by Kate Lattey
We stare at each other uneasily for a moment. Our paths have only crossed twice since Christmas Day, and both times were awkward. I know that she’s trying to give me space, and that makes me feel bad, but I don’t know how to deal with it. Nina’s hands are full of grocery bags, and I recall belatedly that Dad said she was coming over tonight to cook. Even more belatedly, I realise that it’s his birthday today – and I haven’t even bought him anything. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any worse.
Nina says a polite hello as she sets the bags on the kitchen bench.
“I didn’t think you’d be home so early.” She sees the ribbon in my hands and smiles. “It looks like you’ve had a successful day!”
I shrug. “Sort of.” And then for some reason, I start crying. I swipe quickly at the tears, trying to cover them up, but Nina notices right away.
“Jay, what’s the matter?” She sits down at the table and looks at me sympathetically. I avoid her eyes, looking down at the table and wishing she would go away. Why can’t she be horrible, and then I can just hate her like I’m supposed to? Why does she have to be so nice to me, even though I’ve been so vile to her?
“Nothing.”
“You’re not crying over nothing,” Nina says matter-of-factly, but her tone is gentle. “Is this about me? I can leave if you want me to…”
I shake my head, then take a shuddering breath. “It’s not you. I don’t care… I mean, I don’t mind you being here. It’s nothing to do with that.”
“So what’s wrong? Is there something the matter with Finn?”
At the sound of her name, I feel a fresh wave of tears coming, but I determinedly force them away. “Sort of. I just… I have a decision to make and I don’t know how to make it.”
Nina rests her elbows on the table and steeples her fingers under her chin. “Would it help to talk about it? I’m pretty good at listening.”
“I don’t know. Maybe, I guess.” I remember that Nina is a lawyer, and wonder if her analytical approach to the facts will help me make sense of the emotions surging through my brain. “I’ll try.”
I take a breath and explain the situation, trying to lay it all out as clearly as possible. Nina listens carefully, nodding slowly as I talk. When I’m done, I rub at the fresh tears on my cheeks.
“So I don’t know what I should do. I don’t know whether I should sell Finn or not, or buy Buzz or not, or give up riding completely…I just don’t know!”
“Do you have to decide right now?” she asks calmly, and I glare at her. As if I’d be tying myself into knots right now if I had time to think about it.
“I have to let Jo know by tonight,” I explain. “Because there are other people interested in Buzz. But she says he likes me and she wants me to have him, even though I’d have to pay him off or wait to sell Finn. But if I’m not going to buy him then she needs to know so she can keep advertising him.”
Nina nods, looking thoughtful. “Okay then. You could make a list of pros and cons, work out the financial side of things, decide on the most logical conclusion and follow your head rather than your heart.” I nod, starting to formulate a list in my head, knowing that Buzz will come out ahead on paper. He’s the sensible choice, the obvious choice, the shortcut to success. But Nina hasn’t finished.
“But before you do, ask yourself this. Five years from now, ten years from now, when you look back at this moment, which choice do you think you might regret more?”
I don’t have to think about that for long. “I don’t want to give up on Finn,” I admit. “Because when I first got her she was nothing much, and I wanted to prove to everyone that she was actually amazing. And at first she was a bit crazy, but she got better and better, and people started respecting and admiring her.”
“Including your friend Abby, right?”
I remember the day that Nina and Dad came to watch me ride, and I nod. “Yeah, Abby loves her. And she has always said how great Finn will be, and gives me so much support and encouragement.”
“So what’s changed?”
I have to think for a moment, but it doesn’t take me long to work it out. “I went to camp, and Steph rode Finn, and she went so well for her. Like, amazing for her. Way better than she ever has for me, even though I’ve been riding her for ages. And Steph said she was one of the most talented ponies she’s ever ridden. But…” I feel myself choking up again and I struggle to control my emotions. “But she also said that she’s being held back by her rider, and that I’m not good enough to give Finn the ride that she needs. So now I just feel like I’m failing my pony, and that I should sell her so she can go to someone who will ride her better and fulfil her potential.”
Nina gives my hand a squeeze. “It must have hurt to hear that. It wasn’t very diplomatic of her, was it?”
“She didn’t say it to my face,” I admit. “I overheard her telling someone else.”
“Jay, I think you might be making a bit too much of a throwaway comment. We all say and do things that we don’t really mean. And even if Steph is right, that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn and improve.” She thinks for a moment. “I don’t know much about horses, but do you think that it matters to Finn how high she jumps?”
I frown. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.” I consider her words for a moment. “I think she would rather jump smaller and have me ride well than jump big and have me stuff it up. But then I’d just be wasting a good pony, wouldn’t I?”
Nina shrugs. “I can’t answer that question,” she admits. “But maybe you should talk to someone who knows more about it. Why don’t you give Abby a call, and see what she thinks?”
I hesitate. “I could, I suppose,” I say slowly. “But what if…”
My words trail off, but my mind keeps going. What if she thinks I’m annoying? What if she thinks that Steph is right, that Finn really is too good for me, and tells me to sell her now before I ruin her even more? What if she can’t even remember who I am?
“You can’t go through your life wondering what if,” Nina tells me firmly. “You’ll just end up with far too much regret and disappointment. What if you don’t call her, and then when you’ve made your decision and it’s too late, she tells you that you were wrong, and wonders why you didn’t ask for her advice?”
I groan and drop my head onto the table, and Nina laughs sympathetically.
“Come on. Get up, get the phone, ring her up and talk to her. What’ve you got to lose?”
I nod and get to my feet. I look up Abby’s number, punch it into the phone and listen to it ring, my palms sweating. Nina gives me an encouraging smile from across the table.
“No regrets,” she reminds me.
I smile back, nodding. “No regrets.”
When Dad gets home almost an hour later, he finds me and Nina working together in the kitchen, cooking the meal and chatting easily. He looks completely bewildered at first, dropping his briefcase and staring like we’ve got six heads between us.
He glances back at the door behind him, then at us again. “Is this my house, or have I walked into some kind of alternate dimension?”
“You’re hilarious,” I tell him as I finish grating the cheese and pass it to Nina. She adds it to the cheese sauce and stirs it slowly.
“What’s going on?”
“What does it look like?” I ask him. “We’re making dinner.” I remember something abruptly. “Oh, and happy birthday!” I rush forward to give him a hug, and he hugs me back.
“Thanks mate.” He sniffs appreciatively and looks over at the food on the stove. “Something smells good.”
“Lasagne,” I tell him. “And don’t worry, Nina’s been making sure that nothing has been burned or ruined. I hear she’s a pretty good cook.”
Dad grins and gives me a squeeze. “You heard right. I’m gonna go wash up, I’ll leave you ladies to it.” He’s humming to himself as he starts to walk out of the room, and Nina and I smile at each other before Dad turns back around. “Oh J
ay, I meant to ask, how was your show today?”
I pause, letting my mind run back over the day’s events. The exhilaration of riding Buzz, the confusion of Steph’s comments, the conversation with Nina, and best of all, the phone call I’d had with Abby.
“It was good,” I tell him. “By the way, enjoy my company now, because after next weekend, I’m not going to be home for the rest of the holidays.”
Dad tilts his head. “Where are you planning on going?”
I grin at Nina, who smiles back at me. “Gisborne. Abby Brooks has invited me to go and stay with her for two weeks. She wants me to bring Finn too, and she’s going to give me some lessons and she says she’ll even let me ride her horses.”
The words sound unbelievable as they come out of my mouth, but I know they’re true. Abby had been delighted to hear from me, and assured me that there was no reason I couldn’t be good enough to jump Finn in the Grand Prix myself.
“Don’t listen to Steph, I never do,” she’d casually assured me. “Finn is your pony, Jay. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve her.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The house where Abby and her mum live is small but cosy, and there are pictures of horses everywhere. The walls are covered in framed photos, showing Abby’s progression from a small child on a hairy Shetland through to the Grand Prix rider she is today. I walk slowly around the room, looking them over. Some of the horses I recognise from her current team, but it’s the photos from Abby’s teenage years that interest me the most. A much younger Abby with a wide sash across her shoulders, sitting on a light grey pony with a bright pink nose. The same pony soaring over a jump, Abby’s lengthening legs wrapped around his sides. Grinning widely on a flaxen chestnut pony, festooned in rosettes. And several photos of her on a finely-bred black pony. I particularly like one of them jumping a huge triple bar. The pony’s ears are up, its knees are tucked and it’s clearing the jump in textbook form, with Abby crouched over its neck, her arms stretched forward in a long release. Both pony and rider look like they’re in perfect unison, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to achieve that kind of connection with Finn.
“That’s Gypsy,” Abby says as she walks into the room, carrying a bowl of pasta that her mum Maria has just whipped up while we put the horses away. “She was my Grand Prix pony, and was a lot like yours. Temperamental and hot, wouldn’t suffer fools, but once you got her on your side, she’d jump out of her skin for you.”
I smile weakly as I sit down at the table, wondering if Finn considers me to be a fool, and whether she’s suffering through the experience of having me as her owner. I’ve already decided that if we don’t make any significant improvements after our time at Abby’s, I’ll put her on the market anyway. It’s just not fair on her to keep having to put up with me.
“None of that defeatist attitude,” Abby says, cutting into my thoughts. “I can see it in your eyes. There is nothing wrong with your pony, and there’s nothing wrong with you except that you don’t have the right tools to ride or train her yet. You’re here for two weeks, and by the end of those two weeks you are going to have a much more rideable pony, trust me.”
“You won’t know yourself,” Maria insists.
“I hope so.”
“You just need to believe in yourself a bit more,” Abby tells me. “Ninety per cent of this sport is psychological. Talk yourself into things, instead of out of them.” I nod, my mouth full of pasta as she keeps talking. “We’ll get started early tomorrow. I try to get all the horses worked in the morning, then I’ve got the farrier coming in the afternoon. And I’ll fit in a lesson for you sometime too. Probably work it around the farrier.”
I swallow my food. “Sounds great. And thanks again for letting me come. Finn too.”
“My pleasure, but it’s not all charity, you know. I’ve brought you in as slave labour.” She’s smiling, but I can detect an undercurrent of seriousness. “Mum works too hard and I’ve been trying to get her to take a break for a while.” She ignores her mother’s attempts to argue, simply talking over top of her. “I was just thinking of getting a working student in when you rang the other night, so call it good timing. As long as you’re as hard of a worker as you say you are.”
I smile at her. “Try me.”
Abby laughs. “Don’t worry, I will.”
I sleep well and wake up to find a fluffy grey cat curled up on the end of my bed. I hadn’t even seen it when I came into the room last night, so tired from the journey and the anticipation of being here. I give it a quick scratch under the chin as I check my watch. It’s half past six, and Abby said to be down for breakfast by seven, but I’m too excited to lie in bed, so I get up and dressed, deciding to be early and make a good impression.
Abby is sitting at the kitchen table with her mum, a pile of paperwork in front of them. They both look up when I walk into the room, and I wonder for a moment whether I’ve interrupted something.
“Morning Jay,” Abby greets me warmly. “Help yourself to food. Bread’s in the freezer, jam’s in the cupboard, cereal’s in the pantry, milk’s in the fridge.” She says it all in one breath, and turns back to the piece of paper in front of her. “Enter Prince in the metre-twenty Champ, he should be up to it by then. The babies can stay in the smaller classes, and Chuck can have a crack at the Grand Prix.”
Her mum nods, filling in the entry forms as Abby flicks through the sheaf of paper. I fix myself a bowl of cornflakes and a mug of instant coffee, rummaging around until I find things. I feel quite at home already as I listen to them chatting about the horses. Abby is clearly the one in charge, making all of the decisions for which classes to enter the horses in, but she takes her mum’s suggestions seriously.
“What about Jay? She will be riding at Te Rapa too?” Maria asks in her heavy German accent, startling me into slopping cornflakes and milk down my shirt. I dab at it anxiously as Abby chews her lip and looks at me, then peruses the schedule.
“So she will. Hmm. Put her in that class, and that one,” she says, jabbing her finger at the programme, and Maria dutifully fills it in.
“What are you entering me in?” I ask, but Abby just winks at me.
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out when we get there.”
We start the day by checking on all the horses in the paddocks. Abby walks around, patting every horse and looking them over, checking for scrapes or wounds, slipped covers or loose shoes. The horses are all happy to see her, coming over for a scratch and a cuddle, but when we get to Finn’s paddock my pony just glances at me before going back to grazing.
“I think your horses like you more than mine does,” I tell Abby honestly.
“How often do you go out to the paddock just to see your pony, without doing anything with her or expecting anything of her?” she counters.
I frown, and answer honestly. “Almost never. Well, sometimes I just get her in to feed her,” I reply. “But that’s usually in the evenings, and I shake the bucket to get her to come to the gate.”
“Does that answer your question?” Abby asks. “She associates your appearance with hard work. Do you run into the classroom every morning at school?”
“Hardly.”
“Exactly. So why should she?”
Abby leaves me pondering this as we start the morning chores. Once all of the horses have been fed and their paddocks mucked out, Abby tells me to bring her big grey mare Zoe in and tack her up while she lunges one of her young horses.
“And take your time grooming her, she loves being fussed over,” she adds.
I catch Zoe easily and lead her into the barn. Abby doesn’t have conventional stables, just big square covered yards with slip rails on the front, where the horses stand to be groomed and tacked up. The floors are compacted earth, and are mucked out and raked over every day. The horses don’t get tied up, and Abby tells me that they never stand in there for much longer than half an hour at a time.
“Nobody likes being cooped up,” she t
ells me. “Least of all me. I’m claustrophobic, so I try not to inflict any of that on my horses. I know what it’s like to feel trapped in one space, and it’s no fun.”
I spend ages grooming Zoe, getting her as clean as possible before tacking her up. I’m just buckling her throatlatch when Abby comes back in leading Rufus, her young bay gelding.
“She looks very pleased with herself,” Abby grins. “She’d be groomed all day long if it was up to her.”
“Yeah she loves it,” I agree. “Not like Finn, she’s always grumpy when I’m brushing her, and she’s about the least cuddly horse ever.”
“Hmm. Zoe used to hate being touched, but we gave her a good dose of selenium when we got her and she was a different horse within a day or two. We’ll dose your pony later, see if it helps. In the meantime grab your helmet and give Zoe a good walk and trot around the arena on a long rein.”
I quickly dash into the tack room and grab my hard hat, then go back out and lead Zoe into the arena. I’m nervous, but delighted to have the privilege of warming Abby’s horse up for her. I pull Zoe’s stirrups down and lead her to the mounting block. She’s huge, and I stare up at her, feeling slightly overwhelmed before giving myself a mental kick and swinging into the comfy saddle. Abby’s stirrups are too long for me, and I realise that I should have adjusted them before I got on, but Zoe is very patient while I fumble around and then tighten the girth. Then we set off. She has a huge stride, covering a vast amount of ground with each step, but she is steady and responsive, soft on the bit and attentive to my aids. I find that she moves from the slightest pressure of my leg, and when I attempt to ride a half-halt, I end up with a full halt instead.
You’re riding a Grand Prix show jumper, I remind myself, and almost have to pinch myself to know that it’s real. I rub Zoe’s thick neck, telling her what a wonderful horse she is, then pick up a trot. Her stride feels even bigger in trot, and it seems to only take seven or eight steps to get down the long side. I soon discover that I have to plan to turn a little earlier with her than I do with Finn, and I carefully trot her around the outside of the arena in both directions, trying to avoid crashing into any of the jumps that are set up.