details of the meeting and the address of our offices in Denver.”
“Okay.” my voice, barely a whisper, broke a little at the end, I clamped my mouth shut before I could hiccup down the phone.
“Have a pleasant day Miss Daniels and I’m very sorry for your loss.”
I couldn’t answer, I pushed the end button on the phone and let my world collapse around me. The room seemed to spin and grow dark, I felt out of breath and flighty.
You’re having a panic attack stupid,
the still functioning part of my mind piped up. The tears I were expecting to follow didn’t, perhaps I had no more to cry, had my allocation for this year already run dry?
The feeling of absolute despair was back again, the feeling I had been fighting so hard to ignore since I arrived, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I needed fresh air and to be away from my grandparents, I couldn’t let them see me like this.
I stumbled down the hallway out into the sunshine, the day had lost all of its previous beauty. I looked around, the paddocks stretched for miles, I didn’t know where to go, the green open spaces which had once seemed so relaxing now seemed stifling. I felt like a prisoner stuck with no way back to the outside world. I couldn’t breathe, I needed to get away from the house but I had no means of getting there. I ran to the garage, Nans old red hatch was gone, the only time I had truly needed to get away and it wasn’t here. My mind flicked towards the possibility of Beaut, he
was
a means of transport. I was sure I could walk him quietly down a track somewhere without breaking my neck, I just needed to be away from here for a while, to be alone.
After a long struggle I managed to get the saddle on and pull myself awkwardly onto his back, my thighs instantly tensed in remembered pain from my last horseback encounter but I ignored this pushing the pain and fear to the edge of my mind. I needed to get away from here, to have some time completely and utterly alone. Nudging his sides gently with my heels, as Pop had shown me, he moved obediently forward out of the pen. We took a sharp right, following the outside edge of the pen until we came to the beginning of the track that I had taken previously, the track that led towards the hills in the distance. Pop had told me never to go up to the plateau paddock, the track was dangerous. It was the only place on the ranch Pop had forbidden me to go. But I was feeling reckless at the moment, I didn’t care what happened, or what the consequences may be, I just wanted to escape the pain. I thought that I had, but I had only managed to fool myself, as if only a few weeks here could fix things. All I had done was become really good at ignoring the feeling of complete emptiness, and now Arthur Bannisters short phone call had bought reality tumbling down around me once more. I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t pretend my parents deaths hadn’t happened, I was going to have to face it, sooner or later, I had prayed it would be later, and now later was only two weeks from Tuesday.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut, trying to lock back the tears that were finally running down my cheeks, I couldn’t even recall when they had started.
I don’t know how long we had been ambling along, I wasn’t really paying attention to the track or the endless fields that slipped by in a blur of green, I was focused only on myself. I tried my hardest to think of nothing, to clear my mind until all feelings had disappeared and I was just a shell.
It took me a while to realize that the track had changed, it was the difference in light that drew me back to reality. We were heading slowly uphill, the forbidden hill. Trees closed in on either side of us forming a canopy high above where the branches overlapped each other blocking the sunlight so that the world beneath was dim. The ground was rocky and uneven, the track itself very rough, almost disappearing in some places, covered with fallen branches and boulders
“Okay.” my voice, barely a whisper, broke a little at the end, I clamped my mouth shut before I could hiccup down the phone.
“Have a pleasant day Miss Daniels and I’m very sorry for your loss.”
I couldn’t answer, I pushed the end button on the phone and let my world collapse around me. The room seemed to spin and grow dark, I felt out of breath and flighty.
You’re having a panic attack stupid,
the still functioning part of my mind piped up. The tears I were expecting to follow didn’t, perhaps I had no more to cry, had my allocation for this year already run dry?
The feeling of absolute despair was back again, the feeling I had been fighting so hard to ignore since I arrived, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I needed fresh air and to be away from my grandparents, I couldn’t let them see me like this.
I stumbled down the hallway out into the sunshine, the day had lost all of its previous beauty. I looked around, the paddocks stretched for miles, I didn’t know where to go, the green open spaces which had once seemed so relaxing now seemed stifling. I felt like a prisoner stuck with no way back to the outside world. I couldn’t breathe, I needed to get away from the house but I had no means of getting there. I ran to the garage, Nans old red hatch was gone, the only time I had truly needed to get away and it wasn’t here. My mind flicked towards the possibility of Beaut, he
was
a means of transport. I was sure I could walk him quietly down a track somewhere without breaking my neck, I just needed to be away from here for a while, to be alone.
After a long struggle I managed to get the saddle on and pull myself awkwardly onto his back, my thighs instantly tensed in remembered pain from my last horseback encounter but I ignored this pushing the pain and fear to the edge of my mind. I needed to get away from here, to have some time completely and utterly alone. Nudging his sides gently with my heels, as Pop had shown me, he moved obediently forward out of the pen. We took a sharp right, following the outside edge of the pen until we came to the beginning of the track that I had taken previously, the track that led towards the hills in the distance. Pop had told me never to go up to the plateau paddock, the track was dangerous. It was the only place on the ranch Pop had forbidden me to go. But I was feeling reckless at the moment, I didn’t care what happened, or what the consequences may be, I just wanted to escape the pain. I thought that I had, but I had only managed to fool myself, as if only a few weeks here could fix things. All I had done was become really good at ignoring the feeling of complete emptiness, and now Arthur Bannisters short phone call had bought reality tumbling down around me once more. I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t pretend my parents deaths hadn’t happened, I was going to have to face it, sooner or later, I had prayed it would be later, and now later was only two weeks from Tuesday.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut, trying to lock back the tears that were finally running down my cheeks, I couldn’t even recall when they had started.
I don’t know how long we had been ambling along, I wasn’t really paying attention to the track or the endless fields that slipped by in a blur of green, I was focused only on myself. I tried my hardest to think of nothing, to clear my mind until all feelings had disappeared and I was just a shell.
It took me a while to realize that the track had changed, it was the difference in light that drew me back to reality. We were heading slowly uphill, the forbidden hill. Trees closed in on either side of us forming a canopy high above where the branches overlapped each other blocking the sunlight so that the world beneath was dim. The ground was rocky and uneven, the track itself very rough, almost disappearing in some places, covered with fallen branches and boulders
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