The Truth Club (49 page)

‘Who did you ring?’ I ask, but Bluebell is trotting forwards to
take her place behind Saffron’s mount, who is called Primrose. Poor Erika. I wish I could get closer to her and offer her some comfort.

In normal circumstances, my day would have been full of Diarmuid. I would have thought for hours about what I could
have done differently, in between watching the telly and drinking
tea and soaking desolately in the bath. I would also have got
angry about Charlene and felt desperately betrayed and rejected.
Then I would have got miserable about Nathaniel not wanting me
like I want him, and eaten a whole packet of chocolate biscuits.

By this stage I would probably have phoned Erika and she would
have joined me. We would both have been wailing about being on
the sideboard and wondering why we were such eejits.

But I can’t think any of these things, because my thoughts have contracted into one major concern: staying on Blossom while she
slithers down the bank of a river and splashes across. Then she
has to climb up the other side. She trips, alarmingly, a number of
times, and I cling to her mane. What on earth can Saffron be
thinking of? Doesn’t she know we’re
beginners
?
We reach a leafy path and have to duck to avoid the branches. Two kids on frisky
ponies are riding up and down policing us, making sure that we
are all in the correct order and behaving ourselves. They must be
Saffron’s staff sergeants.

Saffron now wants us all to climb a steep hill; then, apparently,
there will be some trotting. I sigh stoically and try to keep the sense of panic from rising too rapidly. But then Blossom does
something unexpected. She turns to the left while the others walk
on. We’re on a small path bordered with wildflowers and
blackberries. Blossom walks on, steadily and contentedly. I try to
get her to turn round, but she politely ignores me.

I am beyond caring. I’m tired and pissed off and very far from
the ground. I am perched precariously on top of a huge animal who has absolutely no respect for me and who may take off at any moment. And so, since I am now virtually a prisoner on
Blossom’s back, I decide just to try to enjoy myself. I’m tired of
waiting for the circumstances that will make me happy. The right job, the right house, the right man, the right marriage… they were
all supposed to be the answer. But they weren’t. I was – I am – still
the same Sally. Having big articles in newspapers didn’t increase
my sense of worth; being married didn’t make me feel more loved.
Maybe the only way to be contented is to accept where I am and
make the most of it. I should drink in this moment, especially since I may soon find myself deposited unceremoniously in a ditch. I smile. How did I become so serious about things? So worried and earnest?

It’s good to be away from Saffron. It’s good just to be with Blossom. I pat her shiny brown neck. She is innocent of the
intentions I gave her; I don’t know how I know this, but suddenly
I’m no longer frightened. I listen to the birds. I watch a small squirrel darting around, collecting nuts. That’s the thing about nature: it only knows how to be who it is. It doesn’t know how
to pretend. It doesn’t know how to lie. Suddenly I am the little girl
who wanted a mountain bike so she could pedal into the wilds, who wanted to learn the names of every bird and every tiny animal. DeeDee was right when she said parts of us are like the Serengeti and parts are like the back yard.

Poor DeeDee. Did she consider coming home, when Marie confirmed that Joseph was dead? Maybe she wanted to be sure
she wouldn’t have to see him. Why else would she have phoned?
But then she probably decided she couldn’t face the rest of us – especially Aggie…

Blossom knows where I – we – need to go. She takes us to a
calm lake, where there are blackberries and tall, lush grass for her
to eat. I get off her and let her munch. I lie back on the earth and
stare up through the trees, at the clear, high, singing blue sky.

‘So you sometimes want to get away, too,’ I say to Blossom.
‘Get off the old path and try something different.’ I know Saffron
will probably be going apeshit, but I find that I don’t care. The
world will always have people like Saffron in it. You just have to
learn not to take them too seriously.

I want to do things like this more often,
I think.
Have more adventures. I want to travel more. And why shouldn’t I? I’m a single woman now. I’ve never really felt single before; I’ve felt
married to my job, my family, my friends, even my house. I want to be more like Nathaniel. I love his carefree ways, his humour.
And I want not to care so much what people think of me. It makes you feel small and trapped and scared.

‘My husband has left me,’ I whisper to the wind, which carries
the words away into the distance. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I have made a lot of mistakes.’ The lake stares back at me, calm and gentle, undismayed and unsurprised.

Eventually I feel I should make some attempt to get back to the
others. I’m worried about Erika. We’ll have to whisk her away from Alex’s vicinity as soon as possible. I find a tree stump and manage to clamber onto Blossom’s back. As I wriggle around arduously, I remember the way Fiona puts one foot in a stirrup
and swings herself upwards so that she lands neatly on the saddle; but I am tired of comparing myself to Fiona. Why should I? We’re different people. Why can’t I just accept myself as I am, instead of
wanting someone else to do it for me?

Blossom heads back down the path without protest. Suddenly
I hear the sound of trotting, so Blossom and I hide behind a large bush. I peep out at the riders. It’s the beginners. Erika is hanging
grimly onto Bluebell’s mane and bouncing up and down on her saddle. When the last rider has passed, Blossom and I creep out from behind the bush and fall in at the back. No one even comments on our absence, apart from one of the small staff sergeants, who says, ‘Did you like the lake?’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s Blossom’s favourite place. If she likes people, she takes them there.’

‘And you didn’t stop us?’

‘No. Saffron said Blossom would look after you. Blossom’s very good with people who are frightened and don’t really want to go riding at all.’

Saffron is roaring instructions about some gate and telling
Erika to shorten her reins. How hard it is to tell who people really
are! I feel a warmth in my heart, a surge in my spirit. It’s been a
lovely morning, lovely in a way I didn’t expect at all. It hasn’t just b
een helpful; it has been necessary. It happened just when I needed it to.

The horses are walking faster, towards the stables and food. As we reach the paddock, I see Erika glancing around nervously. The advanced ride will be returning soon. She’ll probably want to flee
before Alex and his wife get back here. Fiona is taking more pictures, and Milly is looking at us all with great interest.

There is a man resting his elbows on the wooden fencing. He
is tall and dark and lithe, with soft brown eyes and a lovely, open
face. He’s watching Erika, watching her every movement. He looks shy but determined.

‘Who’s that?’ I nudge Erika as she loosens the girth on
Bluebell’s saddle.

But suddenly I know, even before she says it. It’s the person she
phoned. It’s Lionel, and he’s
gorgeous
.

Chapter
Thirty-Three

I
stumble into the
day from a thick sleep, with no wish to go anywhere. I want to spend the day in my cosy wee cottage. It’s lashing rain outside. I have to write my column, and this one’s
going to be different. It’s going to say things I actually believe, for
a change. I’m tired of feeling like a fake. I’m tired of telling people
to paint walls and buy woven rattan baskets. There’s quite
enough of that advice around already. I want to write something
different, but I don’t quite know what it is yet. I need a cup of tea
first.

I propel myself from my bed. I can barely stagger. Erika’s
wildflower liqueur has set off a foggy, dull ache in my head, and
the muscles in my legs and thighs and bum are complaining
mightily. I wince with every step. Who would have thought sitting
on a horse for an hour could do this to you? I inch my way
downstairs towards the kitchen and the kettle. I feel as though I’m
ninety.

As I gingerly sip my tea, I decide to phone Erika to see if she
has recovered from seeing Alex and his wife. When we sat on her
saggy sofa last night, I spilt the beans and spent most of the time
talking about Diarmuid and Charlene and Nathaniel. It didn’t
help that the sofa’s cushions were sliding gradually onto the floor.
It’s a cheap sofa with a rickety wooden base, and it seems to have
aspirations to become a carpet. By the time we were virtually on
Erika’s multicoloured ethnic rug, I was announcing that I was a failure and clearly knew nothing at all about intimate relation
ships, so I would obviously be alone forever. The brief serenity I h
ad found when riding Blossom had disappeared entirely. How could I believe I knew anyone again? I hadn’t had the slightest suspicion that Diarmuid was about to ditch me so dramatically.
Yes, I agreed, I hadn’t been entirely sure about my marriage, but
I’d thought it would at least drag on a little longer. Erika pointed
out that ‘dragging on’ didn’t sound that satisfactory, but I
proclaimed that it could, at any moment, have got better.
Diarmuid had given the mice back to the college. He was a great lover. He remembered things like milk and black bean sauce. He washed up, for God’s sake, and he knew how to put up shelving.
I started to cry when I mentioned the shelving. Charlene would have his shelving, and I was on the shelf.

‘The sideboard,’ Erika said. ‘It’s not the shelf, it’s the sideboard.’ I didn’t correct her.

At around that time she got up and fetched chocolate biscuits,
which she actually put on a plate. As she handed the plate to me,
I said that that was what I’d done with Diarmuid: I had virtually handed him to Charlene on a plate, like a biscuit. Then we spent
the next hour discussing what type of biscuit Diarmuid would be,
if he were a biscuit – and, after four glasses of Erika’s wildflower
liqueur, I wouldn’t have sworn he wasn’t. We decided that he
wouldn’t contain much sugar but would be alarmingly deceptive
– the kind of biscuit that seems wholesome and bland until you
get to the bits of raw chilli pepper and have to race to the sink and
rinse out your mouth. Alex, on the other hand, would seem to be sweet and delicious, but he wouldn’t really be a biscuit at all; he
would be full of salt and pepper and sour mayonnaise. I don’t know where the sour mayonnaise came from. By that stage we were basically talking gibberish.

Erika wanted me to describe what kind of biscuit Nathaniel
would be, but I couldn’t. I said he was Eloise’s biscuit and I had
no right even to taste him. I started to cry again, and Erika
decided to cheer me up by playing the guitar. I got a taxi shortly a
fterwards. I wonder what sort of state she is in this morning. It’s
nine-thirty; she should be at her desk.

‘International Mouldings.’ Her voice has acquired the sing-song tone of public announcements at airports.

‘I thought it was International Holdings.’