The Horse Dancer (29 page)

They stood in the hallway, each lost in thought. When Mac spoke, it was clear that their minds had headed in different directions. ‘We haven’t really talked about this, Tash, but what do we do if the old boy doesn’t get better?’ He leant against the front door, blocking her way out. ‘He’s not good, you know. I can’t see him bouncing back quickly.’

Natasha took a deep breath. ‘Then she has to become someone else’s problem.’

‘Someone else’s
problem
?’

‘Okay. Someone else’s responsibility.’

‘But what do we do about the horse?’

She pictured the animal, treading carelessly over her patio, a path of strewn debris in its wake. That day, it had stopped being a thing of grace and beauty to her.

‘Mac, the day we leave here we stop being a family. We stop being able to offer her a home, horse or not. Your job won’t allow for full-time guardianship and you know mine certainly won’t. We’re struggling through every day as it is.’

‘So we let her down.’

‘It’s the system that lets her down. It doesn’t have the flexibility or resources to deal with someone like her.’ Seeing his expression, she tried to soften her voice. ‘Look, they might be able to find the horse a temporary place at a sanctuary or something until a new home can be found for her, perhaps in the countryside, if she’s that desperate to keep it. It might work out better for her.’

‘I don’t imagine that’s very likely.’

‘Well, I can ask around. See what the options are. Without giving anything away.’

He still didn’t move from the door. Natasha’s watch told her she’d be late for her meeting.

‘Do you want her to go?’

‘I never said that.’

‘But . . . you don’t seem to like her.’

‘Of course I like her.’

‘You never say anything nice about her.’

She rifled through her bag to hide the colour that had risen in her cheeks. ‘What am I supposed to do? Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here, Mac. She was a stranger. I’ve offered her my home – and, might I add, misled Social Services in the process about our relationship. I’ve paid out hundreds of pounds to move her horse to Kent and back. I’ve sacrificed my beloved garden—’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘Then what are you saying? That we should be bonding over makeup tips? I’ve tried, okay? I’ve tried to take her shopping. I’ve offered to do up her room. I’ve tried to make conversation. Have you ever considered the possibility that she just doesn’t like me?’

‘She’s a
kid
.’

‘What? So she’s incapable of disliking someone?’

‘No. I just mean it’s an adult’s job to overcome it.’

‘Oh. So now you’re the expert on child-rearing.’

‘No. Just someone with a bit of humanity.’

They stared at each other.

She placed the bulbs on the hall table and picked up her document case, her cheeks scarlet. ‘It must be nice being you, Mac. Everyone loves you. Hell, that bloody social worker was nearly sitting on your lap. And, for whatever reason, you have the same effect on Sarah, and that’s great for both of you.’ She grabbed her phone. ‘But don’t attack me for not having the same effect, okay? I’m doing my best. I’m giving up my home. I’m sacrificing my relationship simply by having you two here every day, by playing happy bloody families. I’m just struggling through, day to day. I’m doing my bloody best.’

‘Tash—’

‘And
STOP
calling me
TASH
.’

She pushed past him, wrenched open the front door and was off down the steps, still hearing his voice above the thumping of her heart and wondering why tears had sprung to her eyes.

‘Okay. You’re clinically insane.’ Jo peeled off her rubber gloves and walked to the kitchen table where Natasha was nursing a glass of wine. ‘Mac? Your ex-husband Mac?’

‘But that’s the point, isn’t it? He’s not properly ex yet so he does have a claim on the house.’

‘Then you should move out. This is insane. Look at you. You’re a wreck.’

Dottie, Jo’s youngest, walked into the kitchen chewing a dog’s rubber bone. ‘No, sweetie. You’ll get worms.’ She removed it from the child’s mouth, which she plugged with a piece of dried apricot even before Dottie had a chance to protest. ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’

‘Of course they don’t. It’s only going to last for a few weeks.’

‘You’ve got to get out. Go to a hotel. You were a mess when you were living with him. This isn’t going to help you move on, is it? For Chrissakes, Tash, you only really started to get your life together in the summer.
BED
, you two!’ she yelled, at the distant sound of fighting from the front room. ‘I really should get this one down too. Are you okay for a minute if I plonk her in now? It’s a quarter to eight.’

‘Fine,’ said Natasha. She was secretly relieved when the adorable Dottie, with her plump, jam-smeared face and talcum smell, was removed from the room. The older children had somehow lost enough of their babyness to seem like people. Dottie was an acute, piercing reminder of something that should have been hers. An absence to which she was still not quite reconciled.

‘Say night-night to Aunty Tash.’

Natasha steeled herself for the kiss, forcing herself to look casual.

‘No,’ said the child, burrowing her head in Jo’s legs.

‘Dottie, that’s not nice – you say night-night to—’

‘It’s fine. Really.’ Natasha waved her away. ‘She’s tired.’ She knew her sister would see this brisk response as yet another sign of her defective maternal gene.

‘Give me five minutes to read her a story.’

Jo had put on weight, Natasha thought, watching her hoist the child on to her hip with the fluid ease of long practice. She moaned constantly about having no time, about how children had ruined her figure, all the while dunking another digestive into an ever-present mug of tea. ‘Blood sugar,’ she would explain. ‘Stops me shouting so much at tea-time.’

For a long time, Natasha had avoided her sister’s house. During her own miscarriages – only one of which her family knew about – she had found Jo’s noisy home, with its finger paintings, chipped plaster and plastic toys, too strong a reminder of the babies she had lost. She had hated herself for not being stoic enough to overcome her envy of those three children, but it had been easier to pretend she was just too busy. Her family had called her driven, a workaholic, ever since she had applied to law school. She was the academic one, the achiever. When she explained that she was just too weighed down by work to attend family lunch, that she had this or that case to prepare for, she knew she would be missed with an indulgent comment, perhaps a certain wistfulness on her mother’s part at her apparent failure to devote her energies to the more important things in life.

They had not dared mention her personal life since Mac had left. ‘At least you’ve got your work,’ they would say, on the few occasions that she did make it, comforting themselves with their belief that that was all she had ever really wanted anyway.

Jo was back some ten minutes later, chucking the apricot at the sink, then scraping her hair back into a ponytail. ‘Desperate to get to the hairdresser,’ she said. ‘I had an appointment last week but Theo got the lurgy. I had to pay fifty per cent anyway – bloody cheek!’

She sat down, took a long, appreciative sip of white wine. ‘Uh. Thanks for that. Bloody gorgeous. Right. I’m going to let the others stay up or I’ll never get to talk to you.’

‘And are you all right?’ Natasha asked, suspecting her sister often thought her self-obsessed. Single, childless women of a certain age were. She heard it all the time. ‘And David?’

‘Nothing that two weeks in the Seychelles and some plastic surgery wouldn’t fix. Oh, and sex. Can’t remember what
that
was like.’ She snorted. ‘Anyway. You. You never bloody tell me anything. Spill.’

Her life had become this peculiar intense little bubble, Natasha realised. Here was normality. Her own life wasn’t normal in the slightest. ‘I only thought he’d be there for a couple of weeks,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t worth telling.’

‘I mean it, Tash. Move out. I’d offer you a room here but we’d drive you nuts in five minutes.’ She had another swig of wine. ‘You’ve got the money. Go and book yourself into a lovely spa hotel. Get a massage and a manicure every night after work. Take the cost off his share of the house. He’s the one driving you out. The nerve of him.’

‘I can’t.’ Natasha doodled with one of the children’s crayons.

‘You can. God – I’d jump at the chance. What heaven!’

‘No, I can’t.’ She sighed, braced herself. ‘Because I’ve sort of taken on responsibility for someone. A girl.’

Afterwards, Natasha felt vaguely regretful that she had seen so little of her sister in the last couple of years because, against all expectations, Jo’s reaction to this news had been magnificent. She had got Natasha to repeat the story twice, and then, as Natasha explained, voice faltering with awkwardness, she had risen from her chair, walked around the table and hugged her younger sister very tightly, leaving floury marks on her dark suit. ‘God, Tash. That’s wonderful. What an utterly fantastic thing to do. I wish more people were like you. I think it’s brilliant.’ Jo sat down, her eyes shining. ‘What’s she like?’

‘That’s the thing. It’s not how I thought it would be. She and I . . . we just don’t seem to gel.’

‘She’s a teenager.’

‘Yes. But she gets on with Mac.’

‘Saddam Hussein would have got on with Mac. He’s ninety-seven per cent flirt.’

‘I have tried, Jo. We just seem to rub each other up the wrong way. It’s not gone how I expected . . .’

Jo leant towards the door, perhaps checking that her children were not within earshot. ‘I’ll be honest with you. The moment Katrin was thirteen she turned into an utter cow. It was as if my sweet baby disappeared and this hormonal monster replaced her. She looks at me with such . . . disgust, like I’m physically repulsive. Everything I say gets on her nerves.’

‘You’ve hardly seen her lately. Swears like a trooper. Answers back. Steals odd bits of money, although David pretends not to notice. Fibs about anything. She’s a fully fledged member of the precocious-bitch club. I can say that because I’m her mother and I adore her. If it wasn’t for the fact that I know the old Katrin’s still in there, and have faith she’ll re-emerge some day, I’d have chucked her out months ago.’

Natasha had never heard her sister talk in such unsentimental terms about her children. It made her wonder how much of motherhood she had chosen to block out, preferring instead to picture the hazy, rose-tinted version that she felt she’d been denied. It made her wonder if she’d been too hard on Sarah.

‘It’s not you. And it sounds like she’s gone through all sorts. Just . . . be there for her.’

‘I’m not like you. I can’t do that stuff.’

‘Bullshit. You’re brilliant, all that work you do with disadvantaged children.’

‘But they’re clients. It’s different. I’m struggling . . . And there’s something else. I got turned over by a boy I represented. He made out he’d undergone this terrible journey, and later I found out he’d lied. Now I’ve lost faith in my ability to see whether I’m being taken for a ride.’

‘You think she’s taking you for a ride?’

‘I don’t feel I’m getting the full story.’

Jo shook her head. ‘She’s fourteen. There’ll be all sorts of stories you’re not getting, unrequited love, or bullying, or weight problems, or some little cow at school that won’t be her friend any more. They don’t tell us this stuff. They’re frightened of being judged, or told off.’ She laughed. ‘Or, worse, that we’ll charge in and try to sort it out.’

Natasha stared at her sister. How did she know all this?

‘Look, I doubt she’s deceiving you in any meaningful way. There’s probably a frightened little soul in there who might be quite glad to open up to someone. Take her out for a meal, just you and her. No, not a meal.’ She chewed at a fingernail. ‘Too much pressure. Go and do something together. Something you like. Nothing too intense. You may find she relaxes a little.’ She patted Natasha’s arm. ‘Go on. At the very least it’ll take your mind off that git being in your house. And remember you’re doing something wonderful just by having her in your home.’

‘It’s a small thing.’

‘Doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Right. Now let me get those two terrors up to bed.’

And Mac? she wanted to ask. How do I feel better about Mac? But her sister had disappeared.

The old man took the fork from Sarah with his better hand and put the slices of mango into his mouth slowly, with silent, intense satisfaction. Mac had bought a ready-prepared pack from the supermarket on the way over, and Sarah was spearing each small piece, then handing him the white plastic fork, allowing him the dignity of feeding himself.

Mac waited until they had finished, the Captain carefully wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, before he pulled out the folder. ‘I’ve got something for you, Captain,’ he said.

The old man turned his head towards him. He seemed perkier today, Mac thought, his responses more alert, his language a little less confused. He had demanded water twice, quite clearly, and said, ‘
Chérie
,’ when he had seen Sarah.

He pulled a chair to the other side of the bed, and opened it so that the contents were clearly visible. ‘We’ve decided to decorate your room.’

Before the Captain could look bemused, he pulled out the first print, a black-and-white A4-sized blow-up of Sarah and her horse performing the stationary trot she called
piaffe
at the park. The old man peered at it, then turned towards his granddaughter. ‘Good,’ he said to Sarah.

‘He did well that day,’ she said. ‘He was really listening to me. Really trying. Every movement . . .’

‘Little act of beautiful,’ he said carefully. Apparently overcome by this sudden rush of language, she crept on to the bed and slid over beside him. Her head lay against his pyjama-clad shoulder.