by T J Stimson
Maddie fell in love with horses the way most women fell in love with men. Ironically, she’d never been a horsey child; Sarah had never had the kind of money that supported ponies and riding lessons and gymkhanas, and even if she had, it wasn’t the kind of posh, braying world they mixed in. But when she was eleven, her mother had dragged her along to a fundraiser at a local stable yard for people who’d been severely injured in riding accidents; not the most auspicious introduction to the equestrian world. She’d been absolutely terrified: of the stamping and whinnying, the huge, iron-clad feet that looked like they could crush her in a heartbeat, of the horses’ sheer size.
But then one of the stable girls had given her a carrot and led her over to a vast, orange sofa of horseflesh called Paul. ‘Hold your hand flat,’ the girl had instructed, as the horse snorted and nuzzled her shoulder. ‘He won’t bite.’
Paul had bared his great yellow teeth as if laughing at her. Maddie had frozen, too petrified to move, as his huge velvety nose snuffled against her hand. With the delicacy of a dowager selecting a cucumber sandwich, he’d taken the carrot and whinnied with pleasure, butting against her arm as if in thanks.
Maddie had gazed up at him in rapture, her heart swelling with joy. He liked her! He liked her!
It had been the start of a love that’d had no equal until Emily was born.
Maddie had spent her teenage years in jodhpurs, with straw in her hair and dirt under her nails, mucking out stables at a nearby horse sanctuary in return for riding lessons. At one point, she’d dreamed of being a jockey. She was the right height and had the necessary slim, wiry build, and over time, she acquired the technical skills, but eventually she’d had to accept she just didn’t have the killer instinct. It took strength and guts to hold on to 1200 pounds of horseflesh thundering along at forty miles an hour. Horses could smell your fear, and she’d never quite mastered hers. Instead, she’d got a degree in animal welfare and started working full-time at the horse sanctuary. Later, after Benjamin’s death, she’d used her small inheritance from her father to buy out the owners, two retired vets, when it’d become too much for them to manage.
Finn had been her first rescue horse. He’d obviously been viciously abused as well as shamefully neglected, and when he’d arrived at the sanctuary, he’d had no idea how to respond to affection, backing away in fear when she tried to stroke his nose. He’d circled his stable endlessly, grabbing mouthfuls of hay and spitting them out over the door and biting his own shoulders. She’d had no idea horses could self-harm until then.
It’d taken months of persistent, loving patience to calm him enough to even get a saddle on him. But, in the end, he’d become her greatest success story. She always put her most nervous riders on Finn. He was like a huge armchair. He understood their fear, because of what he’d been through himself.
Izzy led Finn into his box. ‘Mads, I need to talk to you,’ she said, as she came back outside and bolted the stable door behind her.
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Maddie said, with a lightness she didn’t feel.
‘Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think we should consider selling the lower meadow,’ Izzy said, as they crossed the yard. ‘Our cheque for feed this month bounced again. The south stables are leaking, and if we don’t fix the roof soon, it’s going to come down. Bitsy hasn’t been paid for two months, and I know you haven’t taken a penny in almost a year. We have vet bills, hay bills, the rates are due.’ She stopped as they reached the small Portakabin that served as the sanctuary’s offices. ‘We’re sinking, Maddie.’
Maddie frowned. ‘If we start selling off bits of land to pay bills, we’ll end up with nothing left. We’ll have another fundraiser. I’ll talk to my mother, see if she can help.’
‘That might see us through this crisis, but what about the next one?’ Izzy said. ‘We need to increase our donor base and find new sponsors, so we can get some kind of regular income coming in. Otherwise, we’re just putting our fingers in the dyke.’
Maddie knew her friend meant well. Izzy and Bitsy loved every blade of grass, every stone and split-rail fence of the sanctuary as much as she did. Like her, they considered it their second home. They’d been at the sanctuary even longer than she had and she’d known them since she’d first started mucking out stables there as a teenager. It was Izzy who’d suggested a degree in animal welfare when her mother had insisted she go to college, and Bitsy who’d encouraged her to buy the sanctuary when the vets could no longer manage it, promising to stay on at the stables as long as Maddie needed her. Izzy had even given Lucas a couple of riding lessons, before they’d concluded, by mutual assent, that horses weren’t for him. She and Bitsy had organised Maddie’s hen weekend on the Isle of Wight with Jayne and Lucas’s younger sister, Candace, where they’d all got outrageously drunk. Sixty-two-year-old Bitsy had been arrested for indecent exposure after she’d dropped her trousers and peed behind a postbox; somehow, Candace had sweet-talked the arresting officer, a baby-faced policeman barely out of his teens and a full head shorter than she, into dropping the charges in return for her phone number. Bitsy and Izzy were her family. They knew the sanctuary meant the world to her, as it did to them. Losing even a part of it would break all their hearts.
Izzy would rather cut off her own arm than sell the lower meadow. If she was suggesting it now, they must be in real trouble.
Maddie leafed through the bills on her desk after Izzy had left. Overdue. Three months in arrears. Immediate payment is required.
Izzy was right. They couldn’t go on like this. Lucas had told her the same thing. And he didn’t just want her to sell the lower meadow; he’d actually asked her to consider selling the sanctuary itself.
She understood his reasoning: the sanctuary was a financial black hole that had long since swallowed every bit of her legacy, and more besides. As Izzy said, she hadn’t paid herself in more than a year. If she sold the land to a developer, she’d make enough for Lucas to buy into a partnership with his architectural firm and enable him to take on some of the projects he longed to do which were currently no more than a pipe dream.
But the sanctuary wasn’t just a hobby or even a good cause, not to her. Maddie felt hurt that Lucas could even ask her to sell it. The horses were her family. She loved Finn second only to Lucas and the children. Of course she didn’t want to stamp on Lucas’s dreams, but closing the sanctuary to facilitate them was inconceivable. It’d be like selling Noah to a baby trader!
She’d sacrifice a kidney rather than let one single horse go.
Chapter 6
Friday 11.30 a.m.
Maddie’s hair smelled of vomit, and her jeans of urine. She’d already changed her T-shirt three times before giving up and accepting the noxious stains as the scars of battle. Her nails were caked in pink calamine lotion, and she strongly suspected the suspicious marks on her socks had something to do with Jacob’s foul-smelling nappy earlier.
‘Of course it’s not a bad time,’ she lied, opening the front door wider. ‘Please, come in.’
Candace thrust a Tupperware box at her as she came in. ‘I made scones. They’re a bit burnt, but you can kind of scrape that off.’
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Maddie apologised, clearing a heap of dirty washing off a kitchen chair so Candace could sit down.
‘You should see my place,’ Candace said cheerfully, lobbing a pair of dirty knickers onto the pile in Maddie’s arms. ‘Lucas told me Jacob’s come down with the pox, too. I thought you might need some moral support.’
Maddie shoved the dirty clothes into the washing machine and jammed the door shut. ‘You have no idea. Your brother practically ran screaming from the room when Emily came out in spots. You know what he’s like about getting sick. I’m amazed he hasn’t made us fumigate the place.’
Candace picked up a piece of leftover Marmite toast from one of the kid’s plates and took a huge bite. ‘I was a bit surprised when Lucas’s office said he was home today,’ she said through a m
outhful of crumbs. ‘I thought maybe you’d gone down with it too, that’s why I came round.’
‘That’s sweet of you, but I’m fine. I’ve already had it.’ Maddie looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know who you spoke to at his office, but they’ve got their wires crossed. Lucas has a meeting in Poole today, and then a late work dinner. He won’t be back till tomorrow morning.’
Candace snorted. ‘That sounds more like my brother. If you were relying on him for the “in sickness” bit of things, you’re out of luck.’ She took another bite of toast. ‘Are you all right, Mads? You look exhausted.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me.’
‘Sorry, darling. But you do look a bit ropey.’
‘That’s nothing to how I feel.’ Maddie collapsed onto a chair. ‘Thank God Noah hasn’t gone down with it yet, though it’s probably only a matter of time. Jacob’s been throwing up all day – this is the third set of laundry I’ve done today.’
‘How’s Emily?’
‘Fine, apart from the itching. I had to cut her nails right back to stop her scratching.’
‘The older you are when you get chickenpox, the worse it is,’ Candace shuddered. ‘I was only five when I had it, and I was hardly ill at all, but Lucas was fourteen and he had an awful time. I remember Aunt Dot had to tie mittens on him in the end to stop him scratching himself to pieces.’ She lowered her voice and grinned conspiratorially. ‘Apparently he even had spots on his willy.’
Maddie laughed. She loved Candace; she might be a little tactless at times, but she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. At thirty-one, she was only a year younger than Maddie, but she seemed to have settled into a happy spinster groove, content to play the eccentric maiden aunt to her niece and nephews. It was unfortunate: the same strong, masculine features that made Lucas so ruggedly handsome were significantly less flattering on his sister. She must have been six feet and was built like a rugby prop forward. But beneath it all, she was emotionally fragile. She’d never managed to maintain a serious relationship and Maddie wondered if it was another legacy from the terrible tragedy that had shaped Candace’s childhood: the fear of letting anyone get too close.
Lucas had introduced her to his sister just a couple of weeks after they’d started dating. The three of them had met at a rooftop bar in London overlooking St Paul’s, near where Candace worked as an IT consultant, and Maddie remembered feeling sick with nerves as she’d got into the lift with him, terrified that if Candace didn’t like her, it would be the end of everything. Lucas himself had been uncharacteristically subdued and Maddie had assumed it was because he, too, was anxious she met with his sister’s approval. It was only later she’d found out he’d been far more worried what she’d think of Candace.
The evening had gone well, although she’d been a little taken aback by quite how much vodka Candace had managed to put away. But it’d been a Friday night and Candace had been celebrating landing an important new client. They’d left her at the bar around ten, waiting for some friends, and Maddie had fallen happily asleep in Lucas’s arms, thankful she’d passed the biggest test of their relationship so far.
At 3 a.m. the next morning, Lucas had been awakened by a phone call from the police. Candace had been arrested after drunkenly crashing her Mini Cooper through the plate glass window of a car showroom in Berkeley Square. She’d been more than three and a half times over the legal limit.
She’d lost her licence and her job. It was the start of what was to become an all-too-familiar pattern. Candace would promise the moon and stars, swearing to cut back on her drinking, and for a while she’d succeed, before falling off the wagon in spectacular fashion. Lucas had paid for her to go to rehab several times, until finally, four years ago, Candace had got her life back on track and moved down to Sussex to be near them. Maddie didn’t hold her problems against her. She knew better than anyone the demons that were fought in private.
There was a loud wail from upstairs, and Maddie wearily shoved back her chair. ‘Sorry, that’s Jacob. I’d better go to him before he upsets Emily. She’s hypersensitive to noise at the moment. She hasn’t even wanted to watch any television, because she says it’s all too loud.’
‘She must be ill. Well, I won’t keep you, darling.’ Candace stood and enveloped Maddie in one of her brother’s bearlike hugs. ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Happy to mind the little buggers if you need a break.’
Noah suddenly started crying too, woken by his brother’s yells. Maddie almost burst into tears herself.
‘Let me see to Noah,’ Candace offered. ‘Probably just lost his dummy. You go and sort out Jacob.’
Maddie hesitated.
‘Go on,’ Candace said. ‘I’m not going to drop him or feed him gin.’
Instantly, she felt guilty. Candace had never given her any reason to worry when it came to the children. She might not let her get behind the wheel with them in the car, but Candace had babysat for them numerous times.
‘There’s a clean dummy on the bookcase by the window,’ she said, shrugging off her misgivings. ‘Let me know if he needs changing.’
She followed Candace upstairs and went into Jacob’s room. The little boy was standing up in his cot, arms outstretched to the stuffed dolphin that had fallen on the floor. Maddie gave it back to him and settled him down, stroking his back until he fell asleep again. She could hear Candace singing to Noah through the thin walls. Led Zeppelin, if she wasn’t mistaken.
Her mobile phone suddenly buzzed in her jeans pocket. Quickly, she tiptoed out of the room to take it.
‘I got your email,’ her accountant, Bill O’Connor, said, without preamble. ‘Is now a good time?’
There was no such thing as a good time today, but Maddie headed downstairs to the tiny study she and Lucas shared. ‘What are your thoughts, Bill? I know the figures aren’t great, but we’re behind on the Gift Aid paperwork, so if you take that into account—’
‘This isn’t about that,’ Bill interrupted. ‘You asked me to look at a second mortgage on your house.’
‘It’d just be for a couple of years,’ Maddie said quickly. ‘I’m sure we can get back in the black soon. Izzy’s got some wonderful fundraisers planned, and she’s talking to a couple of big donors, so it’s not like I’m pouring good money after bad, I do have a plan, if we can just get enough to tide us over—’
Her accountant cut across her babble. ‘Putting aside the wisdom of using your personal funds to prop up the business, I have another concern. Whose name is the house in?’
Maddie was taken aback by the question. ‘Lucas and I bought it together. It’s in both our names. Why?’
‘So, both your signatures would be required to take out a second mortgage?’
‘I suppose so, but I’m sure Lucas would agree—’
‘I’m not worried about Lucas agreeing, but you already have a second mortgage, Maddie.’
The front door banged suddenly. Through the window, she watched Candace lever herself into the tiny front seat of her sports car and shoot out of the drive with a spurt of gravel. She was a little surprised her sister-in-law hadn’t bothered to say goodbye, but Candace was always a bit unpredictable.
She switched her phone to the other ear. ‘Sorry, Bill. What did you just say?’
‘A second mortgage was leveraged against your house just over six months ago.’
‘That can’t be right. You must be confusing it with—’
‘I’m not confusing it with anything. I’m looking at the paperwork right now. Eighty thousand pounds, using the house as collateral. I have your signature right here. At least,’ he added ominously, ‘I assume it’s your signature.’
Maddie sat down abruptly. For once, she was speechless.
‘Maddie,’ Bill said heavily. ‘You’re my client. I have to consider your interests first. I hate to ask you this, but did Lucas take this loan out without your knowledge?’
‘Of course not!’
‘So you did know?’
&nbs
p; She hesitated. Did she? Her memory hadn’t been exactly reliable recently. But she found it hard to believe she could have forgotten something this big. Eighty thousand pounds! A loan like that didn’t happen overnight. They’d have discussed it, and signed paperwork. Her memory was bad, but it wasn’t that bad. She couldn’t possibly have forgotten everything.
But Lucas would never have taken it without telling her, she was equally certain about that. Five thousand, perhaps; he’d lent Candace quite a bit of money to help get her new IT consultancy off the ground last year and it was possible he might have borrowed a bit more without running it past Maddie first. But eighty thousand pounds? It simply wasn’t possible.
Why would he even need that kind of money in the first place?
Chapter 7
Saturday 2.00 a.m.
Maddie couldn’t sleep. The first night since he was born that Noah hadn’t been up with colic and she was awake anyway, tossing and turning in bed, wishing Lucas wasn’t away tonight of all nights, so she could simply ask him, face-to-face, about the loan.
She needed to look him in the eye when she asked him why he’d done it. Because there was no getting around the fact that her signature on the mortgage application form had been forged. She’d seen it with her own eyes. It was a competent attempt, but the signature on the paperwork Bill had sent her clearly wasn’t hers.
Until now, she’d have said she knew her husband inside out. Maybe not his entire personal history; there was much about his life before they’d met that she didn’t know. But they’d survived some testing challenges in the six years they’d been together and she had a pretty good idea of the mettle and character of the man she’d married. That’d been evident from the day they’d met in the jury box at Lewes Crown Court.