The Day We Disappeared (6 page)

A strange miasma of smells reached out
as we opened the gate into the yard. Some I recognized – horse poo, straw – but many
others wove together into an unfamiliar sensory blanket.

‘Clothes-buying?' Becca
snorted. ‘You've got a better chance of going on a weekend mini-break to
New York than you have of nipping off to Minehead, pet. Lunch is a twenty-minute
soup break and you're spending yours with Mark. I'm going to tell you
what to say this morning, and you're going to listen hard while shovelling a
lot of shit and filling a lot of buckets with freezing water, okay?'

I nodded glumly.

‘Only first I need to show you how
to use the most dangerous machine in Somerset, known as the Tank. It rakes the
indoor school, lifts up bales of straw and kills anyone who needs knocking
off.'

‘I really hate this job,' I
muttered.

Becca roared with laughter.
‘That's my girl,' she shouted. ‘That's my
girl!'

By lunch I was certain I was dying. I
couldn't feel my fingers at all, my legs chafed where my wellies had pressed
the stiff seams of my jeans into my skin, and my lip was bleeding where I'd
chewed part of it off. I stank of horse wee and had hundreds of tiny pieces of horse
bedding in my hair.

So far this morning I'd had zero
direct contact with horses. I'd raked the indoor school, scrubbed horse poo
out of the horse walking machine, picked horse poo from
one of the paddocks and spent a stinking hour sculpting
horse poo on a giant muck heap. I'd filled endless buckets with icy water from
a heavily insulated tap and had removed yet more horse poo from the area where Joe
and Mark were saddling and unsaddling an endless procession of horses for
exercise.

It had been me and poo, without rest,
all morning.

During the sculpting of the muck heap,
Becca had tried to teach me the different names for horse colours. I had been so
useless at remembering them that we'd ended up with the giggles. The serious
giggles. We'd stood there on top of the muck heap, which steamed unfragrantly
in the bitingly cold air, and howled for quite some time.

Mark had ridden past and glanced at us,
folded over our yard forks, crying with mirth. He hadn't looked pleased, but I
couldn't stop. I hadn't laughed like that in weeks.

I was so desperate for the toilet, by
the time lunchtime arrived, that I almost cried when Tiggy strode into the
downstairs loo ahead of me. ‘Argh,' I whispered, hopping from one foot
to the other outside the door.

‘She's an evil one,'
whispered Joe, walking past. ‘I'll fight her for you, if you
like.'

‘Please don't be fighting
anyone,' I said carefully, ‘or I'll end up weeing into my sock,
and that would be the end.'

Joe roared with laughter as he rolled
off into the kitchen. ‘I love you, Galway,' he called. ‘I will
love you for ever, my flame-haired Irish princess.'

I realized I was smiling, which rather
took me by surprise. And then I realized I actually felt quite good. Quite happy
about how the morning had gone, even though I felt I might be dead. It had been
wonderful to lose myself
in manual labour,
to be involved in a routine and responsible for the welfare of someone beyond
myself.

As the darkness had melted and our
surroundings had come into view, I'd been reminded once again of how
stunningly beautiful it was around there. The vivid green of the fields, sharpened
brilliantly by the brown rugged hills that rose above them, speckled with yellow
gorse, flint-grey rocks, white sheep.

I hadn't thought about the Bad
Shit for nearly
six hours
! ‘Kate Brady is on fire!' I told
myself, as Tiggy flushed the loo. ‘She's nailing this!'

A few seconds later I collapsed my numb,
freezing thighs on to the also-freezing porcelain, and for a few moments I allowed
myself to drift off on a cloud of hopeful possibility.

Then: ‘PET,' Becca yelled
through the toilet door. ‘You've forgotten your lunch with
Mark!'

I exploded out of that toilet as if it
were on fire. I'd not had any direct contact with Mark during my
morning's work but just glimpsing him riding round and round in that indoor
school – silent as a shadow, so shut off from all the human beings buzzing around
him – had left me cold.

‘If he asks anything awkward, just
lie,' Becca advised, as I shoved my frozen feet back into my wellies. Pain
roared down my left heel, which had already blistered. ‘And watch Maria. She
acts like she hates Mark but she'll destroy you if she thinks you're a
threat …'

‘Ideal,' I called, running
out. ‘I can hardly wait.'

Who the hell
were
these
people?

It didn't matter, I reminded
myself. They would have to do.

I balled my hair
into a bun as I sprinted across the old farmyard, which separated our barn from the
main house. The sun had slid out doubtfully from behind huge sheets of grey cloud,
temporarily brightening the yellow stone of the farmhouse and picking out the woody
twists of wisteria that covered the south- and west-facing walls. I drew in a long,
cold breath of Somerset air and prayed for clemency.

Sandra opened the door, wearing an apron
saying ‘SEXY GRANNY!' She was wide, wobbly and maternal, with an Alice
band and glasses that magnified her kind eyes. She smelt of baking and cologne.
‘Ah, Katie,' she said sweetly. ‘Welcome! How are you,
darling?' She made a feeble attempt to clear a path through the vast pile of
wellies and riding boots that almost blocked the front door.

‘Kate.' I smiled. ‘And
I'm grand, thanks, Sandra. How are you?'

‘Love that accent of yours!'
She giggled, which seemed to be her answer to my question. ‘Come on through.
Mark and Maria are having a little disagreement about something but they'll be
thrilled to see you. Dirk?' she said to a Labrador who was eating a squeaky
broccoli in a downstairs loo. ‘Dirk, do you want to go to Wootton with me
later? I need some stamps …'

Dirk squeaked the broccoli and I was
waved through to an old-fashioned dining room with large windows overlooking a
neglected lawn. The room contained a table and a photo in a shabby frame of Mark
show-jumping, but little else, other than faded marks on the wooden walls where vast
ancestral portraits might have been. There
were only four chairs huddled at the far end of the table
and a sense of quiet gloom hung in the air. It made a marked contrast to our bright
quarters across the yard.

In one corner of the room sat a plastic
Wendy house, out of which came little yells of ‘WHERE'S THE STEAK?
WHERE'S THE FUCKING STEAK, DAVE? I'VE GOT THREE COVERS WAITING,
DAVE!'

‘Ana Luisa!' bellowed a
dark-haired woman sitting at the table with Mark and a mountain of papers.

‘Stop swearing, sweetheart,'
Mark added.

Maria sounded very exotic. Brazilian,
perhaps: her beauty was wild and Amazonian and her hair fell in dramatic waves
around her slim shoulders. She was wearing leather trousers with a phenomenally
expensive-looking black polo-neck and a Rolex watch. I hadn't realized that
people wore clothes like that outside films.

Ana Luisa, in the Wendy house, went
silent. Then: ‘Do you and Daddy want your fucking steak or what?'

Mark Waverley's face moved briefly
in the direction of a smile. ‘Oi,' he began.

‘ENOUGH!' yelled the woman
at the table. ‘Go up to your bedroom! Our order is cancelled!'

A screaming match ensued, during which a
small dark girl of around six ejected herself violently from the Wendy house,
smashed it with her fist, then stormed out, swearing about her mother.

‘Hello,' Mark said. His hair
was squashed from being under a riding hat all morning. ‘My daughter wanted to
serve our lunch from the Wendy house today, but it seems that her imaginary
sous-chef, Dave, has been a bit slow with the steaks.' He did that half-smile
again, and even though it
lasted all of a
second I felt a little less nervous. ‘She's been watching too much
Gordon Ramsay,' Mark added.

‘She is out of control,'
muttered Maria. ‘But that's what happen to neglected children. Maria
Waverley,' she purred, standing up and placing her still hand in mine as if
she were the Queen. She was both magnificent and terrifying.

‘Kate Brady!' I beamed. The
jolly Dubliner routine was my best and only option. ‘I'm the new trainee
yard assistant, great to meet you.'

Maria looked me up and down, decided I
posed no threat to her marriage whatsoever, and sat down again next to Mark.
‘We are having fight,' she announced. ‘Because my husband he does
not understand business. Kate, he has buy a horse lorry that he can only pay for if
he wins Badminton and Burghley every year for the next millennium! Ha-ha!'

‘Ha-ha?' I echoed.

‘Maria,' Mark said tiredly.
‘What part of “I have a cash sponsor for the first time in years”
do you not understand?'

‘Which part of “Yes, but
your cash sponsor is not paying you anywhere near enough to buy that lorry” do
you
not understand, darling?'

Mark swept the papers to one side and
gestured for me to sit down. ‘Mum?' he called. ‘Is there any
lunch?'

‘Of course, darling,' Sandra
said, arriving with a big pan of soup and a board of bread. I suspected she'd
been hiding in the kitchen doorway, waiting to be summoned. This was one of the
strangest places I'd ever been.

The soup smelt like cauliflower cheese
in a bowl and was served with a
boule
of oven-hot bread.

‘Well, now,
doesn't that bread smell like God's bakery itself?' I brayed, into
the silent room. ‘I could eat the lot!'

Mark stared at me, possibly wondering if
I was mentally ill.

‘I'm sure you could,
sweetheart,' Maria said pleasantly, looking at my waist.

‘Do you have your CV?' Mark
asked, ignoring his wife. They seemed to spend a lot of time ignoring each other.
‘And, look, I should probably tell you that I didn't ask my mother to
interview anyone on my behalf. Unfortunately one of our team left while I was in
Europe, trying out some youngsters, and Mum took it upon herself to solve the
resultant staffing deficit.'

‘Your mum and I had a lovely
chat,' I tried. ‘She was so nice!'

Maria snorted. ‘I imagine
Sandra's interview skills are even worse than yours, darling.' She gave
Mark a tart, citrussy sort of a smile.

It was like a sitcom! How could they not
be embarrassed, carrying on like this? I hated them both. A more miserable pair of
bastards I'd never come across. I spooned some hot, cheesy soup into my
mouth.

Mark turned back to me. ‘So, as I
was saying –'

‘Please email me your CV,
darling,' Maria interrupted crisply. ‘For our files.'

Mark took in a slow breath.
‘Please email
me
your CV,' he said. ‘In the meantime you
can tell me about your experience.'

‘Well,' I began. ‘I
first sat on a pony at three years old, and since then I've –'

‘You do not look like a
rider!' Maria smiled, staring pointedly at my large breasts.

I blushed.

‘As you were saying …' Mark
peered at his watch.

‘As I was saying, I got on a pony
at three years old and went for a gallop along the beach. It was the best moment of
my life. I spent my entire childhood riding, and when I moved to Dublin I kept a
horse out in Bray.'

‘Pony Club?' Mark asked.

‘Yes!'

‘Did you get your B
test?'

I froze. Did I? B didn't sound
good enough for Mark Waverley's yard. ‘Actually, I got my A.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah. I, er –'

‘FUCK YOU ALL!' came a
little scream from the hallway. Ana Luisa was on her way out of the house with a
little rucksack covered in diamanté. More stylish than I would ever be, she had
chosen a silk headscarf and large sunglasses for her departure. She was incandescent
with rage, a small bomb on two legs. ‘FUCK YOU ALL! I'M
LEAVING!'

‘Good luck,' Maria called.
Mark went to go after her but Maria grabbed his wrist with a manicured hand,
barnacling him to the table and their argument.
Ah, go and grab her
, I
thought sadly.
Give that poor sweet girl a cuddle.

‘Becca will sort her out,'
Maria said, catching sight of my face. ‘Ana Luisa does this regularly. It is
the classic behaviour of a child who is being abandon by workaholic
father.'

Mark turned back to me. His temple was
pulsing. ‘Did my mother mention that you're on a trial?'

Sandra, eating her soup at the far end
of the table, clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh, I forgot to.'

‘Which is
why I ask that you leave the hiring to me, Mum,' Mark cut in. Sandra, if she
was hurt, did not show it.

‘You're on a month's
trial,' he told me. ‘But that doesn't mean you're guaranteed
a month, I'm afraid. I don't have millions of pounds or a
state-of-the-art yard, like everyone else in the World Class squad, which means I
have to be doubly fussy about who I hire.' I made a mental note to find out
what this World Class thing was. ‘So there's no room for error on my
yard. Every little mistake can hurt us.'

He stared at me, directly, for the first
time, as if challenging me to wilt and die, which I wanted to very much indeed.

Instead I smiled. ‘Of course,
Captain! You won't be disappointed.'

Mark's navy eyes drifted off, as
if he couldn't stand the sight of me.

‘So, Kate,' Maria purred,
‘why you choose Mark's yard for work?'