Page 94 of The Sun Sister

At first I’d been frightened, because they’d seemed gigantic and I’d been so small, but the groom had found the smallest pony in the yard and I’d sat up on its back, feeling a million times taller than I ever had before. I’d been led around the paddock, at first bumping up and down, but then letting my body adapt to the natural rhythm of the animal, and by the end of it, I’d been able to encourage the pony into a gentle canter.

‘You have a natural gift with horses,’ Pa had said as he had pulled up beside me on a beautiful brown stallion. ‘Would you like to learn to ride properly?’

‘I’d like to very much, Pa.’

And so Pa had arranged riding lessons for me in Geneva, and then again when I went to boarding school. It had been the highlight of my week, because I knew that I could tell all my secrets to my horse, love him as much as I wanted and he would never, ever betray me.

‘There, all done,’ I said to Marissa as I took off my gloves, having refreshed the straw from the bale in the yard.

She indicated the paddock where three of the screw-ups were leaning over the fence watching another screw-up pet Philomena, a gentle bay mare.

I went to the fence and leant over it, nodding at the others but not engaging.

‘Hi, Electra!’ Hank, who ran the stables, waved at me. ‘You’re up next!’

‘Thanks,’ I replied, giving him a thumbs up. I watched him from a distance, thinking how attractive he was, with his muscled torso that had not been honed in the gym but by riding out in the desert every day. I enjoyed the way Hank was with the horses; even though I’d seen him kill a diamondback rattlesnake with a shovel when it had appeared in the paddock, he showed a gentleness with the horses that was endearing. I had to admit, I’d been coming down to see him as much as the animals...

‘Okay, honey, you’re on,’ he shouted to me a few minutes later, after I’d had him stripped naked in a stable in my imagination. The good news about my dark complexion was that blushes didn’t show.

‘She’s all yours,’ he said as I approached Philomena.

‘Hi, Philly,’ I whispered as I stroked her nose and gave her a kiss, breathing in her fresh horsey smell. ‘Gee, you’re a lucky girl. Number one, you are an animal, and number two, you get so much love and none of the grief that goes with it. But I sure wish I could climb on your back and take you for a ride,’ I added, turning to see Hank watching me and shooting him a smile.

When they’d done my original psych appraisal, there had been a question mark as to whether I was a sex addict. I’d replied that I was a twenty-six-year-old woman who enjoyed sex, especially when I was high, but no way –no way –did I think I was addicted to it. Well, not any more than the next woman of my age.

‘This is the problem with coming here,’ I whispered to Philly. ‘You come out with more possible addictions than you arrived with.’

Once my ‘horse-hugging’ session was over – there was only so much you could do with a static mare – I nodded at Hank, who ambled across to offer me a treat to feed to her.

‘You okay?’ he asked me as I gave Philly probably her twentieth carrot of the day.

‘Yeah, I’m okay. This horse is gonna get fat if she stands here and eats all day.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll give her a good run later.’

‘I wish I could take her out,’ I sighed.

‘It’s against the rules, I’m afraid. Otherwise...’ he shrugged.

‘I understand.’

‘Maybe when you’re out of here you could come to my ranch and take a ride.’

‘Thanks, I’ll see,’ I said, feeling the sweat pool under my armpits. Maybe it was just me, but as I walked away and saw out of the corner of my eye that he was watching me, I wondered whether that had been a come-on. Whatever, it cheered me up a bit to think that maybe I could still attract a man, even in rehab.

I returned to my dorm, a pastel-painted room with three double beds that were only just long enough for me to fit on. I had a narrow closet for my hoodies and track pants and a desk that I hadn’t had use for so far. At first, the thought of sharing a shower and the subsequent body hair that got left behind (I had a thing about hair in plugholes) was enough to make me stay sweaty and unwashed, but I’d finally given in when I realised I smelt, and actually it was just fine.

Luckily, the shower was sparkly clean today – the maid had obviously just been in – so I stripped off as fast as I could and stood beneath the blissfully cool spray, casting my eyes upwards and not down to the swirl of water around my feet. When I’d emerged from the shower and dressed, I took out my old sketchbook (I’d found it in the front pocket of my holdall, still tucked away after my trip to Atlantis) then grabbed a pencil and began to draw. I’d recently found that thinking up ideas for unusual but comfortable clothes relaxed me – so many times I’d been dressed up in basically unwearable (and often hideous) haute couture to create images which the average woman on the street couldn’t even begin to emulate. But, as I heard from endless designers, fashion was a modern art form. Personally, it pissed me off that they claimed this idea as their own when fashion hadalwaysbeen an art form. The Versailles courtiers, for example, or the Ancient Egyptians.

I began to sketch a dress that had a detachable glittery collar and which would fall in soft folds to the ankles. Beautifully simple and very, very wearable. A few minutes later my attention was caught by a new face appearing around the dorm door. The girl wandered over to the empty bed closest to the window. She was – as a lot of the inmates were here – anorexically thin, and little more than five feet high. She had the gorgeous skin tone that, like Maia’s, indicated a mixed-race heritage, and a head of lush, glossy dark curls.

‘Hi,’ I said as I put my pencil down. ‘You new?’

She nodded as she sat on the bed, knees together, hands clasped in a fist on top of them. She didn’t look up at me, and I was glad – normally it only took one glance for a stranger to recognise who I was and to start asking the usual questions.

I watched her release her hands and saw they were shaking as she lifted one to push a lock of hair away from her face.

‘Just out of medical detox?’ I asked.