by Amanda Wills
‘What are you looking at, Cloud?’ Poppy followed his gaze but all she could see was an empty kennel with what looked like a long-forgotten black and tan blanket crumpled in a heap in the corner. But as she stared the blanket stirred and a black head with a tan muzzle appeared. Cloud gave a whicker and the dog barked softly in response, its plumy tail thumping the ground.
‘Oh! I thought it was an old blanket but it’s a dog,’ she said to Caroline, who had joined her by the cage.
The dog was emaciated and its shaggy hair was matted in places. It struggled to its haunches and offered them its paw, which was swaddled in a cast and bandage, as if to shake hands.
‘What happened to her?’ Poppy asked.
‘She’s a he, actually,’ said the vet. ‘The police brought him in yesterday. He was found dodging the traffic on the Okehampton road. His leg was broken so I think he’d probably been hit by a car, though he was lucky – there’s no damage internally.’
‘Who does he belong to?’
‘I expect he was probably dumped. People do it all the time, I’m afraid. He’ll stay with us for a few more days and then I’ll ask Moorwings, the local animal sanctuary, to come and pick him up. They’ll look after him until someone gives him a permanent home.’
Charlie joined them, with Chester following patiently behind. Charlie leant his forehead against the wire cage to get a closer look at the dog, which seemed bemused by all the attention. ‘What’s his name?’
‘One of the veterinary nurses christened him Freddie after her first boyfriend. She said he had the same brown eyes and scruffy black hair, but much nicer manners apparently.’
Caroline sighed. She had a feeling she knew exactly what was coming next. Her instincts proved correct when Charlie fixed his bright blue eyes on her and wheedled, ‘Can we give Freddie a home, Mum? You did promise we could have a dog when we moved to Riverdale because we were leaving all our friends behind. And it would stop me looking for the big cat.’
‘Charlie and I will look after him and take him for walks,’ said Poppy, giving her stepmother an imploring look. ‘You needn’t do a thing. Imagine how awful it would be if no-one else gave him a home? He’d have to spend the rest of his life in a cage.’
Caroline opened her mouth to speak but the vet joined the offensive before she could utter a word. ‘I know he does look a bit of a state but other than that broken leg there’s nothing wrong with him. And I think he’s probably only about eighteen months old, so he would give you years of pleasure. I’d take him in myself if I didn’t already have four at home.’
‘Do we really need another waif and stray? What will your dad say? What will Magpie say?’ asked Caroline. But she had to admit the dog really did have the softest brown eyes. Almost as if he could sense her wavering, Cloud gave her a nudge and she turned to the children and laughed.
‘OK, OK. I know when I’m beaten. But I’ll hold you to your promise. He can be your responsibility. And you two can break the news to your dad.’
Charlie flung his arms around his mum and Poppy gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She still felt a little shy around her stepmother but things were so much better between them now. Caroline enveloped her in a hug, ruffled Charlie’s blond hair and gave the vet an ironic smile. ‘Come on you lot. We’d better say goodbye to Freddie for now and get this X-ray done, before we end up offering a home to any more lame ducks.’
Chapter Three
Half an hour later Cloud and Chester were back in the trailer and Poppy and Caroline had joined the vet in one of the consulting rooms. She used a pencil to point at an X-ray, which glowed a ghostly white against the dark background.
‘This is his pedal bone. And this is what I was worried about. Can you see the hairline crack? I’m afraid he has fractured the bone.’ Poppy nodded mutely. A natural pessimist, she had spent the last week fearing the worst, but she took no pleasure in being proved right. Caroline squeezed her hand.
‘But it could be a lot worse. There’s no wound, which means there should be no danger of infection, and the fracture hasn’t reached the coffin joint. That’s the joint between Cloud’s pedal bone and his short pastern.’
‘So what happens now?’ Caroline asked.
‘Box rest is the most important part of the treatment for a fractured pedal bone, and you’re already doing that. He’ll need two to three months of total box rest. We need to completely immobilise that foot to give the bone the greatest chance of healing. He needs to be fitted with a bar shoe, and if that doesn’t work we’ll look at applying a cast to his hoof and pastern. With the right treatment the prognosis for a full recovery is very good.’
‘Is there anything else I can do for him?’ Poppy asked.
‘No, you carry on exactly as you are. He’s already looking so much better than when I saw him on Monday. We’ll repeat the X-ray in four weeks’ time to see if the bone is beginning to heal and go from there.’
When Caroline and Poppy stepped back out into the yard Charlie was leaning against Freddie’s cage, stroking the dog’s nose through the wire.
‘The vet wants Freddie to stay here for a week so she can keep an eye on him. She said we could pick him up on Friday,’ Caroline told him. ‘That gives you precisely six days to win your father around.’
On Sunday morning Poppy was woken by a bleep on her mobile phone. It was a text from Scarlett.
Hi Poppy, fancy a ride? Thought we could go and say hello to the new people. Be here for ten. C U later, Scar xx.
Poppy yawned and stretched. Magpie, the McKeevers' overweight black and white cat, was curled up in a ball on the end of her bed. He eyed her briefly before tucking his head under one paw and going back to sleep. Poppy jumped out of bed, opened the curtains and was greeted by a crisp autumn morning, the sun low in a bleached blue sky. She gazed down at the stables. Cloud’s grey head looked out over the stable door, his warm breath like curls of smoke in the cold air. Poppy opened her window and called softly to him. He saw her and whickered. She calculated that she still had time to spend a couple of hours with him before meeting Scarlett. She threw on some clothes, ran down the stairs and grabbed a plate of toast from Caroline in the kitchen, grinning her thanks as she headed for the back door.
Chester had shouldered Cloud out of the way and it was the donkey she could see over the stable door as she pulled on her wellies. Cloud was at the back of the stable resting his bad leg. Poppy ran her hand over his neck and leant on his withers. His mane tickled her cheek and she sighed with contentment.
She let Chester out into the yard and Cloud watched her muck out the stable, change the water and re-fill the hayrack. ‘I’m going to give you a groom and then you are going to test me on my German homework. I’ve got to learn the numbers from twenty to forty by tomorrow otherwise Miss Maher will have my guts for garters,’ she told him as he started tugging wisps of hay from the rack.
Poppy lost track of time and had to run most of the way to Ashworthy, where she and Scarlett spent half an hour brushing the worst of the mud from Scarlett’s two Dartmoor ponies, Flynn and Blaze. Scarlett had talked her mum into having Blaze clipped but Flynn’s winter coat was growing thicker by the day and his mane was bushier than ever. When Poppy bent down to pick out his feet he seized the chance to nibble her pockets. ‘Do you ever think about anything other than your stomach?’ she asked him, rubbing his ear with affection.
Scarlett grimaced as she hauled a rucksack over her shoulder. ‘Mum’s insisted on giving me some chocolate brownies to give to the new people as a moving in present. I told her they’d be broken into a million pieces by the time we get there but she still made me bring them.’ Scarlett eyed Flynn’s round belly, then looked down at her own sturdy legs and sighed. ‘She thinks feeding people is the answer to everything.’
The two girls swung into their saddles and clip-clopped down the farm track to the lane. They turned left, passing the Riverdale drive and heading towards the Blackstone farm at the other side of the valley. The two s
emi-detached farm cottages were on the Waterby side of the ramshackle farm. Poppy had ridden past them a dozen times without paying much attention. The two white rendered houses, built in the 1950s, were at first glance mirror images of each other. But as they approached she realised the difference was enormous. The cottage on the left sat behind an immaculately manicured front garden whose symmetrical flowerbeds, filled with cyclamens and winter pansies, reminded her of a municipal park. A concrete Greek goddess gazed benignly at them from her plinth in the centre of this kaleidoscope of colour. The windows of the cottage gleamed and a row of white shirts danced in the breeze at the side of the house. Poppy could just make out the navy brass name plate by the front door. Rose Cottage.
The house to the right was more like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale than a Greek myth. A wooden gate, hanging precariously from rusty hinges, led to a concrete path that was breaking up in places. Brambles and nettles had long taken over the lawn and were now waist high. The wooden window frames were rotten and the windows themselves were opaque with years of grime. A wheelie bin to the side of the front door was painted with the words Flint Cottage. Poppy and Scarlett looked at each other dubiously.
‘I’ll go. You stay here and hold the ponies,’ Scarlett offered, much to Poppy’s relief. Scarlett was as outgoing as Poppy was shy and although Poppy knew she shouldn’t depend on her friend to take charge it was sometimes easier to.
Scarlett edged her way past the nettles and brambles to the front door and pressed a doorbell at the side of the tarnished letterbox. The resulting chime was unexpectedly loud, making her jump. For a while nothing happened and Scarlett was about to press the buzzer a second time when the front door opened an inch.
‘Hello?’ Scarlett said. ‘Is there anybody there?’
The safety chain was on and the door opened no further. Scarlett glanced uncertainly at Poppy. She turned back to the house and froze as she saw thin fingers curl around the door jamb. The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention as a voice whispered, ‘Who are you?’
Chapter Four
Poppy, from her vantage point in the lane, only heard Scarlett’s reply.
‘My name’s Scarlett and my best friend Poppy is just over there. We live next door to each other on the other side of the valley. We heard new people had moved in and wanted to say hello. Oh, and my mum made some brownies for you, though they look more like the broken bits of cake that go at the bottom of trifles now. I knew we shouldn’t have had that canter. I tell you what, I’ll leave them on the doorstep. We need to get going anyway. You can keep the box they’re in – it’s only an old biscuit tin. Well, welcome to Waterby. It was nice meeting you, er –’
Poppy caught a murmured answer. The fingers uncurled from the door and it closed with a creak inches from Scarlett’s freckled nose. Poppy watched her friend place the tin of brownies on the doorstep and re-trace her steps down the concrete path. When she glanced up at the house again, curious to see what was behind the filthy windows, the face of the girl suddenly appeared. Her huge eyes stared at Poppy for a couple of seconds before she turned and vanished from view.
‘Well, that was seriously creepy,’ said Scarlett, taking Blaze’s reins from Poppy. They mounted and turned the ponies for home. Scarlett filled her friend in on the short-lived conversation she’d had with the mysterious girl. ‘She’s called Hope. She said she couldn’t let me in because her mum wasn’t there. And did you see what a state the house was in? Trust George Blackstone to rent out such a dump. I wouldn’t let my worst enemy stay there. But Mum always says he’s as tight as they come. I doubt he’s spent a penny doing it up for the new family.’
Poppy nodded. Blackstone was public enemy number one as far as she was concerned. Five years ago the belligerent farmer had bought Cloud, thinking he was going to make a packet selling the pony on, but when Cloud escaped onto the moor, the farmer had nursed a grudge against him. After the annual drift, the Connemara had been sent back to the Blackstone farm, albeit briefly. Poppy shivered as she pictured the dried blood caked to Cloud’s flanks when he’d finally returned to Riverdale. She felt sorry for the newcomers.
As they trotted down the lane Poppy was haunted by the face at the window. The girl had stared at her with such intensity that she felt uncomfortable. Something else wasn’t right, she was sure of it. But she had no idea what it was.
‘Did you see the girl’s face?’ she asked Scarlett.
‘No, just her arm. She had long, skinny fingers and a red mark on the inside of her wrist. Oh, and she bites her nails. I suppose she’d been told by her mum not to open the door to strangers. Though I hardly look like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. My nose isn’t half as long as his for a start…’
The two Dartmoor ponies walked towards home with an easy stride. Poppy let Scarlett chatter on as she mulled over the visit. Every now and then Flynn, sensing that Poppy’s mind was elsewhere, seized the opportunity to snatch a mouthful from the hedge. His bay ears were pricked and she felt his pace quicken as they turned into the rutted farm track that led to Ashworthy.
‘You’re quiet,’ Scarlett remarked.
‘That’s because you do enough talking for two, Scar. Only kidding. It’s because I’m thinking. There’s something about that house – about that girl – that’s bothering me. But I can’t think what it is.’
They untacked the ponies, gave them a brush down, put on their rugs and turned them out in their paddock. Then the realisation hit Poppy like a sledgehammer. She felt prickles of disquiet on the back of her neck. She put her hand on Scarlett’s arm and said, ‘I know what it is about that girl at the Blackstone cottage.’
‘What?’
Poppy paused. Was it any of her business anyway? But she saw the curiosity on her friend’s face and carried on regardless.
‘She had no hair.’
Chapter Five
Charlie spent the week preparing the house for Freddie’s arrival. He held impromptu counselling sessions for Magpie, showing him pictures he’d sketched of black and tan dogs and holding the protesting cat up to the television every time a dog appeared on the screen. They went to Baxters’ Animal Feeds on the Tavistock road and bought a navy blue dog bed, a collar, lead and water and food bowls. With Poppy’s help Charlie cleared the alcove under the stairs of its usual jumble of shoes, bags and coats.
‘We can put his bed here. He’ll be like Harry Potter at the Dursleys’ – sleeping under the stairs. Though he won’t be locked in like Harry was. I wonder what happened when Harry needed the loo in the middle of the night?’ Charlie pondered.
Their dad watched the preparations with mild amusement. Charlie had been right about him – he loved dogs and was looking forward to Freddie’s arrival as much as Poppy and Charlie. He also thought that having a dog in the house would offer extra security for Caroline and the children during his long work trips abroad.
‘I don’t think Freddie’s necessarily guard dog material,’ Caroline pointed out, remembering the dog’s liquid brown eyes and his attempt to shake hands. ‘He’s a big softie.’
‘Not once I’ve started his special forces training. I’m going to teach him to kill on command,’ declared Charlie.
‘Don’t let Magpie hear you,’ warned their dad. ‘You’ve been telling him all week that dogs are really big friendly cats in disguise.’
Charlie grinned unashamedly and held his finger to his lips. ‘Our little secret, Dad. I won’t tell Magpie if you don’t.’ He paused. ‘Poppy, do you think Freddie and Cloud have already met? They seemed to recognise each other at the vet’s.’
Poppy thought back. Charlie was right. If Cloud hadn’t whinnied she’d have walked straight past Freddie’s kennel, assuming it was empty. ‘I suppose they could have come across each other on the moor. I wonder how long ago Freddie was dumped.’
‘Long enough for him to need some serious fattening up,’ said Caroline. ‘Which reminds me, we need to pop into Waterby after school tomorrow
to get some dog food. It’s the only chance we’ll get before we pick Freddie up on Friday.’
Waterby Post Office and Stores was the nerve centre not only of the village but also of the wider rural community. The nearest supermarket was almost ten miles away and the shop was a lifeline for many. It was owned and run by Barney Broomfield, who the McKeevers had nicknamed Father Christmas because of his white beard, twinkly blue eyes, rounded paunch and penchant for red sweaters. They felt it was no coincidence that the only day of the year the shop closed was Christmas Day.
Barney took an eccentric and eclectic approach to ordering stock.
‘Oh look, some Big Ben money boxes. Cool!’ said Charlie, who was wandering up and down the three aisles while Poppy and Caroline scrutinised the labels on different brands of dog food.
‘They’re for the grockles, lad,’ boomed Barney’s deep voice from the other side of the shop. ‘Classy, aren’t they? I’ve some T-shirts with the Queen’s corgis printed on the front arriving next week.’
‘Grockles?’ whispered Poppy, looking at Caroline in bemusement.
‘It’s what people in the West Country call tourists,’ Caroline whispered back. ‘Though I’m not sure grockles visiting Dartmoor are going to want corgi T-shirts and Big Ben money boxes.’ Poppy stifled a giggle.
Then from an aisle behind them she heard a girl’s voice.
‘But I don’t want to do it anymore, Mum. You promised me I wouldn’t have to when we moved here.’ The voice was quiet, breathy. Poppy wondered if it was the girl from Flint Cottage.
‘Yeah well, things change, don’t they babe? Get over it.’ There was an edge to the woman’s voice that made Poppy uneasy. Caroline was busy scooping tins of dog food into the shopping basket one-handed and clearly wasn’t listening.