The Horse Dancer, Page 9

  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.

  A new lock on a door was no problem, he told her, whistling through his teeth. Natasha had worked out pretty quickly that an emergency locksmith was beyond the girl's means, especially as she was still fretting about the holiday money. Mac had brought an old one with him, and had taken less than forty minutes to get it into place.

  'Crista? It's Natasha.' And then, when she was met with blank silence, 'Natasha Macauley.'

  'Natasha. Hi. Shouldn't this be the other way around?'

  'I know. I've got a bit of an odd situation here. I need to find an emergency placement for a teenage girl.' She outlined the facts.

  'We've got nothing,' Crista said. 'Absolutely nothing. We had fourteen UASCs - unaccompanied asylum seeking children - arrive in the borough yesterday morning and all our foster placements are full. I've spent all evening on the phones.'

  'I--'

  'And before you start with the Emergency Judicial Reviews, you might as well know the only place I'll be able to put her for the best part of tonight is the local police station. You may as well save your time and a judge's and take her straight there. We may be in a better position tomorrow but frankly I doubt it.'

  When she went back into the living room, Mac had finished. He had brought an iron strip with him - God only knew where he kept all this stuff - and had screwed it to the door frame. 'Stop anyone getting in again,' he said, as he packed away the last of his tools.

  Natasha smiled at him awkwardly, grateful for his practicality, for the fact that he had not issued one resentful word at being dragged out to do DIY in the middle of the night. Now he sat a few feet from Sarah on the sofa. He was examining her framed photographs - the first point of reference for Mac in anybody's home. 'So,' he was saying, 'this is your grandfather?'

  'He used to be a captain,' she said. She had a balled-up tissue in her hand and her voice was low.

  'That's a fantastic picture,' he said. 'Don't you think, Tash? Look at the muscles on that horse.'

  He had a photographer's way of putting people at ease. There was almost nobody with whom he couldn't adopt an immediate and easy intimacy. Natasha tried to look impressed, but all she could think about was that she had to tell Sarah that her next bed would be in a police cell. 'Did you get a bag together?' she asked. 'School uniform?'

  Sarah patted the holdall beside her. She seem a little uneasy, and Natasha had to remind herself that the girl did not know the people who had suddenly taken over her life. It was now half past midnight.

  'Where are we taking you, then, young lady?' Mac asked, but addressed the question to Natasha.

  Natasha took a breath. 'It's a bit difficult tonight. We have to put you in emergency accommodation until we can find somewhere a bit more suitable.'

  They both looked at her expectantly.

  'I've been on to the people I know and, unfortunately, there isn't much available. It's the time of night . . . and there's been a bit of an influx . . .'

  'So, where are we going?' said Mac.

  'I'm afraid that tonight we have to take you to the police station. Nothing to do with earlier,' Natasha assured her, as she saw Sarah's face blanch. 'It's just that there are no foster-carers available. Or hostel beds. It's unlikely to be for more than a few hours.'

  'The police station?' said Mac, disbelievingly.

  'There's nothing.'

  'But you must have contacts. You spend your life doing this kind of stuff, forcing authorities to put children up.'

  'And sometimes a few end up in police stations. It's only for a while, Mac. Crista says she'll be able to find her somewhere better by the morning. She'll meet us there.'

  Sarah was shaking her head. 'I'm not staying in a police cell,' she said.

  'Sarah, you can't stay here by yourself.'

  'I'm not going.'

  'Tash, this is ridiculous. She's fourteen. She can't go to a police cell.'

  'It's the only option we have.'

  'No, it's not. I told you. I'll be fine here,' Sarah said.

  There was a long silence.

  Natasha sat down, trying to think. 'Sarah, is there anyone else you know? Any schoolfriends you can stay with? Other relatives?'

  'No.'

  'Don't you have a number for your mum?'

  Her face closed. 'She's dead. It's just me and Papa.'

  Natasha turned to Mac, hoping he might understand. 'This isn't that unusual, Mac. It'll just be for one night. But we can't leave her here.'

  'Then she can come back to ours.'

  She was as nonplussed by his use of the possessive as by the idea behind it.

  'I'm not going to dump a fourteen-year-old girl who's just been burgled in a police cell with God knows who,' he added.

  'She'll be safe there,' Natasha said. 'It's not like she'll be in a cell with other people. They'll look after her.'

  'I don't care,' he said.

  'Mac, I can't take her home. It's against every kind of procedure, every kind of advice--'

  'Fuck procedure,' he said. 'If procedure says it's right to stick a young girl in a police cell rather than in someone's warm, safe home for a night, then your procedure is fucking worthless.'

  Mac rarely swore. It made Natasha realise he was deadly serious. 'Mac, we're not cleared as foster-carers. She'll be deemed vulnerable--'

  'I'm CRB-checked. I had all that stuff done when I started teaching at the sixth-form college.'

  Teaching?

  He turned to Sarah. 'Would you be happier at . . . ours? We can ring your grandpa and let him know.'

  She looked at Natasha, then back at him. 'I guess so.'

  'Is there any other procedural reason why she can't stay?' He pronounced 'procedural' sarcastically, as if Natasha was searching for reasons to be difficult.

  My job, Natasha wanted to say. If it got round chambers that I was taking in waifs and strays my professional judgement would be called into question. And I don't know this girl. I found her shoplifting in a supermarket, and I'm still not convinced by her explanation.

  She stared at Sarah, trying not to think about Ahmadi, another young person who had seemed desperate, prompting her to go out on a limb. 'Give me five minutes,' she said.

  She walked back into the girl's bedroom and rang Crista.

  'I'm running late,' Crista said, before Natasha could speak. 'We've got a problem in one of the homes. I've got to pick someone up.'

  'It's not that,' Natasha said quickly. 'Crista, I've got a situation here. The girl's refusing to go to a police station. My . . . Mac doesn't like the idea either. He - he's CRB-checked and thinks she should stay at ours instead.'

  There was a lengthy silence.

  'Crista?'

  'Okay . . . Are you family friends of this girl? Do you know her parents? Can we say they asked you to be the foster-carer?'

  'Not exactly.'

  There was a long silence.

  'You know her at all?'

  'Met her tonight.'

  'And you're . . . happy with this?'

  'She seems . . .' Natasha paused, remembering the supermarket '. . . a nice kid. Capable. She's just got no one at home and the flat's been burgled. It's . . . difficult.'

  She could h
ear disbelief in Crista's silence. She had known her for almost four years and nothing would have suggested that Natasha might be capable of such a thing.

  'Tell you what,' said Crista, eventually. 'Best advice I can give you is that we never had this conversation. There's nothing in the log yet. If you think she's okay, and you think she's safer with you guys, and you'd rather not spend half the night down the nick then frankly I don't need to know she exists until tomorrow. Call me then.'

  Natasha flipped the phone shut. The girl's room was neat and orderly, more so than you'd expect from a girl of her age. There were pictures of horses everywhere, large, free-with-this-magazine galloping horses in full colour, small photographs of a girl who might have been her with a brown horse. The backdrops of green meadows and endless beaches were oddly incongruous against the landscape outside the double-glazed window.

  She was tired and closed her eyes for a moment, then walked out into the living room. Mac and Sarah stopped talking and looked at her. Sarah's eyes, Natasha noticed, were shadowed blue with exhaustion and shock.

  'You're coming to ours, one night,' she said, forcing a smile, 'and tomorrow morning we'll get you sorted out with a social worker.'

  She had gone to sleep almost without a murmur. She had been silent during the journey, as if the precariousness of her position had only just dawned on her, and Mac, perhaps guessing this, had gone to some lengths to joke and reassure her. He was barely recognisable as the man she had last spoken to: sweet, considerate, gently spoken. It was painful to see the best of him directed at someone else. Easier when she could remind herself of his deficiencies.

  Natasha said almost nothing as she drove, unsettled by the conflicting emotions that the presence of Mac and the girl had brought up in her. The night had become increasingly surreal. He was so familiar and yet, after such a short time, alien. As if he belonged somewhere else.

  She had forgotten how nice he could be to young people - because, apart from her sister's children, they had been around so few.

  'Is the spare room made up?' Mac asked, as she stood back to let them in.

  'There are some boxes on the bed.' His books. Things she had sorted out on the days when she could face such a task. Mac was so absent-minded she had been afraid he would get them mixed up.

  'I'll move them.' He gestured to Sarah. 'Why don't you find out if she'd like a drink?'

  'Hot chocolate?' Natasha asked. 'Something to eat?' She felt stupid almost as soon as she'd said it, like an elderly aunt who had no idea what the Young People Liked These Days.

  Sarah shook her head. She glanced through the open door at the living room. Mac had been sorting out his photographic stuff: boxes of it littered the floor. 'You have a nice house.'

  Natasha saw it suddenly through the eyes of a stranger: large, plush, tastefully furnished. It spoke of high earnings, of things carefully chosen. She wondered if the girl could see the gaps, the clues to a man who had recently gone. 'Can I get you anything before you go up? Do you want me to . . . iron your uniform?'

  'No, thank you.' She held her case a little closer to her.

  'I'll show you upstairs then,' Natasha said. 'There's a bathroom on the landing you can have to yourself.'

  'I hope you don't mind,' Mac said, as she came slowly down the stairs. 'I made up the sofa-bed in the study.'

  She had half expected it; she could hardly turf him out at this hour of the morning, not after everything he'd done. Still, the prospect of having him sleeping under the same roof was oddly disturbing. 'Glass of wine?' she said. 'I know I need one.'

  He let out a long sigh. 'Oh, yes.'

  She poured two glasses and handed him one. He sat on the sofa and she kicked off her shoes, then folded her legs under her on the arm chair. It was a quarter to two.

  'You'll have to sort everything out tomorrow, Mac,' she said. 'I've got court first thing.'

  'Just tell me what to do.'

  She observed absently that he couldn't have any work or he wouldn't have offered.

  'Write down who I should call, or where I should drop her. I might let her sleep a bit - she's had quite a night.'

  'We all have.'

  'Nasty shock for her,' he said. 'Would have been hard even for an adult.'

  'She handled it pretty well.'

  'It was the right thing to do,' he said, waving at the stairs. 'It would have felt . . . wrong to leave her. With all that.'

  'Yes.'

  They sipped silently.

  'So, how are you?' she said eventually, when the weight of not asking became too burdensome.

  'Okay. You look well.'

  She raised her eyebrows.

  'Okay, tired, but good. The hair suits you.'

  She fought the urge to touch it. Mac could always do this to her. 'What are you working on?' she asked, to change the subject.

  'I'm doing three days' teaching a week, and commercial stuff the rest of the time. Portraiture. A bit of travel stuff. Not much, to be honest.'

  'Teaching?' She struggled to keep the incredulity from her voice. 'I thought I'd misheard you.'

  'I don't mind it. It pays the bills.'

  Natasha digested this. For years he had refused to compromise. When the advertising work had dried up, he had scorned her idea that he teach. He hadn't wanted to be tied down, committed in a way that might stop him doing something more interesting at short notice. Even though it meant that his side of their finances was distinctly feast and famine, usually the latter.

  Now he was Mac the Mature, Mac the Motivated. She felt cheated.

  'Yup. I got a bit disillusioned with the whole commercial scene. Teaching's not as bad as I thought it would be. They seem to like me.'

  Oh, surprise, Natasha thought.

  'I'll keep doing it till I work out where I'm going. It doesn't pay brilliantly.'

  She stiffened, braced herself as if for impact. 'And . . .'

  'And at some point, Tash, we need to think about sorting out the house.'

  She knew what he was saying. Permanent financial settlements. 'Meaning?'

  'I don't know. But I can't live out of a suitcase for ever. It's been almost a year.'

  She stared into her glass for a long time. So, this is it, she was thinking, but when she looked up at him she made sure her face was blank.

  'You okay?'

  She drank the last of her wine.

  'Tash?'

  'I can't think about this now,' she said abruptly. 'I'm too tired.'

  'Sure. Tomorrow, perhaps.'

  'I'm in court first thing. I told you.'

  'I know. Just whenever you--'

  'You can't just pop back and suddenly expect me to sell my home,' she snapped.

  'Our home,' he corrected. 'And you can't pretend that this has come out of the blue.'

  'For the last six months I haven't even known what country you were in.'

  'You could have rung my sister if you needed to get in touch. But it suited you to sit here and let the dust settle.'

  'The dust settle?' she echoed.

  He sighed. 'I'm not trying to pick a fight, Tash. I'm just trying to get things straightened out. You're the one who was always on at me to get organised.'

  'I'm quite aware of that. But I'm tired. I've got a big day ahead so, if it's okay by you, I'd like to divide up the marital assets some other time.'

  'Fine. But I may as well tell you that I need to be in London from now on, with somewhere to stay. And unless you have a really good reason, I'd like to use the spare room until we've sorted things out.'

  Natasha sat very still, making sure she had heard him correctly. 'Stay here?'

  'Yes.'

  'You are kidding?'

  He raised a small smile. 'Living with me was that bad, huh?'

  'But we're not together any more.'

  'Nope. But I own half of this property and I need a roof over my head.'

  'Mac, it'll be impossible.'

  'I can handle it if you can. It's only for a few weeks, Tash. I'm
sorry to play hardball, but if you don't like it you're welcome to rent somewhere yourself. As far as I'm concerned, I've given you the best part of a year with sole access. Now I'm entitled to something.' He shrugged. 'Come on. It's a big house. It'll only be a nightmare if we make it that way.'

  He was disconcertingly relaxed. Happy, almost.

  She wanted to swear at him.

  She wanted to throw something at his head.

  She wanted to slam the front door and book into a hotel. But there was a fourteen-year-old stranger in her home for whom she had just agreed to take joint responsibility.

  Without another word, she stalked out and up the stairs to the bedroom that no longer felt like hers, wondering how hard it would be for estate agents to sell a house in which the owner's head had actually exploded.

  Six

  'It is the same with horses and with men: all distempers in the early stage are more easily cured than when they have become chronic and have been wrongly treated.'

  Xenophon, On Horsemanship

  The girl in the photograph was beaming up at her parents, who each held one of her hands as though they were about to lift her off the floor. 'Fostering,' the poster read. 'Make All the Difference.' Not her parents, then. In any case there was no family resemblance. They were probably all models, paid to act a happy family.

  Suddenly irritated by the child's smile, Sarah shifted on her seat in the social worker's office, and glanced out of the window from where she could just make out the scrub and trees of the municipal park. She needed to get over to Sparepenny Lane. She knew Cowboy John would take care of Boo that morning if she didn't turn up, but it wasn't the same. He needed to go out. He needed to keep up with his training.

  The woman had finished scribbling. 'So, Sarah, we've got most of your details now and we'll set out a care plan for you. We're going to try to find you a temporary home until your grandfather is better. Does that sound okay to you?'

  The woman talked to her as if she was about the age as the child in the poster. Every sentence went upwards at the end as if it was a question when it was clear that there had been no questions in what she had said.

  'I'm from the Children's Services Reception and Assessment Team,' she had said. 'Let's see if we can sort you out, shall we?'

  'How does this work?' Mac said, beside her. 'Are there families who . . . specialise in taking kids for short periods?'

  'We have a lot of foster-families on our books. Some young people - our clients - will be with them only for a night. Others might stay several years. In your case, Sarah, we'll hope it's just a short time.'