The Horse Dancer (60 page)

Natasha waited. She was aware that she had sounded as if she was talking to a client. But she couldn’t help it. That’s my voice, she said silently. That’s the best I can do.

But Sarah just sat there. ‘Can we go home now?’ she said.

Natasha screwed her eyes shut. ‘What? That’s it? You’re not going to say anything?’

‘I just want to go.’

Natasha felt the swell of a familiar anger. Why do you have to make this so difficult, Sarah? she wanted to yell. Why are you so determined to hurt yourself? But instead she took deep breath, and said calmly, ‘No. We can’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘I know when someone’s lying, and I know you’re lying to me. So, no, I’m not going to take you anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.’

‘You want the truth.’

‘Yes.’

‘
You
want to talk about the truth.’ She laughed bitterly.

‘Yes.’

‘Because you
always
tell the truth.’ Her tone was mocking now.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Uh . . . like you’re still in love with Mac, but you don’t tell him?’ She nodded towards the car where Mac, just visible through the rain-washed window, was poring over a road map. ‘It’s so obvious it’s pathetic. Even in the car you don’t know what to do with yourself around him. I see you sneaking little looks at him. The way you accidentally brush into each other the whole time. But you won’t tell him.’

Natasha swallowed. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Yes, it’s complicated. Everything’s complicated. Because you know like I do—’ There was a break in her voice. ‘You know like I do that sometimes telling the truth makes things worse, not better.’

Natasha stared across the road at Mac. ‘You’re right,’ she said finally. ‘Okay? You’re right. But whatever I feel about Mac, I can live with it. When I look at you, Sarah, I see someone who is throwing away a lifeline. I see someone who is creating more pain.’ She leant forward. ‘Why, Sarah? Why would you do this to yourself?’

‘Because I had to.’

‘No, you didn’t. That man thought you might be good enough in a few years if you—’

‘In a few years.’

‘Yes, in a few years. I know it seems like a long time when you’re young, but that time will fly.’

‘Why can’t you just leave it? Why can’t you trust me to make the right decision?’

‘Because it isn’t the right decision. You’re destroying your future.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I understand that you don’t have to cut everyone out of your life just because you’re hurting.’

‘You
don’t
understand.’

‘Oh, believe me, I do.’

‘I had to let him go.’

‘No, I’m telling you you didn’t. Christ! What was the thing your grandfather wanted more than anything for you? What would he say if he knew what you’d done?’

Sarah’s face whipped round. Her expression was ferocious. She was shouting now: ‘He’d understand!’

‘I’m not sure he—’

‘I
had
to let him go. It was the only way I could protect him!’

There was a sudden silence. Natasha sat very still. ‘Protect him?’

The girl swallowed. It was then that Natasha saw it: a glistening at the corner of Sarah’s eyes, a tremor in her whitened knuckles. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. ‘Sarah, what happened?’

Suddenly, abruptly, she began to cry, a terrible, grief-stricken sound. She cried as Natasha had cried thirty-six hours earlier, gulping sobs of utter loss and desolation. Natasha hesitated for just a moment, then pulled the girl to her, holding her tightly, murmuring words of comfort. ‘It’s okay, Sarah,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’ But as the sobs slowly subsided into hiccups and Sarah began to whisper a halting tale of loneliness, of secrets, debt, fear and a dark path so nearly taken, Natasha’s own eyes filled with tears.

Through the blur of the windscreen, Mac watched Natasha holding Sarah so tightly that there was a kind of fierceness in it. She was talking now, nodding, and whatever she was saying, the girl was in agreement. He didn’t know what to do; it had seemed clear that Natasha had some plan in mind. He didn’t want to interrupt if she was managing to elicit some explanation for the past three days.

So he sat in the car, watching, waiting, hoping she had some way of making this thing better. Because he was pretty sure he didn’t.

A woman arrived at the table, the owner probably. Natasha was ordering something, and as he watched, she turned to him. Their eyes locked, hers suddenly bright, and then she was beckoning him to join them.

He climbed out of the car, locked it behind him, and went to where they were sitting under the awning. They were both smiling, shy smiles, as if they were embarrassed to be caught so close to each other. His wife, his almost ex-wife, he thought, with an ache, looked beautiful. Triumphant, almost.

‘Mac,’ she said, ‘there’s been a change of plan.’

He glanced at Sarah, who had begun to pick at the basket of bread in front of her. ‘Would this change of plan involve a horse?’ he said, scraping back a chair.

‘It certainly would.’

Mac sat down. Behind them, the skies were clearing. ‘Thank God for that.’

All the way back to England, Natasha sat with Sarah in the rear of the car, their voices a low murmur, occasionally lifting to include Mac in the conversation. They would not return to Saumur today; Sarah knew a man, she told them, the one man she would trust to bring Boo back for her. They had rung Le Cadre Noir who, to Sarah’s visible relief, seemed to have been expecting their call. The horse was fine. He would be safe there until someone came to collect him. No, Natasha said, she didn’t think Sarah would return in person – ‘I’m afraid we have a funeral to arrange,’ she said softly.

Occasionally Mac would glance back at the two heads, organising, talking, seemingly now in perfect communion. Sarah would stay with Natasha. They were considering all options: boarding-schools – Natasha rang her sister who said she had heard there was one that took horses – or livery yards far from that part of London. There would be no more problems with Sal, Natasha told her. Without Sarah’s signature on the terms and conditions, his claim on the horse was worthless, and she would send a legal letter telling him as much and warning him to keep away. And Boo would be safe. They would find a different kind of life for him. Somewhere he could run in green fields.

Natasha, Mac thought, was doing what she did best: organising. Occasionally, when Henri Lachapelle was mentioned, Sarah’s face crumpled a little and Natasha’s hand reached out to squeeze hers, or just to pat a shoulder. Little acts of kindness to tell her, again and again, that she was not alone.

Mac saw all this in the rear-view mirror, his gratitude tempered by the odd sensation of exclusion. He knew Natasha was not deliberately leaving him out, that whatever had occurred between the two of them he would keep Sarah in his life too. Perhaps this was Natasha’s gentle way of telling him that their night together had been a mistake, that away from the intense atmosphere of the search she was seeking to return to a more stable existence with Conor. What had this been, after all? Some kind of swansong? Closure? He dared not ask. He told himself that sometimes actions spoke louder than words, and by that account what she was saying was pretty clear.

When they reached Calais, Sarah finally telephoned the man she had said could transport her horse back to England. She took Natasha’s phone and walked away across the tarmac for some time, as if she needed this conversation to be private. Mac was struck by how relaxed she seemed about the prospect of leaving Boo in another country, until he thought about it: there was no place – other than with her – that she would rather have him.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Natasha remarked, as Sarah talked some distance away, walking between the cars queuing for the ferry, her left hand pressed to her ear.

‘I guess there’s nothing I need to say,’ he said. ‘You two seem to have it all figured out.’ She shot him a strange look then, perhaps catching the edge to his voice.

‘Here,’ said Sarah, returning, before either of them could say anything else. ‘Thom wants to talk to you.’ She stood close to Natasha as she took the phone, as if the distance between them had been bridged.

He watched Natasha talking, his thoughts now so dense and complicated that he couldn’t listen properly to what she was saying. Something had changed in her, her face softening, lightening. She had been denied motherhood, but it was as if she had found a new purpose. He turned away, conscious suddenly that he couldn’t hide how he felt.

‘No, that’s really not . . . Are you sure?’ she said, and then, after a pause, ‘Yes. Yes, I know.’

He turned back her as she ended the call. She was looking at Sarah. ‘He won’t accept any money,’ she said. ‘He won’t hear of it. He said he’s headed that way in the middle of the week and he’ll bring Boo back then.’

Sarah’s smile was brief and surprising, as if she was as taken aback as Natasha by this act of generosity.

‘But there’s a catch,’ Natasha added. ‘He said that in return you have to invite him to your first performance.’

The beauty of young people, Mac thought afterwards, was that hope could still be restored. Sometimes it took only a few words of faith to reilluminate a spark of confidence that the future could be something wonderful, instead of a relentless series of obstacles and disappointments.

‘Sound like a fair deal,’ Natasha said.

Sarah, nodded.

If only, Mac thought, as he headed towards the car, the same was true of adults.

Natasha fiddled with the key in the lock, and opened the front door on to a dark hallway, flicking on the lights. It was shortly after one in the morning, and Sarah, bleary with sleep, walked in and up the stairs on automatic pilot, as if she was at home. Natasha followed her, straightened her bed, handed her a fresh towel, and finally, when she was sure that the girl would sleep, came slowly down the stairs.

It was the first time in forty-eight hours that she had felt confident Sarah would not disappear again. Something had changed; there had been a seismic shift in the ground between them. She realised that, despite the responsibility she had just taken on, despite knowing that she was effectively signing herself up to several years of financial commitment and an emotional roller-coaster, she felt – at some deep level – a kind of excitement she had not felt in years.

Mac was on the sofa in the living room, his long legs stretched out, feet on the linen-covered footstool, car keys still in his hand. His eyes were closed, and she allowed herself a lingering glance at him, taking in the rumpled clothes, the indisputably male presence. She forced herself to turn away. It was a kind of masochism to keep looking.

He yawned, pushed himself upright, and Natasha busied herself, afraid he would feel her scrutiny. The floor, she noticed, was carpeted with photographs, row upon row of ten-by-twelve prints, lined up on the polished wood floor where he must have left them days ago, the morning he had discovered Sarah gone. It was as she let her gaze run over the series of black-and-white images, the horses in mid-movement, the glowing tones of Cowboy John’s shrewd old face, the images that heralded Mac’s renewed appetite for what he did best, that her eyes fell on one in particular.

The woman was on the telephone. She was smiling, oblivious to the camera’s attentions, surrounded by the bare branches of a garden, the light low and gentle behind her. She was also beautiful: the winter sun reflected on her skin, her eyes were softened with an unknown pleasure. The camera’s gaze was not a cool reflection of some shuttered image: it was intimate, a secret collusion with its subject.

She stared at it for several seconds before she realised the woman was herself. It looked like some idealised version of her, a person she had ceased to know, a person she had believed long buried in the acrimony of the divorce. She felt something in her tighten and break. ‘When did you take this?’

He opened his eyes. ‘A few weeks ago. In Kent.’

She couldn’t tear herself away from it. ‘Mac?’ she said. ‘Is this how you see me?’

Eventually she dared to look at him. The man before her had new lines of sadness on his face; his skin was grey with tiredness, his lips pursed as if prematurely accepting disappointment. He nodded.

Her heart had begun to thump. She thought of Henri, of Florence, of Sarah, bravely blurting out the truth into a rainy unknown. ‘Mac,’ she said, her eyes still on the photograph, ‘I have to tell you something. I have to tell you even if it turns out to be the stupidest, most humiliating thing I ever did.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I love you. I always have loved you, and even if it’s too late for us I need you to know that I’m sorry. I need you to know that letting you go will always be the greatest mistake of my life.’

Her voice had begun to quaver, breathlessness hijacking it. She held the picture between trembling hands. ‘So now you know. And if you don’t love me, it’s okay. Because I’ve told the truth. I’ll know I did everything I could, and if you don’t love me, there’s absolutely nothing that would have changed that.’ She finished in a rush.

‘Actually, it’s not okay,’ she added. ‘In fact, it’ll probably kill me a little bit. But I still had to tell you.’

His usual relaxed charm had deserted him. ‘What about Conor?’ he said, almost snappy.

‘It’s over. It was never . . .’

‘Fuck,’ he said. Then he stood up. ‘Fuck.’

‘Why are you—?’ She stood up, shocked by his outburst, the uncharacteristic cursing. ‘What do you—’

‘Tash,’ he said, striding across his photographs, which skidded across the polished floor. He was inches from her. She held her breath. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his skin.
Don’t say no
, she willed him.
Don’t make some terrible joke, and find a diplomatic reason to leave. I can’t do this a second time.