Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [38]
February
E for Equine
Tom had called Natalie and offered her a ride home. Said he was passing vaguely by the radio station.
It had been a draggy afternoon – it was ages since he had called. Natalie was hormonal and bored and scratchy. She ate a whole bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut while she waited for him.
Tom’s afternoon had been rather more successful. He’d landed a new client at his meeting. He was feeling a bit smug, and rather playful. Which meant that he didn’t recognise that the girl with the slightly chocolatey lips who got into his car wasn’t the sashaying, smiley-eyed girl who had left him in her flat hanging shelves last week. This girl had dark circles under her eyes, which weren’t all that smiley, and her shoulders were hunched and tense under her overcoat.
‘I was going to go for Eating. It’s almost Valentine’s Day, after all. I thought perhaps a nice, romantic, candlelit dinner…’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Natalie rubbed her mouth, inspected her fingers, and rubbed again, until the chocolate was gone. ‘I’m starving.’
‘… but then I remembered how you lured me to your place under false pretences and forced me to spend most of the day grappling with some shelves and their obscure instructions written in pidgin English, and I’m not so sure that you deserve a nice meal. So I rethought my letter.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
‘Enema. I almost booked you a colonic irrigation at some clinic in town.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Yeah. And I’m not that mean.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Not quite that mean.’
‘Are you sure I don’t deserve a nice dinner?’
‘Don’t even think about using that little-girl-lost voice on me, Nat. I am so much more than sure that you don’t.’
‘Come on, then.’ Natalie sighed, but Tom didn’t hear it. ‘Put me out of my misery. What hideous E have you got planned for me?’
‘Don’t you want to guess a little longer? I mean, there were plenty of possibilities. I toyed with Eco-warrior—’
‘What? Make me sit up a tree all day with people whose personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired?’
‘It would have pissed you off.’
‘But you’d have had to do it too, and you’re not up for that.’
‘Exactly right. That ruled out several options. Until I came up with the perfect thing.’
‘Tom!’ Natalie was exasperated, but also a little scared. He looked like he was enjoying this.
He did an imaginary drumroll with his hands, biting his bottom lip. ‘E for… Equine.’
Natalie raised her eyebrows
‘All things equine. Equestrian activities.’ Her expression was unconvinced. ‘Horses.’
‘What about horses?’
‘Nothing extraordinary. We’re going to ride some.’
‘No, we are not.’ Natalie shook her head petulantly like a toddler.
‘Says the girl who jumped off a viaduct less than a month ago.’
‘That was different. I’ve never had a bad experience with a viaduct.’
Tom chortled. ‘Oh, come on. That was years ago.’
‘It was enough for me.’
She’d broken her pelvis, which would have been enough for most people, during the summer after her O levels, when everyone else had been celebrating, partying. She’d thought she was going to die. The mare she’d been riding wasn’t big – although she’d felt it when she landed on Natalie, after they’d fallen. There weren’t many things from her childhood that she remembered so exactly. Crystallised moments held in perfect lucidity in her mind. Hardly anything, actually. She remembered their mum sitting on the stairs and crying when the three of them had chicken-pox. She must have been four or five. She remembered driving away from their old house, when they moved, and watching it get further away until Dad had turned left and it disappeared. First filling, first kiss, first period, last time Mum had smacked her. But she remembered nothing as well as the terror and pain of that accident. And the girl who had loved riding, who had claimed it as her own thing, while Susannah tap-danced and Bridget sat still, had not been near a horse since.
She realised that Tom was curiously absent from her