“You think I’d let you hurt my horse?”
Harry had no comeback to that. He tightened his grip on Mani’s mane and heaved himself up onto Mani’s broad back. The movement was light and easy, like I’d known it would be, and when Mani stayed stock still, staring disinterestedly into the distance, the apprehension in Harry’s face faded.
He grinned and the sunshine beating down on us was suddenly brighter. “Hey, it’s not bad up here. I can see Emma hanging the washing out at the bungalow and even the circus up the road. Who else wants to see?”
Spending an hour lifting kids on and off Mani hadn’t been in my game plan, but it seemed that Harry had got my number. He’d played me at my own game and won. And my morning was all the better for it.
The minibus departed a few hours later. Harry helped me pack up the equipment we’d used and carried the box back to the tack room while I brought Mani into his stable for some water and a light feed in the shade.
I was fussing with his mane when Harry returned. “What was all that about?”
“All what?”
Harry rubbed Mani’s neck like he’d been doing it his whole life. “Getting me up on this monster. I mean, it was fun—empowering, actually—but I didn’t think it was your MO to fuck with people’s fears.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because Emma hasn’t left the bungalow all week, and you haven’t tried to make her, even though everyone else has.”
“Toby hasn’t.”
“Toby is equal parts terrified and totally in love with her.”
“True that.” There wasn’t really room for Harry and me in the stable doorway, but somehow we made it work. His shoulder touched mine and I forgot about the long afternoon of hoof trimming that awaited me. “But to answer your question, I can’t fuck with Emma’s shit because I don’t know how. The others know trying to help her won’t work, but they do it anyway so she knows they care. I... I dunno. I don’t see the point in rowing with her about something she can’t change. It just makes her feel guilty.”
Harry nodded, his gaze thoughtful. “What makes you think she can’t change it?”
I looked at him properly. “What makes you think she can?”
Harry shrugged. “Experience. I work with a lot of MS patients, ME too. Many of them battle with anxiety and depression, I think much of it is because they can’t visualise their situation ever changing—that they’ll live debilitated and in constant pain forever.”
“A physical illness isn’t the same as an anxiety disorder.”
“Not exactly, but they can share a psychology. I don’t know enough about Emma’s condition to make a judgement, but don’t assume that nothing can change. Life can always be better, Joe.”
Harry punched my arm and walked away. The impact of his fist was gentle, like his words, but I felt it for the rest of the day.
* * *
It was a rare morning that I slept past dawn, but on the third Sunday that Harry was with us—because that was how I apparently measured time now—it was gone nine by the time I rolled off the couch.
I stumbled into the downstairs bathroom and then into the kitchen. The smell of bacon lingered, but there was no one around, not even Sal, which accounted for the stack of dirty plates in the sink.
Chin-deep in a mug of tea, I wandered outside. And then blinked.What the fuck?Sunday often drew visitors to the farm, and so we tried to get the stables done first thing, but all the mucking out done this early was unheard of.
Most of the horses had been turned out to the fields. I checked on the ones that remained and found their stalls spotless too. “What’s going on, eh?” I muttered to Mani, but he had no answer for me or any bright ideas about where everyone had got to.
I let him be and drifted across the yard to the tack room, noting that Harry’s car was MIA too. It wasn’t unusual for him to take my mum to the market in the week, but Sundays usually found him using the hay barn as some kind of assault course, and the realisation that he wasn’t on the farm doing just that hit me kind of strange.
Puzzled, I set to work on the mountain of overdue tack cleaning, trying not to listen out for every engine that neared the farm. And failed, obviously, because I was waiting in the yard when Harry’s car pulled up an hour later.
I opened his door before he’d turned the ignition off. “Your break discs are warped. I can hear ’em. And what the fuck is she doing in your car?”
Emma narrowed her eyes at me from the passenger seat, though it was tough for her to appear angry when her grin was a mile wide. “I heard the clunking too, so I showed him where Freddie’s place was so he can get it fixed tomorrow.”
“Freddie’s place is three miles away.”
“I know.”
