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With the most darting of glances over her shoulder and two quick hand gestures, Lolly communicates her plan. I am to keep Whiskey to Sapphire’s off side, coming just short of abreast with her, while Lolly and Rum gallop in an arc around and in front of Sapphire, turning the mare into me and Whiskey. Off we go, and as the horses turn, I snatch Sapphire’s reins. It is a team effort, possible only because of the understanding Lolly and I share. Almost as soon as it started—in less than a handful ofminutos—it’s over.
But even once Sapphire is slowed to a walk and Alan has leaped from her back to the safety of the ground, Lolly’s expression is thunderous. Only when she leans slightly to pat her horse, telling her “Rum Punch, you were a superstar!” does her face take on the light it held only a day ago. “Your name’s Miss P now, if that’s okay by you?”
A smattering of applause starts up as we ride back to the group, interrupted when Johannes looks up from his camera and calls, “You would not believe the photos of that stunt! I think Gwen will be ecstatic, even withoutallthe merch on display.”
Lolly snorts. She’s sporting the requisiteTS&Kgear, and so is Alan, while I am shirtless—more fodder for the tabloids. But I can do nothing about that. My job is to make the students happy, to plump them up with confidence, so that is what I do.
“It is a great triumph! Alan has added a feather to his cap, and we are alive to tell the story.”
But before anyone besides Pippa starts clapping again, Lolly interrupts.
“I’m sick of stunts.” She pierces me with a look. “And it wasn’t a triumph.” Her voice is flat and dark, and she is breathing nearly as hard as her mare is blowing. She refuses to even look at me as she rides past, her mare pinning her ears as she goes by. “It was bloody dangerous.”
And those are the last words Lolly speaks at me for the next four days.
BUTTON BRAIDS
Lolly Benoit. Ainsbury Abbey. The Cotswolds, England.
It’s Brontë weather the morning of the drag hunt—actual fox hunts being the exception rather than the rule these days—and even though Aunt Dottie has driven me over to the Abbey grounds early, the field is already clogged with horse vans looming out of the fog like strangely scattered boxes.
“I do hopeyou’ll consider what I’ve said, darling. It’s not every man who will work to win back—”
I’ve already heardevery damned variation of her pro-Mariano harangue in the days since his Argentinian/iPhone version of theSay Anythingboombox scene. The woman’s a broken record. It’s all I can do not to screamIt’s not my fault your prince didn’t come back! That doesn’t make Mariano a saint! He’s a liar, Dottie. A lying, lying liar of lies and I will not stand for it!I don’t say the other things. The thingsunderall theSturm und Drangbecause Dottie doesn’t know what happened all those years ago and I’m not about to tell her.
I reported the perv.
Everyone knew I was telling the truth.
He lied. And lied and lied and lied.
It was all he said, she said, she said, she said (because I wasn’t the only girl he’d messed with).
Without video, audio, or a confession, the police and lawyers and parents and school board couldn’t do squat, apparently.
And the newspapers went to town, interviewing all the girls who’d talk, painting them as Junior Harlots, with their short skirts and long legs and, during their riding lessons, standing too close to the riding instructor in their tight breeches…
So, he got moved to another school district.
And Mummy blamed me and we moved to another country.
The end.
So,no, I’m not okay with stories about me, or any woman who gets painted as the Scarlet Woman in the press. Stories I can’t control. Stories about sex, sex, sex. And I’m not okay with men lying about the sex and touching they’ve done, even if it’ssupposedly‘only a boob signing,’ ergo consensual, ergo not his fault, er-fricking-go away and leave me alone. The women are always dirty somehow, and me with them. The stain of old made fresh again. I wish I could untangle that knot, but it’s so central to who I am that it’s practically welded shut.
Don’t cry,Lolly. Remember: that was then and this is now. And the TMZ pictures are lurid, but they are NOT THE SAME. And now they’re gone. Deleted. Expunged. Put that out of your mind.
The pressreally are scum buckets, always looking to make things look like skank-stank, which sells. But if none of that had happened and I wasn’t fully activated by my own past, I’m still never, ever, ever okay with men who lie.
Men who lie are notto be trusted. Big lies, little lies, friendly lies, I-didn’t-mean-it lies. They’re all lies and they’re all dealbreakers.
Dottie takesthe corner at her usual speed, throwing me against the door and bringing me back to the present, then screeches to a halt.
“Menlike him aren’t two-a-penny. You shouldn’t turn away a man who’ll do anything—"
I slamthe door on whatever Aunt Dottie is going to say next.
Of course,Dottie rolls down her window to finish her thought. “To win back his lady’s love!” When I don’t respond she raises her voice even more. “Have a marvelous time, darling!”
