Barefoot

by Ruth Patterson

  Barefoot

  by

  Ruth Patterson

  For Hetty and Tommy

  Text copyright © Ruth Patterson 2013

  Cover design by Spiffingcovers.com

  The right of Ruth Patterson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN: 978-0-9558812-2-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to any real person living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Important Note:

  No one under eighteen should remove shoes from their horse or pony without parental consent. The author has no professional experience in the equine world, and can accept no liability whatsoever. This is a work of fiction, and in no way should be interpreted as offering advice. At the end of the book is a list of professional equine organisations you may consult about your horse or pony.

  ***** One *****

  Like all accidents, it happened when Toni least expected. She was lapping the cross country course and jumping Grace over some of the easier fences.

  Nothing challenging. That’s the thought she kept having later.

  Just a couple of logs.

  A small drop.

  One minute she was cantering down the long hedge line separating the course from the road, the next minute a car roared by, windows open and loud music blaring. Boy racers probably, heading for the stock-car track up at the old aerodrome.

  Two pheasants rose clumsily from the hedge in alarm and the thoroughbred, jittery as always, spooked, leapt sharply to one side, then neatly dumped her on the ground. Toni hit the wooden edge of the drop a glancing blow with her right shoulder as she landed, and lay there on the frosty grass, stunned from the impact and struggling to breathe. Grace cantered off to the bottom corner of the field.

  Disaster. The tell-tale pins and needles spreading down her arm already giving the message something was broken. She tried to move her right hand, but couldn’t, and twisted her neck to see what Grace was doing. The mare slowed to a trot and started to circle, still wary.

  Toni reached down with her left hand to the phone case strapped to her leg.

  Who should she call?

  She tried to imagine Arabella’s reaction. The three-day event was only weeks away. Toni began to shake at the thought of her mother’s fury. Or maybe it was the shock beginning. She needed to act quickly if that was the case.

  She pressed the call button to her father instead, even though she knew he was miles away in London.

  He picked up instantly. ‘Hi, darling. What’s up?’

  Toni found herself gasping for breath and couldn’t get any words out.

  ‘Hey!’ He sounded alarmed now. ‘OK. Take your time.’

  She tried to slow her breathing down and he waited patiently.

  ‘You OK?’

  She gripped her toes as hard as she could inside her riding boots to stop the shaking. ‘I’m fine. Really. I’ve had a fall.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the cross-country field. Down at the bottom end.’

  ‘You’re alone?’

  Toni hesitated. She’d broken the rules, she knew. But sensed her father’s question was more a practical one. ‘Yes. I’m alone.’

  ‘Did you hit your head?’

  She tried to remember. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I can’t move my right arm. Or shoulder.’

  ‘Right. Don’t hang up.’ He was really concerned now, though trying to mask it with calm efficiency, she could tell. ‘I’m going to use the landline to get some help out to you, as soon as I can. Promise you’ll stay on the phone?’

  ‘Promise.’

  She could hear him in the background talking urgently on the other line. Grace, satisfied the danger had passed, circled round to where she lay and dropped her head towards her, looking almost apologetic.

  ‘It’s OK. It wasn’t your fault.’ Toni reached up to the mare, then felt a wave of dizziness and dropped her head back down to the ground again.

  ‘Toni? Are you still there?’ Her father was back on the line.

  ‘Mm. Sorry, I feel dizzy.’

  ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  He hesitated. ‘And your mother is on her way, too.’

  No.

  ‘I had to call her. You know I did.’

  Things seemed to happen quickly after that. A paramedic arrived first, bumping over the rutted field track on a motorbike. When he lifted his helmet, it revealed a perfectly bald head and kind eyes. He asked Toni to keep as still as possible, and was checking her over when Arabella’s four by four arrived.

  Her mother jumped down and slammed the door hard, shouting already.

  ‘You stupid, stupid, girl. What did you think you were doing?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why the hell aren’t you wearing your body protector?’

  Grace stood calmly grazing now, and Arabella ran up her stirrups, yanking the reins sharply when the thoroughbred tried to back away.

  Toni shut her eyes, blocking her mother out. The paramedic tried to flex her injured arm and, as the pain spread down one side of her body, she willed herself not to cry.

  She opened her eyes again and found Arabella looming over her now, all muscle and sinew, her face contorted with anger.

  ‘How many times have I told you never to jump without someone on the ground…?’

  The paramedic cut across her rant. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to discuss what happened later. Right now we need to get your daughter to hospital.’

  *************

  It was even worse than Toni had imagined.

  ‘The collarbone is cracked. See here.’ The consultant pointed at the x-ray, and Toni watched as her mother glared at it in disgust.

  ‘Well, strap it up. She has a competition in less than three weeks.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think you understand…’

  ‘…I understand perfectly,’ Arabella interrupted him. ‘I’ve personally competed with far worse.’

  Toni leant forward. Her head was spinning and her skin felt clammy.

  The doctor reached up, removed the x-ray and clipped another one in its place, this time of her wrist. ‘It’s not just the collarbone.’

  Arabella’s tension seemed to fill the room.

  ‘See here?’ He pointed again. ‘It’s a fracture.’ He swiftly replaced the x-ray with another one of her ribs. ‘And here’s another one.’ He looked at Toni again. ‘How much pain are you in?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘On a scale of one to ten,’ he probed.

  Toni avoided Arabella’s gaze. De Carteret’s didn’t admit to pain. All her life she had been told to just deal with it. ‘Give in to pain and you’ve lost,’ Arabella always said.

  ‘Antonia?’ The doctor encouraged her.

  ‘Five …., perhaps six.’ In fact the pain was excruciating now and she could hardly get the words out.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Arabella. ‘Nonsense. She’s exaggerating.’

  He stood up briskly. ‘Far from it. Seeing these x-rays, I’m going to hazard a guess it’s actually more like eight or nine. Antonia, pain is your body’s way of giving you a warning, so don’t ever ignore it. We can strap the collarbone and the ribs, but we have no choice – we have to immobilise that wrist.’

  He pulled back the curtain and called a nurse, then turned to face Arabella squarely. ‘Your daughter won’t be riding
again for six to eight weeks, Mrs De Carteret. You’d better get used to the idea.’

  They drove home in complete silence. The painkillers the doctor had given Toni were strong and reduced the pain to a dull throb, but she still winced every time the four by four jolted over a speed bump. Her head was still swimming, but in a pleasant way now, and the trees along the side of the road seemed to dance.

  As soon as they got back to the yard, Arabella strode off to take her anger out on the grooms, and Toni climbed wearily upstairs to stretch her aching body flat out on her bed and escape into sleep.

  She was woken suddenly by the pain kicking in again, or by the knock on her bedroom door, she wasn’t sure which. It was dark now, and the luminous hands of her alarm clock showed it was past eleven. The whole of the right side of her body came alive with agony as she tried to sit up, and she had to breathe deliberately and slowly to ride each wave.

  The knock sounded again and her father put his head around the door, holding a glass of water and a bottle of pills. ‘Hey, darling, you’re awake.’ He squeezed his huge frame through the narrow attic doorway and sat down carefully on the side of the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’

  She grimaced. ‘Pretty rough.’

  ‘Here, take these.’ He shook out a couple of painkillers and handed her the water. ‘Your mother tells me you won’t be riding for a while.’

  He made it sound so innocent, but she could imagine the scene in reality.

  ‘She’s furious, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s worried about you,’ he said, diplomatically. ‘We both are.’

  ‘You might be.’ Toni let her head sink into the pillow again and closed her eyes.

  There was a silence, as he struggled to say the right thing. ‘Are you hungry?’ he finally asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘OK.’ He stood up, leant over and kissed her forehead lightly. ‘I’ll leave you something in the kitchen anyway. And I’ll check in on you in a couple of hours.’

  When Toni next woke, it was about five in the morning. He obviously had been in again, because she found herself covered with a duvet. The pain was back with a vengeance and competed with her grumbling stomach. It was important to eat something before taking more painkillers she knew, so she sat up, cautiously. Her entire body had stiffened and it was hard to turn her head to one side.

  She made her way slowly down the two flights of stairs into the kitchen and switched on the light. A cheese sandwich sat on the granite worktop, with a chocolate muffin, both wrapped in clingfilm. Alongside was the bottle of painkillers and a Post-it note with a smiley face.

  ‘Sorry. Had to get back to London.

  Love you. Xx’

  Her Border terrier Ben uncurled himself from his basket and padded over sleepily to see what was going on.

  Toni bent to stroke him with her left hand and he licked her fingers gently, sensing something was wrong. His mother, Lily, raised her head, and then settled straight back down again to sleep. Nearly fourteen and arthritic, she clearly wasn’t going to waste precious energy.

  Toni straightened up and poured herself a glass of milk, then fumbled with the bottle of painkillers until she managed to shake out two of them, unwrapped the clingfilm and began to eat. At half-five she heard water running upstairs and knew it would be Arabella, who always got up before everyone else. Part of her wanted to avoid her mother, but the thought of trying to move quickly enough to get back up to the top storey of the house was too much, so she stayed at the kitchen table.

  When Arabella walked into the kitchen she was obviously taken aback.

  ‘Oh, you’re up! You must be feeling better.’

  Even for her this was insensitive.

  ‘I needed to take more painkillers,’ Toni said, between gritted teeth.

  ‘You can’t let pain defeat you.’ Arabella busied herself filling the kettle, then turned to face her daughter, not a trace of sympathy on her face. ‘In my experience.’

  And that said it all. No one could tell her mother anything about pain. She crossed to the fridge for her milk, her heavy limp emphasising her point.

  Arabella De Carteret.

  She had been a rising event star, who lived her entire life to compete. The tack room was festooned with her rosettes, and photos of her jumping career lined the shelves.

  Her name was everywhere Toni looked.

  In her face.

  It was on the sides of the horse lorries and etched on all the silver trophies she had won. On the back of the jackets the grooms wore, and on the biros littering the desk in her office.

  No one could forget it. Arabella made sure of that.

  And the end result was that Toni thought of her only as Arabella, rarely as mother, and certainly, never as Mum.

  Then Arabella had her accident and everything changed. Toni was only six when it happened - too young to completely understand, and it was a subject the grooms didn’t risk gossiping about, even now. What she did remember was, before the accident, horses had been fun. Arabella was too busy to notice or care what her daughter got up to, and Toni spent long happy hours with her New Forest pony, Buster.

  But when her mother’s dreams disintegrated, she turned her attention to Toni instead.

  Arabella added boiling water to her coffee and splashed in the milk. The kitchen had several expensive coffee-making devices, but she regarded them all as a waste of time.

  ‘I assume you won’t be seeing to Buster or Grace. I’ll ask Jen to do them for now.’ She pulled on the yard boots lying by the stable door. ‘But I can’t afford to spare her for long,’ she added, and picking up her coffee, she limped out.

  Toni sat there for a while longer, wondering why she had expected anything different. Then she dragged herself back up two flights of stairs to the safety of her room to sleep again.

  It was late afternoon when she finally surfaced through the fog of the painkillers. She was even stiffer now, and getting herself upright and swinging her legs over the side of the bed took a real effort of will.

  She realised she was still wearing her jodhpurs and they were caked with mud. Her phone flashed on the bedside table and she reached across to check her messages, managing to knock over the glass of water at the same time.

  ‘Shit!’

  She rescued her phone as quickly as she could and dried it on the pillow, watching the pool of water drip over the edge of the drawers and onto the floor.

  The first message was from Lauren, wondering why she wasn’t at school.

  Another from Lauren. Still wondering.

  Toni began to text a reply, fumbling uselessly with her left hand, but soon gave up in frustration. She would call her later. There was a voicemail from her father, letting her know he had to go away for a few days for work. Leaving me alone with Arabella, she thought bleakly. All she needed right now was a hug, and she certainly wasn’t going to get that from her mother.

  She contemplated trying to get her jods off, but even the thought exhausted her and she decided not to bother. She pushed a foot into one of her trainers instead, then, realising she would need two hands to tie the laces, kicked the shoe off again in fury. It flew across the room and bounced off the wall opposite, and she fought back tears again, as an excruciating pain shot through her ribs.

  Wellies didn’t have laces.

  Toni hauled herself upright, using the bed to lean on, and edged slowly downstairs, noticing her back beginning to loosen up a little as she moved. She managed to pull on her boots and let herself outside and stood for a few moments feeling dazed.

  It was only twenty-four hours since the accident, but it felt as if she had been in bed for days. She could hear Arabella barking out orders in the yard and decided to cut round the barn to avoid bumping into her.

  As she passed the horse-walker, she surprised a groom who was leading two horses up from a field. The staff changed all the time and Toni hardly knew her, but the girl smiled sympathetically before hurrying on. There were twenty horses t
o catch and bring in, and rain was threatening.

  Toni waited until they had gone, then picked her way through the haystore and into the lower barn. She passed Grace, barely acknowledging her, and on to the end stable on the right. Buster lifted his head in surprise, whinnying a welcome as she let herself in. She was overwhelmed with relief to see him and wrapping her good arm around his neck, Toni buried her head deep in his mane and finally allowed herself to cry.