The Horse Dancer

  'Just until your grandfather's better,' Mac said.

  'Yes,' the woman said.

  There was something not quite definite in the way the woman had answered, Sarah thought.

  'But there are lots of young people in similar situations to you, Sarah, families who need a bit of help. You mustn't worry.'

  Mac and his wife had talked only to her over breakfast, not to each other. She wondered if they had had an argument, whether it was something to do with her. She couldn't remember Papa and Nana ever arguing. Nana would joke that she could argue with Papa but he would never argue back. When Papa was cross he just went very quiet, his face set in stone. 'It's like arguing with a statue,' she would say conspiratorially, as if it was some big joke between them.

  Tears prickled behind her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, willing them away. She was already regretting having gone with Mac and Natasha. Last night she had been afraid, but now she saw that her life was being taken over. By people who didn't understand it.

  The woman had looked at a file. 'I see your grandparents have a residency order for you. Do you know where your mother is, Sarah?'

  She shook her head.

  'Can I ask when you last saw her?'

  Sarah glanced sideways at Mac. She and Papa never talked about her mother. It felt strange to air the family laundry in front of strangers. 'She's dead.' She stumbled over the words, quietly furious that she had to give out this information. 'She died a few years ago.'

  She saw the sympathy on their faces, but she had never even missed her mother, not like she did Nana. Her mother had never been a warm embrace, a pair of arms to fall into, but a chaotic, unpredictable shadow over her early years. Sarah remembered her as a series of images, of being dragged into different people's houses, left to sleep on sofas, the hum of distant loud music and arguments, an uneasy sense of impermanence. And then, when she had gone to live with Nana and Papa, order, routine. Love.

  The woman was scribbling. 'Are you sure there are no friends you can stay with? Any other family?' She sounded hopeful, as if she didn't want to deal with Sarah. But Sarah had to admit that there was not a single person who might want her in their home for weeks on end. She was not popular. Her few friends lived in flats as small as hers; she knew no one well enough to ask, even if she had wanted to.

  'I need to go,' she said to Mac quietly.

  'I know,' he said. 'Don't worry, the school knows you'll be late. It's more important that we get you sorted out.'

  'And where did you say your grandfather is now?' The woman smiled at her.

  'He's in St Theresa's. They said they're going to move him, but I don't know when.'

  'We can find that out for you. We'll put a contact arrangement in place.'

  'Will I be able to see him every day? Like I have been?'

  'I'm not sure. It'll depend on where we can place you.'

  'What do you mean?' said Mac. 'Won't it be somewhere close to her home?'

  The woman sighed. 'I'm afraid the system's under immense pressure. We can't always guarantee that clients will be as close to their home as we would like. But we'll make every effort to ensure that Sarah sees her grandfather regularly until he can come home.'

  Sarah could hear huge gaps between the woman's words, holes where there should have been certainty. She had visions of herself being placed with some smiling family miles from Papa. From Boo. How was she supposed to look after him if it took her hours to get anywhere? This wasn't going to work.

  'You know what?' she said, glancing at Mac. 'I can look after myself. Actually, if someone could just help me a bit, I'll be fine at home.'

  The woman smiled. 'I'm sorry, Sarah, but legally we're not allowed to leave you by yourself.'

  'But I can cope. It was getting burgled that was the problem. I need to be near my home.'

  'And we'll make every effort to ensure that that happens,' the woman said smoothly. 'And now we'd better get you to school. Your social worker will meet you afterwards and, hopefully, take you to your placement.'

  'I can't,' she said abruptly. 'I need to be somewhere after school.'

  'If it's an after-school club, we can set that straight with the school. I'm sure they won't mind you missing a session.'

  Sarah tried to work out how much to tell them. What would they do if she told them about Boo?

  'Right, Sarah. If we can move on to religion, I won't keep you much longer. Can you tell me which of these categories you fall into?'

  The woman's voice receded and Sarah found herself staring at Mac. He was uncomfortable in this place, she could tell. He kept fidgeting as if he would rather have been anywhere else. Well, now he knew how she felt. She hated him suddenly, hated him and his wife for putting her in this mess. If she hadn't been so shocked yesterday she would have patched up the door herself. Cowboy John might have helped. And she'd still be at home, running her life, still seeing Boo twice a day, coping, hanging on for Papa's return.

  'Sarah? Church of England? Catholic? Hindu? Muslim? Other?'

  'Hindu,' she said mutinously, and then as they looked at her, disbelieving, she said again, 'Hindu.' She almost laughed when she saw the woman writing it down. Perhaps if she made life really difficult for them they'd have to let her go home. 'And I'm a strict vegetarian,' she added. Mac's face told her he was remembering the bacon sandwich he had made for her at breakfast. She dared him to contradict her.

  'Ooohh-kaaaay.' The woman carried on writing. 'Nearly done. Mr Macauley, if you need to go now I can take it from here.'

  'And I'm claustrophobic. I can't live anywhere where there's a lift.'

  This time the woman's expression was sharp. Sarah suspected she was not quite as sympathetic as she had initially appeared. 'Well,' she said crisply, 'I've got to speak to your school and your doctor. No doubt if there are any real requirements or problems they'll confirm them.'

  Mac was scribbling. 'You all right?' he asked Sarah quietly.

  'Just great,' she said.

  He looked troubled. He knew he had ruined her life, she thought. He handed Sarah a piece of paper. 'My numbers,' he said. 'Any problems, you give me a call, okay? I'll help you any way I can. That's okay, right?' he added to the woman.

  She smiled at him. Sarah had noticed that loads of women smiled at Mac. 'Of course. We encourage clients to keep to as much of their normal routine as possible.'

  Mac stood to leave and handed her the folder of documents and personal papers he had taken from the flat for her. 'Take care, Sarah,' he said. He lingered, as if he was not quite sure whether he should go. 'I hope you get home soon.'

  Sarah kicked at the leg of her chair and said nothing. Doing and saying nothing, she was discovering, was the only power she had left.

  'Thank God. I thought we were going to have to call up Mr Snappy Snaps.'

  'Sorry. Got caught up in something.' Mac dumped his camera bags on the floor. He kissed Louisa, the art director, whom he recognised, then turned to the girl who was sitting at the mirror, texting furiously, oblivious to the attentions of the makeup artist behind her, twisting her hair on to huge ceramic rollers. 'Hi, I'm Mac,' he said, holding out a hand.

  'Oh. Hi,' she said. 'Serena.'

  'You should have been here an hour ago.' Maria tapped her watch. Her jeans were positioned so low on her hips that they were almost indecent; above them, two layers of floating dark fabric were tied skilfully to reveal a shapely midriff. Behind her, someone was fiddling with a CD-player.

  'Just thought I'd give you extra time to work your magic, sweetheart.' He kissed her cheek, sliding his hand across her bare back. 'I'll set up, shall I? Louisa, do you want to talk me through the brief again?'

  Louisa outlined the kind of look and ambience they wanted for the shot of the young actress; the wardrobe girl nodding attentively. Mac nodded too, appearing to give her his full attention, but his mind was in that children's welfare department. He had run down the steps of the dispiriting building forty minutes previously, feeling less relieved than
he had expected. Sarah had looked absolutely miserable, shrinking in on herself as they had sat in that office and the extent of her altered situation had dawned on her. He had half considered asking Tash if the girl could stay with them, but even as he had formulated the sentence, while they made breakfast in loaded silence, he could see the absurdity. Tash had made it clear that her job was compromised by Sarah's presence, and she could barely cope with having him in the house. It no longer even felt like his home. How could he impose on her the presence of a stranger?

  'Lots of red. Very bold. We want to make a statement with this picture, Mac. She's not just another young starlet but a serious actress of tomorrow, a young Judi Dench, a less political Vanessa Redgrave.'

  Mac eyed Serena, who was giggling at a text message, and stifled an internal sigh. He had lost count of the exceptional young starlets he had shot over the past ten years. Barely two had survived the initial burst of publicity to make it to a sitcom.

  'Okay. She is ready for you.' Maria appeared in the doorway, a thin makeup brush between her teeth, pinning up the girl's blonde hair with deft fingers. The wardrobe girl was pulling outfits from the long rail, piling them over one arm. 'I'll bring these out,' she said.

  'We'll be ten minutes. I'm just going to check the backdrop.' Louisa left them.

  Maria walked up to him. 'I was going to ask why you so late,' she said, in her heavy Slavic accent, 'but then I realised I didn't care.'

  He hooked a finger in her belt loop and pulled her close to him. Her hair smelt of apples, her skin of makeup and hairspray, the layered unguents of her trade. 'If I told you, you wouldn't believe me.'

  She removed the brush. 'You were out picking up women.'

  'Fourteen-year-old girls, actually.'

  Her mouth was so close now that he could see the tiny freckle to the side of her upper lip. 'This does not surprise me. You are disgusting man.'

  'I do my best.'

  She kissed him, then pulled away. 'I have another job after this. Soho. You want to meet up?'

  'If we can go to yours.'

  'You are at your ex-wife's house?'

  'It's my house too. I told you.'

  'And this woman does not mind you moving back?'

  'I can't say we've discussed it in those terms.'

  She narrowed her eyes. 'I don't trust her. What woman with any self-respect would take back her ex-husband like this? When my ex-boyfriend in Krakow tried to return to my house I turned my father's gun on him.' She mimed the action.

  Mac considered this. 'That's . . . an option, I suppose.'

  'I felt not so good about this afterwards. Turns out he was only trying to return my CD-player.' She turned to leave, reaching into the fruit bowl for a stray grape as she headed for the door. 'Is just as well I missed.'

  The darned gates were jamming again. Cowboy John was hauling at them, trying to make them line up as he wrestled with the padlock, when he saw a familiar figure running towards him, her bag bumping against her hip.

  'I was just about to close up,' he said, unhooking the padlock. 'I was waiting for you all yesterday. I thought something had happened to you. Where have you been, girl?' He coughed, a hoarse, rasping sound.

  'They've put me in Holloway.' She dropped her schoolbag on the cobbles and ran past him to Boo's stable.

  He pulled the gates shut and followed her, stiff-legged. The chill of autumn was sidling into his bones. 'You went to prison?'

  'Not the prison,' she said, wrestling with the bolt on the stable door. 'Social Services. They said I can't stay at home any more with Papa not being there and they made me go to this stupid family. But they live in Holloway. They think I'm with Papa now - it's the only way I could get here.' She threw herself against the horse's neck and he saw a long shudder escape her, as if the pent-up tension of the day had been released.

  'Hold on, now. Hold on.' He flicked on the lights. 'You need to rewind. What the Sam Hill is going on?'

  She faced him, eyes glittering. 'Our flat got broken into on Tuesday. And this woman who gave me a lift home, this lawyer or something, she made me stay with her because she said it wasn't safe where I was. And then they took me to Social Services and the next thing I'm living in someone else's house and I've got to stay there till Papa is better. This family in Holloway. And I'd never even met them. It took me an hour and a quarter on the bus to get here.'

  'What they want to make themselves busy for?'

  'I was fine,' she said, 'until the break-in.'

  'Your grandpa know about this?'

  'I don't know. I can't get there till tomorrow. They don't know about Boo. I can't let them know or they might put him somewhere too.'

  Cowboy John shook his head. 'Don't you worry yourself. He ain't going nowhere.'

  'I haven't even got the stables money for you. They took Papa's pension books so I've got nothing except my bus and lunch money.'

  'Don't you fret.' She was winding herself into a mini-hurricane. 'I'll sort out the rent with your papa when he's up and about. You got money for your horse's food?'

  She thrust her hand into her pocket, counted out the cash and handed it over. 'I've got enough for four bales of hay and a couple of sacks of food. But I need you to feed him for me. I don't even know if I can get here to muck him out.'

  'Okay, okay. I'll clean his stable for you, or get one of the boys to do it. What about the blacksmith? You know he's coming Tuesday?'

  'I know. I've got some savings. I could pay this month out of that. But I can't pay the rent.'

  'I told you, I'll strike the rent until the Captain's back in action.'

  'I'll pay you back.' She sounded as if she thought he wouldn't believe her. He took a step backwards. 'I know that. You think I'm stupid?' He gestured towards the other ponies. 'I wouldn't let one of these sewer rats miss a day's rent, but you and your papa . . . Now you just calm down, sort your horse out, and we'll take things a day at a time.'

  She seemed to relax a little. She took up a brush and started to groom him, sweeping her arm down his flank methodically, rhythmically, like her grandfather did it, as if she took comfort in the simple action.

  'Sarah . . . I'd offer you my own place but it's kinda small. And I been on my own a long time. If I had a bigger house, or a woman around . . . I'm not sure it's the kind of set-up they'd want a girl to be.'

  She told him it didn't matter.

  He stood there for a minute. 'You okay to lock up if I go?' he said. He could tell she didn't want to leave any time soon. He leant on the stable door, tilting his hat back so he could better see her face. 'I tell you what, Sarah. You want me to go visit with your grandpa for you tomorrow so that you can come here instead?'

  She straightened. 'Would you? I don't like to leave him alone for two days.'

  'No problem. He'd want to know Boo here was still doing his circus thing. But I got to tell him something. And, sweetheart, I have to talk to you about it too.'

  She looked wary then, waiting for some further blow. 'I'm thinking of selling up to Maltese Sal.'

  Her eyes widened. 'But what--'

  'It's okay. Like I'll tell your grandpa, nothing's going to change. I'm going to hang on here till my house is sold. Day to day I'll still be opening up and taking care of business.'

  'Where are you going?' She had put her arms around the horse's neck and was hanging on as if he, too, might be spirited off somewhere.

  'I'm moving out to the country. Somewhere with a bit of green. I figure my boys deserve it.' He nodded at his horses. He hesitated. Took the cigarette from his lips and spat on the floor. 'Seeing what happened to your grandpa, Sarah, it shook me up. I'm not as young as I was, and if I only have a few years, then I'd like to spend 'em somewhere peaceful.'

  She didn't say anything, just looked at him.

  'Maltese Sal's promised me nothing's going to change, girl,' he said. 'He knows about the Captain, knows it ain't easy for you right now. He says he'll keep things just as they are.'

  She didn't have to
say anything. He could see it in her face. Given where she had ended up right now, how the hell could she believe that?

  'Thanks for being so prompt, Michael. Mrs Persey will be here soon and I wanted to run through some of the preliminary papers with you.' She paused as Ben came in, bringing a box of tissues and a bottle of chilled white wine. 'We don't normally encourage "crying time",' she said, as the bottle was placed carefully on her desk, 'but when you have a client of this calibre . . .'

  '. . . you let her shed a few tears.'

  Natasha smiled. 'And soften the pain with a glass of her favourite Chablis.'

  'I imagined this end of town would be more about confiscating the odd can of Special Brew.' A renowned divorce lawyer, Michael Harrington's charm and amused manner of speaking belied a razor-sharp mind. Natasha could remember the first time she had watched him in court, when she had been a trainee and he had been opposing counsel. She had wished she had a tape-recorder so that she could emulate the deceptively easy fashion in which he had punctured their own counsel's case.

  'Okay.' She glanced at her watch. 'In brief, married twelve years, second wife, some dispute over how soon she and Mr Persey got together after his first wife left. Just over a year ago she discovered him in flagrante with the au pair. Fairly standard stuff. We have two problems. First, there is no agreement on the financial settlement, on grounds of inadequate disclosure of assets. Second, she is refusing to comply with the access arrangements on the grounds that he was physically and mentally abusive to her during the term of the marriage, and verbally abusive to the eleven-year-old daughter.'

  'Messy.'

  'Oh, yes. The papers don't suggest that this was in evidence during the marriage.' Natasha flicked through her brief. 'She claims she went to every length to hide it, as she didn't want to upset his standing in the business community. Now, she says, she has nothing to lose. But he's threatening to withdraw his offered financial settlement because of the lack of access.'

  'I need hardly tell you that this will be a very high-profile case, given his reputation. The hearing is booked for the Principal Registry of the Family Division in the Royal Courts of Justice. The dispute-resolution meeting was an absolute disaster. Meanwhile Mrs Persey seems . . . Well, she seems quite keen to publicise her version of events. It's all I can do to stop her going to the newspapers.' She paused, pressed the tips of her fingers together. 'You'll find, Michael, that she isn't the easiest of clients to represent.'