Pony Jumpers 9- Nine Lives

by Kate Lattey

  “I know,” I reminded her. “I have read the itinerary, you know.”

  Mum looked over at me as we passed acres of grassy paddocks. “You’ll have a wonderful time, Katy. I’m so jealous. And even if the first week or so isn’t what you’d hoped for,” she continued diplomatically, “it’ll be worth it once you’re on a horse, wearing the silver fern on your jacket.” She sighed heavily, returning her eyes to the road. “God, I wish I was coming with you.”

  I blinked hard and looked out of my side of the car, fighting back tears. I couldn’t speak, or I’d start crying and begging her not to make me do this alone. Both of us had dreamed of this for years, the chance to ride for New Zealand, to wear that silver fern and see our flag waving from the rafters of a big indoor stadium. And maybe, just maybe, standing on a podium and hearing our national anthem being played. But never in my wildest dreams had I imagined doing any of it without my mother by my side.

  To distract myself, I took the itinerary out of its folder and smoothed it out on my lap, staring down at the printed pages. The tour plans had changed after Dennis’s abrupt departure from the programme, because he’d been arranging our warm-up competition at Cavan the first week. Now that he was gone, that had been scrapped, and instead of planning something else, Maureen just shortened the tour by a week. After we’d bought non-transferable flights, of course. The team wouldn’t convene until ten days after we’d flown into the country, when we would meet up at an equestrian centre in County Cork for a Young Rider training camp. The first team competition was being hosted at the venue that weekend, with the championship final held a week later at a different facility. My stomach clenched apprehensively. The week between the two shows was chock full of sightseeing and stud tours, but that first week was a completely blank slate. I wished I knew what to expect. I’ve never been any good at surprises.

  My phone buzzed, and I looked down as the screen lit up with a message from Susannah.

  Good luck go hard and have an amazing time! Wish I was coming with you :(

  I wish that toooooo, I typed back. It was crazy, really – if you’d told me a year ago that I’d have been dying to spend a week with Susannah Andrews, I would have told you that I’d rather pull my fingernails out with pliers. But my opinion of her had changed in the past few months, and we’d gone from despising each other to being good friends. If we’d been going away together on tour, I had no doubt that we’d have become very close by the time we got home.

  Spending the week w princess Lily is probly going to kill me, so don’t expect me to win anything over there. will be lucky to make it out alive tbh

  Susannah’s reply came almost immediately. I have faith in you. Don’t let them get you down! Forbes says best of luck!!

  Her message was followed by a selfie of her and Forbes, the warmblood pony she’d bought from me a few months ago. He was standing in his stable with his ears pricked, his coat gleaming even more than the polished wood walls behind him. Susannah’s family were loaded, and Forbes had fallen into the lap of luxury with them – which he thought was exactly what he deserved. She had her arm over his neck and was smiling into the camera, looking polished and pretty despite the early hour, and I smiled ruefully. Only Susannah could make mucking out look that glamourous.

  I sent her back a row of four-leaf clover emojis, because I couldn’t think of any other response. The car jolted over a speed hump, and I looked up to see that we were driving into the Napier airport already. Sick dread lay over me like a shroud, but I did my best to hide it. Mum felt bad enough already – I wasn’t going to make her feel worse.

  We found a park and Mum hurried me into the building, even though my flight wasn’t for ages. She checked the departure board anxiously while I dragged my suitcase behind me, trying to stay calm.

  Mum turned towards me with a smile. “Everything’s running on time,” she beamed. “Let’s get you checked in.”

  I followed her to the check-in area, smiled weakly at the cheerful woman behind the counter, and lugged my suitcase onto the conveyor belt as instructed. It was heavy and cumbersome, and the whole effort was made more awkward by having to surreptitiously shoulder my mother’s attempts to help me out of the way.

  “I can do it,” I muttered, wondering how she thought I was going to get along for three and a half weeks without her if she didn’t even trust me to be able to lift my own suitcase thirty centimetres off the ground.

  Mum said nothing, just threw her hands up and stepped backwards as the woman stuck a label on the handle, then hit a button that sent my suitcase trundling off onto the bigger conveyor and on down the line into oblivion, hopefully to only be seen again when we reached Irish soil. It suddenly seemed terrifyingly far away, and I stepped back shakily, my passport clutched tightly in my hand.

  “Where do I go now?”

  “Look at your boarding pass,” Mum suggested. I pulled it out, but before I could say anything, she’d read it over my shoulder. “Gate three. This way.”

  I bumped my arm against my mother’s as we walked towards my departure gate as an affirmation that she was still there, by my side – at least for now. I was starting to realise how much I was going to miss her. A lump rose in my throat, but I gritted my teeth and stared determinedly ahead. Don’t be a wimp. You’re going on an adventure, not to your execution.

  “Are you hungry?” Mum asked, oblivious to my internal anguish. “We’ve got a bit of time. Do you want something to eat before you go?” I shook my head, unable to stomach the thought of food, but she pressed me. “Are you sure?”

  A surge of irritation and I grasped it tightly, glad to have an excuse to snap at her, because otherwise I was in danger of bursting into tears and begging her to drop everything and quit her job and come with me.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I snapped. “They do serve food on planes these days, you know.”

  Mum responded to my narkiness the same way she always did – by averting her eyes and letting out a small sigh, staring into the distance towards a time and place when I would no longer be a horrible teenager and would be bearable to be around.

  But when it came time to board my plane, I lost the struggle to hold back my tears. It didn’t help that Mum cried too as she hugged me goodbye, and I left tear stains on her shoulder before forcing myself to turn and walk away, through the sliding doors and out onto the warm tarmac, reminding myself with every step that I would only be gone for three and a half weeks. Twenty-five days. That was all. That was nothing, right?

  The flight to Auckland was short and smooth, and the plane landed a couple of minutes early. I grabbed my backpack and waited impatiently to get off the plane, feeling more and more hemmed in and claustrophobic the longer I had to wait. Eventually I managed to get out into the main terminal of Auckland airport, where I stopped and looked around for the Christiansons. Mum had said they would meet me there, but there was no sign of them at all. Maybe they hadn’t arrived yet? I sat down on a seat with my bag at my feet, staring at the clock on the wall and wondering what to do next.

  Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. I checked the electronic arrivals board to see if any flights from Wellington had come in yet, but it turned out that flights from Wellington came in every hour or so, and since I didn’t know which one they were on, it wasn’t much help to me. I was scrolling through Instagram in an attempt to distract myself when I saw a selfie that Lily had posted nearly an hour earlier, grinning in front of a plate of salad.

  Ireland bound! Kickin back in the int’l Koru lounge while we wait to fly out #yestofreefood #onlywaytotravel #AKLairport

  I stared at it for a moment in shock, then stood up and looked around. I had no idea where the Koru Lounge was, but there was an information desk off to the side, so I went that way.

  “How do I get to the Koru Lounge?”

  The man behind the counter eyed me suspiciously. “Do you have a Club card?”

  “Well, no…” I started to say, and he shook his head.
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  “Then you can’t go in. It’s not for everyone. You have to be a member.”

  “I know that. But my friends are in there.” I held up my phone to show him Lily’s Instagram, and he squinted at it.

  “That’s the international lounge,” he told me. “You’re at the wrong terminal.”

  “Oh. Right.” Duh. I started to turn away, then spun back. “Wait, how do I get there?”

  “You can take a shuttle, or it’s a ten minute walk,” the guy told me, pointing me towards a well-marked path that wound through the carpark and along to the international terminal. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my thin jacket as the straps of my heavy backpack dug painfully into my shoulders. The wind whipped around me, pulling strands of hair out of my ponytail and chasing them across my face.

  Once inside the international terminal, I walked down the wide expanse of carpet, surrounded on all sides by people in various states of transit – smartly-dressed people with briefcases and phones to their ears, only in town for the day; intrepid travellers with backpacks stuffed to bursting, hiking boots and sleeping bags dangling off the side; families with luggage trolleys piled high, bickering amongst themselves in a foreign language. A small child sat on her hard plastic suitcase with a soft toy clutched in her arms, staring vacantly at the commotion around her.

  I numbly followed the signs to the Koru Lounge, arriving there with a palpable sense of relief.

  The person in front of me pulled out a gold card and boarding pass, and the woman at the desk smiled at him as she scanned his information. I stepped up and offered the woman a cheery smile of my own.

  “Hi. My friends are in there and I need to go join them.”

  “Name?”

  “Katy O’Reilly.”

  She tapped something into the computer, then shook her head. “There’s no registration for O’Reilly.”

  “Oh. Um, Christianson.”

  “First name?”

  “Uh…” I racked my brains, but I couldn’t remember Lily’s father’s name. Or her mother’s, for that matter. I knew it, but it wouldn’t come to me. “Lily?”

  She tapped a few keys, then looked at me again. “We do have a passenger booked under that name. I’ll see if I can get someone to locate them for you.”

  “I know what they look like,” I assured her. “Can’t I just go in?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, love, but I can’t let you do that. Let me just put a call through, and Lily can come out and sign you in. How’s that?”

  So I nodded and stood off to the side with my backpack at my feet as other travellers were swiped through the sliding glass doors into the promised land of the Koru Lounge. As I waited, it gradually occurred to me that maybe the Christiansons were doing this on purpose, and that they didn’t want me to be travelling with them. They’d probably planned a nice family holiday, touring around England and seeing a few of the sights in Ireland before training started, and now they’d have me tagging along as a fourth wheel. Mum said they’d assured her that it would be no problem to have me with them, but I was dubious. My mother was a pretty poor liar, and I had a sneaking suspicion that they had only said yes out of obligation. Not because they wanted me there, and I looked at the floor, fighting the desire to get on the next flight back to Napier and tell Susannah to take my place on the trip.

  Then I heard the sliding doors open with a swish, followed by a familiar voice. “Hi Katy.”

  I looked up to see Lily, and I smiled at her as I grabbed my bag off the floor and waited while she signed us in, then led me into the Koru Lounge. It was big and warm and in-your-face trendy. We walked past the long buffet table and over to where her parents were sitting. Her dad was tapping away on a laptop, and her mother was sipping coffee as she flipped through a glossy magazine.

  She looked up at my approach, and produced an insincere smile. “Katy, there you are. How was your flight?”

  I did my best to smile back as I took a seat next to Lily. “Um, fine thanks.”

  Sonya – I’d finally remembered her name – nodded vaguely and took another sip of coffee. “Lily, love, did you order that hot chocolate you wanted yet?”

  Lily was scrolling through her phone, and shook her head without looking up. “Not yet.”

  “Well, hurry up if you want time to drink it. We’ll be boarding soon. Are you as excited for this trip as our daughter is, Katy?” she asked. “Lily has been talking about it non-stop for weeks, we just can’t shut her up about it!” She laughed in a fake kind of way, then nudged her daughter with her toe. “Lily, get ordering.”

  “I’ve just done it,” she muttered. “I texted it through.”

  “Of course you did. Technology!” she told me with a laugh, as though I was supposed to be impressed that you could text your drink order to a bar only a few metres away. “Oh, did you want a hot chocolate too? Lily, add one onto the order for Katy.”

  “I can’t just add one on,” her daughter replied. “I would have to do a second order.”

  “Well, do that then.”

  I spoke quickly, before I ended up with a hot chocolate that I would have to drink. I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle anything right now, and certainly not anything that sweet. Or milky. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I don’t really like hot chocolate.”

  “Sure?” Sonya asked. “Well, there’s a buffet over there. Go help yourself if you’re hungry.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  She shrugged and went back to flicking through her magazine, but Lily looked up at me. “The chocolate chip biscuits are really good,” she said conspiratorially. “I’ve got like, ten of them in my bag. Plane food sucks, so it’s always good to have a backup.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I repeated. I was starting to sound like a broken record, even to myself.

  Lily shrugged and went back to her phone. I wondered if Susannah had texted me again, and I reached into my pocket to check mine too.

  But it wasn’t there.

  2

  LONG HAUL

  Don’t panic, I told myself. Check your other pockets before you panic. But it wasn’t in my other pocket either, or any of the pockets in my jeans. I grabbed my backpack and hauled it up onto my lap, then started rummaging through it. Lily glanced at me a couple of times, but nobody said anything until I had completed my search, and dropped the bag at my feet with a thud.

  “Everything okay?” Sonya asked.

  “I’ve lost my phone.” My voice came out shaky, and I swallowed hard.

  “Oh dear.” Sonya was trying to sound sympathetic, but her expression clearly told me that she was annoyed by my carelessness. “Where did you last use it?”

  I thought back. “Um…when I was in the Domestic terminal.”

  I’d pulled it out of my pocket to show the guy who’d told me I couldn’t get into the Koru Lounge, and I couldn’t remember having it since.

  “Did you leave it there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” I was already trying to work out if I had enough time to run back and get it. How far had it been? How long would it take?

  “You should keep better track of your belongings,” Lily’s father said, in the first words he’d spoken to me since I’d got there.

  “Oh, Hugh,” Sonya scolded him. “Lily loses things all the time as well.”

  “I know where it is. I mean, I think I do. I’m pretty sure I left it at an information desk,” I said, getting to my feet. “I can go get it.”

  Hugh looked up at me. “You don’t have time. We’re boarding in ten minutes.”

  “I’m a fast runner,” I said desperately.

  “Are you sure you need it?” Hugh asked me, and Sonya slapped his arm with the back of her hand.

  “Come on Hugh, she’s a teenage girl. They don’t last five minutes without their phones. Frankly, I’m surprised it took her this long to realise she’d left it behind.” Sonya sighed heavily, then put her magazine down and stood up. “Okay, Katy. Come with me.” />
  I followed her through the lounge and over to an information desk, where she explained the situation to a bemused airline assistant. I was about to find out that one of the perks of being rich enough to join the Koru Club meant you always got excellent customer service, because the woman was very understanding and immediately rang over to the Domestic terminal to see if she could track my phone down. It took forever, and I stood nervously aside as she was transferred from one desk to another, pausing a few times to ask me questions about where exactly I’d been, and which booth I’d asked at. I just shrugged.

  “It said Information,” I told her.

  “We’ll find it,” she assured me. “The right booth anyway, if not your phone.”

  That was reassuring. Finally, she discovered that I’d actually gone to a travel agent rather than an airport information desk, and they did indeed have my phone. I felt my knees weaken in relief at the good news, but just as the woman put the phone down, the announcement system told us that boarding was about to start for our flight.

  “Oh dear, that’s us,” Sonya said, then looked at me. “You’ll have to buy a new phone in Dublin.”

  I gaped at her, wondering how on earth I was meant to afford that with the limited spending money I had with me.

  “No need for that,” the woman behind the counter said before I could speak. “I’ll have someone bring it to your gate. You won’t have to go away without it.”

  I almost collapsed with relief, and thanked her profusely before following Sonya back to our couch and collecting my backpack. I trailed the Christiansons out of the lounge and across the airport to our gate, where they showed their tickets to go straight through. But when I attempted to follow them, I was stopped.

  “Business class only. You’ll have to wait for main boarding.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at the boarding pass in my hand, then watched as Lily and her family disappeared down the chute and onto the plane without a backward glance.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are about to begin our descent into Dublin…”