‘I’ve made a new friend recently,’ she says, moving the bridle to a different peg, her back to him. ‘Someone … a girl who helps out at the stables.’ Considering most of the girls who help out at the stables are aged eleven to fifteen this is a huge lie. The only person around her age is the instructor, Mel, but she’s married with two teenage sons and, on the odd occasion Olivia has suggested going for a drink after work, Mel would throw her a horrified look and say she had to get back for ‘the boys’。
‘Really? What’s her name?’
‘Charlotte.’ She plucks a name out of thin air. She’s always liked it. She thought if she had a daughter that’s what she would call her.
‘Where are you going?’ He sounds so suspicious she almost wants to laugh. Does he think she’s really going out with a guy? He has a boys’ night out, as he calls it, every week and goodness knows where he was or who he was with last night, despite his assurances he was with Stan. He’d disappeared around the time that Jenna was attacked. She inhales deeply. She immediately dispels this thought. Wesley wouldn’t hurt anyone. Would he? But she knows better than most what a person is capable of, if pushed.
For some inexplicable reason her eyes fill with tears. She stares ahead at the racks of saddles on the far wall. This is the life she deserves, she thinks.
This time twenty years ago she was going about her life, happy, innocent, unaware that it was about to change. She was getting ready for her weekly girls’ night out, dressed up in her knee-high boots and checked mini skirt, her hair streaked a beautiful honey colour and heavily layered around her plump, youthful face. She was excited about the future, her new relationship with Wesley, her best friends. She was excited about trying out the new nightclub in the next town that has now long ago closed down. Her life had been filled with expectation, with colour, but now it was black-and-white, a pencil drawing that was fading slowly over time. She was greying at the temples, she’d put on a stone and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt truly excited about something. How she wished she really did have a friend called Charlotte. A bubbly, fun friend, who would encourage her to wear something inappropriate and drag her out to nightclubs and encourage her to get pissed and flail about with abandon in the middle of a sticky dance floor.
What would her life have been like if Sally, Tamzin and Katie hadn’t disappeared twenty years ago tonight? Would they all be married now? Mothers? Would they all have stayed friends or would they have moved away, moved on, grown up?
‘Liv? Have you gone off into Dreamland again? I asked where you were going.’
‘I don’t know yet. Look, I have to get on now.’ She turns and faces him at last. ‘I’ve still got a bit of work to do before I finish for the day.’
‘What am I supposed to do tonight?’ he whines. ‘They were my friends too, you know.’ No, they fucking weren’t, she wants to shout. Sally couldn’t stand you! But she presses her lips together. She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. God knows why when he’s always hurting hers. ‘I thought we’d spend the night together.’
‘Well, you thought wrong, then, didn’t you? I didn’t say we would. And after you flounced off at lunchtime I didn’t think you’d want to see me today.’
There’s a shocked pause. ‘Is this about last night?’ he says, in a strangled voice.
She sighs. ‘No, of course not.’
‘You’ve been funny with me ever since. I didn’t like the way you spoke to me earlier either,’ he says. ‘You can’t do this when we live together, you know.’
‘Do what?’
He thrusts his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘Just go out gallivanting. That’s not what couples do.’
‘Oh, really? So, no more boys’ nights out for you, then? Is that what you mean?’
He hesitates. ‘Well, no … that’s different. We get together to watch football. It’s not like we’re clubbing or chatting up girls.’
She closes her eyes. She suddenly feels bone tired. She realizes in that moment that her injuries have helped Wesley keep her on a lead. He’s stifling her and she wants to run, run, run.
‘Wes,’ she sighs, ‘it’s one night. We can’t live in each other’s pockets. I didn’t question why you had to run off so quickly last night –’
‘I told you. Stan needed help. Woman trouble.’ Not one of his friends is in a couple as far as she’s aware. ‘It’s never bothered you before.’
‘Well, it bothers me now.’
He laughs nastily. ‘Oh, I see, I get it. You’ve just used me for all these years, is that it? And now you’re stronger, now your leg is getting better, you don’t need me any more. Well, fuck you, Olivia. Fuck you.’
‘Wes …’
He storms out. She doesn’t follow him.
She is still in the tack room, slumped on the bench, when her mum walks in. The fading light casts shadows along the tiled floor.
‘What are you doing sitting in here alone?’ asks her mother, when she spots Olivia. She’s holding a red grooming kit with a hoof pick sticking out of the top. She places it on a shelf along with the others. Olivia hadn’t known her mother was back. She’d picked her up from the standing stones earlier and dropped her home, then said she’d had to go to the cash-and-carry to get supplies. Her mother has been gone for ages. ‘Have you brought Sky back in from the field?’
‘Yes, she’s in the stables.’ Olivia brushes down her jodhpurs. She must stink of horses. The soles of her riding boots are caked with mud. ‘And the vet came earlier and sorted out Pickles.’
Her mother turns to her, her face softening. ‘It’s a hard day, I know.’
Olivia doesn’t say anything. Instead she plucks the horse hair from her jodhpurs.
‘I love you so much, you know that, don’t you?’
Olivia’s head shoots up in surprise. Her mum doesn’t often profess endearments. ‘Of course. And I love you too.’
Her mother comes and sits beside her, reaches over and pats her knee awkwardly. ‘I like Wesley, you know I do, but I’m worried you’re not happy.’
It’s on the tip of her tongue to blurt it all out, to confide in her mother – her doubts about Wesley, her unhappiness. And to ask the questions she’s always been afraid to. But once she says it all she’ll never be able to unsay it. It will be out there, in the ether.
‘Don’t you ever worry that our lives are just so … small?’ she asks instead.
Her mother fidgets next to her. ‘Small?’
‘It’s always been the two of us. And then Wesley. You’ve never really had a relationship apart from my father, and you said you were only together for a short time.’
Her mum laughs suddenly. ‘What? Of course I had other boyfriends before that, and since you were born. I just didn’t advertise it. You were always my priority.’
‘And friends. You never see them any more either. Since … well, since the accident.’
Her mother closes her eyes. ‘How could I? Let’s not rake all this up now, love.’ She presses her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and sighs. Then she seems to rally herself. ‘Come on.’ She gets up and holds out a hand. ‘Why don’t we watch a film tonight, a feel-good movie? While You Were Sleeping is on at nine.’