Page 19 of The Black Trilogy

While I’d stayed in some downmarket places in my life, for the last fourteen years, I’d had the luxury of going home to a mansion at the end of each trip. My stay here at Hazelwood Farm had no expiry date, and I was sick of cockroaches.

I crawled out of bed, and my breath fogged in the chill as I walked the few short steps to the tiny bathroom. Please, say the pipes hadn’t frozen again. Yesterday, I’d had to borrow a hairdryer to thaw them out. A bonus would be if the shower was warm, but I couldn’t expect miracles.

I turned the tap on over the grimy, soup bowl-sized basin and did a silent fist pump when the water slowly dripped out, the flow gradually increasing as the ice build-up cleared. Once I’d done my bit in the bathroom, I returned to the freezing bedroom to get dressed, although I’d rather have gone into hibernation at that point. Layering was definitely the way to go in this weather.

Carol had held a whip-round of various acquaintances, who’d donated a selection of clothes ranging from unfashionable to downright scary. I was now the proud owner of a waxed jacket, and the knitting club had gone overboard with the scarves.

Suitably attired, I stood in front of the cracked mirror to put in my contact lenses. My roots were still good at the moment, but I’d need to buy hair dye in the near future, even if the thought of shopping filled me with dread.

So far, I’d gone through each day like a robot. Do this, do that, don’t think, don’t feel. The numbness still hadn’t begun to shift. Would I ever feel like myself again?

“Miss you,” I whispered, turning my head to gaze at the blackness outside. When I returned to the mirror, I barely recognised the desolate stare of the broken woman looking back at me.

Before my husband’s death, I’d been full of energy, perhaps too much on occasion. We’d always worked as a team, complementing each other. I’d had the tendency to jump straight into things, adapting to circumstances on the fly because I wanted to get the job done and done quickly. My husband had been the thinker, the planner, preferring to run everything through in his head and work out the best course of action before he took a single step. We’d learned from each other, and together, we’d achieved what others thought was impossible.

Not anymore.

My mind was black inside, the darkness a cancer eating me from the inside out. And living in that shadow, all I could do was get on with things as best I could.

The cold wind hit me as I stepped out the door. I had eight horses to muck out, and the longer I procrastinated, the more they would poop.

I checked the temperature on the phone I’d bought from some dude in The Coach and Horses, kind of cheap, but I was almost sure it was kosher. Rats—it wasn’t due to rise above freezing all day.

With it being a Saturday, the part-timers from the village had arrived to do the horses in the other barns. The girls I worked with during the week, Susie and Hayley, were having in a lie-in in the cottage next to my trailer. They’d invited me over for dinner a couple of times, and the place wasn’t in much better condition than mine, although it stayed slightly warmer.

When I got to my barn, the first thing I did was defrost the taps with a kettle full of water, careful not to spill it because the walkway would turn into an ice rink if I did. I might do all right on a pair of skates, but the horses wouldn’t.

One by one, I tied them outside and mucked out their stables. The effort warmed me up, and by the time I’d finished, I’d shed my jacket and was wishing I hadn’t put on thermal leggings under my jeans.

Then came my favourite part of the job: grooming the horses. So peaceful, just me and them, and I liked to brush their coats until they shone. I didn’t have the radio on like the other girls, preferring the silence, interrupted only by the munching of the neddies eating their hay and the occasional quiet whicker.

But those moments were the calm before the storm, and sure enough, the thunder started half an hour later when two of the owners, Jessica and Marianne, strode into the barn. One of them turned the music on at full volume as she walked past, and the pair of them clattered around as they hauled stuff out of their lockers.

Their voices had no mute button, and before I was halfway through brushing the horses, I was all too aware that Marianne had just been dumped by her boyfriend. Not only that, the boyfriend didn’t understand her, she could do better than him anyway, and he’d been sleeping with a girl who’d had breast implants and a nose job.

Jessica, on the other hand, had been out clubbing last night, and her cell phone, keys, wallet, and dignity were just the beginning of what she’d lost in the process. She claimed to be hungover, but I had my doubts about that. If she was at death’s door as she claimed to be, she wouldn’t be screeching so loudly.

Throughout their conversation, they ignored me. After all, I was just the hired help, there to pick up their junk and keep out the way. I was used to that. In fact, I’d used the ploy many times over the years. People barely noticed the invisible army of worker ants—the maids, the handymen, the meter readers, the cleaners. Did you know that the best way to break into a building was to put on a hi-vis jacket and carry a toolbox?

Shh, don’t tell anybody.

Stables mucked out, I stowed my wheelbarrow and hung up my fork. The next job was preparing the horses’ food in the hay barn and the feed room, and a good thing too. My ears had suffered enough, and I was out of aspirin.

CHAPTER 9

I HEADED FOR the hay barn first. Filling the twenty-four haynets that got hung up in the stables for the horses to eat would take half an hour. They got one in the morning, one at lunchtime, and another in the evening. It wasn’t my favourite job because of the dust, but at least it was quiet.

I was stuffing haynet number twenty when Susie and Hayley walked past, Susie pushing a wheelbarrow and Hayley carrying a mucking-out fork.

“What are you doing out here? Don’t both of you have the day off?” I asked, knowing full well that they did.

“Uh, we thought we’d give you a hand,” Susie said, carefully avoiding eye contact.

“I’ve been out here almost four hours. Nearly everything’s done. Now, tell me the real reason you’ve dragged your backsides out into the cold to shovel unmentionables.”

“Portia Halston-Cain’s just arrived,” Hayley said, as if that explained everything.

Portia owned three of the horses in my barn, but she rarely visited on weekdays, so I hadn’t met her yet. Gameela, Samara, and Majesty, her Arabians, were all stunningly beautiful, but according to Susie, she only ever rode two of them.

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