by Jojo Moyes
Mac had another swig of his coffee. 'I don't know how anyone could eat four breakfasts,' he said, eyeing the depleted breakfast buffet.
'I paid for it,' John said. 'Might as well get my money's worth.'
Actually, I paid for it, Mac observed silently. But it was a relief to spend time with someone cheerful so he said nothing. Around them the breakfast room of the Tempest International hummed with travellers; salesmen locked into telephone conversations, stressed mothers shepherding small children around a cereal-splattered table as fathers disappeared behind newspapers. Occasionally a moon-faced Eastern European girl would approach and offer to top up their coffee, whereupon John would announce, Why, yes! Thank you!
He appeared rejuvenated this morning, his smile a little readier under the battered brown hat, his collar and cuffs neatly pressed. Mac, whose clothes always tended to look as if he had spent several days in them, felt perversely dishevelled in his company. He had risen before dawn and, unable to sleep and in the absence of anything more useful to do, had again walked the deserted seafront, watching the early-morning ferries come and go in the encroaching light, listening to the forlorn cries of the gulls wheeling overhead, and wondering, with a sick dread, where in the world Sarah might be.
He had returned shortly after eight o'clock, let himself into the room and found Natasha not on the chair by the window, as she had been when he'd left, but curled up on the other single bed. The room was still, with only the dull murmur of voices down the corridor breaking the silence. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, a curiously childlike position, her hair half covered her face, and she was frowning, even in sleep. On the desk, even at this hour, her phone flashed with silenced messages. He considered checking them, in case Sarah had decided to call, but the thought of her waking and finding him violating her privacy stopped him. Instead he showered, did his best to freshen up with the lather-free hotel soap, then made his way downstairs to breakfast, where Cowboy John had apparently been availing himself of the facilities for some time.
'So what's the plan today, chief?' John wiped up a pool of egg with the corner of fried bread.
'I haven't a clue.'
'Well . . . I been thinking and I'd lay money on its she's round here somewhere. That girl ain't never been nowhere, not as long as I've know her. She can't swim the darn horse to France. So, the way I see it, she'll either find somewhere to leave him and go to France on foot, in which case someone could hang out by the ticket office, or she'll work out pretty quickly that she's stuck, and stay around here while she thinks up what to do next.'
'I can't imagine her leaving the horse.' Mac thought back to their abbreviated stay in Kent.
John grinned. 'My thoughts precisely, my man. So she's gotta get here and stay here likely as not. So let's not call the cops just yet. All we gotta do is make sure we got all the bases covered. Ring round the stables, ask hotels to check for any kids signing in using Natasha's credit card.'
Mac sank back in his chair. 'You make it sound simple.'
'Best plans usually are, and unless you got an alternative . . .'
Natasha appeared at the table. Her hair was damp and she seemed wary, as if she might be criticised for being the last up.
'Here.' Mac pulled out a chair. 'You want some coffee?'
'I didn't mean to sleep late. You should have woken me.'
'I thought you could do with the rest.' He saw the faintest flash of something pass across her face, saw her try to hide it. How easily an innocent remark could be misconstrued when every conversation was loaded with history.
'Your phone,' she said, handing it to him. 'You left it in your room. Your girlfriend's been calling.'
'Probably about a job I'd lined up for this morning . . .' he began, but she had already left the table for the buffet.
John leant forward. 'I been thinking something else.'
Mac was barely listening. She was standing by the bread basket, shaking her head as she spoke rapidly into her mobile.
'We may be worrying too much.'
Mac turned back to the table.
'Her old man. He trained that horse pretty good, better than any horse I've ever seen, and I been around horses a long time.'
'So?'
'She's safe with him.'
'Safe with who?' Natasha sat down, a piece of toast clenched between her teeth.
'The horse. John thinks she's safe with him.'
Natasha put the toast on her plate. 'So it's like Champion the Wonder Horse? It'll fight off attacking snakes? Warn of approaching Injuns?'
Cowboy John tipped his hat back and glared at her. He turned pointedly towards Mac. 'I mean she can outrun things, situations she don't like. And a lot of people are intimidated by horses. They're goin' to leave her alone, people who might otherwise feel quite happy approachin' a little girl out by herself.' He swigged his coffee. 'In my eyes she's a damn sight safer on that horse than she would be without him.'
Natasha drank some juice. 'Or she could be thrown from it. Or fall under it. Or be attacked by someone who wants to steal it.'
John eyed her warily. 'Boy, you're a cheerful soul. I can see why you're a lawyer.'
The young waitress was lingering by their table. Mac smiled and held up his mug. As she walked away, he caught Natasha's eye on him. It was not a friendly look.
'I think Mac would rather I'd been a waitress.'
'What the hell's that supposed to mean?'
'It means,' she directed her comments to John, 'that he was one of those men who used to say how much he liked smart women. Until "smart" came to mean "complicated" and "wised-up", at which point he decided he liked twenty-two-year-old waitresses and models instead.' She flushed.
'Yo' sayin' there's somethin' wrong with that?' John chuckled.
Mac took refuge in his coffee. 'Perhaps I just found it easier to be around people who weren't angry with me all the time.'
That had got her. He saw her colour, and felt curiously ashamed.
John rose stiffly from the table. 'Well, you two lovebirds sure have reminded me why I stayed single. If you want to sort out a plan of action I'm goin' to brush my teeth. I'll be down and ready in five.'
They watched him saunter across the restaurant. Natasha chewed her toast. 'I'm sorry,' she said, into her plate. 'I shouldn't have--'
'Tash?'
She looked up at him.
'Can we call a truce? Just till we find her? I find this all . . . a bit exhausting.'
There was just the faintest flash of anger. He could see it, an unspoken 'Exhausting? You think this is my fault?'
'You're right,' she said. 'Like I said, I'm sorry.'
Across the dining room John had doffed his hat at the waitress. Mac watched his courtly bow. 'Okay. What's the plan? Because I haven't got one.'
'She can't get far,' Natasha said. 'I vote we give her till . . . four o'clock? If we haven't found her by then, okay, we call the cops.'
Natasha and Cowboy John sat on a bench outside the ticket office, their heads tucked low into their jackets in an attempt to shield themselves from the wind as the gulls shrieked above them. They had rung around most of the south of England that morning, from the two hotel rooms, and then, fidgety with cabin fever and anxiety, had come to meet Mac outdoors. Time had crept by, every hour with no sighting of Sarah adding to a growing unease. They sat outside the bleak Portakabin, watching the steady stream of foot passengers disembark from coaches, coming to buy tickets or simply to use the lavatories. Periodically, Ben would call up with some query, often from Richard, and she would shout the answer, her voice lifting against the sea breeze. Periodically Cowboy John stood, walked up and down the exposed stretch of tarmac and smoked impassively, occasionally lifting a slender hand to pin down his hat.
'I don't like this,' he said, gazing out towards the sea. 'This ain't Sarah.'
She barely heard him. She was thinking about what Linda had said when she'd asked if Conor had stuck up for her at the previous night's partners' meetin
g. 'He did try,' she had said, in a voice that suggested he hadn't tried very hard. 'Funnily enough, it was Harrington who really stuck up for you. In a conference call. I . . . um . . . happened to be listening in. He said your strategy had been . . . innovative, that going when you did would make no difference to the case.' She had seemed surprised that Natasha wasn't more pleased by this news.
The morning in court had gone well. Richard had quizzed the family doctor, and Harrington had quizzed the forensic accountant, skewering Mr Persey's claims of financial loss. He had been so shaken, Ben said, that Harrington claimed afterwards he would be surprised if they couldn't reach some kind of deal the following day. Natasha told him that was great, trying to ignore the envy and loss it invoked in her.
Mac was coming towards them now, clapping his hands, the hair at the front of his head blown upright by the wind. Watching him made her conscious of her creased suit, the slightly stale scent of her blouse. Her feet ached from walking around the town in her court shoes. She would have to buy herself a change of clothes if they didn't find Sarah soon.
'No sign?'
Natasha shook her head. 'Nobody remembers seeing a horse. But they said it would have been different staff in the ticket office last night. And they wouldn't let us see the passenger lists - data-protection laws.'
Mac swore softly under his breath. 'Nothing from the credit-card company?'
'That doesn't mean anything. Sometimes it takes a few hours for it to be processed.'
They were running out of ideas. And in the absence of any firm plan, the urgency of the previous day had slowly seeped away, to be replaced by a strange melancholy.
The day dragged on. They split, and took it in turns to drive or walk around Dover, or stay in the hotel room and ring their way through the telephone directory. A sweetshop owner on Castle Street swore she had seen a girl on a horse the previous evening but could offer no more information. Mac, increasingly frustrated, stopped people on the street, shop-owners, ferry-workers. Cowboy John retreated to his hotel room, rang the hotels they had rung the previous evening, just in case, and occasionally fell asleep. Natasha fielded more calls from work, explained that, no, she was not going to be back by tonight after all, and walked the damp streets of Dover, fighting an encroaching sense of despair.
They agreed to meet at six in a pub on the seafront. Natasha had wanted to eat in the hotel, but John had said if he spent one more minute in that sanitised hell-hole he'd go stir crazy. The pub, untouched by the vagaries of fashion, was steeped in the odour of beer and old cigarettes. On sitting down he seemed to relax. 'Now this is more like it,' he kept saying, patting the battered velour seats as if he'd found a home from home.
Natasha waited until the men went to the bar before she dialled the number. She sat down, pressing her other hand to her ear to drown the noise of the television that blared sports results above her.
It took him eight rings to answer. She wondered whether he had seen who was calling and been unable to decide whether or not to pick up.
'Conor?'
'Yup.'
'I just wondered how you were.'
'Have you found her?'
'No.'
'Where are you?'
'Dover. She's definitely come this way but we can't locate her.' She wished, almost as soon as she had said it, that she had omitted 'we'.
'Right.'
There was a lengthy silence. Natasha glanced behind her at Mac chatting to the barmaid, perhaps explaining what he and John were doing there. She saw the girl raise her eyebrows and shake her head. She had witnessed this response so many times over the past twenty-four hours that she didn't need to hear the words.
'Conor?'
'Yup.'
'I just wondered . . .' She ran her fingers through her hair. 'I wanted to make sure we were okay. I hated leaving things like that.'
A short delay before he replied. 'You wanted to make sure we were okay?'
'I'm sorry I had to go off like that, but you must understand that I couldn't just leave it all to Mac.'
She heard, over the sound of the television, his breathing. 'You just don't get it, Hotshot, do you?'
'I explained to you about the job. I hear Harrington was great in court today. Me not being there--'
'No. You don't get it.' His voice was softer now.
'Get what?'
'Not once, Natasha, did you ask. Not once, when you were about to throw up your whole life for this thing did you think to ask me to help you.'
'What?'
'You didn't even consider asking me, did you? What does that say about us?'
Mac was laughing with the girl now.
'I didn't think you'd--' she said. 'Given what you--'
'No. You didn't think to ask. I don't know what's going on with you and Mac, but I don't want to be involved with someone who can't even be honest about her own feelings.'
'That's not fair. I--'
But he had already rung off.
Sarah was waving a piece of bread in the air, oblivious to the fact that her high English voice was attracting the attention of French diners at the surrounding tables. 'They're like this kind of brotherhood, you know. They have black caps and black uniforms . . .'
'Ah. I knew it would be about fashion,' Thom teased.
Sarah ignored him. '. . . and they can get their horses to do absolutely anything. They'll jump a chair about a foot wide. You know how hard it is to jump a chair?'
'I can imagine.'
'Papa always said that when he came to Le Cadre Noir it was the first time in his life he had felt understood. Like there were just a few other people in the world who spoke his language and all of them lived in that one place.'
'I know that feeling.'
'But they worked so hard. He would start riding at six in the morning, and sometimes go on all day, working on different horses, different movements. Some were at the basse ecole stage - that's more basic - and some at haute ecole. The horses all specialise in different movements. He had this favourite horse that specialised in capriole. You know what that is?'
'No.'
She blew out her cheeks. 'It's one of the most difficult things you can ask a horse to do. It comes from a battle manoeuvre and dates back thousands of years. The horse leaps up, using its back legs, and then when it's, like, suspended in mid-air, it kicks out behind. I used to think about what it would be like to be on a battlefield and you go to stab someone and then this horse is up and - yah!' She motioned the kicking out of his back hooves.
'Pretty scary.'
'Well, it must have worked or they wouldn't have kept doing it for so long.'
She had insisted on paying. He hadn't felt entirely comfortable about his supper being financed by a stolen credit card, but she had assured him she would pay back every penny when Papa was better, and the thing about Sarah was that you couldn't help but believe her.
When they had arrived in France and made their way down the autoroute she had become more and more animated, so that it was hard to reconcile the chatty, confident girl with the silent, wary child of the previous evening.
'Papa's friend John always jokes that what we do are circus tricks, but there are no tricks. You can only understand it when you see it. The horses do it because they love to. It's about training them to want to do it. That way when they perform there's no strain, no tension. And for that reason they're brought on really slowly, bit by bit, so that they understand how to do their job without resisting.' She took a mouthful of chocolate mousse. 'Is that how they train them in racing?'
Thom nearly choked on his coffee. 'No. Not really. No.'
The door to the service-station cafe opened and closed, allowing in another French family. They watched, eating, as the mother spoke to the two children, pointing out the things they were allowed to have from the buffet.
'So how long have you and your granddaddy been on your own?'
'Four years.'
'You never stayed in touch with your mum?'
> 'She died before Nana.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I'm not. I don't mean to sound horrible but . . . she was the kind of person who causes problems. I was really young when she left me. I miss my nana, though.' Sarah tucked her feet under her and broke off a piece of chocolate.
'Me, my nana and papa were really happy. People don't believe me when I say I don't miss my mum, but I never did. Not one day. Everything from that time, when I was with her, feels bad. I don't remember much, but I remember being scared. When my grandparents took me I never once felt scared. One day,' she said, gesturing at the French countryside, 'I'm going to bring Papa back here. We were meant to visit in November, you see. He really wanted to. But then he had his stroke and everything got . . .' She was silenced, then appeared to compose herself. 'When he hears I'm there, I think it will help him. When he's fit he can come over. He'll be happy.'
'You're pretty sure you can make all this happen.'
'My grandfather was one of the best riders in France. He could make a horse float in the air, do things it didn't know were possible.' She put the chocolate into her mouth. 'All I'm trying to do is ride a few miles.'
Tom looked at her, this child, her stowaway horse. She made it sound like perfect sense.
Natasha flipped her phone shut and swore. It was dark and the three of them were driving aimlessly around Dover, having just returned from a cashpoint situated in a sleepy, industrial area of the town, full of car workshops and nondescript low office blocks. This, according to the credit-card company, was the last place that money had been withdrawn. To be so close, and yet to have no sign of her, was steadily ratcheting up the tension in the little car. No one mentioned the earlier promise to call the police: they knew she must be close by. That little piece of plastic proved it. But why would a girl on a horse end up in a place like this?
Natasha turned in her seat to face Cowboy John. 'Tell me something, John. How did Sarah's grandfather end up living where he did? It wasn't . . . Well, it's not the nicest place, is it?'
'You think he set out to live somewhere like that? You think that was what he wanted from his life?'
Mac shrugged. 'We don't know anything about him other than that he seems to have raised a child who can defy gravity.'
John settled back in his seat with an almost palpable air of contentment. 'Okay. I'll tell you about Henri. He came from a pretty rough and ready background. Farming people, somewhere in the south. There were problems with his dad, and when Henri was young he got out fast as he could and joined the military.'