The Girl Who Cried Wolf(23)
I still feel very dubious as he holds my hand and I climb onto the second rung of the fence.
‘Put your foot here.’ He holds out the Western-style stirrup and I place my one hand on the pommel and the other on the back of the huge saddle. I swing my leg over and settle down gently; remembering how Starlight hated it when we landed heavily in her saddle. I find my balance and Michael places my other foot in the stirrup. I look up through Pinto’s forward-pointing ears and see the sun beginning her low descent into the silver birch forest ahead. I look at Michael and as his eyes meet mine, I realise I have the biggest smile on my face I can remember.
We start in slow circles, and my fear dissipates as I feel the cocooning comfort of the saddle. As Pinto’s pace changes from walk to slow trot, I laugh as I forget to rise and stay low in the saddle.
‘I love it much more than English riding!’
‘Of course.’ Michael tries to sound cool, but I can tell he’s delighted. ‘Think you can go solo?’
My nerves flutter, but only for a second before I nod bravely. I can do this by myself.
As Michael unclips the lunge rein, I guide Pinto away from him and we walk gently to the far edge of the meadow. As we turn back around, I see the sunset breaking into magnificent oranges and gold, and my heart lifts once more. If someone had told me a few months ago I would be riding a beautiful horse into the sunset with no hair under my cowboy hat, I would have thought they were insane. I could never change places with the old me now, and I tap my heels with urgency so Pinto picks up my command and breaks into an easy canter towards the setting sun.
If you have never cantered a horse, you need to. It is the most exhilarating feeling as you hear the steady, pounding hooves and sway with the rocking motion of the magnificent gait.
If the end of something, like the end of this day, could be so beautiful, perhaps I had nothing to fear after all.
***
As night falls and Pinto has been groomed, blanketed, and fed, we leave him nibbling the grass and swishing his tail. Walking hand-in-hand to the kitchen, I tell Michael he is no longer my true love.
‘Let me guess, you love the horse more, right?’
‘Yep.’ I laugh and hit him with the cowboy hat he brought me, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I look less than respectable with no hair.
‘I knew you’d like him, he’s one of my favourites too.’
He tells me about the horses, including a palomino like the one in the picture he had given me in hospital...
‘I tore it up.’ I blurt out my guilty secret
‘You were hurt; I can get you another one.’
‘I’d really like that. You don’t know how happy it made me when you gave me the picture. I felt it was all so doomed, out of my control.’
‘Well,’ he changes the subject, ‘they are one of the most beautiful horses in the world. We have a Palomino on the ranch; I’m the only one who rides her.’
‘Why only you?’
‘She is quite flighty, always on her toes but I seem to have a calming influence.’ He looks at me sideways and I hope he is not comparing me to a highly strung horse.
‘I’d like to see her one day.’
Michael smiles and ends the conversation, to my pleasure, with a kiss.
***
By the time Izzy and Mother got back, we were drinking hot chocolate in front of the fire. I was so content I even poured Lillian a glass of wine and she happily joined us. The moment was instantly ruined when she let out an exasperated cry as Michael told her I had been riding.
‘Really, Michael, I’m surprised. I thought you brought the animal to show her, not for her to go galloping around the fields. Some days she can barely walk.’
My eyebrows knitted together crossly as he tried to explain, ‘Pinto is my gentlest horse, Mrs. Winters. A child could ride him.’
Once again she had ruined everything. My sense of accomplishment at cantering into the sunset for the first time on a new horse with a strange saddle, deflated like an old balloon. A child could have done it.
No one noticed me get up to leave as Michael tried to defend his actions and insisted I was safe. Mother humiliated me further by telling him I am not a competent rider and what would have happened if I had fallen off? They both sounded very upset and I could have screamed Elm Tree to the ground that my beautiful memory had been ruined, and I was to be discussed like this – an invalid once more.
Izzy finds me in the kitchen sneaking a glass of Mother’s wine. I have taken two more tablets but they do nothing.
‘Have you taken your proper medication? Not the painkillers, the other ones?’
‘Every morning,’ I mutter. Mr Raj had given me a stern discussion regarding my home medication; I was too frightened not to take everything exactly as he had prescribed. It was only the sedative painkillers I used against his instruction.
‘She just worries about you, Anna.’ Izzy knows Mother has blown it once more. ‘She’s told Michael if he saddles Pinto again he must leave this house.’
I glare at Izzy, guessing she agrees with our mother. ‘Tell Michael I need to lie down for a little while.’
Izzy kisses my cheek and I am too exhausted to worry about leaving her alone with him. I use the last of my strength to make it upstairs and crawl under my blankets.
I know my father will be expecting Michael to sleep in one of our guest rooms, but while sleep evades me I’m happy to hear him come into my room and slip into bed beside me. We make love and his strength soothes my troubled soul. I kiss his mouth and ask him if he loves me.