The Horse Dancer (11 page)

‘Ah. That’d be why I couldn’t find it.’ He tried to smile.

‘I needed to have some of my files down here . . . and . . .’ She tailed off.
And it was too painful having all your stuff around. Occasionally, just occasionally I had the urge to smash it with a large hammer
.

She wished she had been prepared for him. She had worked late, drinking too much coffee, even though she knew it would be subtracted in lost hours of sleep later. Her makeup had long rubbed off her face. She suspected she looked pale, worn.

‘I’ll nip upstairs, then,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you.’

‘No – no! Don’t rush. I’ve got to . . . I need to get some milk anyway. You find what you need.’

She was out of the house before she heard his protest. She knew he was being polite. He probably imagined she was late because she had been with Conor. Although he wouldn’t say as much. That had never been Mac’s style.

She didn’t often use this supermarket, which was at the rougher end of the neighbourhood; it was the kind of place where occasionally someone managed to push out a trolley without paying and everyone else in the shop cheered. But she was in her car before she knew what she was doing, had turned off her phone out of fear or bloody-mindedness. She just wanted to get away from that house.

She was standing in the dairy aisle, trying to avoid a mumbling vagrant talking to the frozen yoghurt and her thoughts were humming so hard that she had forgotten why she was there.

Mac, the most unsuitable marriage material her parents had ever seen, the feckless enigma of a man she had married, the other battered half of a union that had nearly destroyed them both, was back in their home.

She had refused to think about him for so long, and he had made it easy. Sometimes it was as if he had dropped off the face of the earth. During the last year of their marriage he had been away so much she had seemed to be single anyway. When he was there she had found she was so angry about everything that solitude had seemed easier. Take your stuff and go, she willed Mac, feeling an uncomfortable echo of the darker days that had only just receded. I don’t want to deal with any of this. I don’t want to feel even the slightest hint of what I felt last year. Do what you have to do and leave me in peace.

She was dragged from her thoughts by a commotion in the next aisle towards the checkout. She walked to the end of the cereals where she could see what was going on.

An overweight African man had hold of a teenage girl. She couldn’t have been much more than sixteen and was pulling hard against him, her hair flopping over her face, but he had her upper arms in a remorseless grip.

‘Is everything all right?’ Natasha asked, emerging from behind the porridge oats. She had addressed the girl; the scene was discomfiting. ‘I’m a lawyer,’ she explained. It was then that she spotted the man’s security badge.

‘There you go. You’ll need one of them down the nick,’ the checkout woman said. ‘It’ll save you a phone call.’

‘I wasn’t stealing.’ The girl shook her arm again. Her face was pale under the harsh neon lighting, her eyes huge and wary.

‘Hmph. So the fish-fingers just leapt out of the freezer and landed in your jacket?’

‘I just put them there while I went to get some other stuff. Look, please, let me go. I promise you I wasn’t stealing.’ She was close to tears. She didn’t have the mouthy defiance of the kids Natasha usually saw.

‘Walked straight past me, she did,’ said the checkout woman, ‘like she thought I was stupid.’

‘Perhaps she could just pay for them now and go,’ Natasha suggested.

‘Her?’ The big man shrugged. ‘She ain’t got no money.’

‘They never do,’ said the woman.

‘I must have dropped it.’ The girl was peering at the floor. ‘I won’t come back, okay? Just let me look for my money before someone else finds it.’

‘How much are they?’ Natasha said, reaching for her purse. ‘The fish-fingers?’

The checkout woman raised her eyebrows.

Natasha was tired. She just wanted to go home without the image of a sobbing girl pinned by a security guard on her mind. ‘Let’s assume this is an honest mistake. I’ll pay for them.’ The two looked at her as if she was somehow in on the scam until she held out a five-pound note. And then – after an infinitesimal pause – the checkout woman rang up the fish-fingers and handed her the change. ‘I don’t want to see your thieving little face in here again,’ she said, jabbing a nicotine-stained finger. ‘Got it?’

The girl didn’t answer. She shrugged off the security guard and hurried for the door, the fish-fingers in her hand. It opened automatically, released her, and she was gone, swallowed by the dark.

‘Look at that.’ The security guard’s skin shone under the strip-lighting. ‘Never even said thank you.’

‘She was thieving, you know. We had her in here last week. Except that time we couldn’t prove it.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, that’s probably the best meal she’ll have this week,’ Natasha said. She paid for the milk, glanced at the vagrant, who was now arguing with the washing powders, and went out into the night street.

She had walked only a few paces when the girl popped up beside her. If she had been less preoccupied, she might have jumped, would have assumed some dark purpose, but the girl thrust out her hand. ‘I found some of it,’ she said. ‘I think it fell out of my pocket.’ On her palm Natasha could just make fifty pence and some coppers. Later she remembered that it was curiously calloused for a girl of her age.

But she didn’t want to get any more involved than she already was so she carried on walking. ‘Keep your money,’ she said. She opened her car door. ‘It’s fine.’

‘I wasn’t stealing,’ the girl insisted.

Natasha turned. ‘You always buy your supper at eleven o’clock at night?’

The girl shrugged. ‘I had to visit someone in hospital. I only just got home and there was no food.’

‘Where do you live?’ The girl was younger than Natasha had originally thought. Perhaps no more than thirteen or fourteen.

‘Sandown.’

Natasha glanced at the monolithic, sprawling estate, its tower blocks visible even from this street. It had a reputation throughout the borough. She didn’t know why she did it. Perhaps she just hated the look of that place in the dark. Perhaps she wasn’t ready to go home to Mac or, worse, to his absence. Around her the city seethed: cars honked in the distance; on the corner two men were having a heated disagreement, their voices lifting in mutual outrage.

I don’t think you’re as tough as you come across
, Conor Deans had said, his voice dropping.
I think there’s a whole different Natasha Macauley in there.

Oh, I’m full of surprises
, she had replied. It had sounded, even to her, like a challenge.

The two men were fighting now, rapid, swinging kicks and punches. The energy in the atmosphere transformed, sucked out into a vortex of violence. There were a few yelled expletives, then footsteps as other shadowy men ran towards them. She saw the glint of an iron bar.

‘You shouldn’t be out by yourself this late at night,’ Natasha said, and walked briskly to her car. ‘Come on. I’ll drop you home.’ The girl studied her for a moment, her work suit, her smart shoes, then glanced at the car. Perhaps she reasoned that anyone driving a vehicle as staid and sensible as an old Volvo wasn’t likely to abduct her.

‘The passenger door lock’s broken,’ Natasha said, ‘if that makes you feel any better . . .’

The girl sighed, as if nothing she could do or say might be of concern to her, and climbed in.

Natasha had started to regret this rash course of action almost before she pulled into the estate car park. Groups of youths hung around in amorphous gatherings, some breaking away to do wheelies on bikes, others throwing down cigarette butts and catcalling insults to each other. They stopped briefly, apparently registering the unfamiliar car as she backed into a parking space.

‘You never told me your name,’ Natasha said.

She hesitated. ‘Jane.’

‘Have you lived here long?’

She nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly, and made to open the door.

Natasha wanted to go home then, to her secure, friendly living room. To the peace of her comforting house, nice music, a glass of red wine. Her own world. Experience told her she should turn the car around and drive away. Such estates were these youths’ domain; some would ever rarely have ventured more than a mile or two outside their confines, and they had a searing, almost feral interest in what went on in their ‘manor’. Natasha knew that her car and her suit marked her out as middle class in a world much harder, much tougher than the one several streets away. But then she looked at the pale, thin girl beside her. What kind of person would turf her out without seeing her to the safety of her door?

She tucked her wedding ring surreptitiously into her back pocket, her credit cards with it. If her purse was snatched all they would get was some cash.

‘It’s okay,’ Jane said, watching her. ‘I know them.’

‘I’ll see you in,’ Natasha said, in the detached, professional voice she employed with all young clients. Then, when the girl didn’t look overjoyed: ‘It’s fine. I won’t say anything about what happened. It’s late and I want to make sure you get in safely.’

‘Just to the door,’ the girl said.

They climbed out of the car, Natasha carrying herself just a little more determinedly upright than usual, her heels clacking officiously on the gum-pocked walkways.

As they approached the stairwell, a boy wheeled past. Natasha tried not to flinch. The girl did not look up. ‘That your granddad’s new bird, is it, Sarah?’ He pulled his hood over his head and wheeled away, laughing, his face shadowed under the guttering street-light.

‘Sarah?’

The lifts were out of order so they walked up three flights. The stairwell was depressingly familiar: graffiti-ridden, urine-scented, strewn with abandoned takeaway boxes still emanating the odours of stale fat or fish. Along one corridor music thumped through open windows, and below, a car alarm had gone off. It took Natasha a second to register that it wasn’t hers.

‘I’m just here,’ Sarah said, pointing. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

Afterwards, Natasha wasn’t sure why she didn’t just leave. Perhaps it was the fake name. Perhaps the girl was just a little too keen to get rid of her. But she kept going, following the girl, who hurried in front. And then they reached the door and she stopped. It was the stunned quality of her stance that made Natasha realise the door was not open to welcome her home. It had been crow-barred. The splintered wood by the lock pointed into a flat in which all the lights blazed.

They stood motionless for a moment. Then Natasha stepped forward and pushed the door wide. ‘Hello?’ she said. She didn’t know what she thought the intruders would do – greet her back? She glanced at Sarah, whose hand had gone to her mouth.

Whoever had been in had long gone. The door opened directly on to a small hallway through which you could see the living room, which was immaculate enough to throw any discrepancy into sharp relief. A gaping absence on a television stand. Kitchen-cupboard doors flung open. Drawers pulled from a little bureau, a frame smashed on the floor. It was this Sarah went to first: she picked it up and tenderly brushed broken glass from the picture. It was a black-and-white photograph of a couple in the 1960s. Suddenly Sarah seemed very young and small.

‘I’ll ring the police,’ Natasha said, pulling her phone from her bag and switching it on. Mac, she saw guiltily, had tried to call.

‘There’s no point,’ Sarah said wearily. ‘They never care about anything that happens up here. Mrs O’Brien’s flat was done last week and the police said it wasn’t even worth them coming up.’ She was picking her way around the flat now, disappearing into rooms and coming back.

Natasha went into the hallway and secured the front door with the chain. Below, she could still hear the youths, and tried not to worry about the car. ‘What’s missing?’ she said, following the girl. This was not the chaotic home she had perhaps expected. This was a home with a few decent things, a home in which order mattered.

‘The telly,’ Sarah said, her bottom lip trembling. ‘My DVD. The money for our holiday.’ She appeared suddenly to remember something and bolted for one of the rooms. Natasha heard a door being opened, the sound of rummaging. Sarah emerged. ‘They didn’t get it,’ she said, and for a moment there was a tiny smile. ‘My papa’s pension book.’

‘Where are your parents, Sarah?’

‘My mum doesn’t live here. It’s just me and my papa – my granddad,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Where is he?’

She hesitated. ‘In hospital.’

‘So who’s looking after you?’

She said nothing.

‘How long have you been on your own?’

‘A couple of weeks.’

Natasha groaned inwardly. There was so much going on in her life, so many things she had to juggle, and she had brought this on herself. She should have walked out of the supermarket with the pint of milk she hadn’t even needed. She should have stayed at home and fought with her ex-husband.

She dialled her home number.

‘Christ, Tash, where the bloody hell are you?’ Mac exploded. ‘How long does it take you to buy a pint of milk?’

‘Mac,’ she said carefully, ‘I need you to meet me. Bring your tools. And my bag – I need my contacts book.’

It had taken Mac four years to renovate their house. In her parents’ eyes, it had been his redeeming feature. He had done the plastering, the carpentry, pretty well everything but the roof and the brickwork. He had even had a hand in the design. He was good with his hands, as deft with power tools as he was with his camera. Natasha hadn’t an artistic bone in her body, but he could see things long before they were there: the shape of a room, the composition of a view, or a photograph. It was as if he had a library of beautiful images in his head, just waiting to be translated into reality.