantly.’

She stiffened, braced herself as if for impact. ‘And . . .’

‘And at some point, Tash, we need to think about sorting out the house.’

She knew what he was saying. Permanent financial settlements. ‘Meaning?’

‘I don’t know. But I can’t live out of a suitcase for ever. It’s been almost a year.’

She stared into her glass for a long time. So, this is it, she was thinking, but when she looked up at him she made sure her face was blank.

‘You okay?’

She drank the last of her wine.

‘Tash?’

‘I can’t think about this now,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m too tired.’

‘Sure. Tomorrow, perhaps.’

‘I’m in court first thing. I told you.’