Free The Horse With My Name by Bateman

without being hungry – but when I was properly married Patricia used to sit me down and say, right, healthy eating begins on Monday. That was generally on a Tuesday,allowing me the best part of a week to stock up on my supplies of sugar and fat, culminating in a Sunday night visit to McDonald’s, where I’d discovered the delights of hot apple pie and ice cream smothered in caramel sauce. And all for just 90p. Or two for £1.80.
    ‘I said, are you finished?’
    I looked at my plate. It was clean. It was a stupid question unless down here they ate plate as well. But I nodded and smiled, because I had to live with these people, at least for a weekend. She was middle-aged and her hair was tied back in a hambuger bun. Her skin was yellow, or it might just have been batter. I glanced at my watch. It was still only seven thirty. Staying up all night to meet McClean had paid off, but now I could go back to bed and sleep off the drink.
    Or I would have done if the party animals had not still been boozing and singing along at the tops of their voices to some country cak on the radio, with the birdshit neighbour across the road staring in with a face like a bag of spiders.
    I roared in and smacked off the radio. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled. ‘It’s eight o‘clock in the fucking morning! Grow up! Tidy up! And if you have to throw up do it somewhere else! Haven’t you got jobs to go to? Haven’t you got homes, you sad fucking wankers! And even if you haven’t, I don’t fucking care, just get out of my fucking house, okay!’
    They stared meekly at me as they gathered up their meagre belongings. I moved to let the dry-cleaner get his coat from the chair behind me. When he’d pulled it on he shyly gave my arm a little squeeze. ‘We understand about Patricia, Dan, and your son.’
    I looked from one sympathetic face to another, and wondered what I’d said, and why. ‘You know nothing!’ I snapped. ‘Now you better be fucking out of here by the time I wake up!’
    I practically ran out of the lounge and up the stairs. I tore off my jeans and crawled beneath a quilt. For some reason there were tears rolling down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop hugging myself. It was the funniest thing.
    I woke just before noon. The house was quiet. I had a quick shower and shave and soaked myself in anti-perspirant and aftershave, but I could still smell horses, and I’d the feeling that I would do for some considerable time to come.
    I dressed in my idea of smart casual. Black jeans, red sweatshirt, black sports jacket, Oxford shoes. If I was going to spend much longer around horses I would certainly have to do something about the shoes. It would mean investing in wellington boots or at least investigating if they did a lace-up version. When I went downstairs there was an oil painting of a little girl picking flowers hanging in the lounge. There was chicken in the freezer and a bag of Guinness cans in the fridge. On a hanger perched on the open door to the utility room were my stained jeans, now washed and pressed.
    There was no note anywhere, and there was no need for one.
    Geordie McClean’s stable was about twenty minutes out of Ashtown. As usual I was running behind schedule. The windy roads and the cows in the way didn’t help. When I finally pulled up to the gates it was nearly half past one. It had been Hilda’s idea to try and meet Geordie face to face on the gallops, rather than risk a brush-off from some underling at the house, so I was hoping he hadn’t checked out my lie about being redirected there by his staff. But as I looked up at the gate and the security cameras watching me I knew that he knew, and just hoped that it wouldn’t make any difference. I gave my name and my business and after a thirty-second wait the gates swung inwards.
    I drove up towards a large whitewashed bungalow. Large, but it wasn’t a mansion. It had nothing on Mark Corkery’s place. There was an IAR Land Rover sitting outside and I could just see