Mal, in his detestably easy way, swung up into Twilight’s saddle. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, and out of the corner of her eye Miri just saw their mother bursting out of the barn where she was overseeing the Kindergarten Quadrille team tacking up, when Mal leaned over, put his hand on the back of Leslie’s neck, and kissed her. For quite a long time. Jane was now standing beside Miri, who felt she could almost hear Jane’s mouth closing with a snap. She could see several of the Quadrille members watching this performance in varying postures of longing and despair—and Leslie was quite pink by the time he stopped. Mal being Mal, he would know perfectly well that his mother had just almost bitten his head off for not putting his helmet on before he mounted. But he didn’t look their way as he unslung the helmet over his arm and carefully strapped it in place; and he gave a careless wave as they rode out of the yard. Leslie waved too, but she looked back, her expression a combination of joy and consternation.
ʺThey’re too young to be that serious,ʺ said Jane.
Miri silently agreed that that hadn’t been any old birthday kiss. ʺYou and Dad were just that age,ʺ she said. ʺAnd I was born two years later, and you told Gran you were waiting tables while she looked after me when you were training three-year-olds and Dad was in college, and we’re all still alive to tell the story.ʺ
Jane grimaced. ʺDon’t remind me. I don’t suppose you’d buy ‘that’s different’?ʺ
ʺNo,ʺ said Miri. ʺA baby wouldn’t be nearly as much trouble as Dorothy.ʺ
By four o’clock both Jane and Miri were beginning to glance a little too often down the old road that led to the nature reserve. There was no reason the birthday party needed to be back yet; five o’clock was probably the time to start expecting them, and it could be later still; it wouldn’t be dark till after seven. But the clouds were beginning to stack up, genuine thunderheads, grey and ominous. Five o’clock came and went, and the last lessons of the day. A couple of boarders were still out on the trail, but Miri (it being Jane’s turn to get dinner: steak, for Mal’s birthday) would come out, check around, and lock up later.
Flame had spent the day looking for goblins, and for the first time ever, when Miri tied him between his trees while she gave lessons, paced back and forth. It wasn’t only Flame; Oscar had refused to get out of Cindy’s car, and had stayed in the back seat and howled. Cindy left early.
They were heading back to the house, emphatically not saying anything to each other about wondering where Mal and Leslie were, when the two missing boarders came trotting down the old road. Jane and Miri stopped dead. Riders walked their horses back down that road, finishing the cooling-off process before the horses were put away; and both these horses had sweat darkening their shoulders and white showing around their eyes.
Miri could hear how hard Jane was working to keep her voice leveclass="underline" ʺYou two don’t look too happy. Or you four.ʺ
Miri made a grab at Applepie’s bridle as he jigged past sideways, his nose curled into his own shoulder; it wasn’t a good idea to let a horse trot into the barn. Applepie, recognising the hand of authority, stopped, but Miri could feel the tension in him just from his mouth clamped on the bit. Sheila dropped the reins with a sigh. ʺThank you. I don’t know what’s got into him; I’ve never seen him like this. I know there’s some weather coming but . . .ʺ Applepie was middle-aged, round and—most of the time—placid, rather like Sheila; Sheila rode for exercise, not excitement.
It was beginning to rain.
Charis dismounted from Moose, who had never pranced in his life, but was trying to do so now. ʺThis must be the mother and father of all storms, is all I can say,ʺ said Charis.
Miri thought, somebody tell me it’s just the barometric pressure that is making my hair stand on end. But she looked at Flame, and he was looking back down the road the way Sheila and Charis had come—the way Mal and Leslie should have come, and hadn’t—and he was so still he looked like the statue of a dog. The statue was entitled Awaiting the Arrival of the Enemy.
As Sheila and Charis led their horses away Jane said, ʺThere’s nothing we can do.ʺ
ʺNo,ʺ said Miri.
ʺAnd standing around in the rain is dumb,ʺ said Jane.
ʺYes,ʺ said Miri, but neither of them moved.
There was a little silence, and then Jane said, ʺI suppose we might as well go indoors and start getting supper ready.ʺ
Any other evening it was Jane’s turn to cook Miri would have corrected her: ʺAnd you can start getting supper ready.ʺ Tonight she only said, ʺYes.ʺ
They went indoors and were instantly mobbed by restless, fretful house cats. There being only four human ankles to twine around, Jessica, always the bravest, chose to avoid the crowd, and twined around Flame’s. Mal’s birthday cake sat on the kitchen table, under a meat save to protect it from the cats, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY MALACHI was still clearly visible through the mesh. There was a little pile of presents next to the cake. Miri listlessly started peeling potatoes, for something to do, something that would stop her looking at the cake and the presents.
Dorothy rocked back and forth on her perch in the living room, screaming, ʺMal! Mal! Mal! Mal!ʺ Ordinarily Miri could ignore Dorothy in one of her tantrums; tonight Miri wanted to scream along with her. Flame crept under the kitchen table and stayed there. Jessica and Charlotte joined him. It was a big old table with a lot of gnarly bent legs, and the cats disappeared in the shadows, but Miri could see Flame’s eyes glowing if she looked carefully. She thought, he almost looks like a very large dust bunny. No, a dust hellhound. She hoped, if she ran a broom under the table, he wouldn’t disintegrate. She finished the potatoes, pulled a chair out of the way and joined Flame and the two cats under the table. She put her arms around him and hugged him hard; he was warm and solid.
ʺYou haven’t hidden under the table since you were seven,ʺ said Jane in that too-level voice she’d used to Sheila and Charis.
I used to hide under the table because I was afraid that the ghosts in the old graveyard would come back here and get me, she thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. ʺIf you want to join us,ʺ she said, ʺbring a cushion. Two cushions.ʺ
Jane’s hands had stopped rinsing lettuce. She was staring out the kitchen window. Even from under the table Miri saw the flash and when the thunder immediately followed the whole house rattled. She was pressed so closely to Flame that she felt the vibration when he made a noise; but it wasn’t a whine, it was more of a groan.
ʺThat looked like it was right over the old graveyard,ʺ said Jane in a voice even flatter and more remote than the one she’d been using.
Miri climbed out from under the table and joined her mother at the sink. She turned the still-running tap off. ʺYou can’t know that,ʺ she said.
ʺNo,ʺ agreed Jane. She turned the tap back on, and went back to swishing lettuce. ʺBut it might have been. It was certainly somewhere over that way.ʺ
Miri stared out the window for a while. There was another flash of lightning, but farther away; the thunder, when it came, was only a distant growl. The sky was still dark grey, but the wind had got up, and the clouds were rolling and twisting around each other like enormous snakes. It was still raining; when a gust of wind threw a handful of rain at the kitchen window, Miri started, as if it had been deliberately thrown at her. ʺWe still can’t do anything,ʺ she said.
ʺNo,ʺ said Jane. She was loading the clean lettuce into the salad spinner.
ʺWe don’t even know which way they went,ʺ said Miri.
ʺNo,ʺ said Jane.
ʺAnd they could have taken shelter somewhere,ʺ said Miri.
ʺYes,ʺ said Jane. She was about to give the salad spinner’s handle the first pull when there was a blur among the trees at the end of the old road that led to the preserve. ʺOh, no,ʺ said Miri, and Jane looked up, fractionally later, and gasped. Miri had her hand on the doorknob before her brain had confirmed that the blur was a galloping horse; but it was Jane, behind her, who’d seen who it was: ʺPeggy,ʺ she said.