'You have to promise me you'll be there,' she said. 'No tack, no deal.'
He glanced behind him again, then spat on his palm and held it towards her. 'Friday morning by the furniture factory. If you're not there by seven I'm outers.'
Liam poked the pasta with his fork and wrinkled his nose. 'It looks like bogeys,' he said.
'It does not look like bogeys,' Conor said equably. 'And, Joseph, don't kick the table leg like that, sweetheart. You're going to knock everyone's drinks over.'
'And it tastes like bogeys,' Liam insisted. He shot a glance at Natasha.
'It's just pesto sauce. Your mother says you eat it all the time.'
'I don't like this pesto sauce,' Joseph said, pushing his plate away vigorously. It was only Natasha's intervention that stopped his glass of juice spilling over her own pasta.
The boys had not wanted to eat Daddy's fish-fingers. They wanted to go to the pizza restaurant. They had been there for almost three-quarters of an hour and she and Conor had hardly exchanged a word except to order their drinks.
'Joseph, can you sit up, please? I know you don't sit like that at home.'
'But this isn't home.'
'This is a restaurant,' Conor said, 'so it's even more important that you sit up properly.'
'But I don't like these chairs. They make my bottom all slidy.'
Natasha watched Conor prop his younger son upright on the chair beside him for the fourteenth time, and wondered at the expression of resigned patience he wore. Eating dinner with his sons had been like herding fish while negotiating with the potentates of two warring Balkan factions. Every time one thing was established, another war began, whether over garlic bread or napkins or a seat that was apparently too slidy for a small person's bottom. All of this had been directed at their father. They had neither acknowledged her nor sought to bring her into their conversations.
Had the mother briefed them? Had she primed them to collect information on Daddy's girlfriend? Had Natasha been deemed a hate figure long before she had even met them?
She felt Liam's eyes on her and forced a smile, trying not to think about the time she could have spent preparing tomorrow's papers. 'So,' she said, wiping her mouth with her napkin. 'Do you like Thomas the Tank Engine? My nephew loves him.'
'No,' Liam said scornfully. 'That's for babies.'
'But you can get really super train sets, grown-up ones, with Thomas characters. I've seen them.'
They looked blankly at her.
'What do you like, then?' she said, gamely. 'What are your hobbies?'
'You like riding your bikes, don't you, boys?' Conor interjected. 'And playing computer games.'
'Joseph broke my PlayStation,' Liam said, 'and Mummy says we don't have enough money to get it fixed.'
'I never broke it,' Joseph protested, adding darkly, under his breath, 'Poo-head.'
'Mummy says we have no money. No money for fun things at all.'
'Well, that's not true,' said Conor. 'Your mother gets an awful lot of money from me. And if you're missing out on things, you should tell me. You know I'll always do what I can.'
'Mummy says you give us the briar minimum.'
'I want a Nintendo,' Liam said. 'Everyone at school has one.'
'I'm sure that's not true.' Conor's voice was becoming strained.
'It is.'
'My nieces and nephews aren't allowed computer games,' Natasha ventured. 'They still have lots of fun.'
'Well they're stupid.'
She took a deep breath and forked up some pasta.
'C'mon, boys. Let's tell Natasha some of the fun things we do. Sometimes we take our bikes to Richmond Park, don't we? We like riding our bikes.'
'No,' said Joseph. 'You shouted at me that I wasn't going fast enough.'
'I didn't shout at you, Joe. I just wanted you to be where I could see you.'
'But your wheels are really big and mine are small.'
'And we like ice-skating,' Conor continued.
'You said it was a rip-off,' Liam said.
'I do think it was a little pricy, yes.' Conor cast a look in her direction. 'But we still had a good time, didn't we?'
'You and Mummy are always going on about money,' Joseph said mournfully.
Natasha had lost what little remained of her appetite. She folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate. 'Boys,' she said, reaching for her jacket, 'it's been lovely to meet you but I'm afraid I've got to go.'
'Already?' Conor laid a hand on her arm.
'It's nearly eight, and you know I've got a big day ahead.'
'I thought,' he said, 'that you might just put us first for tonight. Given the occasion and all.'
'Conor . . .'
'I'll be taking them home in half an hour. It's not much longer, for Christ's sake.'
'Look,' she lowered her voice, 'put yourself in Sarah's shoes. She's a kid, and she's about to be moved on to her fourth home in a matter of months. I'll be here with you to see your boys for ever after.' She reached out surreptitiously to touch his hand, conscious of the boys' eyes on her. 'It might even be best if we keep this first meeting short. I'll get to know your boys, Conor, but I have to sort out this mess first. I took her on. I can't just walk away.'
'Sure.' His tone was clipped. He went back to his food as she wrestled her bag from the back of her chair, then added casually, 'Will Mac be there?'
'I have no idea,' she said.
'No,' he said. 'Of course not.'
For a long time before he had become a photographer, Mac had used a strategy in life that if it didn't presage his career perhaps suggested some aptitude for it. When situations became uncomfortable or overly emotional, when he didn't want to have to deal with what was happening in front of him, he would turn down the sound in his mind and view the tableau from a distance, as if he was posing a picture. Raw emotion was filtered by this lens, reduced to a beautiful composition, an extraordinary meeting of light and line. At twenty-three, he had eyed his father's body in his coffin like this; the familiar face too still and cold, as if it had long been left behind. He had framed it, observing with a distant eye the way death had relaxed the muscles and wiped away long-held tensions, along with a lifetime of expression, from the features. He remembered watching Natasha lying in bed after the second miscarriage, curled up under the duvet, her position an unconscious foetal reminder of what she had lost. She had already turned away from him, closed herself off. He had, felt her emptiness echo in himself, until it was almost unbearable, and had focused instead on the way the light played on the folds of the bedcover, the delicate strands of her hair, the haziness of early morning.
And he did it now, watching the two females seated in front of him, the older perched neatly on the sofa in her work suit explaining to the younger why she herself would be leaving the house tomorrow morning and would not return, and why the girl would ultimately move to another, more appropriate home.
Sarah did not shout, beg or plead, as he had dreaded. She just watched Natasha talk and nodded, asking no questions. Perhaps she had anticipated this from the moment she had arrived. Perhaps he had been fooling himself with hopes of how they could make it work.
But it was Natasha who drew his eye. Now, against the pale sofa cushions, her back straight and poised, it was as if a storm had passed over her, leaving skies that, if not blue, were calm; skies under which you could see an awful long way from where you were standing. She's let go, he observed. Whatever I did the other night, I set her free. This thought came with unexpected pain, and he realised that he, standing back, was the most emotional of the three: only he was blinking back tears. 'We'll work something out, Sarah,' he found himself saying, as the room became silent. 'I'll pay your horse's rent, if I have to. We won't just let you fall.'
Finally Natasha rose. 'Right,' she said, looking him full in the face for the first time. 'We're straight. Everyone knows what's going on. Are you two okay if I go and pack?' A shorter-than-average thirty-five-year-old woman, with little makeup a
nd hair that hadn't been brushed since that morning. Not a model or stylist, not a vision of classical beauty. Mac watched her go. Sarah fixed her gaze diplomatically on Natasha's handbag.
'You okay?' he said to her. Upstairs they could hear Natasha's heels as she went to and from the airing cupboard.
'Fine,' Sarah said calmly. 'Actually, I'm a bit hungry.'
He smacked the side of his head, forcing a smile. 'Supper. I knew I'd forgotten something. I'll go and make it. You coming through?'
'I'll be along in a minute,' she said.
It was as if she had guessed he needed a moment alone. Or, at least, that was what he thought at the time. Later he discovered it had been something quite different.
Seventeen
'In moments of danger the master gives his own life into the keeping of his horse.'
Xenophon, On Horsemanship
Sarah stood behind the parked Transit van, a hundred yards from the intersection of the two flyovers, oblivious to the small clouds of breath that evaporated into the damp air in front of her. She had been there for the past half an hour, long enough for her toes to lose all feeling in the chilly morning and her jacket to dampen under the persistent drizzle. She stood, beneath the sodium lighting, on this desolate stretch of road where the marshes segued into the city, under the web of pylons tracing the inevitable march towards urbanisation.
She had almost lost hope when she saw the first trucks arriving. Now she shifted, trying to ease the weight of her rucksack on her shoulders, her eyes never straying from them as they disgorged their passengers on to the slip-road. Even from here she could see Maltese Sal's men, clapping their hands in the cold, laughing and exchanging cigarettes, the onlookers who climbed out behind. It was a big race, the biggest she had seen. The side-road under the flyover was filling quickly with a line of vehicles, a small crowd spilling out, the atmosphere upbeat, expectant, despite the early hour, the bleakness of the setting. The end of the race was here, at the beginning of her own. Looking at all these men, the vehicles, she found she was shivering. She reached down, placing her fingers around the reassuring edges of the plastic card in her pocket.
It was twenty-five to seven.
She clenched her toes experimentally in her boots, wondering if it was possible to run on feet she could no longer feel. The men stood in small huddles, some raising brightly coloured umbrellas, chatting as if they were meeting for nothing more than an early-morning catch-up. She had asked Ralph three times if he knew for sure, and each time he had sworn he did. But could she trust him? Could his friendship with her override his worship of Maltese Sal? Was this a trap? She kept thinking of how he had turned away from her in the yard. Ralph lived by his own rules: singular, self-serving. Unreliable. But she had to trust him: she had no other option.
Her stomach rumbled. It was almost twenty to seven. They should have been here long before now. There must have been a change of plan. It was a different race. Boo wasn't coming, she thought, and her heart sank. She couldn't think what she would do if he didn't; she had no back-up plan. Everything was burnt, ruined, from the moment she had left the Macauleys' house. She thought briefly of Mac and Natasha, who would probably have woken up. How soon would they guess what she had done?
A car drove past at a crawl, its driver eyeing her curiously through the slow-moving windscreen wipers, and she pretended to rummage for something in her pocket, trying to look like a normal person, on her way to a normal day.
It was nineteen minutes to seven.
She heard a familiar voice, carrying towards her on the wind. 'Those marshes over there got more green than you boys got. Put yo' money where yo' mouth is.' Cowboy John was sauntering down the centre of the line of vans, his battered hat shiny with rain, his hand outstretched as he greeted the others. From here she could just see the glow of his lit cigarette.
'You come here straight from the airport? Jet-lag's affected your judgement, Cowboy.'
'You fo'get worrying about my judgement. Worry about that horse's legs. I seen three-legged dogs with a better turn of speed than yo' horse.' There was laughter. 'They started yet? Sal texted me. Told me you guys were starting six thirty. I should be in bed but my system's all shook up from the time change.'
'Started back by the Old Axe. They should be along any time now.'
Her head jolted upwards at the honk of a horn, a yelled exclamation.
As if on cue there was a silencing of traffic, no cars, no dull roar of vehicles overhead. There was a vacuum in the atmosphere; the men stilled, as they waited to confirm what they were seeing, then jogged forward, up the wet slip-road, for a better view. And first a small dot, then a distinct outline - there he was, trotting flat out down the flyover above them, pinned between the poles of a light blue sulky, his head lifted with anxiety as a grey-haired, thick-necked man pulled hard on the reins from the seat of the sulky behind him. Maltese Sal's grey mare, a short distance away, trotted smartly alongside as Sal leant across to shout an insult as he passed.
She couldn't take her eyes off her horse, his huge, muscular body trapped between the twin poles, his feet a blur on the hard road as he passed her. He was wearing blinkers, which made him seem blind, vulnerable, as if he was some kind of hostage. They were off the dual carriageway on the exit slip, briefly obscured by the intersection, then coming back round in a fluid loop towards the small crowd, as the flyover traffic surged forward above them. The men on the ground moved down the slip-road to meet them, and Sarah stepped back behind the white van, holding her breath. She watched the two horses coming back down the side-road, pulling up beneath the huge concrete pillars and there were cheers, exclamations, the sound of slamming car doors, a voice raised in protest. Boo wheeled, unsure whether he should be stopping, and his head was pulled back roughly, causing him almost to drop backwards on to his haunches.
She heard Cowboy John's voice. 'What the Sam Hill is he doin' here?'
What if she failed? What if this all went wrong? She felt her breath rise up to her throat and stall, then leave her tight lungs in a long shudder. Think. Assess. She had spent her sleepless hours reading Xenophon's advice to cavalrymen, and a sentence floated back to her now: 'To be appraised of the enemy's position in advance, and at as great a distance off as possible, cannot fail to be useful.'
She shifted her position behind the white van, her eyes fixed upon her horse. I'm here, Boo, she told him, and readied herself for action.
Mac heard Natasha's shower kick in, glanced at the clock and winced at its confirmation of this unearthly hour. He lay back for a moment, dimly aware that there was something he needed to do. Then the significance of the morning bumped its way into his consciousness. She was leaving. This was it. The whole thing was ending.
He sat upright. Across the hallway, the shower ran, the faint whine of the extractor fan a distant, hesitant descant. She would aim to leave with as little fuss as possible.
'I'll come and sort out the house in time for the move,' she had told him, after Sarah had gone to bed the previous evening. 'Removals. Surveys. Whatever. And I can talk to the social worker, if you'd prefer not to do it yourself. But I won't be staying here from now on.' She had barely looked at him as she spoke, busying herself with odd books from the shelves.
'You don't have to do this, Tash,' he said quietly.
But she had brushed aside his words. 'I've got a big case, Mac. Biggest of my career so far. I need to focus.' There had been no rancour, no anger. It was the Natasha he had hated: that closed-off, unreachable version of his wife. The one whose cool, faux-pleasant demeanour spoke of all the things he had apparently done wrong in his marriage.
He heard the doorbell, shrill and invasive. Postman? At this hour? Natasha wouldn't hear it over the sound of running water. Sighing, he pulled on a T-shirt and headed down the stairs.
Conor was on the front step. Mac took in the smart suit, the neatly shaven chin, and recognised, not for the first time, how much he disliked the man.
'Mac,' Conor said
evenly.
'Conor.' He wasn't going to make this easy. He stood, waiting.
'I've come to collect Natasha.'
To collect her. As if she was something he had loaned. Mac hesitated, then stood back to allow him into the hall, feeling bitter resentment at every step he took over the threshold. Conor walked in as if he had some claim to the house, turned left into the living room and sat on the sofa with the relaxed confidence borne of familiarity, then flicked open his newspaper.
Mac bit his lip. 'Excuse me if I don't stay and chat,' he said. 'I'll just tell my wife you're here.'
He walked up the stairs, feeling a burning anger at what was happening. The man seated on the sofa Mac had chosen, paid for, was waiting to take his wife away. But even as he acknowledged this caveman growl of protest, some other part of him answered with an image of Maria, barely dressed, clutching two glasses of wine. Her sneaking delight in Natasha's pain.
The shower had stopped. He knocked on the bedroom door, and waited. When there was no response, he knocked again, then opened it tentatively. 'Tash?'
He saw her reflection before he saw her. She was standing in front of the mirror, a towel wrapped around her middle, water still running in droplets over her bare shoulders from her wet hair. She flinched as he entered, and her hand shot unconsciously to her throat. That defensive gesture was a further rebuke.
'I did knock.'
There were half-packed bags all around the room. Inches from a clean getaway, he thought.
'Sorry. In my own world. It's this case . . .'
'Conor's here.'
Her eyes widened. 'I wasn't expecting him.'
'Well, he's downstairs, waiting to collect you.' It came out a little sarcastically.
'Oh,' she said. She took her dressing-gown off the bed and pulled it around her. Bending, she started to towel her hair. 'Tell him . . .' she began. 'Actually, don't worry.'
He ran his hand along the rim of an open suitcase. He didn't recognise many of the clothes that were folded in it. 'So this is it,' he said. 'You just go.'
'Yup. Like you did,' she said briskly, straightening to brush her hair. 'Is Sarah up?'
'Haven't checked.'
'With everything that went on last night, I forgot to mention - she had a form that needed signing. For some school trip.'