Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

had been an accident. They hid the body, and life went on.’

Her eyes were empty, red as she spoke. Her arms bore scratch marks, from today and other days. Cooper held her breath as she talked about hurtful things, things she had been told not to think about, things she had tried to move on from, things that just kept coming back and back. Sympathy passed like a fever, and when she tried to aim it at herself, when she tried to show compassion for her own regrets – her failure to get to the woods fast enough, what she’d had to do to that boy – all forgetting ended in the memory of the wooden crate, of the head in the soil, of the hole in the skull.

The gut lived on after death. The microbiome bloomed and bloomed. But what had lived by that lake . . . what had germinated in the broken families of sinking Ilmarsh . . . Being there had changed her. And now Cooper was broken too.

Sitting in this room, talking about the case of the sixteen horses, Cooper’s words were so specific, so chosen, that the therapist couldn’t help but wonder if she’d rehearsed them before, to herself, to others. She said things like ‘the thinking is’, or used the pronoun ‘we’, the more their sessions went on.

Her breathing did not get better. It continued on and on. She kept drowning.

‘How did it make you feel, to find his body?’ the therapist asked.

‘I’m talking about Grace,’ Cooper said.

‘I know you are. I—’

‘Rebecca took control of Grace’s account,’ Cooper went on. ‘She pretended her mother had left the country. Maybe she was dealing with her grief and guilt in the process, I don’t know; the chat logs suggested it was more than just a decoy. She developed entire friendships with people, posing as the woman who’d brought her into the world, who’d tortured her in turn.’

‘Cooper?’ The therapist stared at her. ‘I asked you a question. How did it make you—’

Cooper held her breath again as she went on. How did it make her feel? She felt interrupted as she tried to explain. She felt like a husk.

‘They broke up, eventually. They couldn’t stay happy. Rebecca returned to her old life a while later. She had a horse-riding lesson; she saw old friends; she even considered a return to school. She was trying to change, she—’

‘Why aren’t you answering my questions?’

‘I’m trying to . . .’

‘Try to focus on how you’re feeling,’ the therapist said, not unkindly. ‘How you’re holding yourself. You hold your breath when you tell these stories . . . your feet curl around each other. You know what it reminds me of?’

‘What?’

‘The way you described the dogs in the crates. The way you said they looked, the way they must have felt in their last hours.’

Cooper said nothing.

‘I think you’re more emotionally invested than you let on, and it’s OK, Cooper. It’s OK to care, to show people you care. This is a safe place.’

Cooper’s face grew more and more stern as she sat there. Anger and sorrow swarmed within her, but it was more than that.

She ignored the therapist, when she next spoke.

‘Simon discovered something in himself. He’d helped kill for Rebecca, and now he was all alone, profoundly alone. All he had was a man he hated. A man who had – as far as he was concerned – killed his mother. A man who slept less and less. A man who took all the early morning cases. These two . . . they were Simon’s targets, no matter who else would die, no matter who else might get hurt. It was his father, and his love. He came up with a solution to a problem.’

‘What problem?’

‘The problem of other people.’

The therapist wrote in her book.

The red sun began to fall.

Cooper picked up her water bottle. She looked at it a while.

‘He stole Grace’s account. He stole all that girl had left of her own mum. All he did, he did for those people who had left him all alone. For those people he had loved.’

They reached the end of their time. The therapist did not say anything. She looked concerned, but it was the end. They would never see each other again.

‘There were sixteen horses,’ Cooper went on, her voice distant. ‘One for each year of Rebecca’s life. Circles . . . like candles on a cake.’

3.

The sun was red over London.

‘Are you happy, Cooper?’

She shook her head.

‘Were you happy before the horses? Before Alec?’

There was a longer pause, and she shook her head again.

‘In our first session, you told me you helped people. That what you did prevented evil, that you rescued animals, that you were proud of your life.’

‘I was. I am.’

Cooper looked away.

‘What would your inner self say about you, if she talked to me right now? How would she tell me you treated her? What would she say about your relationship, your life?’

‘Don’t be sad?’ Cooper shrugged.

‘What would she say, Cooper?’

‘She’d . . .’

She’d say I’m killing her.

4.

Her journey home took an hour and a half, some of it on the Underground, the rest by bus. Much of it involved standing, jostling, trying to make sure she could board each vehicle, and that others could get off. She had to bash a man to the side to let a young mother off. He had his headphones on, wasn’t turning, wasn’t listening, was just blocking the door, even as it was about to close. He didn’t even turn around, didn’t confront her. Just lazily moved aside.

The bus was easier. It emptied as it drew closer to her stop. The area was beautiful, red-brick, moss on long walls. The streets were full of cafes, of music in places. The summer went on and on.

She drank a bottle of wine at home, all by herself. She had her favourite ready-meal, oven-baked meatballs. She even boiled some broccoli. She chopped each stalk in half, boiled it for four minutes, drained, salt and peppered with a dash of lemon. It was,