The Auditions

by Stacy Gregg

  Alice looked at Georgie. “Do you want me to open it?”

  “No,” Georgie said. “It’s OK. I can do it.”

  She reached her hand up and slid the bolt gently open, swinging back the wooden door so that she could see into the loose box.

  She heard a gentle nicker and then a moment later a horse emerged into the sunlight. She was a strikingly beautiful mare, a deep red bay with a jet-black mane and tail and a face that had an exquisite sculptural quality to it, as if an ancient Greek had chiselled it frommarble. On her forehead was a heart-shaped white marking. Georgie took one look at her and reeled back, as if she had been given an electric shock.

  “Georgie? What’s wrong?” Alice asked.

  Georgie didn’t answer. She just stared wide-eyed at the bay mare.

  “I think she’s beautiful,” Alice said. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like her?”

  Georgie shook her head. “No. I mean, it’s not that. It’s just that I know her already. I know this horse.”

  Georgie stared, taking in the white heart marking on her forehead, the deep brown eyes. In every way, this horse was the spitting image of Boudicca. She remembered that mare’s face so clearly. How could she possibly forget? Boudicca was the horse that her mother had been riding at Blenheim. The day that she died.

  Chapter Nine

  “You’re Ginny Parker’s daughter?” Alice was stunned. “The Ginny Parker? And you think this is your mother’s horse?”

  Georgie nodded. “It could be her, I suppose. Dad sold all the horses after the accident. I never found out what happened to Boudicca. I guess she could have been sold to Blainford.”

  Was it really possible that the mare had somehow ended up here? Georgie had never seen Boudicca again after the day of the accident. Her father had been so upset he wouldn’t have the horse back in their stables and she had been sold at auction straight away. Boudicca had been Ginny Parker’s favourite horse, but had also been her most difficult mount. Young andheadstrong, the bay mare had been the one horse in her stables that Ginny would never let her daughter ride.

  Georgie needed a step-ladder to climb on to Ivanhoe, her mum’s seventeen hands Irish Hunter, but she had been allowed to ride him over jumps all the same. But not Boudicca.

  “She’s a sensitive mare, very highly strung,” Ginny had said firmly one day when Georgie begged to try out the mare. “You’re not ready for a horse like that yet.”

  The mare in the stall was unnervingly similar to her mother’s old horse but the nameplate didn’t say Boudicca–it said Belladonna. Whether this mare was Boudicca or not, Georgie was spooked by the resemblance.

  “If you don’t want to ride her, you could ask Tara Kelly to swap you to a different horse,” Alice told her.

  “Tara Kelly?”

  “She’s responsible for matching the school horses up with new riders,” Alice explained.

  Georgie stared over the Dutch door nervously. Inside her stall, Belladonna was pacing about warily, asif she too was unsettled by her new partnership. The mare’s dark eyes were blazing. Georgie wasn’t certain what to make of this horse. All she knew was that when Alice suggested that Georgie should come and meet William, she agreed a little too quickly, locking Belladonna’s stable door with unnatural haste.

  William was just a few doors down in the same stable block. He was a handsome chestnut Warmblood with a broad white stripe down his nose and white spots across his shoulders and rump, a bit like Zara Phillips’ famous eventing mount, Toytown.

  “He’s gorgeous,” Georgie enthused as William thrust his nose out of the stall to greet them.

  Alice glowed with pride. “He is a lovely boy, isn’t he? Will’s fifteen years old now. Kendal had him for his best years, but he still has plenty of gas in the tank. He’s brilliant on the cross-country course.”

  They left the stables and walked in a loop around the back of the school and the duck pond, past two of the other boarding houses Alice identified as Luhmuhlen and Alberta.

  “There are six houses at the school and each of themis named after a famous eventing horse trial. The boys’ boarding houses are Burghley, Lexington and Luhmuhlen. The girls’ houses are Alberta, Badminton and Stars of Pau. Badminton is the best one to be in,” Alice insisted.

  Badminton House reminded Georgie of a Southern Belle’s ball gown. It was a pale blue wooden two-storey building with ribbons of scarlet trim around the upstairs dormer windows and a bright scarlet front door.

  Inside, the house had the same Southern charm. Downstairs there was a living room with sofas and a giant television, a kitchen and a bathroom block. There were enough showers and mirrors so the forty girls who lived here wouldn’t be fighting for space in the mornings. A huge wooden staircase led upstairs to the senior girls’ bedrooms.

  “Kendal is a senior so she gets her own room upstairs,” Alice said. The junior bedrooms were downstairs and the girls slept two to a room. The room mates were rotated each term. Mrs Birdwell, the house mistress, had already allocated their rooms for the firstterm. Alice eagerly checked the whiteboard to see who they were sharing with. She frowned. “I’m in with some girl called Emily Tait,” she said, “and you’re supposed to be rooming with Daisy King.” Georgie let out a groan.

  “Do you know her?”

  “I used to ride against her back in England,” Georgie told Alice. “I don’t think she likes me much. She’s certainly not going to be thrilled when she discovers that she’s come all the way to Lexington to room with me.”

  There was a devious glint in Alice’s eyes. “What if she never finds out?”

  Alice looked around hastily to see if anyone was watching and then she grabbed the whiteboard eraser. In a moment the deed was done. She had swapped the names over so that Daisy King was now rooming with Emily Tait and Alice and Georgie’s names were side by side.

  “I cannot believe you just did that!” Georgie was shocked.

  “No need to thank me,” Alice grinned. “Just let mehave the bed by the window.”

  All the bedrooms were decorated with floral curtains and duvets in similar patterns but with different colour schemes. Georgie and Alice’s had a blue theme, which Georgie faintly registered as she collapsed on top of her duvet. Jetlag from the long flight had struck at last. She was suddenly utterly exhausted and fell asleep then and there, face down on her duvet.

  Anyone who has ever flown on a long-distance plane flight will know what jetlag feels like. It is the most uncontrollable phenomenon, where waves of tiredness can appear from out of nowhere. When Alice tried to rouse Georgie half an hour later to go to the dining hall with the other girls Georgie murmured that she was too tired. Alice left her in their room and promised to try to smuggle something back for her to eat later.

  When the girls returned from dinner, they found Georgie still sprawled face down on her duvet, sound asleep. No one saw any point in trying to wake her until morning.

  The next morning Georgie dressed for the first time in her Blainford pale blue pinafore and navy jersey and sandals, an outfit Alice referred to as ‘number ones’. Number twos meant the jodhpurs, shirt and boots that were worn for the riding classes in the afternoons.

  “How’s the jetlag?” Alice asked as Georgie returned from the bathroom.

  “I woke up at five this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep,” Georgie groaned. “And I’m starving!”

  Boarding students ate their meals at the dining hall next to the quad in the main school buildings and it was a five-minute walk up the driveway at the front of the school to get there.

  An early morning mist had settled over the school as Alice and Georgie joined the rest of the Badminton girls gathering outside the boarding house. Kendal, Alice’s older sister, was standing with the seniors. Georgie would never have recognised her if Alice hadn’t pointed her out. The sisters looked nothing alike. Kendal was blonde and tanned, not dark haired like Alice.

  “Georgie!” Daisy King waved and came over.

&nbs
p; “Wow!” Daisy said. “Amazing, huh? I never thought you and I would both be at Blainford together.”

  It was hard to tell what she meant by this. Was she amazed that they were here together–or amazed that Georgie had got into Blainford at all?

  “So has your horse arrived yet?” Daisy asked.

  Georgie shook her head. “I sold Tyro,” she said, “I’m going to be riding a school horse.”

  “Oh, me too!” the girl standing next to Daisy exclaimed. She turned out to be Daisy’s room mate, Emily Tait. Emily had an accent, which Georgie had assumed was Australian until Emily said it was “too expensive to fly my horse over from New Zealand”.

  “It can’t be that much more than flying your horse from England,” Daisy said dismissively. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming without Village Voice.”

  Daisy and Emily seemed distinctly uncomfortable together. Emily, who was shy and quiet, was obviously a bit daunted by her confident, competitive room mate. She hardly said a word after that as they walked up the driveway and Daisy looked like she could barely be bothered talking to her.

  “Look at them!” Alice elbowed Georgie. “They’re getting on like a house on fire,” she said dryly. “They’ll thank us one day for putting them together!”

  Alice did enough talking for everyone as they walked up the driveway. “Badminton is the best girls’ house to be in,” she raved. “It’s one of the first houses, it was the original girls’ boarding house when the school opened and there’s always a cool mix of international students.” Alice pointed to a stark, white modern-looking building at the point where the driveway forked. “That’s Alberta House. The showjumperettes are always in Alberta.”

  The best boys’ house to be in, according to Alice, was Burghley, “because it’s the closest one to the school and the stables. You have to walk for miles if you’re in Lexington or Luhmuhlen.”

  Burghley House stood right beside the driveway only a hundred metres from the main school. It was a red Georgian brick building surrounded by rhododendrons and magnolias in bloom. As they walked past, a group of boys came out the front door and Georgie’s heart skipped a beat. There was James, the handsome blond boy she had met on the square yesterday. He was walking with the other two boys who had stood back and sniggered when she was being given fatigues.

  Georgie glanced across at them and saw the blond boy staring at her. He gave her that same killer smile and she felt her cheeks go hot with embarrassment and hastily turned away to talk to Alice.

  This time when they reached the quad Georgie knew better than to walk across the lawn. The girls made their way to the door of the dining hall. They had arrived ahead of the boys from Burghley House, but as they queued at the dining room door, Conrad and two other boys in long boots and spurs pushed straight past them to the front of the line.

  “Hey!” Alice snapped. “There’s a queue you know!”

  Conrad glared at her. “Not for prefects there isn’t,” he said dismissively, grabbing a breakfast tray from the stack and entering the hall.

  The queue moved slowly and by the time the girls finally got inside it was well past eight. Most of the tables were almost full, but there was some space at thefar end of the hall where three girls sat. Georgie loaded up her tray with toast, juice and cereal and was about to walk over to join them when Alice blocked her with her breakfast tray.

  “No way!” she hissed. “You can’t sit over there with them!”

  “Why not?” Georgie was baffled.

  “That’s the showjumperettes’ table,” Alice said, steering Georgie in the opposite direction where another table had now become free. “And those three girls are the Blainford equivalent to the witches in Macbeth.”

  Alice tried to look like she wasn’t staring at the three girls as she pointed them out to Georgie. “The one on the end with the long blonde hair? That’s Tori Forsythe, she’s a total snob. The girl next to her with the dark hair who looks like she spent all day at the beauty parlour? That’s Arden Mortimer. Her parents own, like, half the corn in Iowa. She’s a trust fund brat.” Alice looked over at Arden who was studiously filing her bright lilac painted fingernails instead of eating her breakfast. “Apparently she got kicked out of her last prep schooland her parents threatened to send her to finishing school in Switzerland, but they compromised and sent her here instead.”

  The third girl had long glossy red hair and was very pretty, with bright green eyes and a deep expensive-looking tan. She had the same pinafore on as Georgie and the others, but it looked so much better on her! She had altered the hemline so that instead of sagging down to the knees like Georgie’s did, her uniform sat at a flirty mid-thigh length that showed off her tanned, toned legs.

  “Kennedy Kirkwood,” Alice said. “She’s from Maryland, like me. I competed against her in the US final auditions.”

  “She’s not a senior?” Georgie was surprised.

  “She acts like she is,” Alice agreed, “but she’s only in our year. She’s behaving like she owns the school already.” Alice ate another mouthful of cereal and then added, “although she kinda does. The Kirkwoods donated a new school gymnasium last year. They’re super-rich. They have this amazing equestrian estate. Kennedy will probably go home most weekends to ride.”

  “How?” Georgie was puzzled. “It would take her all weekend just to drive home.”

  Alice laughed. “Who said anything about driving? The Kirkwoods pick the kids up in one of their private jets.”

  “One of their jets?”

  “They’ve got two. Kennedy goes to Paris each season to get new jodhpurs, and flies her showjumping instructor, Hans Schockelmann, over from Germany so he can give her lessons,” Alice continued. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate her because she’s rich. There are other reasons to hate her.”

  “You sound like you know her pretty well,” Georgie said.

  “Kennedy and I were best friends at pony club in Maryland–until I beat her in a big competition,” Alice admitted. “She demanded that the judges drug test my horse.”

  “That sounds bad,” Georgie said.

  “We were only six years old at the time!” Alice laughed.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Totally serious!” Alice was wide-eyed. “We were just little kids on tiny ponies but for Kennedy it was as if we were at the Olympics. She’s always been that way. She can’t stand to lose at anything. She hardly speaks to me now.”

  Georgie’s eyes were still fixed on the showjumperettes’ table and she was surprised when she saw James suddenly appear at Kennedy’s side. He had been walking with his friends towards the exit, but then he diverted course and stopped at their table instead. He said something to Kennedy and the redhaired girl looked up at him and smiled. Then, to Georgie’s utter mortification, they both looked over in her direction! James was staring straight at her as he spoke this time and Kennedy was looking at her and laughing.

  Georgie hastily looked away and pretended to eat her breakfast, but out of the corner of her eye she could still see Kennedy and James together. Kennedy was chatting and waving her hands about in an animated fashion while the blond boy listened, smiling at her indulgently. Then finally, he said his goodbyes andheaded for the door where his friends were waiting for him.

  “Are we actually supposed to eat this?” Daisy asked.

  “Mmmph? What?” Georgie replied absentmindedly.

  “This toast.” Daisy was inspecting the slice on her plate. It had the consistency of cardboard. “I mean, is it actually supposed to be edible?”

  Alice shrugged and bit into her toast without fear. “Get used to it. Boarding school food is the worst!”

  “Hi!” a voice beside them interrupted. “Can I sit with you?” The girls turned round. There was a boy standing by their table holding a breakfast tray. He had short brown hair, brown eyes and an eager grin that made him kind of good-looking, in a geeky way.

  “I thought it was you,” he smiled. “It’s Georgie
Parker, isn’t it?” The boy had a lilting Scottish accent.

  Georgie looked blankly at him. “Yeah, that’s me …”

  The boy looked a little upset that Georgie clearly didn’t recognise him. “It’s the hair,” he sighed. “My mum cut it before I left. She said she didn’t want megoing off to Blainford looking like I had a floor mop on my head.”

  He looked over at Daisy and gave her a smile. “Hey there, Daisy!”

  “Hi, Cameron,” Daisy smiled back. Georgie looked at the boy again and suddenly she clicked. Cameron Fraser, from the final auditions in Birmingham!

  “I remember now,” Georgie said as the boy sat down at the table with them. “I didn’t recognise you without that big piebald cob. Is he with you?”

  “Paddy?” Cameron asked. “Oh yeah, he’s with me.

  He’s just gone back for a second helping of scrambled eggs.”

  Georgie groaned. “I meant have you brought him to school.”

  “Yeah, he’s here,” Cameron said, “although he’s nearly been kicked out of Blainford already for his behaviour. He managed to jump out of his field last night and eat the middle of the flowerbed at the front of the school gates. He completely devoured the horse shoe from the school insignia. Mrs Dubois had a fit when she saw it.”

  Georgie giggled. “Bad Paddy.”

  “Actually, that’s pretty typical behaviour for Paddy,” Cameron admitted. “He was a champion show horse until he got his leg stuck in a metal gate. The wounds healed but the scars meant he couldn’t be shown any more so he got sold on to the local hunt master. He was such a lunatic on the hunting field no one would ride him. Then my mum and dad turned up and offered a hundred quid for him.”

  “Why did your parents buy him if he was so crazy?” Alice asked.

  “Because they don’t know anything about horses!” Cameron said, downing his orange juice. “I’d outgrown my pony and told them I needed a new horse. So they bought Paddy. The first time I got on him he bolted and kept going. He leapt over six fences and ended up two kilometres from my house before he finally gave up galloping. I thought, well that proves he can jump, so I started eventing him that season.”