by Kate Lattey
“Do you want to show this weekend?”
Of all the things I’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them. “Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do.”
I drew in a breath, let it out. The funny thing was that, for the first time in a long time, I did want to, and I told him so. He looked relieved, and even smiled. I don’t think it occurred to him that I could’ve been lying.
“Good.” He shifted his weight, leaning his arms on Skip’s stall door. He held a hand out to Skip, who took a step towards him, then hesitated and looked back at me. My heart melted, and I reached out and touched his shoulder.
“Go on.”
Skip walked up to Dad and lipped hopefully at his palm. “Now you’re just teasing him,” I told my father, and was rewarded with another smile.
“Sorry, mate.” He clapped Skip’s neck as the chestnut pony huffed out a disappointed sigh.
The tension was so thick that it was almost oppressive. I waited for Dad to bring it up, waited for him to have the conversation that he’d told Mum he would have with me. Waited for his anger and disappointment and his insistence that I do as I was told, do what was expected of me, what he wanted me to do. Be the person he wanted me to be. I’d tried, but I was so tired. If he told me that I had to stay, I wouldn’t have argued. I didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
But he didn’t. Instead, he brought up a different topic.
“I heard back from the vet, about Teddy.”
I hadn’t thought it was possible for my chest to get any tighter. I struggled to fill my lungs, putting a hand on Skip’s rump to steady myself.
“What’d she say?”
“Intracardiac aortic rupture.” He rattled the words off as though he’d memorised them. “That means that the aorta-”
“Ruptured on the inside. That’s why she didn’t see it until she dissected his heart,” I finished for him. I did my best to divorce my own feelings about Teddy from the facts, because it was interesting. I wondered what his heart had looked like on the inside, how easily she’d found the problem. Wished, belatedly, that I’d stuck it out in Biology to do the heart dissection myself. Then I’d be able to have a clearer idea of what had gone on.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. “We should’ve had him checked more thoroughly.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t our fault.” I knew that now, and looking at Dad’s face, I knew that he hadn’t had anything to do with it. I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought he might have. My father was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a monster.
Dad drummed his fingers on the top of the stable door. “Have I ruined it for you?”
I blinked at him, confused. “Ruined what?”
“Horses. Competing. Everything.” He swept one arm around and I followed his eyes across the two empty looseboxes that stood on either side of Buck and Skip. At the tack room that lay opposite, with its gleaming saddles and faded sashes and rosettes, pinned up in there in the days before I’d started winning at a National level and my prizes had been considered worthy of display inside the house. “I know I’ve put a lot of pressure on you. I thought it was for your own good, but…” He shook his head.
Was he finally listening to me? I finished unplaiting Skip’s false tail and carried it carefully back to the front of the loosebox. Put it in its box and closed the lid, then looked up at my father.
“Sometimes it gets a bit intense,” I told him truthfully. “But I do love it.”
I used to. I still do. I can’t tell sometimes.
“I only ever wanted the best for you.”
“I know.” He was scaring me now. He wasn’t angry or yelling. He wasn’t threatening me or fuming about my mother. He just seemed sad, and old, and tired.
“Come inside for dinner,” he said eventually.
He turned and started walking away, and I wondered what he was thinking. He hadn’t had the conversation Mum had told him to have. Did that mean he was resigned to me leaving? Or did he just not think it was a conversation he needed to have, because he knew I’d never have the courage to defy him? Was he trying to get me to pity him, so I’d choose him when I got put on the spot?
“Dad.”
He paused, looked over his shoulder at me, silhouetted in the fading light.
“I love you.”
That wasn’t what I’d planned to say, but it just came out.
My father smiled at me. “Ek is lief vir jou.”
And he left it at that.
* * *
Pete was trying to contact me, but I kept ignoring him. I didn’t know how I felt about him right now. He was ruining everything. It wasn’t a rational anger, but I couldn’t help it. If he hadn’t contacted me, this wouldn’t be happening. Everything would still be fine.
Nothing had been fine for a long time.
He rang me twice at school, once in the middle of Biology class, which resulted in my phone being confiscated. Mr Gibbons looked apologetic about it, but I didn’t care. I surrendered it willingly, and let him hold onto it. I didn’t care if I never saw it again.
But on Friday afternoon, he called me up to his desk at the end of class.
“You’ll want this back. Don’t let me see it again.”
He smiled, trying to be nice as I nodded and pocketed the phone. The battery was flat by now anyway.
“Thanks.” I started to turn away, but he called me back.
“Susannah.” I pivoted, waited. “Do you still want to be a vet?”
I shook my head. “No.” Then I hesitated. I’d changed my mind because I knew nobody in New Zealand would want me looking after their horses. But what if I wasn’t in New Zealand? I felt a rush of excitement. The dream hadn’t died after all. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Because you have a lot of potential, if you apply yourself.” I forced myself not to roll my eyes at that old cliché. “But this was a disappointment.” He held up my latest assignment, and I felt my face flush. “Care to explain?”
I shook my head. “I got busy. I didn’t have time to finish.”
He didn’t seem to believe me. I didn’t want to let him down. I was leaving, but I didn’t want him thinking badly of me.
“Things have just been rough at home lately.” The words tripped over themselves coming off my tongue, and I cringed inwardly. Another unspoken rule was that you did not, under any circumstances, talk about our family with anyone who was not part of it. What happened in our house stayed in our house. But those rules meant nothing anymore. Perhaps they’d never meant anything in the first place.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mr Gibbons took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “I know a little about that myself. But you can’t let that distract you from your calling.” He pushed his glasses back up his angular nose and gave me a thin smile. “Don’t let other people’s problems stop you from achieving your dreams.”
Good advice, and I pretended to take it. He dismissed me, and I took a longer route back through the school buildings, going past Ms Bryant’s room again. I couldn’t say exactly why. Maybe if the door had been open, I would’ve gone in. Just to see if she was there. Just to see if she really did want to talk.
But her door was still closed, so I went home instead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Katy was true to her word. When we arrived at the Hawke’s Bay show grounds, she was waiting for us, and directed my father to park next to their truck. Ours dwarfed it, but everyone pretended not to notice the disparity.
“Ponies are down here,” she said, pointing towards the nearest yards. “This was as close as we could park to them.”
She seemed slightly apologetic, but I smiled at her as Dad lowered the ramp. “It’s fine. Thanks.”
AJ came hurrying over to me, her wide grin splitting her face as usual. “Hey, you’re here! We’ve got it all set up. Come see!”
She took Buck’s lead rope from me, and I led Skip behind her as we went in
to the building. The ponies were housed at the closest end, only a stone’s throw from where our trucks were parked. AJ led Buck into the second yard on the left, and motioned me to one right before it.
“See? Close as. And we’re sleeping there.”
Next to Skip’s yard was a small alcove, where they had stacked a few hay bales around the sides. In the middle was an old tarpaulin, with two sleeping bags already rolled out, pillows situated at one end. I felt my throat constrict as I looked at their efforts. They’d really meant it about sleeping out with me to keep an eye on the ponies.
“That’s great.”
“It’s not very subtle,” Katy mused. “Makes it kind of obvious that we’re standing guard. I wanted to sneak out after dark, so nobody realised we were there, but AJ insisted on setting it up now.”
“It’s a deterrent,” AJ explained. “Now they probably won’t even try anything, and we can all get a good night’s sleep.”
I tried to smile, but I had no plans to get even a wink of sleep. I wanted to get to the bottom of this as much as Katy did, and I wasn’t going to let anyone slip past me.
“I love it, but think Katy’s right,” I said. “We should be a bit sneakier about it.”
Katy gave her friend a smug look, and AJ rolled her eyes. “Fine. But you’re impressed, right?”
“Very,” I assured her. “Thanks so much. Both of you. It means a lot.”
AJ grinned, but Katy shrugged off the praise uneasily. “Let’s see not get carried away until we know if it works.”
I’d competed at these show grounds countless times, but it had never been quite like this. For one, Mum wasn’t there. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d missed one of my shows voluntarily, but she’d told me that she had things to do this weekend, and would drive down for the Pony Grand Prix tomorrow. I knew it was because she didn’t want to spend the weekend shut into a truck with Dad, and I couldn’t blame her. Yet despite how strange it was not having her there, it was also more relaxing. And with only the two ponies to compete, and them only jumping in one class each per day, it was setting up to be a fairly quiet show.
Katy, on the other hand, had four ponies competing, including her new grey pinto. He was apparently already behaving much better after a chiropractic treatment and with a saddle that fit him correctly, and she jumped him and the gangly black gelding Puppet in a low class that morning. I hung around the yards, unwilling to let my ponies out of my sight, but when they came back and decided on an early lunch, AJ insisted that I join them. I ate the ham and cheese sandwiches on offer, keeping one eye on my ponies as AJ smothered the ham in mayonnaise and complained loudly that it wasn’t bacon.
Then it was time for the metre twenty, and we saddled the ponies. AJ did Buck for me while I wrestled with Skip’s fake tail until Deb came to help me. Her experience helped, and she managed to get it sitting much better. If you didn’t look too closely, it almost looked real. Katy had music blaring from their truck while we got the ponies ready, and I kept waiting for Dad to come out and tell her to turn it down, because he was trying to get some work done, but he didn’t. He kept quiet, his head down over the piles of paperwork that he’d brought along, and I moved around him as I got dressed for my class.
“We’re heading over to the ring now,” I told him as I opened the wardrobe and looked at the row of jackets. My hand went towards my usual dark grey one, but then I grabbed another one out instead. I hadn’t worn this one in a while, because the burgundy fabric stood out against others’ more muted, traditional colours, and I hadn’t wanted to draw attention to myself. But I had decided not to care anymore. I loved this jacket. I was going to wear it if I wanted to.
AJ stared at me as I came back out of the truck, and for a moment I second-guessed my choice.
“Oh my God, I love your jacket!” She came closer, plucking at the sleeve inquisitively. “What a gorgeous colour. Where’d you get it? I haven’t seen one like this.” She looked over at Katy, who was dressed in conservative dark blue. “Why don’t you have one this colour?”
Katy pulled a face. “Not a fan.”
I felt my face flush, but AJ shook her head at her friend. “Well, there’s no accounting for taste. I think it looks great. Is it new?”
I shook my head as I pulled Buck’s stirrups down. “I’ve had it for a while. I don’t wear it much.”
“You should. Or you could give it to me,” AJ hinted. “I bet it looks good on a grey pony.” She realised what she’d said a second later, and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh man, sorry! I didn’t mean that. Well, I didn’t mean it to be like…”
“It’s fine. And it does,” I told her. “Though Teddy was light grey, and it’d probably look even better on a dark grey like Squib.”
AJ smiled at me, relieved that her faux pas hadn’t upset me, but strangely enough it had done the opposite. By talking about Teddy, the loss somehow hurt less. I still felt guilty for what had happened to him, but I also knew that we couldn’t have stopped it from happening. The only thing I could’ve done differently was not to ride him at all, but Teddy wouldn’t have taken well to retirement. He’d loved outings, and being left behind in the paddock every weekend wouldn’t have gone down well at all. He’d probably have run himself ragged while we were gone, and we’d likely have come home to find the same outcome, only he would’ve been miserable and alone when it happened.
Dad came out of the truck and gave me a leg-up into Buck’s saddle, and I rode to the ring with Katy by my side. AJ followed behind, deep in conversation with Skip. He was already quite taken with her, and when she sat on the fence and watched us warm up, he rested his chin on her leg and blew bubbles at her.
She giggled as I trotted past. “Your pony is so weird.”
I smiled. “I know.”
The delicate bubbles gathered around his lips, and AJ reached over and gently touched one. It popped, spraying Skip’s own saliva onto his nose, and he jumped, making AJ laugh so hard that she almost fell off the fence.
It felt good, knowing that she liked my pony because he was cute and silly, not because he was a performance animal. Nobody else had ever noticed much about him except that he was a consistent winner, that he was steady and reliable and well-known. AJ was new to the show scene, and probably knew very little of his history. She just took him at face value, and amused herself for the next few minutes by popping every bubble he blew at her.
Dad was standing by the railing, talking to Deb and letting me get on with my warm-up. He only forgot himself once, when I had transitioned back to trot and glanced down to check my diagonal as I passed him.
“Eyes up!”
I shot him a look, and he appeared slightly chastened as Deb left him and went to the practice fence, setting a sharp cross and telling Katy to canter down to it. I circled, getting Buck around my leg and focussing. Katy cantered past me, and nodded towards the practice jump.
“I think she’s waiting for you to go before she puts it up.”
How could a switch flip so quickly? Only a couple of weeks ago, I’d have sworn on my mother’s life that Katy O’Reilly hated me with the fire of a thousand suns. Yet here she was, nodding me down to the practice fence, and her mother was looking at me expectantly, and I was suddenly part of the team.
It felt very different.
It felt very, very good.
We jumped the cross once off each rein, then Deb put it up to a vertical. I watched Katy ride Molly past me on her way to jump it, and as much as I’d enjoyed riding that pony, I was glad I’d made the decision to let Katy have her back. I couldn’t imagine that I would be getting this kind of acceptance from her if I hadn’t. Even if AJ was still speaking to me, Katy definitely wouldn’t have been. But she was now, and I was surprised by how quickly I was getting used to it.
We both jumped clear first rounds, and I swapped onto Skip while AJ took Buck from me. He rubbed green foamy saliva on her shoulder as she ran up his stirrups, and she pulled a face at me.
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br /> “I thought Squib was gross, but your ponies are ridiculous. I’m going to be covered in their snot and drool by the end of the day!”
I laughed as I swung my leg forward and tightened Skip’s girth. “You volunteered! Hand him off to Dad if you want. He’ll hang onto him.”
But AJ shook her head. “It’s fine. Come along then, Buckingham Palace. Let’s get you cooled off.”
Skip gave a pathetic little whinny as Buck and Molly wandered off to loosen their muscles, but Buck didn’t even glance back at him. If my ponies had any faults, it was their attachment to one another, which had only increased since we’d lost Teddy. But Buck was quite content with his new friends, and I smiled at their retreating backs before picking up Skip’s reins.
Entries were low at this event, and I only had a short time to get Skip ready to jump, but Deb was still around and she adjusted the fences for me, asking what I wanted to jump and how high. I was a bit hesitant to ask at first, and just agreed with whatever she set up. But when Skip rubbed the ascending oxer twice, I had her set it square and he jumped much better.
I waited at the gate, running my hand down his stubbly crest. I actually quite liked how his hogged mane felt now that I’d run the clippers over it. If you didn’t know better – and didn’t look at his tail – you’d think it’d been done for fashion. And it was already saving on grooming time. I just hoped I wasn’t going to need an emergency mane-grab.
I was sent into the ring as Stacey Winchester rode out on her new black pony, and I circled, waiting for the stewards to replace her handful of dropped rails. The bell rang while they were still resetting the wall, but I figured that I had six jumps to clear before then, and they’d have it set by the time I got there. I rode Skip down to the first, and he cleared it in a wide arc. Over the second, and the third. Across the arena to the double at four, and Skip jumped through it beautifully. Five strong strides on to the big grey oxer, and over that one too. I sat up and balanced him for the turn, and saw that the fence stewards were still pushing the blocks back into place on top of the wall.