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HETTIE FAILED TO SLEEP that night. She gave up trying and climbed out of the single bed in her childhood room.
She glared at the purple walls painted in her teenage years, the rows of faded rosettes pinned to the wardrobe doors and the clutter of cheap jewellery and make-up on her dressing table. Why was all that shit still here?
The dress she’d worn the day before lay across the back of her chair, she picked it up and shoved it into the bottom of the wardrobe. You’re a total, utter, fuck-up, she grimly reminded herself. As if a reminder was necessary.
Pig had messed on the kitchen floor and prised open a kitchen cupboard. The result, a jumble of chewed pots and upended cleaning products, spread across the room, punctuated by bright flecks of shredded yellow sponge. Hettie sighed as she opened the back door to let the dogs out into the garden. ‘My life in art form, Pig,’ she whispered, as the puppy scuttled past her. ‘What a treat.’
Hettie walked the dogs along the footpath that circled her mum’s housing estate. She frowned at the plastic bottles and cigarette butts that littered its verges. Crossing the football field to reach the track beyond, she steered a route that kept her distant from Draymere land.
She called Grace from her mobile, while she was out of earshot of her mother. ‘Grace, don’t talk, just listen.’ Hettie closed her eyes and fought the tremor that threatened her voice. ‘I’ve done something awful. I did something awful. In South Africa. Alexander found out.’
‘Something awful? No, don’t be silly, what could you have possibly done...’ Grace paused for a moment as she thought it through. ‘Oh no, please tell me you didn’t. Not that. Poor Alexander. Oh Hettie, but you were both so happy yesterday...’
Hearing the drop in Grace’s voice as comprehension struck was hard to bear but felt utterly deserved. Hettie’s throat was dry and tight. She swallowed and struggled on. ‘Yes, I did. I’m only telling you because I’m worried about him. I’m back at Mum’s, and I haven’t seen him since he found out. He was in a state when I left.’
Grace didn’t speak, but the silence spoke for her. Hettie could picture her with her shoulders drooping under the weight of unwelcome news. ‘I’ve got a cheek to ask, but I wonder if James would go and check on him. I wouldn’t be welcome myself...’ A sob closed Hettie’s throat as grief choked off her words. She would never be welcomed by Alexander again.
Grace’s voice was tight and clipped, but not unkind. ‘Of course, I’ll send James over there right now. Oh Hettie, what a pity this is.’
‘I’m so sorry, Grace. Please just make sure he’s okay.’ Hettie ended the phone call abruptly. It was hard to breathe through the lump that was stuck in her chest. She scuffed away the tears that ran down her cheek with a fisted hand.
Traitor’s tears.
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OF COURSE, SHE WOULD have to go back to Draymere. Lockie was there, and she still had to check on the yearlings. Bert wasn’t up to the job yet. Two more shitty ordeals she had to get through today then, because she needed to call Bill Harding too.
She sat on her bed, legs pulled up to her chest. Doris had settled by her feet, but Pig was ferreting under the dressing table. The dogs weren’t meant to be upstairs, but her mum had gone out, and Pig had been driving her mad, barking every time a car drove past on the road outside.
She stared at the phone in her hand. What would she say to Bill? Was she going back to South Africa now that everything had gone tits-up here? At least Cynthia wouldn’t judge, but what about Lockie?
Pig knocked the dustbin over. She got up to scoop the heap of damp tissues back into the bin and picked him up too. It wasn’t his fault he was out of sorts; that was her fault too. Maybe the phone call to Bill would make up her mind for her. She’d lay it on the line and let him decide her future. A cop-out, of course. She rehearsed the conversation in her head: ‘Hey, Bill, I’ve fucked up again! I’ve broken Alexander, and I’m out of money and energy.’
She sniffed back more tears of self-pity, but they just kept coming. Her weakness made her angry. She pushed her face into Pig’s wiry coat, but he squirmed to get away.
She dialled Bill’s number and hung up three times before finally letting it ring through. ‘I’ll say it like it is, Bill. I’m clean out of money, and I’ve split up with Alexander. I’m not looking like such a great prospect right now. So, if you wanted to change your mind, about the tenancy, I’d totally get it.’
‘Well, now, I won’t do that. I’ve seen what you’ve done to the place, and I’m impressed. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you six months rent free for all the improvements, and if you’re not viable then, we’ll think again.’
Hettie blustered through her thanks and hung up the phone just as the tears she’d been choking back overflowed again. Shit. Fuck. Now what?
Her room got stuffy when the sun hit the window, and her sheets were rumpled by broken sleep.
It felt wrong that the sun was still shining. Surely it should be raining and grey. At least the dogs, the horses and Hardacre gave her a reason to get out of bed.
She went downstairs quickly, so her mum didn’t have to deal with whatever Pig had done. If she got up early enough she could get out of the house before Mum came down. It wasn’t that her mum was unsympathetic, quite the opposite really, but her questions and pitying looks were making Hettie feel worse.
The Landy spluttered in the still of the morning. The door wouldn’t shut unless she slammed it, and she worried about the noise that made in the quiet of the street.
Pig yapped in the back. His sharp bark grated on her strung-out nerves, and then she felt even guiltier for being the cause of yet another disruption in his short life. At least Draymere and Hardacre were familiar, and gave him the space to use up some of his boundless energy.
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SHE TIMED HER VISITS to the paddock carefully, when she knew Alexander would be at the practice, and took the back road into Draymere, just in case, so she didn’t have to pass the Hall or the Gatehouse.
Sitting on the gate with a cigarette and watching Lockie as the dogs ran through the grass was the only time she felt anything close to hopeful. She took out her phone and typed a text to Alexander.
I’m sorry but it wasn’t a fling
just a drunken grope
She hesitated before sending it, deleted the second line and tried again.
I’m sorry it wasn’t a fling
It was much less than that
I love you
She deleted ‘I love you’ and almost pressed send, erased all of the text except ‘I’m sorry’ and finally sent the message.
She felt a bit sick.
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HETTIE SWITCHED THE light in the bungalow kitchen on and off and on again. Bless Dave, he’d even replaced the bulbs in here. She wondered if Bill had spoken to him. He’d finished all the jobs on her list this week and more she hadn’t even asked to be done.
She checked her phone as she walked back to the yard. The missed-calls log was growing: Clare and Imogen, several from Grace. People must be talking, word spreading in eager whispers. She knew how it worked. That was the worst thing about villages. Your shit was never yours to deal with on your own.
She couldn’t face speaking to any of them. Thank God she had this place to escape to. And still nothing from Alexander, of course. Hettie dropped her phone back into her pocket.
Thanks to Dave the yard was looking good. It just needed horses now. She pinned back the stable doors to let the air flow through.
Was it reasonable that Alexander hadn’t even replied to her texts? How did that work? One minute he’s saying he loves her, then he’s cutting her off like she’d never existed. But had she ever, for a moment, thought he would be reasonable? She shook her head crossly. Enough wallowing. It wouldn’t get her anywhere, and she was weary of stewing the problem over and over and over...
The show-jumping poles needed sanding down before she could paint them. Only six months to find out if she could do this now.
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SANDPAPER DUST FLOATED onto her jeans. Hettie stretched her shoulders and rested her hands on her hips. An idea was forming. Why shouldn’t she live here too?
The dogs were happier, and she wouldn’t be constantly under her mother’s feet. She was paying the bills anyway, and it would cost less in fuel, which the Landy seemed to drink without giving a thought to her financial predicament.
She took out her phone. Hardacre needed clients, and she wouldn’t fill her stables while she was hiding out here, not talking to anyone. She perched on the pole that rested across the bottom rail of the arena and reached into her back pocket for tobacco. With an unlit rollie wedged between her fingers she typed half a dozen apologetic texts, blaming her workload for failing to answer friends’ calls.
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HETTIE MOVED HER STUFF into the bungalow the following Sunday. It was fusty inside, barren and basic, but she got an odd satisfaction from dragging the mattress she’d borrowed from home into the bedroom and laying it out with her sleeping bag and pillows. She half-covered the green velour sofa with an old throw her mum hadn’t wanted. No heating, and she couldn’t afford to fill the oil tank yet, but the days were still warm enough to take the chill off. There was a fireplace in the living room. She could burn bits of leftover pallet when the nights got colder. She opened the windows in the kitchen and unpacked the cardboard box full of cutlery and china stashed in her mum’s attic since she’d left the cottage at Draymere.
The floor needed a bloody good scrub. She hadn’t worried too much about the state of the bungalow; she hadn’t been planning to use it. At least there wouldn’t be any damage Pig could do in here. The place was already a pigsty. She grimaced at her own pun.
It would do, for now.
She pushed up her sleeves, filled a bucket with soapy water and looked out the grubby window over the sink. At least the outlook was good – to the front, the yard and the arena, which looked a whole lot better than they had a month ago. And to the back of the house, the ground behind the bay window fell away steeply – the infamous ‘hard acre’, which tilted and tipped downhill to the stream and a wooded hollow. A sharp blue sky and wisps of gossamer clouds drifted overhead. She could hear the sound of the church bells carrying across from the village and tried not to think of their sombre peal as a toll of damnation.
Hettie knelt and started scrubbing. The grey bristled brush etched lines through the dirt on the red tiles, and the rhythmic whoosh of scurfy water satisfied something in her. Her knees jarred on the unforgiving floor, but Hettie pressed on, almost relishing the ache that built in her shoulders. She shoved her hair away from her face with a soapy hand and scrubbed harder.
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MONDAY MORNING, HETTIE lay on the mattress, trying to gather her bearings. It was cold this near to the ground, but at least Doris and Pig kept her feet warm. More rules she’d broken. The dogs had never been allowed to sleep in her bed, but at least Pig was sleeping. And it wasn’t really a bed, just a mattress on the floor.
The silence was disorientating. No neighbours, no cars on the road outside, no Alexander breathing beside her. She pulled a thick sock over each foot as she withdrew it from the sleeping bag. Stuff to get done. She’d have to get a rug for the kitchen floor if it was always this cold to walk on. And maybe a bigger one for the living room too.
She’d call Bill today, tell him if he wanted to move his horses she had stables waiting. She could bring Lockie here as soon as she got her first horse in. And she’d speak to Jodie again about hosting a clinic for the riding club. Not in the arena, which wasn’t usable yet, but the paddock behind the stables was flat. She could put the jumps in there for what was left of the summer. She had loads more flyers to hand out, and she ought to set up a Facebook page.
She wrapped her hands around her mug of hot coffee, and padded back to the bedroom to get dressed and on with her day.