Moonlight: Star of the Show

by Belinda Rapley

  Charlie, Alice and Rosie smiled at one another. Mia often said the same thing about their ponies, especially Pirate, whose bushy black mane defied gravity no matter what Charlie tried. No one lived up to Mia’s high turnout standards, and if she was annoyed with someone, being superior about their grooming was Mia’s favourite put-down.

  “Looks like we’ll have to go back home after all,” Rosie said. She tried and failed to keep the triumph out of her voice.

  Once they reached Blackberry Farm the girls turned out the ponies as soon as they’d drunk some water and had their backs and legs hosed down. Scout got down straight away and rolled happily and Dancer copied him, grunting loudly as she kicked her legs in the air and almost got stuck on her broad back.

  Alice drank some water from the hose on the yard, and when Charlie tried to take it the hose flipped, accidentally, on Mia, who shrieked as if someone was trying to kill her. Before Alice could stop her, Mia had grabbed the hosepipe to exact her revenge and after a couple of well-aimed blasts they were all sopping wet. Even Rosie, as she emerged from the tack room with her packed lunch in her hand, got a blast full in the face.

  “Mind my sandwiches!” she shrieked, holding them above her head.

  The girls sat on the paddock fence in the sun to dry off, hungrily eating the lunches they’d brought with them from home. The ponies all wandered over to them, with Dancer stretching out her neck and nibbling Rosie’s knee until she gave in and shared her sandwich with her. After they’d finished, Mia checked her watch and flipped open her notebook again. Looking down the clues, they felt pleased with what they’d found out so far.

  “I can almost taste victory!” Rosie announced.

  “What, even through cheese and pickle?” asked Charlie.

  Mia coughed. “Listen, we haven’t got long to go through this before we have to head back to Harry’s – we need to concentrate.”

  Rosie saluted Mia, making Charlie and Alice giggle as they all turned their attention back to the notebook:

  Clue 1

  Solid metal gate, standard. New padlocks on there – maybe put on since the theft of Moonlight?

  Clue 2

  No tack was stolen with Moonlight.

  Clue 3

  Tracks on the pa…

  Tracks on the path – hooves only – whoever took Moonlight must have led him away from the yard on foot to begin with because there was no way they could load him into a trailer or horsebox without being heard.

  Clue 4

  Person who stole Moonlight must be local to know about him and how to get him away from Hawthorn Farm.

  Clue 5

  Could be a local dealer – stealing to order?!

  Clue 6

  Harry Franklin – dealer who has a yard close to Hawthorn Farm.

  Clue 7

  After inspection of his yard, Harry Franklin has a pony (Moonlight?) which he wants to keep hidden.

  Clue 8

  Phone call – Harry arranging for someone to come and collect the pony that they’ve made him keep hidden.

  They sat back, satisfied.

  “There’s no point getting settled, everyone,” Mia said, turning the page on her notebook to reveal the following:

  Action Point 1

  Stake out Harry Franklin’s yard to watch for mystery person collecting mystery pony (Moonlight?).

  Action Point 2

  Get photo of pony (Moonlight) as he is picked up from Harry Franklin’s yard, to use as hard evidence.

  “We’ve got to go back there without any further delay,” Mia announced, jumping down from the fence.

  “Has anyone actually thought about how we’re going to get there? There’s no way I’m walking that far!” Rosie complained. “And we can’t take the ponies out again – they’ve done enough today already and they’d be a bit of a giveaway, anyway, unless we teach them all to hide under that big bush.”

  “We could cycle,” Charlie suggested. “It’s only two now, so we could be there by three at the latest.”

  “Great – my bike’s got a puncture, I can’t go,” Rosie huffed but was secretly pleased. She didn’t like the idea of cycling so far in the blazing summer heat one little bit.

  “We could take it in turns to double up?” Alice offered.

  “I hardly think so. You don’t want to be carrying around a lump like me,” Rosie said, puffing herself out to make herself look as big as possible.

  “Well, if you’re staying you won’t mind me asking if I can borrow your brother’s bike, seeing as I haven’t got my own here,” Mia said, pleased that she’d thought of it first – Rosie’s brother Will had a really good bike. “But if you don’t come, Rosie, and we find Moonlight, you lose your share of any reward.”

  Rosie narrowed her eyes. “But I got the clue about the hoof prints.”

  “Look, come or don’t come. Either way, we have to get going. And I think we should call our parents to let them know we’ll be late home.” Mia got up briskly, reaching for her mobile.

  Charlie and Alice followed. Alice turned to see Rosie sitting moodily on the fence still, gently pulling Dancer’s ears, and thought for a second that she really was bailing out. But as they turned the corner Rosie suddenly jumped down and ran to catch up. When she saw Alice and Charlie smiling to themselves, she dropped back to a grumpy walk.

  Fifteen minutes later they were ready to leave the yard. Mia had found Will out in one of the fields checking on the sheep. He’d cheerfully headed back to the yard and wheeled out his huge red bike for her, and Rosie had reluctantly agreed to take it in turns to double up with the others.

  Alice was first to cycle with Rosie as it had been her suggestion. Rosie sat on the saddle and steered while Alice held the handle bars and pedalled standing up. After about a quarter of a mile Alice was exhausted and Rosie swapped onto Charlie’s bike, but Charlie couldn’t manage to pedal hard enough to keep her small bike going with Rosie sitting on it. Rosie stomped over to Mia, who could only just reach the pedals on Will’s bike.

  Mia panicked after three minutes, braking violently, and claiming that she swore she heard the main shaft crack. None of the rest of them knew what a ‘main shaft’ was but it sounded important and Mia convinced them it was serious. So Rosie got shunted back to Alice and they muddled along, with Rosie moaning in Alice’s ear every five seconds that she couldn’t see to steer. Alice thought at first she was just being awkward until they wobbled headlong into a bramble bush.

  With lots of pit stops, filled with Rosie complaining about the cycling making her ravenous, it took them longer than they thought to reach the edge of Harry Franklin’s paddocks. They walked the bikes up to the top of the slope where they’d hidden earlier that morning and pushed them roughly into the hedge, keeping them nearby in case they had to make a quick getaway.

  What do we do now?” Rosie asked, collapsing dramatically and lying flat out on the grass in the sun.

  “We sit and wait until we see a horsebox approaching, then we sneak down and get a photograph as they load Moonlight. Then we phone the police,” Mia announced. “Simple.”

  So they sat down on the warm grass behind the hedge and waited.

  And waited.

  Rosie let out an occasional slight snore as Alice made endless daisy chains and Charlie saw how much grass she could put in Rosie’s hair before she noticed. Suddenly Mia peered over at the yard and squeaked. The others looked up, with Rosie wondering where she was for a second, as Mia pointed silently.

  Lying on their fronts, they peeped through the hedge and saw Harry walk out into the yard. Somehow he looked even larger than before, and Alice felt a shiver go down her spine despite the warm summer sun. Harry had his big grey lurcher loping along by his side. It looked as if Harry was taking Growler out for a walk.

  Rosie groaned. “We could be here all night at this rate!”

  Charlie stood up, stooping to keep hidden by the hedge. “Look, rather than hanging about up here, which isn’t getting us anywhere, why
don’t we sneak down to the yard now while Harry’s out, get a photo of Moonlight, then make a run for it.”

  “What, go down there now? Before the handover?” Alice gasped. “But he’ll go mad if he finds us on his yard. You heard what he said about us ever coming back here!”

  “He won’t even know we’ve been,” Charlie said. “We’ll be in and out before he has a chance to see us.”

  Alice looked seriously doubtful.

  “You can always stay here by yourself all night if you’d prefer,” Charlie called back to them as she scrambled over the hedge and darted off down the hill to the yard. Filled with excitement and nerves, Alice jumped up and followed her, snagging her jods on the way over. Alice heard a cry and guessed Rosie had done the same, but she didn’t turn to check. By the time Alice reached the stables her heart was racing. She told herself that it must have been the running.

  Charlie motioned for them all to head straight across the main yard and round to the stables at the back. It was a huge risk, heading in the same direction that Harry had disappeared in, but they had no choice. Alice was two steps behind Charlie, and she heard Mia’s voice in her ear hissing at Rosie to stop pulling at her T-shirt or it would lose its shape. Charlie edged slowly round the corner then suddenly stopped dead and whipped back. Alice crashed into her, Mia into Alice, and Rosie collapsed, panting, on all of them, almost knocking them to the floor in a heap. The look on Charlie’s face said all they needed to know: Harry Franklin was on his way back… with Growler!

  They turned quickly back into the main yard. Suddenly they saw the office door opposite where they were standing start to open. The skinny stable lad! They’d all totally forgotten about him! Alice, Rosie and Charlie panicked – they were trapped, with Harry advancing in one direction, the skinny lad in the other! There was no way they’d make it out of the yard without being seen now! Without thinking, Mia quickly scraped back the bolt on the nearest stable door and bundled the others inside. She swung the door shut and scraped the top bolt across, ducking down behind the door just as footsteps stepped out across the yard from the office. Mia stayed stock still for a second. Then, still bent double, she turned to make her way to the back of the stable where the others were hiding. She came nose to nose with a huge white horse – Harry’s huge white horse. The horse snorted. Even his nostrils were vast. He stomped his hoof, and as Mia glanced down she noticed that his hoofs were also seriously huge. With a gulp, she edged round him and joined the others who had shoved themselves as tightly as possible into the furthest, gloomiest corner.

  The massive horse shifted his back legs round, turning so that he was facing them. He lowered his head and snuffled them. Rosie tried to squeeze further behind Charlie, who was trying to inch behind Alice. Alice, cramped in the corner on her heels, felt herself tipping forward and pushed back on them both. As Rosie opened her mouth to protest Mia shot her a warning glance, holding a finger to her lips with one hand and trying to push the huge, inquisitive, whiskery white muzzle away with the other.

  There was a light patter of feet outside. Alice tried to breathe so silently that she started to feel faint. A dog’s nose snuffled outside, his shadow just visible as it broke up the crack of sunshine under the stable door.

  Then the metallic ring of steel-toecapped boots clopped closer.

  “All right, boss?” The girls hadn’t heard the skinny worker talk before, but they figured it must be him. Harry grunted in reply then stopped outside the big white horse’s stable.

  “What’s wrong, Colossus?” Harry asked. The horse, unsettled, stepped forward to the front of the stable and nodded his massive head up and down. Alice was convinced that her heart was beating so loudly Harry would be able to hear it from where he was standing. The four girls were cramped in the corner, squished into the straw. Alice’s legs were starting to burn but she didn’t dare move an inch.

  Suddenly Rosie’s stomach let out an almighty rumble, echoing round the stable. The girls’ mouths dropped open as they stared at Rosie, whose eyes nearly popped out of her head.

  “What’s that?” Harry boomed. The girls leaned back into the shadows even further, starting to shake as they glared at Rosie, certain she’d just given them away. “Are you hungry, Colossus, is that it?”

  As the footsteps disappeared for a second the others let out a collective, shaky sigh.

  “What? I warned you I was hungry!” Rosie mouthed, as Charlie nudged her.

  Suddenly, a slice of hay was lumped over the door. Harry loitered outside.

  “Who forgot to put the bottom bolt on your stable, eh, Colossus? Better go in and check that nothing’s amiss. Isn’t that right, Growler? Yes, isn’t that right?” Harry said in a surprisingly high, soppy voice, patting the dog loudly.

  A bolt was slowly scraped back and the lower stable door opened an inch. A crack of sunshine appeared, along with a long, furry snout.

  At the same second a mobile phone rang out, shattering the silence. Rosie went pale – it was her ring tone! It was her phone! She must have forgotten to turn it off, she thought, scrabbling for it in her pocket and elbowing Alice in the nose. This was it – she’d led the others into the shaggy grey jaws of doom!

  “Where are you? On your way?” Harry barked, at the same moment that Rosie’s hand closed round her own phone. The screen was blank. With her heart galloping she let out a long, silent sigh and sank back into the straw, squashing the others even more as they silently protested with shoves and glares. Rosie was about to slide her mobile back into her pocket when she looked up and saw the door was still open an inch. The big snout was still there. Rosie shivered as the snout edged the door open an inch more. One black, glinting eye looked round, then fixed itself upon her. But the next second Harry, his mobile still stuck to his ear, used his large boot to hook Growler back from the door.

  “I’ll get the pony ready,” Harry said. “Now, about payment…”

  He swung the stable door shut, slid the top bolt then kicked the bottom lock across. The rest of the conversation was lost as he stomped out of earshot.

  Mia, huddled in the corner behind the others, looked stricken.

  “He’s shut the bottom bolt!” she whispered. “We’re trapped!”

  “WE might be trapped,” Charlie whispered, feeling hot and sticky from crouching awkwardly in the corner, “but at least we haven’t been caught.”

  “That was close, though!” Rosie said, puffing out her pink cheeks as she fanned her face with her hand.

  Her insides felt upside down and she was secretly glad that she was sitting and not having to run anywhere or be heroic at that precise moment.

  “Listen!” Mia hissed quietly, holding her hand in the air.

  They all fell silent. The huge white horse, Colossus, stopped munching for a second, too, raising his head and taking a massive step up to the door, his big ears pricked forward. It was getting louder by the second – the unmistakable drone of a horsebox, gears changing down then revving as it slowed for the turning into the drive, then accelerating up the drive and braking in the yard with a hiss.

  “They’re here,” Mia mouthed and took a deep breath. They all looked at one another, feeling nervousness and excitement bubble through them.

  Alice felt her knees give and she grabbed hold of Rosie, who nearly jumped out of her skin, making Charlie start to giggle nervously before gulping and biting her lip to keep silent. Horsebox doors were slammed and a couple of people jumped down onto concrete. The girls crept nearer to the stable door, avoiding Colossus’s flashing tail, and straining to hear snippets of conversation as Harry clacked over to meet whoever had just arrived in the driveway. Three sets of footsteps walked into the yard, stopping not far from the grey horse’s stable. Alice felt a bead of sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades as she heard the voices – they were just the other side of the wooden stable wall!

  “So, you managed to get your hands on the pony my son here had his eye on,” a deep voice boomed. “No trouble keeping
everything hush-hush at this end?”

  “It was easy keeping everything under wraps to begin with,” Harry replied, “until today when some girls came round, one with a proper-looking show pony.”

  In spite of the situation, Mia allowed herself a small, superior smile.

  “They kept mentioning the Fratton Show and trying to get round to these stables where I’ve hidden your pony. I think they knew more than they let on, but I put them off. Just,” Harry explained.

  “Good. That’s what you’re being paid extra for, to keep this ‘special’ deal quiet, remember?” the deep voice replied coldly.

  As the other girls looked at each other with widening eyes, Mia eased her notebook out of her pocket. She began quietly scribbling their conversation down, collecting the evidence.

  “Come on, Dad, I don’t want to hang around here all day,” a new, younger male voice piped up. “Can’t we just get the pony and load him up?”

  The girls’ jaws dropped. They glanced at one another, their eyes wide with disbelief. The voice was unmistakable. Mia wrote down a name in capital letters, then tapped the notebook. The others read, then nodded their heads vigorously.

  MARK TICKLE!

  But they couldn’t be shocked for long. Mia would only have a second to get a photo on her mobile phone of Moonlight as he was led through the yard to the waiting horsebox. She switched her mobile to camera mode. Alice pointed out silently that she needed to turn off the flash option. Mia stepped lightly and hunkered down beneath the half door in the shadows, her hands shaking as she held the phone.

  The hoof beats got louder as they passed right by Colossus’s stable. Mia waited for as long as she dared, then as the hoof beats tripped away she popped her hand over the stable door while staying well hidden and took a picture.