By the time they reached Canterbury, Natasha became convinced that they had gone too far. She would never have reached this point, she told the men. Look at the weather. Her eyes strained, making out imaginary figures in the dim light, distracted by people, odd cars, under the streetlamps. 'I think we should turn back,' she said.
But Mac insisted Sarah would have come on this route, and if she wasn't there, it meant they should keep going. 'She left town at seven o'clock this morning,' he pointed out. 'She could have got a hell of a way by now.' He was hunched over the wheel, his eyes scanning the dark horizons.
John seemed uncertain. The horse was strong and would do whatever the girl asked of him . . .
'What?' Natasha turned to him. 'What were you going to say?'
It was dark inside the car now, and John's face was hidden. 'I was going to say, provided they haven't had an accident.'
By seven o'clock the traffic had thinned a little, the signs for Dover more frequent. They stopped four times, when John announced, yet again, that he needed to relieve himself, or when hotels and B-and-B's were signposted close by. But when Natasha asked inside if a girl and a horse had checked in, the receptionists without exception, looked at her, as if she was insane. She couldn't blame them: it sounded mad even to her.
Each time she returned to the car she asked the two men again whether they were sure the grandfather had said she would go to France, until Mac told her to stop treating them like imbeciles. And, all the while, Ben's text messages loyally informed her of the partner meeting that was taking place without her.
Linda says not to worry
he finished, a sure sign, Natasha thought, that she should.
Some time in that last half an hour they had lost confidence. Mac kept up a running mathematical equation, trying to calculate how far a girl and a horse travelling at a nominal fifteen miles an hour might get, given that they were in adverse weather conditions and without food. 'I think she'll stay somewhere outside Canterbury,' he concluded. 'Or maybe we should head back to Sittingbourne.'
'They gonna be awful wet,' John said mournfully, wiping his window with his sleeve.
'I think we should stop somewhere, ring all the hotels and ask if they've seen her,' Natasha said. 'But I'm going to need someone else's phone. Mine's running low.'
Mac reached into his pocket and handed his to her. Taking it, she found herself thinking about the last year of their marriage, during which his phone, as hers, had been concealed, its flirtatious messages incriminatory, or a symptom of what was falling apart. 'Thanks,' she said. She didn't want to use it, after all. She didn't want to risk seeing messages from that woman, missed calls that spoke of things he might rather be doing.
'I have to pee,' said John, again.
'Well, we're going to need fuel,' Mac said. 'I vote we head to Dover. If that's where she's headed, it doesn't matter if we've passed her.'
'But if she's stopped at Canterbury, she won't make Dover till tomorrow.'
'Well, I don't know what else to suggest,' Mac said. 'We can't see a thing. We could drive around in the dark all night achieving nothing. Let's head to Dover and then do as you suggested, Tash, set up somewhere with a landline. We can ring around and get ourselves something to eat while we're at it. We're all exhausted.'
'And then what?' Natasha placed Mac's phone carefully on the dashboard.
'Well . . . pray we can find out where she's staying from your credit card, I guess. After that I have no bloody idea.'
The hotel was one of an anonymous mid-range multi-national chain, two squat maroon-brick blocks linked by a glass walkway. Natasha stood in the oversized reception area, crumpled and sweaty in her suit, suddenly desperate to sit still, to eat and drink something. Mac, in front of her, was chatting to the receptionist, who smiled at him, a distinctly non-corporate sort of a smile. Natasha noted it grimly and turned away. Cowboy John was in an easy chair by the wall, legs splayed, head hanging low between his bony shoulders. Natasha registered the slight distance guests enforced around him as they passed and felt briefly awkward for him. Then, as he lifted his head and winked lasciviously at a young woman, she realised her sympathy was probably wasted.
'Okay,' said Mac, shoving his wallet back in his pocket. 'We've got one double and one twin.'
'But surely we need three rooms.'
'That's all they've got left. If you want to try somewhere down the road then go for it, but I'm shattered. This'll do me fine.'
Which room will you be sleeping in? she wanted to ask. But his face was etched with strain, and instead she followed him mutely towards the lifts.
It was John who settled the matter. 'I'm goin' to have a bath and somethin' to eat,' he said, taking a key from Mac as the doors opened at the second floor. 'You guys call me when you know what we're doin' next.' He strolled out into the corridor and then she and Mac were alone, suddenly self-conscious, in the lift.
The room, as with every hotel room Natasha thought she had ever slept in, was at the far end of the building. They walked down the carpeted corridor in silence. When they reached the door, she was about to speak but Mac handed her the key. 'You hit the phones. I'm going down to the ferry terminal to make sure she's not there.'
'Aren't you going to eat?'
'I'll get something while I'm out.'
She watched his back disappear down the corridor, the unexpected stoop to his shoulders, and grasped the full weight of the responsibility he felt for Sarah.
The image of his despair propelled her into the room where she sat for a moment, trying not to think of what was happening to her career in her absence, the ex-husband walking through the rainy streets of Dover, the awful, shaming lack of the things she should have felt in place of this resentment. Natasha Macauley did what she had always done when real life became too difficult: she put the kettle on, grabbed a notebook and pen, and set to work on the hotel phone.
It was almost half past ten when Mac returned. She had borrowed a telephone directory from Reception, had called not just all the hotels in the Dover area but all the hotels and B-and-Bs within ten miles. Nobody had heard of Sarah Lachapelle or seen a girl with a horse. She had wondered whether to call Mac, but it was pointless. He would have rung if he'd heard anything, just as she would.
Cowboy John had called from his room half an hour previously, and announced that if nothing else was going on he'd get a few hours' shut-eye. She had told him to go ahead praying he wouldn't set his room alight. Stiff-necked and exhausted, she ordered food from Room Service and a bottle of wine, then walked the length of the room. She was stretching her arms above her head when she heard the knock.
Mac stood in the corridor. He said nothing as he walked past her and sat heavily on one of the twin beds. He let himself fall backwards, one arm shielding his eyes against the light of the room.
'Nothing,' he said. 'It's like they've vanished into thin air.'
Natasha poured him a glass of wine and held it out. He raised himself wearily and took it from her. His chin was grey with stubble and he still carried the tang of cold salt air on his clothes. 'I've been all over Dover. I've even walked the beaches in case she was down there.'
'Did you go to the ferry offices?'
'I asked the guys who load the vehicles. I figured they'd see if anyone came by. They told me that all animals were transported there on lorries. She can't get further than here, Tash. It's not possible.'
They sat in silence, drinking their wine.
'What if she's gone to another port? I assumed Dover . . . but what if it was Harwich? Or Sittingbourne?'
'She was going in the wrong direction for Harwich.'
'We're out of our depth,' he said. 'I think we should call the police.'
'You're underestimating her. She planned this, Mac. She's got my credit card. She'll be safe somewhere.'
'But you've rung all the hotels.'
She shrugged. 'Then perhaps she didn't get this far. I can't ring all the hotels in the south of England. Hell -
maybe she's staying on a farm. Or at a riding stables. Perhaps she has a friend near here. There are a million places she could be.'
'Which is why we should call the police.'
Natasha sat at the end of the other bed and let out a growl of frustration. 'Oh, Jesus, Sarah. What the hell do you think you're playing at?' The words were out of her mouth before she realised she had said them aloud.
'I don't think she's playing, Tash.'
'You think she stole my card by accident?'
'I think she was desperate.'
'For what? We gave her everything she asked for. We took care of her horse. I was about to take her shopping to buy her grandfather whatever she wanted for him.' She shook her head. 'No,' she said. Fear and exhaustion made her severe. 'I think it was just all too much like hard work. She didn't like our rules and routines. She didn't like the fact that she couldn't go and see her horse when she wanted to. We were making her go to school, Mac, not allowing her to come and go as she pleased. Forcing order on to chaos. This is her way of repaying us.'
'Repaying us?'
'You're assuming she thinks like us. That she is like us. But you have to admit she's been a closed book from the start. We don't have the faintest ideas of who Sarah Lachapelle really is.' She looked up to see Mac staring at her.
'What?' she said, when it became unnerving.
'Jesus. You've become hard.'
It was like a blow.
'I've become hard,' she repeated slowly. A lump rose in her throat, and she forced it away. Why do you think that is? she wanted to say to him. Who do you think made me this way? 'Okay, Mac. Why do you always assume that Sarah's the victim in all this?'
'Because she's fourteen? Because she's got nobody?'
An image of Ali Ahmadi rose in front of her. 'That doesn't make her an angel. She's stolen from us, taken my card, hidden things from us. And now she's run away.'
'You've always seen the worst in her.'
'No, I just see her without your rose-tinted spectacles.'
'So why are you here? Why bother trying to find her?'
'Seeing her as she is doesn't stop me being concerned for her welfare.'
'Is this really about her welfare? Or is this just a matter of you not wanting to be seen to fail?'
'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'
'Doesn't look too good for you, does it? The legal champion of lost children unable to look after the one girl she took on. I think that's why you don't want us to call the police.'
'How dare you?' She fought the urge to hurl the wine in his face. 'I see these kids every day. I see them helpless and pathetic on the benches, then have to listen to them cheerfully swearing at me forty minutes later when I've got them off or found them somewhere else to live. I know that half the time they're going straight off to nick another car, or shoplift another bin-bag of clothes. I know these kids. I've been played by them. They're not stupid and they're not always helpless.'
She took off her shoes, hurling them on to the carpet. 'In some ways Sarah is a decent kid, but she's no better and no worse than any of them. And that I can see that doesn't make me a bad person, no matter what you might want to think of me.'
She went into the bathroom, slammed the door, and sat on the toilet lid. She held up her hands in front of her, saw that they were trembling, then flung a bathmat and two towels at the door in an impotent expression of fury.
There was no sound from the bedroom.
She sat there as the minutes ticked by, waiting to hear Mac get up and leave the room. He wouldn't want to stay with her any more than she wanted to be with him. She'd tell him it would be better if he shared Cowboy John's room.
But the worst of it was that there was truth in what he had said. She didn't want the police involved. She didn't want to have to explain the circumstances under which she had taken Sarah in, her utter failure to look after her or even ensure her basic safety. If they could just find her, Sarah could go quietly to someone more capable.
She let out a long, shuddering breath. Oh, it was easy for Mac to be outraged, to be the good cop yet again. Easy to be the nice one when it never came at any personal cost to him. It had been the story of their marriage. Natasha dropped her head into her hands, breathed in the smell of cheap bathroom cleaner and waited for her head to clear. She didn't want him to see how much he had got to her. She didn't want him to see anything of her at all.
When she emerged, her expression composed, her mind humming with rehearsed argument, it was to a silent room. Mac was asleep on the bed, his arm still half covering his face. She walked silently to the other single bed and stared at him, this man this almost-ex-husband, crushed by his proximity and by his dislike of her.
She found she couldn't stop looking at him, and realised now little she had seen of him over the past two months. Her eyes were drawn to his arms, his chest under the faded T-shirt. How many times had she wriggled into that tight embrace? And how many times, she reminded herself, had she turned her back on it, eyes screwed tight shut against silent tears? How could he despise her so much after all the love he had shown her?
Natasha poured the rest of the wine into her glass and downed it in one long, resentful swallow. Then, almost reluctantly, she reached for the folded bedspread at the end of Mac's bed and pulled it over him, up to his chest.
She turned off the light. She did not approach her own bed, but sat by the window, gazing out at the windswept car park, the distant inky blackness of the sea, still, against hope, half expecting to see the shadowy figures of a girl and a horse make their way down the darkened street.
When she woke, her neck stiff, her limbs folded uncomfortably into the chair, the room was illuminated by the watery blue light of daybreak and Mac was gone.
Twenty-one
'If you would have a horse learn to perform his duty, your best plan will be, whenever he does as you wish, to show him some kindness in return.'
Xenophon, On Horsemanship
Sarah was just finishing the last of Jackie's stables and jumped at the sound of Thom's voice.
'I didn't mean to scare you,' he said, from the other side of the stable door.
'I - I just didn't hear you.' She spoke into her scarf, her hot breath bouncing back on her skin.
'I came to ask did you want some breakfast? Jackie's making. She's pleased as punch that you've done all the horses for her.'
Sarah squinted into the low sun. 'I was up early. And she washed my jeans and stuff . . .'
'Ah, manners and a work ethic. Your parents did something right.' He grinned. He had spent the previous hour washing out the big lorry. She had been dimly aware of the high-pressure hose behind the stables, water spattering off metallic surfaces, sporadic scrubbing, his determinedly upbeat whistling. The previous evening over dinner he had been downbeat, still shaken by the death of the horse. He had picked at his food, resisting Jackie's best efforts to cheer him up. Sarah had been equally quiet, exhausted to the point of near-catatonia by the day's events. She had eaten her meal in near silence, then, as her eyes blurred with exhaustion, escaped gratefully to the spare room. Clearly Jackie and her husband liked an excuse to entertain: even as she drifted into sleep she could hear them laughing and talking.
She had woken shortly after six thirty, briefly bewildered by her surroundings. Then, almost reflexively as her memory returned, she had leapt from her bed, still in her T-shirt, and run from the house to find Boo.
When he thrust his head over the stable door and whickered, her breath returned. She let herself into the stable, shivering in the morning air. He stood quietly in his borrowed rug, showing little sign of the journey he had endured the previous day. She had checked his legs, lifted his feet, then, reassured, pressed her face to his neck before returning to the house where, unable to sleep, she had dressed and cleaned his stable.
Mucking out the others had not been an act of charity, despite what Thom seemed to believe: in the absence of a clear plan, she needed to do everything possi
ble to secure accommodation for another night. There was a system of lairage she had known nothing about: ponies in transit during a family emigration; racehorses and eventers, whose value sat firmly in five or six figures, on their way to new homes. All, like her, awaited a new life they could not yet know. The horses of lesser value, the broken-down and infirm, those bound for the continent in cattle trucks, had no such rest. They would stay on board until they were unloaded into the slaughterhouse.
'Yesterday . . . was tough for you to see. I hope it didn't give you nightmares.' Thom had eyes that were either used to smiling or had spent too much time squinting into the sun. You would have known he was Irish even before he spoke.
She leant on her fork, picturing the stricken horse. 'Do you think he suffered much?'
'No. They go into shock. Like humans. And then the vet put him out pretty swiftly.'
'Are you sad?'
He shrugged, seeming surprised. 'Oh . . . no. He wasn't mine. I don't own the horses. I just shift 'em around.'
'Will his owner be sad?'
'Don't take this to heart, kiddo, but probably not. He was just a failed point-to-pointer with dodgy legs. The owner sold him in a job lot to a French dealer. To be honest, when I rang this morning, he was more concerned about the insurance claim.'
Sarah dislodged some dried mud from the stable floor with the toe of her boot. 'What was his name?'
'The horse? Oh, Lord, now you're asking . . .' He looked up towards the sky. It was then that Sarah felt free to look at him properly; she noticed, with a kind of appalled thrill, that his left hand wasn't real but made from a kind of flesh-coloured rubber.
'Diablo,' he said, suddenly looking at her. She flushed, embarrassed to have been caught staring. 'No, Diablo Blue. That's the boy. Right. Shall I tell Jackie you'll be in soon? I've got to shoot into Dover to get the partition fixed.'
She thought about it. Perhaps it was because he had been so much more shaken than Jackie and her husband the previous evening, or the way he stroked the horses' noses as he passed each stable, hardly aware that he was doing it. Perhaps it was that hand. But something about Thom told her he was not a threat.