countryside.
He spent that night staring up at the ceiling of his hotel bedroom and counting the minutes until dawn. He drifted off sometime before first light, and woke to the rays of the sun creeping up the flower-patterned wallpaper by his bed. He threw off the covers, dressed quickly and grabbed a coffee in the breakfast room, waiting impatiently for the day to start. As soon as the hands on his watch hit 9 a.m., he started phoning round estate agents.
His enquiries drew blanks all the way. It seemed that whoever had let the co-operative make use of the building hadn’t gone through an agent – or at least not one in the region. Maybe a more casual agreement, then, cash only. Maybe the place had been rent-free. It couldn’t be worth much to live there.
But whatever the arrangement, someone had to be paying local taxes on the property. Which meant that somewhere there was a record on file that would lead him to the owner and then – with a bit of persuasion – to the people who’d last lived in it.
He checked a map of Offenburg and found that the Rathaus or town council office wasn’t far from his hotel. The sun had disappeared behind iron-grey clouds and there was a chill in the air as he walked through the streets. The Rathaus was an imposing red and cream building on the corner of a street of neat old timber-framed houses. He pushed through the main entrance and walked across the reception foyer to the desk, where he spoke to an austere-looking woman with thin lips and dead eyes who seemed to enjoy informing him that unless he was a police officer or a licensed private investigator with proper ID to show her, there was no way she was going to disclose the identity or home address of the owner of the former pottery outside Offenburg. He stared hard at her for a long moment, until a flicker of nervousness appeared in those lifeless eyes. With that small victory won, he turned and pushed back out of the main entrance.
Out in the street, he looked up at the building. Below the arched clock tower was a balcony, and the stonework around the windows was ornately sculpted in classical German style. But he wasn’t admiring the architecture. He was thinking about how easy it would be to get in there after dark, and find the records himself.
Easy enough.
But until dark, all he had on his hands was more time to kill. He couldn’t bear the thought of sitting it out in the hotel, and he didn’t feel like exploring the town much either. He walked back to where he’d parked the Mini, threw himself behind the wheel and punched the little car out through the traffic into the countryside. But if he’d thought that driving around aimlessly was going to help him get his mind off things, he knew right away that it was over-optimistic. As he drove, the road in front of him became the tunnel of his thoughts and he could feel despondency wrapping its arms around him. A weight of emotion settled heavy in his chest. Had he lost Ruth forever? Was this just going to fizzle out?
Up ahead on the winding country road, he saw a line of horse riders, four of them, moving in single file, and he instinctively slowed the car and edged out to the left to pass them without scaring their mounts. He glanced at them as he purred by in second gear. The string was led by two women on big hunters, followed by a teenage boy on a grey and a little girl of about nine bringing up the rear. She sat astride her sturdily-built pony as if it was the most treasured thing to her in the world.
The leader gave Ben a nod and mouthed a thank you as the Mini passed by. He waved back glumly, put his foot on the pedal and accelerated gently away.
Then, fifty yards up the road, he stopped the car.
He looked back in the mirror. Watched the easy ambling gait of the big hunter up front, the sway of the rider’s hips astride the saddle. Heard the clip-clop of horseshoes on tarmac.
The riders came closer, and he pretended to be searching for something in the glove box but was watching them all the way. As they trotted past the car, he stared again at the little girl.
Not at her. At what she was wearing. Zipped up tight to her neck was a little green fleece jacket with an equestrian logo on it.
His fingers were trembling a little as he took out his phone and scrolled up the picture of Ruth standing there looking cold and windswept on the library steps in St Peter’s Square in Manchester.
She was wearing the exact same type of fleece that the little girl was wearing. Same logo, same cut, same colour. He’d been too busy trying to make out her features to pay attention to the clothes. But now he realised that she was wearing exactly the kind of equestrian gear that the Ruth of his memories would have grown up wanting to wear.
With Ruth, it had been horses, horses, horses. What had started out as a fun activity for her at the age of four had quickly turned into a serious passion. By the age of seven, she’d been an accomplished junior rider with a whole wall of trophies and rosettes, and the dream she always talked about of becoming a champion show jumper had been looking more realistic with every new competition. The house had always been full of little riding boots and hats, bits of tack, horse pictures and books, hoof picks and all kinds of other equestrian paraphernalia. Those were the memories that made Ben smile.
Then his mind drifted to the ones that didn’t. The memory of coming home from North Africa as a family of three and knowing that it was his fault. Of his mother, her face a mask of agony as she lay sobbing on Ruth’s bed, clutching a little riding jacket as though Ruth was still inside it. Of the terrible months that had passed before his father had finally gathered up all the boots and riding hats, her tack and her saddle, and sealed them inside a packing case.
Ben returned to the present. Thought of the person Ruth was now. Whatever her life story had been, whatever the reason why she’d never tried to find her lost family, was there a small part of her that was still the Ruth he’d known? A part of her that still loved horses, wanted to be around them?
Further up the road was a little white sign on a post. He couldn’t make it out from that distance, but when the line of riders reached it they turned right up a track and out of sight.
He slipped the car into gear and followed. The sign at the side of the road bore a picture of a horse and the name of what appeared to be some kind of equestrian centre. Pulling up at the entrance to the track, he saw the riders pass through an open gate and up towards a large yard surrounded by stable-blocks. Behind the stables was an office with a car park, and he drove in and pulled up on the gravel next to a 4?4 hitched to a trailer.
Stepping out of the car, he looked around. He’d been in a hundred of these kinds of places with his sister. The smell of hay and straw, horse feed and manure filled his nostrils as he walked over towards the office. The two young women in boots and jodhpurs who were sitting at a desk over mugs of coffee and sharing a joke about something looked up at him as he stepped inside. One was about seventeen, stumpy with bad skin, and gazed at him through thick glasses. The other might have been a couple of years older, more self-assured, and gave him a smile. On her jacket was a name tag that said ‘Hannah’. She had the broad shoulders and slender waist of a serious rider. An instructor, he thought.
He showed them the picture on his phone and asked if they knew the person in it. Blank looks, an exchange of rapid German, and they shook their heads.
‘Can you tell me if there are any other stables or riding schools in this area?’
The stumpy one went on staring at him through her glasses, but Hannah smiled again and said there were four. Politely ignoring the seductive looks she was giving him, he jotted down the details.
‘Shame I can’t drive you there myself,’ she said. ‘I’m working. But we’re having a barbecue here tonight, if you fancy coming along.’
These German girls. He politely declined.
It took him two hours to drive around the countryside and find the first three places on his list. More horsey smells and sounds, more young women in riding gear. No sign of Ruth and nobody who seemed to know her. The peak of energy that had surged through him was beginning to wane again.
His spirits sank even more as he drove up to the last place on the list, eleven miles out of Offenburg, in the early afternoon. The establishment looked more like a country club than a riding school. The horses in the neatly- fenced paddocks were gleaming Arabs and thoroughbreds, and two little guys in uniforms jumped out to rake up the tyre tracks he’d left in the gravel.
He thought about driving off, then shrugged and slammed the door and wandered about the buildings. A talented young rider was cantering around the sand school with her feet out of the stirrups and her arms out like a plane. Grooms were leading nervy horses up and down the yard. Everything very slick, professional and
