CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
There’s a second when I wake up when everything is normal. I reach over, blurrily, for my phone, but it’s not on the bedside table or under my pillow. Then I remember and it’s like being kicked in the stomach.
I curl away towards the wall, pulling my knees in until I’m as small as I can be, and I wrap the duvet around me and close my eyes.
I can’t do this. I can’t do any of it.
I need to see Leah and make sure she’s OK, but she’s in hospital and I just can’t face the lights, the sounds, or Mum. I also need to get to Mabel, make sure she’s OK, and that I can do.
My jodhpurs are inside out on the floor. I turn them the right way round, pulling an old work fleece of Dad’s out of the bottom drawer. I take my keys out of the back pocket of yesterday’s jeans and my phone falls out.
I take the phone, with one finger and thumb. I don’t want to look at it. It slips and falls on to the carpet because my hands are shaking and I realize the battery is most likely dead, anyway. I don’t want to turn it on and read the messages inside it. I don’t need to see them to imagine what they say.
You selfish bitch, what were you thinking, bringing a horse to the beach.
You don’t deserve a horse.
You should be reported to the RSPCA.
You don’t deserve friends.
You’re a bad person.
This is all your fault.
It’s all your fault.
It’s all my fault.
I put it in my pocket and creep downstairs. It’s still early and there’s no sound from Lisa. I write her a note to say I’ve gone to the stables and slide out of the front door so quietly that even Withnail doesn’t notice.
It’s harder to cycle than I expected. My muscles are aching from running along the shore road yesterday and I’m fighting to concentrate. Nothing’s working properly. It’s like I’ve got tunnel vision and as I cycle across the empty street a taxi blares its horn at me in the silence. I don’t know where it came from, but it almost hit me. I keep going. I’ve got to get to the stables, got to make sure Mabel is safe.
As I turn towards the yard, I realize what I have to do.
I pull up at the corner and take the phone from my pocket, and I drop it between the metal slats of the drain cover and wait a half second. There’s a plop and a splash as it falls down into the sewage system and I know that I never need to look at it again.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Polly is already in Mabel’s stable, bent down on one knee, a white cotton wound dressing between her teeth. She wraps it round Mabel’s foreleg and holds it in place while she tries to find the end of the bandage.
‘Can I help?’
I feel as if I’m an intruder. Mabel turns to look at me for a moment, her eyes liquid brown and trusting, and I feel sick with guilt and shame.
‘I’ve got it,’ says Polly, and she deftly wraps the bandage round and round. It stays in place by some kind of magic.
Polly straightens up and looks at me.
‘Grace, the best help you could give right now is to get some bloody rest. Why aren’t you in bed?’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
And she looks at me and shakes her head.
‘I’m sorry.’ I whisper the words.
‘Don’t even go there,’ says Polly.
‘But I am.’
‘I know,’ she says, and she smiles at me as if nothing has happened. ‘Where’s your mum?’
She doesn’t know. In Polly’s world, all that we’re dealing with is a horse that’s been lucky to get away with superficial cuts and bruises, and an owner that doesn’t deserve her.
‘Hospital.’
‘You what?’ Polly’s face registers shock and she bends down to pick up the vet kit. ‘Come on, you need to tell me what’s happened. Is everyone OK?’
I nod.
We sit in the tack room and I spill out everything that’s happened since I left. Polly makes coffee, with two huge spoonfuls of sugar and she hands it to me, shaking her head.
‘You look a mess, Grace. Did you sleep last night?’
I did, but it was a weird, tangled swirl of nightmares and half-rememberings. And now I’m phoneless, terrified about Leah, terrified about what’s going on with the friends I had – and lost – and terrified about . . . well, everything. Life just feels as if it’s too much to deal with.
‘You need a break, Grace.’ I see her watching my hands, which are shaking. The trembling that started last night is back again. ‘Seriously, I can watch Mabes for you. Go and sleep or something.’
‘I can’t sleep in the daytime.’
Polly swigs the last of her coffee and puts the mug down with a thump on the metal draining board. She looks at me sideways, putting her hands in the small of her back and stretching. I think she’s tired from looking after Mabel when she’s already got loads of work to do, and I feel guilty about that too.
‘Well, you don’t need me to tell you that you’re not safe around here when you’re in this state. You’re a liability, and we’re already one horse down.’
Her phone bleeps and she pulls it out and checks the screen.
‘It’s your mum. I’ll tell her I’m giving you a lift back once I’ve done morning stables.’
‘But my bike –’
I start to protest but close my mouth when I see the expression on her face. It’s not one I want to argue with.
Mabel’s stiff this morning. I take her out of her box and lead her across to the tiny paddock where the Shetland ponies – restricted from eating too much grass so they don’t get laminitis – are normally kept. We’ve led them into the outdoor arena where they’re beetling about, hovering up the stray shoots of grass that have grown around the fence posts. I feel shame and guilt washing over me as each of Mabel’s legs move clockwork-slowly towards the field. My face flushes hot red and I feel prickly in my skin, like there’s someone sitting just out of sight, watching me, judging me. She moves as if all her joints are needing to be oiled. When I close the gate, she walks carefully towards the water trough, sniffing it gently. All her spark and fire is gone.
I did that to her. I turn away, her headcollar in my hand, and walk back towards the yard. Doubt creeps into my mind. I can’t remember if I closed the gate properly – I turn back to check, and I’ve pulled the gate shut but forgotten to slide the bolt across. With trembling hands, I click it into place, the rusted metal stiff and unyielding.
Polly’s right. I’m no use here, either.
‘You gave me a shock,’ says Lisa. She pulls the door open before I’ve even made it up the steps into the front porch. ‘Thanks,’ she calls to Polly, giving her a wave. The little Corsa rolls off in a cloud of faulty exhaust smoke.
Inside the house there’s a smell of Dettol and furniture polish. Lisa’s left a bottle of it sitting on the dresser, and I catch sight of an upturned bucket on the draining board in the utility room sink. She’s hoovered too, and the place looks spotless, the way it did when Grandma left. There’s a thin shaft of sunlight coming in through the porch window and the tiny specks of dust she’s scared up from the furniture are suspended there in mid-air, minuscule pieces of the world. I watch them and think about us suspended in the universe, hanging here, waiting to be blown around. Yesterday morning everything was one thing and now it’s another and I don’t like the way things keep changing. I don’t want to be moved about.
Anna’s mum breaks through the silence: ‘I’ve just spoken to your mum,’ and I realize I’m standing, staring, my mouth hanging half open, my arms dangling uselessly by my sides. It doesn’t feel like home with everyone gone and everything changed. I wish hard that Dad might hear my thoughts and magic himself from the frozen wilderness to be back here. I want him to come and make us pancakes and have Radio Four droning on in the background and Mum yelling at him for leaving bloody coffee cups all over his desk in the study. I want Leah dancing about in tennis shoes and winding me up with Megan, not lying in a hospital bed wired up to machines because she’s almost killed herself with alcohol poisoning. I want –
‘You’re away in a dream,’ Lisa continues. And she looks at me, searchingly. ‘What are you thinking? Don’t worry, sweetie, everything’s going to be OK.’
I look at her and I know my face is set like a stone. I can’t make it into the right shape to keep her happy. I don’t even know what the right shape would be. I just want everything to go away.
She smiles at me again. I can’t help feeling that she’s not quite sure what to do with me, like she’s worried I might burst into tears or into flames or something. She’s got a strange expression underneath the smiley crinkles in the corner of her eyes.
And then I realize I know what it is. She knows Anna hates me for what happened, and she doesn’t know how to tell me. And she’s having to be here to be polite and do the right thing because she’s friends with Mum, and – my skin prickles again at the thought and I realize that I’m tapping thumb to finger to thumb again in a rhythm. I catch her watching my fingers moving and I quiet them so they’re still, but the movement just shifts and I tap tap tap inside.
When I was little and they sent me to the Jigsaw centre, they used to try to get me to stop. Quiet hands, Grace, they’d say, and they’d hold them in my lap, smiling. And I’d want to scream at them that it’s like having a motor ticking over inside me, and if I don’t fidget something in my head wants to explode, but I couldn’t find the words. And right now my head wants to explode. I get a sudden urge to pick up the bottle of furniture polish and throw it against the mirror and watch it smash into a thousand razor shards. I squeeze my hand into a ball so the fingernails dig into my palms.
I can’t do that, anyway. Withnail would stand in the broken glass and I’m already the worst animal owner in the world. But that’s what people seem to do. It happens on television all the time. They just pick things up and they throw them and they walk away and somehow it works out for them. And I still can’t get the rules. I watch and I try to absorb it, and I try to get it right and hang out at the park and fit in, and somehow I break everything. Not glass, but people. And lives.
‘Anyway, the doctor’s happy with Leah’s bloods. They’re on the way back. Shouldn’t be long.’ She picks up the duster that’s lying on the dresser and folds it into a neat square, smoothing it out with her fingers before placing it down carefully on the shiny wood. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’