Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

them through it all – all Cooper had left behind, all Alec had abandoned forever. No one knew anyone in the city, wasn’t that what people said? But Alec had known no one in his small town, far away.

He drove on. He’d wanted to drive, had pushed for it on the way back. There was more stopping and starting than he’d thought there might be.

Cooper didn’t say much. She just looked out of the window to their left.

They reached the open road. One straight line, breaking out into the flat plains, and then Ilmarsh. They were going to book a couple of rooms in a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of town. Neither felt safe sleeping in Ilmarsh itself.

He turned his head to her. Her lips were curled. She stared at nothing.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘. . . Yeah.’

He did not like her when she was like this.

There was not much out here. Office parks, occasionally, close enough to the city to commute. A mile out, they passed a partially constructed power plant, its three towers sitting dormant after its funding deal had been blocked by the government. Foreign interference was now feared.

He wondered what went on in those halls. If anyone still guarded the building, if it would be dismantled for parts, if they were just waiting for the baton to be passed again, for power to be needed, for the atom to be split at long last.

‘Sorry about back there,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘Sometimes you just, you know—’

She shook her head, gently, still not looking at him, still saying nothing. The motion interrupted.

‘What?’

She was silent.

‘What was that?’

‘What was what?’

‘You shook your head.’

‘OK,’ she said.

They kept on. He felt hot in the car, but he couldn’t turn down the fans or it’d mist up.

‘You were going absolutely nowhere,’ he said. ‘All you were doing was drawing. You barely asked a single question about the case, and—’

‘The girl hasn’t spoken to anyone, maybe ever. We were told men made her nervous. What did you think was going to happen, Alec?’

‘I get that. I get it. I do. But we only had a few hours. You aren’t a therapist. You were wasting time.’

She didn’t answer. She was just leaning back, now. She moved away slightly as he shifted the gear stick.

‘There’s no need to be emotional,’ he said. ‘You’re sulking because I had to take over. That’s all this is.’

‘Fuck you.’ Cooper’s face twisted. ‘“Emotional”,’ she scoffed, rolling her eyes. Still she did not look at him.

He turned.

He kept his own eyes on the road from then on. His stomach in knots, his legs, his ankles, his feet aching with the dull pressure, he tried to concentrate on everything that was outside himself, and nothing that was within.

They drove past hamlets full of Christmas lights, trees displayed in the windows of cosy homes. Was there a connection between the place ‘hamlet’ and the play Hamlet? Between small groups of houses and princes avenging their fathers by killing their uncles? He didn’t know. English was a strange language. ‘Pepper’, for example, referred to vegetables, seasoning, the action of scattering, chillies, and far more – all unrelated, all disparate. He thought about Christmas.

He had not got Simon much, yet. He was last-minute, every year.

He wondered if Simon had got him anything, before his disappearance.

Maybe he was like his father. Maybe he had left it late, also.

He gripped the wheel tighter. The rain fell lighter and lighter.

He ticked the wipers onto a lower setting and switched on the radio. Cooper used to fight over it, those early days, used to debate what station, what songs to listen to. Alec liked the news, talk shows, that kind of thing. They helped quiet his thoughts.

She did not touch it now.

An unseen voice talked about the ethics of artificial meat.

‘Look, I’m . . .’ he began, and hesitated.

Twenty seconds passed.

‘What? You’re what?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re not yourself,’ she said.

How would she know?

How would anyone know?

The radio show went on and on. The host asked if a guest would ever consider eating a steak if it was grown in a lab, if no animal really suffered.

The guest told him that steak was still very complex and hard to get right. A hamburger would be easier to grow. It—

Cooper leant forward and changed the radio station, clicking it a few times past Christmas songs until she just switched it off. They drove in silence after that.

The world thinned as they approached the outskirts of Ilmarsh.

Only one room waited for them at the bed and breakfast – two beds, at least, but still, not what they’d booked.

There was no other option, though, unless one of them wanted to sleep in a room without any bed at all.

‘We’re doing renovations,’ said the woman at the desk.

They took the key and went upstairs.

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

She didn’t face him. She didn’t sit up. She just lay on her bed, still wearing the clothes of the day. She stared at the ceiling and began to talk.

‘What happened today . . . it can’t happen again.’

He did not answer. She did not know if he was still awake.

‘You’re careless, sometimes, Alec.’

Thin light came through the blind slats, the street lamps still on outside. The place smelt like all such places: musty, mildewed. If other people were staying there, they’d barely heard them.

Cooper turned from him and shut her eyes.

At some point in the night, she woke. She had no idea if it had been two minutes or two hours.

Alec was talking, now. She didn’t know if he’d said much else.

‘—rather be careless than cruel.’

She turned her head.

‘My dad used to say that, when I was younger.’ He was staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t look over at her. ‘Meaning to do good, he thought it was more important than . . . well . . . he wasn’t clear on what. Just that meaning, it was better than . . . than not meaning.’

His voice was hollow, worn, gentle.

‘The car you scratched . . . did you mean to do good?’

Cooper rubbed her eyes. ‘What?’

‘I asked you the