The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,70
on her own and she, well, she never really got over any of it. We moved to London, gave up horses and things were never the same again.’
Gabriel was sitting up now, next to me. His face looked oddly naked without his glasses and he was looking down at his knees so I couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Fourteen,’ he said, almost wonderingly. ‘You were only fourteen.’
‘My mother never let me forget that it should have been me.’ And here was the widening of my throat that paradoxically stopped the words from coming and I had to swallow hard and screw up my eyes. ‘We shouldn’t have swapped horses, and it should have been me that got hit on Kelly.’
Gabriel made a noise like someone startled, a sharp indrawing of breath. ‘Your mother said that? To you?’
‘She was upset and angry. We’d had to sell up and move and give the horses back to their owners and it was all because of me. And I’d had everything, she’d given up everything to try to turn me into an eventer as good as my dad, and it had all gone, in that one afternoon. Because I wasn’t a good enough rider to stop a horse from trying to turn for home.’ A couple of tears escaped from my rigid control. ‘I loved my dad, but I didn’t want to do what he did. I was never good enough, not strong enough or driven enough. I was a decent rider but I didn’t care about being successful – that was all Mum. She’d always wanted to be an event rider, but she had a weak back, she couldn’t ride the big fences and—’ I stopped. ‘I loved my dad,’ I said again, my voice trailing into a pitiful little sob that made me hate myself just a little bit more. ‘And you had to know, Gabriel.’
In one swift movement he put his arms around me and held me in the new silence that was broken only by the rain weeping down the glass.
I didn’t cry. I’d cried myself to a standstill all those years ago, unheard. My mother had been too deep in her own grief to console me, and there hadn’t been anyone else. The stable girls had all had to be let go. I remembered several of them crying at leaving their favourite horses, and I’d hidden my grief by crying in sympathy with them. Now there were no tears left. So I rested my forehead against Gabriel’s shoulder and let him take the weight of my sorrow.
The wind rattled the windows and the smell of charred wood puffed out of the now-cold log-burner as the breeze came down the chimney.
‘I have to go over to Warram today,’ I said, my voice slightly muffled by Gabriel. ‘I’m seeing Karen and taking Poppy her boots.’ The prosaic nature of the forthcoming day was good; it quietened me. Kept me nailed to the here and now and from sliding back into those days of grief and loss or, even worse, the time before. Dad, always cheerful and upbeat, training hard, and Mum – well. Always on my back about something: how I didn’t need to study, I needed to ride. I should be working on my strength, on my endurance, on dealing with the more difficult horses instead of riding the steady workers. I should be in the manège, getting a good collected trot, a round outline, a good balance.
‘Great. We can take the pumpkins too.’
But he kept hold of me. Somehow the feel of his warm body and the regularity of his breathing was reassuring. There was a steadiness to Gabriel, I realised. Not the escapist ‘money solves everything’ of Luc, but a more grounded feel.
‘Do you think I’ll be legal to drive? That wine was awfully, um, effective.’
He laughed and the rock of his shoulder under my cheek made me smile. ‘I’ve always suspected Mary of putting something extra in her wine. Don’t know what it is, but it’s had some very odd effects over the years.’
Gradually, cautiously, we unwound ourselves as though we were embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. The kiss, that had been something, but it could have meant nothing. Me telling Gabriel, well, it moved us on to another level, whether he knew it or not, and I didn’t know where we went from here. Apart from over to Warram, armed with two carved pumpkins and a pair of high-heeled boots.
14
We drove down to Warram Bay,