The Horse Dancer (13 page)

‘I know. Just whenever you—’

‘You can’t just pop back and suddenly expect me to sell my home,’ she snapped.

‘Our home,’ he corrected. ‘And you can’t pretend that this has come out of the blue.’

‘For the last six months I haven’t even known what country you were in.’

‘You could have rung my sister if you needed to get in touch. But it suited you to sit here and let the dust settle.’

‘The dust settle?’ she echoed.

He sighed. ‘I’m not trying to pick a fight, Tash. I’m just trying to get things straightened out. You’re the one who was always on at me to get organised.’

‘I’m quite aware of that. But I’m tired. I’ve got a big day ahead so, if it’s okay by you, I’d like to divide up the marital assets some other time.’

‘Fine. But I may as well tell you that I need to be in London from now on, with somewhere to stay. And unless you have a really good reason, I’d like to use the spare room until we’ve sorted things out.’

Natasha sat very still, making sure she had heard him correctly. ‘Stay here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are kidding?’

He raised a small smile. ‘Living with me was that bad, huh?’

‘But we’re not together any more.’

‘Nope. But I own half of this property and I need a roof over my head.’

‘Mac, it’ll be impossible.’

‘I can handle it if you can. It’s only for a few weeks, Tash. I’m sorry to play hardball, but if you don’t like it you’re welcome to rent somewhere yourself. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve given you the best part of a year with sole access. Now I’m entitled to something.’ He shrugged. ‘Come on. It’s a big house. It’ll only be a nightmare if we make it that way.’

He was disconcertingly relaxed. Happy, almost.

She wanted to swear at him.

She wanted to throw something at his head.

She wanted to slam the front door and book into a hotel. But there was a fourteen-year-old stranger in her home for whom she had just agreed to take joint responsibility.

Without another word, she stalked out and up the stairs to the bedroom that no longer felt like hers, wondering how hard it would be for estate agents to sell a house in which the owner’s head had actually exploded.

 

 

 

The girl in the photograph was beaming up at her parents, who each held one of her hands as though they were about to lift her off the floor. ‘Fostering,’ the poster read. ‘Make All the Difference.’ Not her parents, then. In any case there was no family resemblance. They were probably all models, paid to act a happy family.

Suddenly irritated by the child’s smile, Sarah shifted on her seat in the social worker’s office, and glanced out of the window from where she could just make out the scrub and trees of the municipal park. She needed to get over to Sparepenny Lane. She knew Cowboy John would take care of Boo that morning if she didn’t turn up, but it wasn’t the same. He needed to go out. He needed to keep up with his training.

The woman had finished scribbling. ‘So, Sarah, we’ve got most of your details now and we’ll set out a care plan for you. We’re going to try to find you a temporary home until your grandfather is better. Does that sound okay to you?’

The woman talked to her as if she was about the age as the child in the poster. Every sentence went upwards at the end as if it was a question when it was clear that there had been no questions in what she had said.

‘I’m from the Children’s Services Reception and Assessment Team,’ she had said. ‘Let’s see if we can sort you out, shall we?’

‘How does this work?’ Mac said, beside her. ‘Are there families who . . . specialise in taking kids for short periods?’

‘We have a lot of foster-families on our books. Some young people – our clients – will be with them only for a night. Others might stay several years. In your case, Sarah, we’ll hope it’s just a short time.’

‘Just until your grandfather’s better,’ Mac said.

‘Yes,’ the woman said.

There was something not quite definite in the way the woman had answered, Sarah thought.

‘But there are lots of young people in similar situations to you, Sarah, families who need a bit of help. You mustn’t worry.’

Mac and his wife had talked only to her over breakfast, not to each other. She wondered if they had had an argument, whether it was something to do with her. She couldn’t remember Papa and Nana ever arguing. Nana would joke that she could argue with Papa but he would never argue back. When Papa was cross he just went very quiet, his face set in stone. ‘It’s like arguing with a statue,’ she would say conspiratorially, as if it was some big joke between them.

Tears prickled behind her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, willing them away. She was already regretting having gone with Mac and Natasha. Last night she had been afraid, but now she saw that her life was being taken over. By people who didn’t understand it.

The woman had looked at a file. ‘I see your grandparents have a residency order for you. Do you know where your mother is, Sarah?’

She shook her head.

‘Can I ask when you last saw her?’

Sarah glanced sideways at Mac. She and Papa never talked about her mother. It felt strange to air the family laundry in front of strangers. ‘She’s dead.’ She stumbled over the words, quietly furious that she had to give out this information. ‘She died a few years ago.’

She saw the sympathy on their faces, but she had never even missed her mother, not like she did Nana. Her mother had never been a warm embrace, a pair of arms to fall into, but a chaotic, unpredictable shadow over her early years. Sarah remembered her as a series of images, of being dragged into different people’s houses, left to sleep on sofas, the hum of distant loud music and arguments, an uneasy sense of impermanence. And then, when she had gone to live with Nana and Papa, order, routine. Love.

The woman was scribbling. ‘Are you sure there are no friends you can stay with? Any other family?’ She sounded hopeful, as if she didn’t want to deal with Sarah. But Sarah had to admit that there was not a single person who might want her in their home for weeks on end. She was not popular. Her few friends lived in flats as small as hers; she knew no one well enough to ask, even if she had wanted to.

‘I need to go,’ she said to Mac quietly.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, the school knows you’ll be late. It’s more important that we get you sorted out.’

‘And where did you say your grandfather is now?’ The woman smiled at her.

‘He’s in St Theresa’s. They said they’re going to move him, but I don’t know when.’

‘We can find that out for you. We’ll put a contact arrangement in place.’

‘Will I be able to see him every day? Like I have been?’

‘I’m not sure. It’ll depend on where we can place you.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mac. ‘Won’t it be somewhere close to her home?’

The woman sighed. ‘I’m afraid the system’s under immense pressure. We can’t always guarantee that clients will be as close to their home as we would like. But we’ll make every effort to ensure that Sarah sees her grandfather regularly until he can come home.’

Sarah could hear huge gaps between the woman’s words, holes where there should have been certainty. She had visions of herself being placed with some smiling family miles from Papa. From Boo. How was she supposed to look after him if it took her hours to get anywhere? This wasn’t going to work.

‘You know what?’ she said, glancing at Mac. ‘I can look after myself. Actually, if someone could just help me a bit, I’ll be fine at home.’

The woman smiled. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, but legally we’re not allowed to leave you by yourself.’

‘But I can cope. It was getting burgled that was the problem. I need to be near my home.’

‘And we’ll make every effort to ensure that that happens,’ the woman said smoothly. ‘And now we’d better get you to school. Your social worker will meet you afterwards and, hopefully, take you to your placement.’

‘I can’t,’ she said abruptly. ‘I need to be somewhere after school.’

‘If it’s an after-school club, we can set that straight with the school. I’m sure they won’t mind you missing a session.’

Sarah tried to work out how much to tell them. What would they do if she told them about Boo?

‘Right, Sarah. If we can move on to religion, I won’t keep you much longer. Can you tell me which of these categories you fall into?’

The woman’s voice receded and Sarah found herself staring at Mac. He was uncomfortable in this place, she could tell. He kept fidgeting as if he would rather have been anywhere else. Well, now he knew how she felt. She hated him suddenly, hated him and his wife for putting her in this mess. If she hadn’t been so shocked yesterday she would have patched up the door herself. Cowboy John might have helped. And she’d still be at home, running her life, still seeing Boo twice a day, coping, hanging on for Papa’s return.

‘Sarah? Church of England? Catholic? Hindu? Muslim? Other?’

‘Hindu,’ she said mutinously, and then as they looked at her, disbelieving, she said again, ‘Hindu.’ She almost laughed when she saw the woman writing it down. Perhaps if she made life really difficult for them they’d have to let her go home. ‘And I’m a strict vegetarian,’ she added. Mac’s face told her he was remembering the bacon sandwich he had made for her at breakfast. She dared him to contradict her.

‘Ooohh-kaaaay.’ The woman carried on writing. ‘Nearly done. Mr Macauley, if you need to go now I can take it from here.’

‘And I’m claustrophobic. I can’t live anywhere where there’s a lift.’

This time the woman’s expression was sharp. Sarah suspected she was not quite as sympathetic as she had initially appeared. ‘Well,’ she said crisply, ‘I’ve got to speak to your school and your doctor. No doubt if there are any real requirements or problems they’ll confirm them.’

Mac was scribbling. ‘You all right?’ he asked Sarah quietly.

‘Just great,’ she said.

He looked troubled. He knew he had ruined her life, she thought. He handed Sarah a piece of paper. ‘My numbers,’ he said. ‘Any problems, you give me a call, okay? I’ll help you any way I can. That’s okay, right?’ he added to the woman.

She smiled at him. Sarah had noticed that loads of women smiled at Mac. ‘Of course. We encourage clients to keep to as much of their normal routine as possible.’

Mac stood to leave and handed her the folder of documents and personal papers he had taken from the flat for her. ‘Take care, Sarah,’ he said. He lingered, as if he was not quite sure whether he should go. ‘I hope you get home soon.’

Sarah kicked at the leg of her chair and said nothing. Doing and saying nothing, she was discovering, was the only power she had left.

‘Thank God. I thought we were going to have to call up Mr Snappy Snaps.’

‘Sorry. Got caught up in something.’ Mac dumped his camera bags on the floor. He kissed Louisa, the art director, whom he recognised, then turned to the girl who was sitting at the mirror, texting furiously, oblivious to the attentions of the makeup artist behind her, twisting her hair on to huge ceramic rollers. ‘Hi, I’m Mac,’ he said, holding out a hand.

‘Oh. Hi,’ she said. ‘Serena.’

‘You should have been here an hour ago.’ Maria tapped her watch. Her jeans were positioned so low on her hips that they were almost indecent; above them, two layers of floating dark fabric were tied skilfully to reveal a shapely midriff. Behind her, someone was fiddling with a CD-player.

‘Just thought I’d give you extra time to work your magic, sweetheart.’ He kissed her cheek, sliding his hand across her bare back. ‘I’ll set up, shall I? Louisa, do you want to talk me through the brief again?’

Louisa outlined the kind of look and ambience they wanted for the shot of the young actress; the wardrobe girl nodding attentively. Mac nodded too, appearing to give her his full attention, but his mind was in that children’s welfare department. He had run down the steps of the dispiriting building forty minutes previously, feeling less relieved than he had expected. Sarah had looked absolutely miserable, shrinking in on herself as they had sat in that office and the extent of her altered situation had dawned on her. He had half considered asking Tash if the girl could stay with them, but even as he had formulated the sentence, while they made breakfast in loaded silence, he could see the absurdity. Tash had made it clear that her job was compromised by Sarah’s presence, and she could barely cope with having him in the house. It no longer even felt like his home. How could he impose on her the presence of a stranger?

‘Lots of red. Very bold. We want to make a statement with this picture, Mac. She’s not just another young starlet but a serious actress of tomorrow, a young Judi Dench, a less political Vanessa Redgrave.’

Mac eyed Serena, who was giggling at a text message, and stifled an internal sigh. He had lost count of the exceptional young starlets he had shot over the past ten years. Barely two had survived the initial burst of publicity to make it to a sitcom.

‘Okay. She is ready for you.’ Maria appeared in the doorway, a thin makeup brush between her teeth, pinning up the girl’s blonde hair with deft fingers. The wardrobe girl was pulling outfits from the long rail, piling them over one arm. ‘I’ll bring these out,’ she said.

‘We’ll be ten minutes. I’m just going to check the backdrop.’ Louisa left them.

Maria walked up to him. ‘I was going to ask why you so late,’ she said, in her heavy Slavic accent, ‘but then I realised I didn’t care.’

He hooked a finger in her belt loop and pulled her close to him. Her hair smelt of apples, her skin of makeup and hairspray, the layered unguents of her trade. ‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.’