Phantom: One Last Chance

by Belinda Rapley

  “I think we should start to keep a watch on the yard,” Mia suggested. “That way we can keep an eye out for Megan, or whoever the visitor might be, and catch them red-handed if they sneak in.”

  Suddenly Rosie squealed.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “Our stash of mince pies!” Rosie gasped. “They’ve all gone!”

  THE next morning the four girls turned out their ponies, except for Phantom, who hated going in the field. They’d planned to hide on the yard all day so they could keep a lookout, which meant no riding. They mucked out, refilled haynets, scrubbed water buckets and swept the yard. Mrs Millar had texted Charlie, saying that she had got her message, was doing a bit of digging for information, and then would call.

  Charlie stayed a while in Phantom’s box. “Things will get better, I promise,” she whispered, to convince herself as much as to persuade the black horse. Phantom stood warily, unmoving, at the back of the box. He turned his deep liquid eye on her, the whites showing, and Charlie felt a tingle of nerves run through her. He made her feel so tiny, with just one look. He still scared her, no matter what she tried to tell herself. She let herself out of the stable, and headed into Rosie’s cottage with the others for some hot buttered toast and hot chocolate.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Mrs Honeycott said vaguely as she put the plates on the table. “There was something in the post for Charlie this morning.”

  “For Charlie?” Rosie asked. Mrs Honeycott scratched her nose with the end of a thin paintbrush which she’d found behind her ear. She frowned, looking taxed, before nodding her head.

  “Yes, definitely Charlie,” she confirmed, picking up the pile of red and white envelopes, stuffed with Christmas cards. In among the pile was a brown rectangular envelope which had been folded over at the end and stuck down with tape. Charlie’s name and ‘Blackberry Farm’ were written on the front in thick marker pen, nothing more. Mrs Honeycott put the envelope on the table, narrowly avoiding a splodge of strawberry jam.

  “This can’t have been posted,” Mia said, examining it. “There’s no stamp or address.”

  “It must have been delivered by hand,” Alice agreed, getting excited.

  Charlie lifted it up and turned it over. It felt curiously solid as she carefully unpeeled the sealed end and then tipped it up. With a thud, a slim red hardback book fell onto the table. The word ‘Diary’ was foiled on the front in faded gold, along with the year.

  “This is from six years ago,” Mia whispered as the others held their breath, already realising what that meant. Charlie checked, but there was nothing else in the envelope.

  Charlie opened the book and saw, on the first page, the flowing, hand-written words: ‘Fable’s diary’. She carefully turned the page and saw the next inscription, which she read aloud: “This diary is dedicated to the memory of Fable and her dear little foal.”

  “It’s Caitlin’s diary!” Alice said, looking at it in awe. “Fran must have found it!”

  “I’m going to start reading it today,” Charlie said. She couldn’t wait to get going. “Right now, in fact, as we’re staying here all day!”

  “Ooh, we can all read it by the fire in the living room!” Rosie said, picturing them curled up on the sofas around the Christmas tree eating piping-hot mince pies straight from the oven.

  “We can’t exactly keep a lookout from there,” Mia corrected her. “I think we should hide in the tack room and use this opportunity to do a marathon tack-cleaning session. That way the yard’s never left unguarded.”

  Rosie sank down in her chair. The thought of soaping and polishing her bridle all day under Mia’s watchful eye filled her with gloom. She wished now that they were going on a marathon ride instead, despite the arctic temperatures.

  Charlie frowned as she saw her Mum’s number flash up on her phone.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, then listened quietly before adding, “No, no I didn’t.”

  Charlie ended the call, looking thoughtful.

  “Who was that?” Mia asked.

  “It was Mum,” Charlie explained. “The woman in the post office just called her to ask if I’d taken down the advert for Pirate early.”

  “Why?” Rosie asked.

  “Because”, Charlie said quietly, “it’s gone.”

  Alice suggested that they should check the other adverts they’d put up. Mia stayed behind with Rosie to keep watch on the yard, while Alice jumped bareback onto Scout and jogged him into the woods, Charlie biking beside her. They got to the fork in the bridleway and caught their breath, staring up at the bare tree.

  “The pin’s still there,” Alice said.

  “But no advert,” Charlie puffed.

  “Maybe someone who wants to loan Pirate has taken it?” Alice suggested.

  “Maybe, although Mum didn’t mention anyone else calling about him,” Charlie reasoned.

  They checked the final tree and found the same – a pin but no advert. Then they headed back to the yard and found Mia and Rosie in the tack room. Mia added a line in her notebook when they updated her.

  “Megan might have taken them down so no one else saw them,” Rosie said.

  “That fits,” Mia agreed, “if it’s definitely Megan, that is.”

  “I guess we might find out today,” Charlie said.

  Mia organised Alice and Rosie as they stripped down their bridles into pieces. They had a bucket of warm water on the floor between them, with sponges and saddle soap at the ready. Just as they began Charlie opened the first page of the diary, sitting cross-legged on the blanket box with Beanie on one side of her and Pumpkin on her lap. She started to read aloud:

  I’m writing this sitting under the cherry tree in the black horse’s paddock. Right now she is very weak and it’s like she’s not aware of me being here, but at the same time I can tell that she’d rather that I wasn’t here at all. The paddock’s huge, but she still seems to think it’s too small for both of us. But if I stay here long enough, I’m hoping that might just change.

  The description hit Charlie – it sounded just like Phantom. He never responded to her presence much any more, yet it still felt as if he hated and resented it. In an instant, she knew exactly what to do.

  “As cosy as it is in here,” Charlie said, gently moving Pumpkin and standing up, “I think I should be reading this with Phantom. Caitlin wrote this while she was near Fable, so the mare could get used to her. I’m going to try the same with Phantom.”

  Charlie walked quietly over to Phantom’s stable. As usual, the black horse was standing in the shadows in his freshly laid, thick straw bed, his coat glistening. He shook his head as Charlie let herself in, and tried to swing away from her as she caught his headcollar. She clipped him to the lead rope, which she tied loosely to the baler twine attached to the metal ring at the front of the stable, near his haynet so that he could still pick at it if he wanted to. The black horse reluctantly stood near her, stretching his lead rope as far as it would go so that he could keep as much distance between them as possible.

  At first Charlie was alert to every twitch Phantom made, her heart racing with each thud of his back hoof or irritable swish of his tail. But the more absorbed she became with the black horse in the diary, the less aware she grew of Phantom. She gasped as she raced through Caitlin’s early struggle to keep the mare alive. She felt her eyes well up as she got to the part when Caitlin truly feared that she was going to lose Fable, and smiled in relief at the happiness that spilled out on the page from Caitlin’s pen, when the mare finally began to take an interest in the world around her.

  As Charlie read on through blurred eyes, Caitlin described Fable’s introduction to Molly the Hope Farm sheep and how Molly’s solid, quiet presence seemed to settle her. Fable still didn’t trust Caitlin to get too near, but she and Molly quickly became inseparable. Caitlin then began to patch together the life that Fable had endured before she finally ended up at Hope Farm. She even traced her original breeder, who described her as a ch
eeky, feisty foal, and clearly promising. But that part of her character was quickly forgotten as she gained a reputation and got labelled as ‘difficult’ instead. She’d been shipped about from new yard to new yard, with expectations of her ability high, but was given no time to settle. Her nature was delicate, and Caitlin could track the change in her behaviour as it became increasingly unsettled and fractious. Each owner had sold her on, keen to get rid of the tricky-to-handle mare, until she’d ended up, broken, misunderstood and unloved, with Tim Leech – the nasty breeder who was going to take her to the knackers’ yard. Tim said that Fable was defensive, ill-tempered and dangerous. But Caitlin could see beyond that to a fragile horse of whom too much had been asked, too quickly. Caitlin had found her just minutes before it was too late. Now it was down to Caitlin and Molly to mend Fable, whose heart had finally cracked on the day that her foal had been taken from her.

  Charlie felt a lump in her throat, and a tear trickled down her cheek. She heard a big sigh, fluttering through velvety nostrils.

  She looked up. She realised that while she’d been reading, Phantom had stopped standing so rigidly, and was no longer filling the box with his unease. She sat quietly for a second, looking at him. He was so beautiful, but she’d stopped seeing it. All she’d seen when she looked at Phantom in the last couple of months was trouble and bad manners, just as all Fable’s owners had done with her. She’d lost sight of the little foal he’d once been. She suddenly realised that she’d learned more about Fable, a horse she’d never meet, in one morning than she had about Phantom after three months. Her eyes widened for a second as a thought struck her. What if Phantom was more like Fable than she realised: what if he was apprehensive and fearful underneath his scary behaviour too, rather than mean and unfriendly?

  Suddenly Phantom started, and Charlie looked up to see Rosie, bringing her a steaming mug of hot chocolate. At once Phantom was transformed back into his grouchy self, and as Charlie stretched her cramped legs, she realised how bored and lonely Phantom must be, standing on his own in his stable for most of the time – especially as she hardly spent any time with him either. She let herself out and walked back to the tack room with Rosie.

  “I’m going to take Phantom to pick at some grass,” she said. “Is that okay?”

  “I’d better come with you, just in case you need a hand,” Mia suggested, placing her gleaming bridle on its hook, feeling a bit restless after spending so long hidden in the tack room.

  “Ooh, me too!” Alice quickly volunteered. After cleaning her bridle to Mia’s high standards, her fingers were aching, and if she heard the same Christmas songs on the radio one more time she might go crazy. She stood up and passed the lunge line to Charlie. “I can open gates, that sort of thing.”

  Rosie looked down at the mass of leather pieces still in a pile on the rug box, waiting to be put back together. She started to wish she’d spent less time playing with Beanie and more time concentrating on her bridle. “I guess that means I’m the one stuck here keeping an eye on the yard, then.”

  “You’ve got Beanie and Pumpkin to keep you company,” Alice smiled.

  As the other three disappeared out of the tack room, Beanie scrabbled at Rosie’s knee, asking her to throw his squeaky toy again.

  Charlie felt her heart quicken and her fingers shake as she clipped the lunge line to Phantom’s headcollar and led him out of his stable. Alice ran and opened the gate. Charlie remembered what Neve had said about not holding him too tight. She held the lunge line loosely, so that he didn’t have anything to fight against as he was led to the paddock. As she turned in through the open gate of the schooling field she glanced over and noticed Pirate grazing with the other ponies in the corner. Suddenly a robin flitted out of the bush beside her and spooked Phantom, who danced at the end of the line. Charlie knew that, for now, the black horse needed her full concentration.

  Alice and Mia climbed onto the post-and-rail fencing, huddling up together to keep warm. Mia wrapped her big, fluffy pink scarf around both of them, and Alice tucked her gloved hands into her pockets. They watched as Charlie let the lunge line out. At first Phantom stood, with his head up, then slowly he began to dip and nibble icy grass, raising his head and staring into the distance between bites, and starting at sounds only he could hear. But as Phantom started to relax, so too, Mia and Alice noticed as they glanced at each other with a smile, did Charlie.

  They were starting to feel the numb chill of the afternoon through their thick layers, and their noses, fingers and toes were beginning to freeze. Then they heard Beanie barking excitedly on the yard.

  Phantom started at the sound and Charlie looked anxiously at him. She took a step nearer and reached out to pat him, but he lifted his head and shied sideways. She sighed, but reminded herself that Caitlin had only ever taken tiny steps forward and that she shouldn’t race ahead and then get frustrated.

  Charlie walked over to Mia and Alice, leading Phantom, who was warily keeping his distance. “I’m going to head back,” she said to them.

  “I bet Rosie’s bridle’s still in pieces when you get there,” Mia said.

  Suddenly they heard a sneeze, which sent Phantom scooting backwards, nearly dragging Charlie over. Mia and Alice turned to see an evergreen bush quivering, close behind the fencing where they were sitting.

  “Rosie!” Mia called out. “Is that you?!”

  The bush quivered again and Rosie stepped out sheepishly, her cheeks bulging.

  How long have you been hiding in there for?” Alice giggled as Charlie got Phantom back under control.

  “Om, nt lng,” Rosie mumbled with her mouth full, not looking at them but chewing quickly and swallowing. “Well, actually, a while. I got bored on lookout duty in the tack room. There was no sign of anyone, so I headed down here soon after you to watch Phantom, keeping out of sight so I didn’t get rumbled. It was quite cosy in that bush, especially with these mini Yule logs to chomp on.”

  “Hang on,” Mia said, deadly serious. “If you’re down here, who was Beanie barking at on the yard a few minutes ago?”

  They all looked at each other for half a second before Mia and Alice jumped down on the other side of the fence and sprinted, Rosie hot on their heels, towards to the yard. Rosie took a running leap at the back gate as Mia and Alice climbed it, but her foot slipped and she crashed noisily into the top of it and then tumbled down the other side.

  “Are you okay?” Alice asked as Rosie untangled herself and rolled into an upright position. Mia held out her hand to help her up. Then they heard a clatter round the corner. Alice raced round, only to find the tack-room door swinging on its hinges, and Mia’s pink body brush lying on the floor just outside. Alice ran to the front gate and jumped over it, then stood scanning each direction.

  “Nothing,” she reported to Rosie and Mia as they joined her. She climbed back over again just as hoof beats skittered onto the yard and Phantom appeared with Charlie. She led him back to his stable, then squealed as Hettie came shooting out of it just as they reached the door. Charlie held her breath, waiting for Phantom to explode, but to her surprise he just lowered his head instead, snorting and watching the sheep as she slowed to a halt in the middle of the yard, wondering where to go next.

  “If Hettie’s in the yard, my Pony Detective powers tell me that it has to be Megan. Again,” Charlie said, bolting Phantom’s stable before joining the others while Rosie persuaded a grumpy Hettie back to her field.

  “Exactly. She must have waited until Rosie left the yard unguarded,” Mia said, looking pointedly at Rosie, “then crept on. Only, Beanie gave her away.”

  Suddenly Rosie looked puzzled. “Hang on a sec, though. That doesn’t add up,” she said. “I heard Beanie barking playfully on the yard too, and thought it must have been at Mum or Dad, because he only barks like that at people he knows and likes…”

  “And he doesn’t like Megan,” Alice said, realising what Rosie was getting at. “She was always tipping him off seats or squashing him when s
he sat down.”

  “So who was it, then?” Mia frowned. “I’m going to ring Megan,” Charlie said decisively, “so we can sort this out once and for all.”

  Charlie went into the tack room and looked for the number Megan had written down on a scrap of paper. Then she dialled it and switched on her speaker phone so the others could hear.

  “Hello, is Megan there please?” Charlie asked politely, when Megan’s dad answered.

  “No, sorry, she’s still out,” he explained. “She’s at the stables with the little bay pony she’s got on loan. She should be back soon though.

  Charlie thanked him and ended the call, looking round at the others.

  “Proof!” she said. “It sounds like she’s told her parents that she’s got Pirate on loan!”

  “And she’s still determined to continue her plan to perfect him,” Rosie added, “only now, she’s gone undercover.”

  “And she’s so desperate,” Alice added, “that she even risked sneaking in here when she knew we were still nearby!”

  “She probably saw Rosie heading for the paddocks then came over. I think we’ll have to stay here again tomorrow so we can catch her out and put a stop to her creeping onto the yard all the time,” Mia said seriously, as the others groaned at the idea of another day filled with tack cleaning. “Only this time, Rosie, we can’t afford to make any mistakes.”

  ALICE’S mum drove slowly along the lane, the car’s tyres crunching lightly on the inch-thick snow that had fallen the night before. She turned slowly into the drive for Blackberry Farm, and Charlie and Alice jumped out at the end, calling their goodbyes and thank-yous. Rosie and Mia were standing by the tack-room door, staring into the yard. They looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

  “What’s up?” Charlie asked anxiously, as she scrunched towards them with Alice.

  Rosie didn’t speak. She just pointed.

  Alice and Charlie stood for a second, not knowing what they were supposed to be looking at. All the ponies were standing at their doors, except Phantom. Dancer scraped her hoof impatiently for her breakfast.