| note. ‘Excuse me,’ two witnesses had heard Mary say, the inquest was told, ‘Excuse me,’ and then she was falling, falling, falling as the train was coming into the station. But it was an accident, that was the verdict, and that’s what we said, and that’s what we would say for the rest of our own lives, and do our best to believe it because anything else was too horrible to contemplate. But I contemplated it anyway, and I knew I would contemplate it forever, and I would always feel that I could have said something or done something so that it did not have to end this way. Because I knew what had happened, or I thought I knew, and I tried hard to push that knowledge aside, and I wanted to be wrong. But this I knew to be true – I should have loved you more, Mary. I should have walked out of that photo shoot when they only wanted me in my little black dress and the smile that I have been perfecting since I was fifteen years old. I should have told them to stick their magazine cover, and I should have chosen you, and chosen friendship and – even if it was beyond my power to find you a man like Christian, who was always your idea of the perfect man – then I should have told you once in a while that I could not have done any of it without you. I should have been |
stood back, watching the dead branches begin to burn. I slowly walked down to Maple, standing in her stall. She lifted her lovely head with a soft snort, always happy to see me. It’s you again. Uncle Jack stored a box of treats opposite Maple’s stall and I found a wad of bread and slipped it into her mouth, feeling the saliva slick against my hand as she took it. I pressed my hands against the long sweep of her beautiful face and those bottomless black eyes blinked at me once. ‘What am I going to do, girl?’ I said. I stood there in the half-light of the stable, comforted by the old familiar smells of leather and hay and soapy water and horse and the wood burning in the incinerator bin. The smell of horse above all. I could hear the voices of Uncle Jack and Marlon as they stoked the fire, my son chuckling, happy again. My old saddle was on a stand, the worn leather gleaming with glycerine saddle soap. I walked slowly along the shelves that my dad had put up years ago, full of well-ordered boxes of bridles, bits, shoes, sponges, blankets and brushes. I found the toolbox. I picked up a nailing hammer. There were a few in there, and I chose the oldest-looking one with a square nose on its steel head, and sharp jaws for pulling out nails and a worn wooden shaft. I stood there with the hammer in my hand |
