Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

all in that way only cats can be, but Rebecca was wise to the tactic. She got up and collected the plates.

The television flickered.

Rebecca lingered in the doorway, smiling faintly at the cat. He stared back, upset that his scraps were being taken away. She thought about her life.

She thought about the horses’ eyes buried in the earth.

She stepped through to the kitchen and her heart stopped.

CHAPTER THIRTY

George could smell the smoke all the way up to the third storey, his suit jacket and trousers piled in a ragged heap in the corner of his room from the night before, his nose running.

He was exhausted, had barely got out of his pyjamas all day. He was hungry. All he could think about was dead things.

Pig offal burning in the sun, burgers, pork, sausages. That, and having a drink. A bottle of beer. Some wine.

It was just about warm enough to sit outside. Warmer than the weather had promised.

And all this in November. What a time to be alive.

Downstairs, his wife, his friends, the plus-ones and the tolerated we-have-to-invite-them-or-it-will-look-bad remnants, sat and stood and drank and smoked and chatted and ate.

He had planned to cook those sausages. He always cooked them. And it wasn’t like many of these sods invited him to their houses, or if they did, that he’d be served anything but salmonella.

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ Shelly had asked, just an hour or two after they had woken up. She’d been very concerned about his cold. She’d bought him medicine, made him tea. He’d taken a sick day, hadn’t he? Why had he taken a day off if he was capable of running a barbecue? He’d tried to explain the finer points of exaggerating a situation to work colleagues, but still, she would not believe or trust him. He was expelled from the whole event.

His wife and brother-in-law had then oven-cooked the meat inside, just to be safe. It was November, however warm it seemed, and you didn’t barbecue things in November. They finished it all in the fire to give it an extra crispy finish.

George kept telling her his cold was nothing, but still she kept fretting.

‘What about your hands?’ she’d asked.

‘What about them?’ George had grimaced at her from the kitchen table, from the low light.

‘They’re all red.’

‘It’s called work, Shelly.’

‘Don’t tell me something’s not wrong with those hands.’

‘They’re fine.’ They weren’t. They were rough and sore. The business on the farm had been difficult, even with the gloves Alec had forced him to put on. ‘Go on. Have it all without me, then. I’ll rest upstairs.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

She frowned.

‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘It’s just I don’t want you to be annoyed at me.’

‘Why would I be annoyed?’ His voice was flat and strained, as passively aggressive as he could make it.

‘OK.’ She turned to smile. ‘If you’re sure.’

So here he was in a room full of piles of unwashed but neatly organized clothes. He’d seen cairns like these. Little piles of rocks in heaths and moors and fields, dedications to the dead that you could crawl inside.

His hands burned. His head began to split.

He had no water. He knew he should go to the bathroom and pour more from the tap but his body and mind and will would not cooperate.

He drew the curtains and lay down, hoping it would all go away. He checked his phone, setting an alarm for a few hours’ time on the off-chance he fell asleep.

His phone background showed his wedding day. Fifteen years since then and he’d never changed it, not on a single phone he’d had since.

They’d been happiest without friends.

An email had arrived. They’d got the CCTV footage from the shore, the night of the fireworks and the killings.

He’d go in to see it tomorrow, if he was better.

He rolled over and closed his eyes, already stinging.

He’d cut himself in places – he didn’t know how exactly, but it had been a long day at that rusty farm. He’d put ointment on the nasty scabs and he’d hidden them from his wife by wearing long-sleeved pyjamas.

He just needed a good rest. She would only worry and fret.

He fell asleep, trying to ignore the sun streaming through the window.

Outside George’s house, the barbecue was coming to an end, and with it the last heat of the year. Around a dozen or so guests remained, chatting, poking skewers of marshmallow into the campfire’s flames. Midges danced around their heads and arms, pulling blood from beneath the surface of their skin. No one noticed the theft. Globules of O-positive, AB, and insulin-rich B floated around their laughter and smiles. Someone opened a cold beer in the dark, preferring to keep away from the heat.

One guest was showing everyone photos of her new home. Fiona was moving much nearer London. She wanted to be near her family. It was the reason everyone moving on gave, as if leaving this place represented some fundamental human failure.

‘Empty nest,’ she said. ‘The house is filled with ghosts, now they’ve all gone. Now Richard’s gone.’

Her husband had died the year before. A stroke after a long bout of emphysema. He’d been older than her, they hadn’t entirely loved each other, but she was alone now, no underlying conditions, no anything.

‘It feels like my kids are gone too, sometimes,’ she said. ‘I know where they are . . . one of them only lives half an hour away, but . . . it . . . it feels like they’re lost, all the same. Like they’re waiting for me.’ She picked up her drink, smiling. ‘Sorry. Too much wine.’

‘I want you to keep in touch,’ Shelly said. ‘I don’t want you to forget me.’

Fiona smiled back, gently, half dismissive. She didn’t say anything.

‘We’ve thought of downsizing ourselves, but, well. We like it here.’

Fiona nodded. And then, after a moment, after staring into the fire, said, ‘I always said I’d move closer to my children if he died first. Do you know what Richard said he’d