The Horse Dancer (14 page)

She removed the brush. ‘You were out picking up women.’

‘Fourteen-year-old girls, actually.’

Her mouth was so close now that he could see the tiny freckle to the side of her upper lip. ‘This does not surprise me. You are disgusting man.’

‘I do my best.’

She kissed him, then pulled away. ‘I have another job after this. Soho. You want to meet up?’

‘If we can go to yours.’

‘You are at your ex-wife’s house?’

‘It’s my house too. I told you.’

‘And this woman does not mind you moving back?’

‘I can’t say we’ve discussed it in those terms.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t trust her. What woman with any self-respect would take back her ex-husband like this? When my ex-boyfriend in Krakow tried to return to my house I turned my father’s gun on him.’ She mimed the action.

Mac considered this. ‘That’s . . . an option, I suppose.’

‘I felt not so good about this afterwards. Turns out he was only trying to return my CD-player.’ She turned to leave, reaching into the fruit bowl for a stray grape as she headed for the door. ‘Is just as well I missed.’

The darned gates were jamming again. Cowboy John was hauling at them, trying to make them line up as he wrestled with the padlock, when he saw a familiar figure running towards him, her bag bumping against her hip.

‘I was just about to close up,’ he said, unhooking the padlock. ‘I was waiting for you all yesterday. I thought something had happened to you. Where have you been, girl?’ He coughed, a hoarse, rasping sound.

‘They’ve put me in Holloway.’ She dropped her schoolbag on the cobbles and ran past him to Boo’s stable.

He pulled the gates shut and followed her, stiff-legged. The chill of autumn was sidling into his bones. ‘You went to prison?’

‘Not the prison,’ she said, wrestling with the bolt on the stable door. ‘Social Services. They said I can’t stay at home any more with Papa not being there and they made me go to this stupid family. But they live in Holloway. They think I’m with Papa now – it’s the only way I could get here.’ She threw herself against the horse’s neck and he saw a long shudder escape her, as if the pent-up tension of the day had been released.

‘Hold on, now. Hold on.’ He flicked on the lights. ‘You need to rewind. What the Sam Hill is going on?’

She faced him, eyes glittering. ‘Our flat got broken into on Tuesday. And this woman who gave me a lift home, this lawyer or something, she made me stay with her because she said it wasn’t safe where I was. And then they took me to Social Services and the next thing I’m living in someone else’s house and I’ve got to stay there till Papa is better. This family in Holloway. And I’d never even met them. It took me an hour and a quarter on the bus to get here.’

‘What they want to make themselves busy for?’

‘I was fine,’ she said, ‘until the break-in.’

‘Your grandpa know about this?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t get there till tomorrow. They don’t know about Boo. I can’t let them know or they might put him somewhere too.’

Cowboy John shook his head. ‘Don’t you worry yourself. He ain’t going nowhere.’

‘I haven’t even got the stables money for you. They took Papa’s pension books so I’ve got nothing except my bus and lunch money.’

‘Don’t you fret.’ She was winding herself into a mini-hurricane. ‘I’ll sort out the rent with your papa when he’s up and about. You got money for your horse’s food?’

She thrust her hand into her pocket, counted out the cash and handed it over. ‘I’ve got enough for four bales of hay and a couple of sacks of food. But I need you to feed him for me. I don’t even know if I can get here to muck him out.’

‘Okay, okay. I’ll clean his stable for you, or get one of the boys to do it. What about the blacksmith? You know he’s coming Tuesday?’

‘I know. I’ve got some savings. I could pay this month out of that. But I can’t pay the rent.’

‘I told you, I’ll strike the rent until the Captain’s back in action.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’ She sounded as if she thought he wouldn’t believe her. He took a step backwards. ‘I know that. You think I’m stupid?’ He gestured towards the other ponies. ‘I wouldn’t let one of these sewer rats miss a day’s rent, but you and your papa . . . Now you just calm down, sort your horse out, and we’ll take things a day at a time.’

She seemed to relax a little. She took up a brush and started to groom him, sweeping her arm down his flank methodically, rhythmically, like her grandfather did it, as if she took comfort in the simple action.

‘Sarah . . . I’d offer you my own place but it’s kinda small. And I been on my own a long time. If I had a bigger house, or a woman around . . . I’m not sure it’s the kind of set-up they’d want a girl to be.’

She told him it didn’t matter.

He stood there for a minute. ‘You okay to lock up if I go?’ he said. He could tell she didn’t want to leave any time soon. He leant on the stable door, tilting his hat back so he could better see her face. ‘I tell you what, Sarah. You want me to go visit with your grandpa for you tomorrow so that you can come here instead?’

She straightened. ‘Would you? I don’t like to leave him alone for two days.’

‘No problem. He’d want to know Boo here was still doing his circus thing. But I got to tell him something. And, sweetheart, I have to talk to you about it too.’

She looked wary then, waiting for some further blow. ‘I’m thinking of selling up to Maltese Sal.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But what—’

‘It’s okay. Like I’ll tell your grandpa, nothing’s going to change. I’m going to hang on here till my house is sold. Day to day I’ll still be opening up and taking care of business.’

‘Where are you going?’ She had put her arms around the horse’s neck and was hanging on as if he, too, might be spirited off somewhere.

‘I’m moving out to the country. Somewhere with a bit of green. I figure my boys deserve it.’ He nodded at his horses. He hesitated. Took the cigarette from his lips and spat on the floor. ‘Seeing what happened to your grandpa, Sarah, it shook me up. I’m not as young as I was, and if I only have a few years, then I’d like to spend ’em somewhere peaceful.’

She didn’t say anything, just looked at him.

‘Maltese Sal’s promised me nothing’s going to change, girl,’ he said. ‘He knows about the Captain, knows it ain’t easy for you right now. He says he’ll keep things just as they are.’

She didn’t have to say anything. He could see it in her face. Given where she had ended up right now, how the hell could she believe that?

‘Thanks for being so prompt, Michael. Mrs Persey will be here soon and I wanted to run through some of the preliminary papers with you.’ She paused as Ben came in, bringing a box of tissues and a bottle of chilled white wine. ‘We don’t normally encourage “crying time”,’ she said, as the bottle was placed carefully on her desk, ‘but when you have a client of this calibre . . .’

‘. . . you let her shed a few tears.’

Natasha smiled. ‘And soften the pain with a glass of her favourite Chablis.’

‘I imagined this end of town would be more about confiscating the odd can of Special Brew.’ A renowned divorce lawyer, Michael Harrington’s charm and amused manner of speaking belied a razor-sharp mind. Natasha could remember the first time she had watched him in court, when she had been a trainee and he had been opposing counsel. She had wished she had a tape-recorder so that she could emulate the deceptively easy fashion in which he had punctured their own counsel’s case.

‘Okay.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘In brief, married twelve years, second wife, some dispute over how soon she and Mr Persey got together after his first wife left. Just over a year ago she discovered him
in flagrante
with the au pair. Fairly standard stuff. We have two problems. First, there is no agreement on the financial settlement, on grounds of inadequate disclosure of assets. Second, she is refusing to comply with the access arrangements on the grounds that he was physically and mentally abusive to her during the term of the marriage, and verbally abusive to the eleven-year-old daughter.’

‘Messy.’

‘Oh, yes. The papers don’t suggest that this was in evidence during the marriage.’ Natasha flicked through her brief. ‘She claims she went to every length to hide it, as she didn’t want to upset his standing in the business community. Now, she says, she has nothing to lose. But he’s threatening to withdraw his offered financial settlement because of the lack of access.’

‘I need hardly tell you that this will be a very high-profile case, given his reputation. The hearing is booked for the Principal Registry of the Family Division in the Royal Courts of Justice. The dispute-resolution meeting was an absolute disaster. Meanwhile Mrs Persey seems . . . Well, she seems quite keen to publicise her version of events. It’s all I can do to stop her going to the newspapers.’ She paused, pressed the tips of her fingers together. ‘You’ll find, Michael, that she isn’t the easiest of clients to represent.’

Ben popped his head around the door. ‘She’s here.’

The briefest glance towards her, and Michael was on his feet, hand outstretched, ready to welcome Mrs Persey into the room.

Natasha had seen many battered women during her time at Davison Briscoe; she had represented children whose mothers swore their man would never touch a soul, even as the stitches healed on their temples, the bruises still purple beneath their eyes. She had seen women so cowed by years of abuse that they could barely speak loudly enough to be heard. She had never met anyone like Georgina Persey.

‘He’s threatening me again!’ She had both her hands on Natasha’s arm even before Ben had closed the door behind her, her brightly polished nails digging into Natasha’s flesh. ‘He rang me last night to tell me that if he doesn’t see Lucy he’ll arrange for me to have an accident.’

Her hair bounced on her shoulders in long, carefully smoothed waves. Her expensive clothes hung from a body that was rigorously exercised, and trimmed by years of self-denial. But her face, immaculately made-up, seemed fixed in a perpetual grimace of outrage. When she spoke, it was as if all the energy had been vacuumed out of the room.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Persey.’ Natasha placed her in front of a chair, poured a glass of wine and handed it to her. ‘May I introduce Michael Harrington? The QC we spoke about? He will be representing you in court.’

It was as if Mrs Persey hadn’t heard. ‘I told him I had it on tape. His threats. Everything. I didn’t, of course, but I was so afraid. I told him if he did anything to me I’d give the tape to you. And you know what he did? He laughed. I could hear that whore laughing behind him too.’ She looked at Michael Harrington beseechingly. ‘He stopped my credit cards. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have your card declined in Harvey Nichols? There were people I knew in the queue behind me.’

‘We’ll do our best to have an interim settlement in place within a matter of days.’

‘I want a non-molestation order. I want him to stay away from the house.’

‘Mrs Persey,’ Natasha began,’ I’ve explained to you that it’s very difficult for us to help you there without any material evidence that you and your daughter are at risk of harm.’

‘He’s trying to make me crazy, Mr Harrington. He’s putting more and more pressure on me so that I look crazy and the judge will take my daughter away from me.’ She spoke only to the barrister, now that he was present. She was one of those women for whom others of their sex were irrelevant, thought Natasha.

‘Mrs Persey.’ Michael Harrington sat down beside her. ‘From the paperwork I’ve seen so far, I have to tell you that we are at far more risk of you losing her because of your non-compliance with the court’s decisions than we are for any suggestion of mental instability.’

‘I will
never
leave my daughter in his hands,’ she said emphatically. As if she was seeing Natasha for the first time, she pulled up a sleeve and held out her bare arm. A long white scar ran towards the elbow. ‘This is from when he pushed me down the stairs. You think he wouldn’t do that to Lucy? You think I should let my daughter stay in the house with that man?’

Michael was studying his paperwork. Natasha leant forward. ‘We said we needed to corroborate your statements about the risk to Lucy. You told me the nanny once saw your husband strike you, yet there’s nothing about it in her statements.’

‘That was the Guatemalan nanny, not the Pole.’

‘Can we get a statement from the Guatemalan?’

‘How should I know? She’s in Guatemala! She was no good. We had to let her go.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘I found her trying on my clothes. As if they’d fit her! She must have been at least a size twelve.’

Michael Harrington placed the lid on his pen. ‘Mrs Persey, did anyone else witness any act of violence towards you or your daughter?’

‘I told you! He’s so clever! He did everything behind closed doors. He said nobody would believe me.’ She burst into noisy sobs.

Natasha met Michael’s eye and reached for the box of tissues, which she held out to the woman.

‘I’m going to the press!’ Mrs Persey stared at her, defiantly. ‘I’m going to tell the world what he’s like, him and his whore.’

‘I suggest we hold fire with the media just a little longer,’ Michael said diplomatically. ‘It won’t endear us to the judge, and it’s very important that we appear absolutely blameless as far as our own actions go.’

‘You think?’

Both lawyers nodded.

‘But it’s so awful,’ she said, weeping noisily into a tissue. ‘So awful.’

‘Take your time, Mrs Persey,’ Michael said, as she sobbed.

Time ticked by. Amazing how relaxed barristers can be when it was costing someone three hundred and fifty pounds an hour, Natasha thought.

‘Now perhaps we can begin again. It’s very important that we get this right.’

Natasha sent Ben a text message: