by Kate Lattey
At the bottom of the valley, I drew Lucas to a reluctant walk. The sun was sinking slowly in the sky, reminding me that I needed to get back, but it was peaceful and quiet out there, and I couldn’t resist taking the long way home. I let my mind wander as Lucas ambled along on a loose rein, trying not to think about the pain in my hand, or whether Tori’s leg was healing properly, or the money I owed Susannah’s father and didn’t have. The trees were changing colour and dropping their leaves, and the air around us was noticeably cooler as the evening arrived. Autumn was upon us. Summer was over, and, apart from Series Finals in just under three weeks’ time, the show season was finished. A long, cold winter lay ahead before the season would pick up again in September, which seemed impossibly far away.
Lucas came to a sudden halt, raising his head and swivelling his ears. Moments later, I picked up the sound of hoofbeats, and voices that carried through the clear evening air.
“Just keep going!”
“I can’t!”
Lucas whinnied a welcome as the big black horse and smaller Appaloosa pony came cantering around the track ahead of us, and Bradley pulled his solid hunter back to a fast trot.
“Hey! Where’ve you been?” Bradley clenched his hands into fists and pulled harder, but his Clydesdale-cross just set his big neck and kept trotting. “Slow down, you bastard. Oh, hi. You’re not Katy.”
“I stole her pony,” I admitted as Bradley circled his horse back towards me. Lacey, his little sister, had already drawn her Appaloosa pony to a halt, and was looking at me with a pinched expression. I smiled at her, but her expression didn’t change. “Hi Lacey. How’s Biscuit?”
“Naughty.”
“He is not,” Bradley said, finally convincing Ajax to halt.
“He keeps bucking!” Lacey retorted.
“Only because you won’t let his head go. I’d buck too, if I was him and had you clinging onto my mouth the whole ride.”
Lacey scowled at him, and I looked pityingly at Biscuit, who was trying to pull the reins out of her tight grip. He was a brilliant show jumper, bold and clever and with far more talent than Lacey needed. She was the kind of kid that wanted a pony like Robin, something fat and slow and entirely predictable. But her mother wanted her to be competitive, so they’d bought Biscuit. I wondered if I would ever stop coming across parents who insisted on living vicariously through their children, whether their kids wanted them to or not.
“How’s Lucas?”
“He’s good.” I patted his golden neck reflexively. “Katy’s on holiday, so I’m just giving him a bit of exercise.”
“She gone to Ireland already?” Bradley asked as Lacey whimpered behind him. “Oh shut up, Lace. Just let him eat if that’s what he wants to do.”
“No, she’s in Taupo, with her dad.” I looked at Ajax, who was sweating heavily and pawing impatiently at the ground. “He looks a bit full of himself today.”
Bradley grinned. “Got to get him fit for hunting. He’s been out with an abscess for weeks, and has only just come right. Bloody frustrating.”
“Typical,” I commiserated. “I’ve only just started riding again after breaking my collarbone, and then your brother did this.” I held up my hand to show him my taped fingers, and Bradley frowned.
“Phyllis did that?”
“Yeah. Well, sort of. He came tearing around the corner on his dirt bike and spooked Squib.”
Bradley’s frown deepened. “When was this?”
“Um, a few days ago.” I wiggled my fingers. “It’s getting better though.”
“I’ll tell Mum,” Bradley declared. “She’ll sort him out.”
“Don’t tell Mum,” Lacey complained, leaning forward in the saddle to keep hold of the reins while Biscuit tore up mouthfuls of grass. Lucas watched jealously as Ajax started pawing the ground again, and Bradley smacked him on the shoulder with the end of his reins.
“Why not?”
“Because she’ll confiscate his motorbike, and last time she did that, he got all mopey and sad.”
“So? That’s the whole point.”
“But he refused to talk to anyone for a whole week.”
“Good. I like him better when he’s quiet.”
Lacey opened her mouth to say something else, then yelped as Biscuit yanked the reins right out of her hands. They landed around his ears, and he carried on grazing as she leaned forward, trying to reach them.
“Get off and sort it out, don’t whinge at me,” Bradley said unsympathetically as Biscuit started moving, almost putting his hoof through his reins with each step.
But Lacey stayed pathetically in the saddle, so I slid off Lucas and grabbed Biscuit’s reins. He lifted his head reluctantly, then bunted me with his head as I passed the reins back to Lacey. I scratched the Appaloosa between his eyes as Bradley continued telling Lacey off for not sorting it out for herself.
“If you’re going to hunt that pony this winter, you’re going to have to have a bit more guts than that.”
“I’m not hunting him!”
“That reminds me,” Bradley said, ignoring his sister. “Mum’s horse blew a tendon last week, so she’s got nothing to hunt this season. She was thinking about buying something else, but then she thought she might just grab Puppet back off Katy and take him.”
I stared at Bradley. “Puppet? Out hunting?”
“Yeah. Be good for him, make him a bit bolder at his fences.”
I tried to imagine the slender, spooky black pony in the hunt field, and couldn’t. “I don’t know how good he’d be at it,” I said as I swung back into Lucas’s saddle.
“I guess she’ll find out, if it comes to that,” he shrugged. “Anyway, it’s just a thought at the moment. She’s going to Dannevirke to try a couple during the week, so it might not happen.”
As he spoke, the sun dropped below the horizon, dulling the sky around us. I said goodbye to the Fitzherbert siblings, and rode home in the fading light.
When Lucas and I finally wandered back into the yard, our peaceful tranquillity was immediately shattered by Tori banging around in her stable, demanding to be fed.
“Would you shut up?!” Deb yelled at her from the feed room, where she was mixing up the evening feeds.
Tori just banged the door harder in response, and I drew Lucas to a halt next to Deb.
“How’s your foot?”
“Sore. And that bloody horse has been kicking the walls ever since I got home,” she grumbled. “She was at it last night as well. Started about 2am, and went on for over an hour before I gave up and came out here to give her a slab of hay to shut her up. Then an hour later, she started it up again! I barely got a wink of sleep all night.”
We both looked across the yard at Tori, who was now swinging her head from side to side in anxious repetition.
“Oh, brilliant,” Deb muttered. “Now she’s going to start weaving. All we need now is for her to start windsucking too, and she’ll have literally no redeeming qualities left.”
“She was easier to handle today,” I said in Tori’s defence as I slid down off Lucas’s back and gave him a grateful pat.
Deb looked sceptically at Tori, who flattened her ears back at the sight of Lucas, and curled up her upper lip threateningly, baring her large teeth. “Uh huh. I’ll think I’ll be having a serious conversation with Katy when she gets home about what she plans to do with that horse.”
I frowned as I ran up Lucas’s stirrups. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean, I think it’s past time we were shot of her,” Deb said bluntly. “She’s dangerous, and far too much for Katy to manage.”
“You’ve had difficult horses before though,” I pointed out. “And Katy’s never given up in the past.”
“Sure she has,” Deb said. “She just doesn’t talk about those ones.” She shook her head as she picked up a feed bucket in her arms. “Some horses just can’t be helped, AJ, and unfortunately I suspect that Tori’s one of them.”
“But…but she’s so talented,�
�� I said.
“Temperament is more important than talent,” Deb countered. “No horse – or rider, for that matter – ever got to the top on talent alone. Sure, she has natural ability, but she has no desire to put it to use. I doubt she’ll ever be worth the effort it’s going to take to get her properly rideable, and I don’t want to set Katy up to fail. I can’t do that to her.”
I wasn’t sure if it was her injury, or her dislike of Tori, or simply Katy’s absence that was making Deb so fiercely protective of her daughter. It wasn’t something I’d noticed before – usually she was so matter-of-fact about things. But like my own mother, who had started hovering anxiously over us instead of shrugging off injuries since the car accident that had broken my collarbone and almost killed Anders, something had changed. I’d always thought that parents would get less protective as their children got older, would start to let go as their offspring prepared to leave home and face the wider world, but lately it seemed like the opposite was true.
As I unbuckled Lucas’s girth, I watched Deb approach Tori’s stable with her feed. The black mare crowded the door, flattening her ears threateningly.
“Oh get out of it, you horrible creature.” Deb waved her arm in Tori’s face, but the horse just wrinkled up her nostrils and refused to back off.
“I’ll give it to her, if you want.”
“No, you’re busy,” Deb said bluntly. “I’ll do it.”
She threw her arm up in Tori’s face again, and this time the mare took a step backwards. Deb unlatched the door and dumped the feed bucket at Tori’s feet, then shut the door quickly as the black horse started scoffing down her food. Lucas watched plaintively from two stables down as I took his saddle and bridle off.
“Who will you sell her to?” I asked as Deb hopped back towards the feed room.
“I don’t know. Anyone stupid enough to want her,” she muttered. “Which could be nobody at all. I doubt anyone out there is as much of a sucker as my ex-husband.”
So she was still blaming him. I left Lucas to munch on a half-empty haynet and carried his tack down towards the tack room, pausing on my way to look in at Tori. She swished her tail and pawed the ground, daring anyone to come near her while she was eating. She’d had a rough start in life, with her overly ambitious breeder insisting on entering her in bigger classes than she was ready for, and she’d soured badly as a result. But it was hard to hear that Katy, who had fixed so many ponies in the past, who I’d come to believe could ride and train any horse, might be willing give up on the mare. I shook my head, sure that when my best friend got home, I’d be able to talk her out of her mother’s plan to quit on Tori. I had to, because lately, it seemed like I was the only one who cared what might become of her.
9
HOMECOMING
“Honey, I’m home!”
I grinned as I cantered Lucas down the long side of the arena, then brought him to a halt at the gate, where Katy was standing with her arms outstretched.
“Lucas, my darling!” She let herself through the gate and flung her arms around his sweaty chestnut neck, and Lucas snuffled her back in a loving sort of way.
“I think he missed you.”
“Not as much as I missed him,” Katy said, her voice muffled against his short blonde mane. She released him at last and looked up at me. “I just had the worst week of my life.”
“What happened?”
“Honestly, I can’t even talk about it until I’m on a pony again. Who’s left to ride today?”
“Molly and Squib.”
“Dibs on Moll.”
“Sure about that? I know how much you love riding Squib,” I teased her, and she laughed.
“Right now, I’m so desperate to ride that I’d almost do it,” she said, then frowned. “What’ve you done to your hand?”
“Oh, nothing much,” I lied, flexing my fingers and pretending it didn’t still hurt. “Just sprained my knuckle.”
Katy raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Squib’s fault, or Tori’s?”
“Phil’s, actually.”
Katy’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Uh, explain.” I filled her in on the situation, and she listened carefully, then narrowed her eyes at me. “So it was Squib.”
“Only because of Phil.”
Katy dismissed that point with a wave of her hand. “It’s not his fault that you were out riding on his property without warning him,” she said, making it clear whose side she was taking. “Did he say sorry?”
“Yeah, kind of,” I muttered.
“Well then.” Katy seemed satisfied with that. “And you can obviously still ride.”
“Nothing that a few painkillers can’t fix,” I told her, borrowing Deb’s line. “Don’t worry, I’ll still be able to ride at Series Finals.”
Katy grinned. “Of course you will. You’d have to be half-dead to pull out of that one.” She sighed. “I’m kind of disappointed that you’ve already worked Lucas. I’ve been dying to ride him for days. Has he been a good boy?” she asked, giving him another cuddle.
“Always. I’ve started doing some lateral work on him, and he’s so good at it! It’s so much easier on a pony that actually likes going sideways.”
“Lucas is part-crab,” she agreed. “He’s got a mean half-pass.”
“I haven’t quite got that far,” I admitted. “Just leg-yields and a little bit of shoulder-in. I actually have no idea how to ride a half-pass.”
Katy grinned, squinting through the sunlight as she looked up at me. “Wanna learn?”
Half an hour later, we were riding out through the old orchard, and it was like Katy had never left.
“Okay Squib, settle down,” I muttered at my pony, who was as excited to have Katy back as I was.
“He’s demonstrating his half-pass,” Katy said with a wry smile as Squib jogged past her sideways with his tail in the air.
“It doesn’t feel quite as smooth as Lucas’s,” I replied. “Squib, seriously!” I added, as my pony sidled too close to an apple tree, and almost took my head off on a low branch. “Calm yourself down, I’m still one-handed over here.”
My fingers were throbbing again after the necessity of maintaining a rein contact on Lucas while I rode the half-pass. It had been worth it, but I was paying the price now.
“He has no sympathy for you,” she said as Molly walked calmly on a loose rein next to my excitable pony. “He just wants to go for a good gallop.”
“What he actually wants to do is buck,” I said, feeling his hindquarters hitch up behind me.
She was unsympathetic. “You’re the one choosing to ride bareback.”
“Yeah, about that.” I looked over at her, but before I could tell her about the unfortunate fate of Susannah’s Antares, a rabbit shot across the trail ahead of us, and Squib slammed the brakes on, his neck turning to rock hard muscle. I sat up straight and shortened my reins, glancing at Katy. “I hope you’ve got your phone on you, in case you need to ring 111 for an ambulance.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Katy said, running her fingers through Molly’s silky mane. “That’s literally the last thing I need after the week I’ve had.”
I did my best to ignore my dancing pony, and focused my attention on my best friend. “So what exactly happened?”
Katy turned in her saddle and fixed me with her light brown eyes. “Well, we drove to Taupo, and had dinner, and went to bed, and the next morning Dad was like ‘So there’s someone I want you to meet’ and next minute he’s like ‘Say hi to my girlfriend’.”
My jaw dropped. “No way.”
“Way.” Katy turned away, facing forward again. “But don’t worry, it gets better. You know how this was supposed to be a father-daughter bonding trip?” She pulled a face, but I could see the hurt on her face as she spoke. “Well, it was. Only turns out I wasn’t the daughter being bonded with.”
I blinked, trying to work out what she was saying. “Huh?”
“Did I forget to mention that his girlfriend has a daughter, t
oo?” Katy asked with cynical cheer. “A very nice, polite, quiet little girl who always does what she’s told and never complains and is basically the daughter my father wishes he had, instead of the one he ended up with.” Molly tossed her head and tugged at the reins, sensing Katy’s bad mood. My friend reached forward and scratched the pony’s neck. “Sorry Mollypop. I shouldn’t be taking this out on you.”
“Okay, wait.” I stared at my best friend, my head in a whirl as I tried to imagine how awkward that all must have been. “Were they with you the whole time?”
“For like, half of it,” she said. Our ponies meandered along the narrow trail, walking so close that her stirrup iron bumped against my ankle. “Dad and I spent a couple of days in Rotorua on our own, but lucky us got to see them again when we came back through Taupo.”
The whole situation was crazy, but somehow, it didn’t surprise me that her father would’ve chosen to spring it on her like this. He was a strange one. “How old’s the kid?”
Katy shrugged. “I don’t know, like eleven? Twelve? Her name’s Riley, and she’s basically mute. I think she said about five words to me the whole time.” She sighed. “The worst part is that they were so nice. They could at least have had the decency to be awful. Then I would have a legit reason to dislike them. As it was, I was the only person arguing about anything and it just made me seem like a spoilt brat.”
“Hard to imagine that,” I teased, unable to help myself.
Katy rolled her eyes, but took it in good humour. “Yeah, shut up. At least they had the decency not to be all lovey-dovey in front of me,” she conceded. “Although they did hold hands a couple of times, but they’d always let go when they saw me watching. Which is lucky, or I might have had to throw up.”
The track narrowed through the trees, and Katy hung back to let me go in front so that Squib didn’t think he was being left behind and decide to buck me off. I contemplated her situation as my pony jogged through the dappled sunlight. I didn’t think that Katy harboured any dreams of her parents getting back together, and her relationship with her dad, who had left her mother several years ago, was awkward at best and hostile at worst. He had tried to make it up to her by buying her horses, first Molly, and then Tori, but there are some things in life that money can’t buy. But as much as Katy had complained about having to go away with him, and how awful she’d been convinced that the experience would be, I wasn’t sure that her father could’ve picked a better way to make it worse.