As Ruby staggered back to her feet, ready to bolt again, Finn dived out of his saddle and caught my reins with both hands. My horse made one last attempt to rear out of his grip but the fire had gone out and she finally came to a trembling, wild-eyed halt. I dismounted and prepared to murder him.
Finn stood with Ruby, panting for breath and ashen-faced. ‘Quarry,’ he panted by way of explanation, and pointed.
My knees nearly gave way and I had to hold on to the saddle as I saw the drop just behind me. We were perhaps five metres from the edge of an overgrown maw in the landscape, where a solitary mouldering, lichen-covered sign warned, ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT.’ We wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Finn
At first I thought she might be in shock. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I began, but then Lilith turned on me with the same fury I had watched her unleash on that fat bastard on the TV and I seriously feared for my balls.
‘Sorry?’ she hissed, ‘You try to fucking kill me and you think ‘sorry’ is going to cut it? What the fucking hell were you thinking? The poor bloody animal’s probably lame for life!’ Lilith ran a hand down Ruby’s foaming near-hind leg. ‘Burning up. You twat. You stupid, ignorant son-of-a-bitch twat.’
‘Look, I won’t lie to you – I wanted to give you a scare, sure, but I didn’t think she’d go that crazy. She’s been stabled up for the last couple of days. I didn’t know – I just…’ I stupidly decided to try and defend myself. ‘Look, I just saved your life…’
‘Saved my life, you arsehole? At which point does putting me on the back of that creature ,’ she jabbed a finger at Ruby, ‘constitute saving my bloody life?’ Her words rang off the stones of the quarry.
‘You said you could ride... I assumed you’d have been hunting since you were crawling and -’ I didn’t get to finish the sentence. Lilith was incandescent.
‘Oh please tell me that isn’t what this was all about. Some one-man class war? For fuck’s sake, Finn! I didn’t have any more choice over where I was bloody well born than you did, so the day I judge you for your sack-of-shit heritage is the day you get to do it to me. Clear?’
‘Well you’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s picked up a hockey injury.’
Lilith narrowed her eyes. ‘Right. I’ll tell you what happened there, shall I? Stacey-Marie Collins and half-a-dozen of her delightful comrades hauled me behind the bike sheds after she’d found a stray photocopy of a cartoon I did of her as an Alsatian bitch on heat. She got them to hold me down while she dispensed justice with the business end of her hockey stick.’
I winced despite myself. ‘I didn’t think they let that kind of thing go on at the posh schools.’
‘It wasn’t a ‘posh school’, you presumptuous little shit. Do you think my mother and I set up in a South Ken penthouse when we got kicked out?’
‘I don’t know – I hadn’t thought ...’
‘Yeah, and doesn’t it show?’ Lilith snapped. ‘We kept what we could carry. We spent the first week in a hostel then moved into a council flat in Peckham. Within three days I’d been hospitalised with asthma from the damp and I returned home to find that my mother – on the basis that aliens were using next door as a bomb factory – had decorated the entire fucking kitchen with tinfoil. I then spent two delightful years at Saint Hilda’s school for teenage psychopaths before my father carried out his highly publicised rescue mission.’ Only now did she stop to draw breath, and I didn’t see her blink once during the entire tirade. ‘And believe me when I say I’m not fishing for sympathy here – I know there are others out there who’ve had more shit in one day than I’ve had in a lifetime – but I really sincerely fucking well hope I’ve just said enough to earn just a touch of credibility in the eyes of the official Dublin representative of the Great Unwashed.’ Lilith Bresson glared at me with glittering, sapphire-hard eyes and I forced myself to meet her gaze.
Birds sang, a soft breeze shook the tops of the trees, and I spent painful moments trying not to puke up the vodka that was threatening a return journey and searching for something – anything – to say. Finally I found my voice. ‘Look, for what it’s worth I’m sorry. You’re right, I was a twat, and if I’d thought for a moment that things would go this wrong there’s no way on God’s earth I’d have done what I did. I wouldn’t put an animal at risk of heading over that edge, never mind a human being.’