The moon had disappeared behind a cloud and it was much darker. It felt like a proper midnight adventure. It was a shame, Lucy thought, that she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it – her parents would be furious and say that pony was too distracting. The Kellys would be confirmed in their low opinion of her reliability. Maybe she could tell Erin – if Erin did get a pony. She could learn from Lucy’s mistakes. She had asked Erin to come to Greenlands tomorrow – that was one thing she could feel good about – and Erin had said that, actually, she was going with her granda, but she’d be cheering for Rosevale.
The front wheel hit the pothole so hard that the jolt through her body hurt as much as the fall. She flew over the handlebars and landed with another jarring blow on the hard lane. Her left arm broke the fall, and the fall broke her left arm. Lucy knew – she felt it crack.
But it couldn’t be broken. She scrambled up, whimpering, Oh no, oh no. Maybe it was just sprained. If she bandaged it up, tight, she would be able to ride tomorrow. She had to be OK. It wasn’t just the money now. It was proving to Declan that she was reliable, proving to Aidan that she wasn’t the spiteful coward he thought she was, proving Rosevale …
Afterwards Lucy never remembered that agonising struggle home without wondering how she ever managed it. She knew she wouldn’t be able to wheel her bike, so she pushed it into the hedge – the front wheel was buckled anyway – and, cradling her bad arm, feeling sicker with the pain every minute, limped home. She snuck in without her parents hearing, secreted some painkillers from the bathroom cabinet, and crept back to her cold bed. It took a long time to warm up again, and even longer to sleep, with the arm a throbbing deadweight across her chest.
Chapter 16
Lost Rider
EVERYBODY was nervous. Aidan understood that. Even though he was only the groom, he wasn’t immune to the general tension. His dad was silent, Kitty twitchy – both of them were pale. Even his mum, making sandwiches he didn’t think anyone would be able to eat, kept dropping the knife.
‘Should I put in enough for Lucy?’ she asked.
‘She’ll have money for the burger van,’ Kitty said.
‘I’ll put some in anyway. Kitty, eat your breakfast or you won’t have enough energy to ride.’
Kitty heaved a huge sigh and pushed egg around her plate.
Aidan escaped to the yard. It might be a special day, but there were still all the horses to be seen to – feeds and hay-nets to organise, beds to muck out, horses to be turned out in the paddocks. Only the team horses stayed in, with big breakfasts. Lucy had promised to be here early to groom Firefly, but it was after nine before she appeared, looking even worse than Aidan’s dad and Kitty – greenish, in fact, and sort of hunched over.
Aidan said hello briefly. It might be The Day but he couldn’t let go of last night’s row that easily. He started grooming Ty. He could forgive Cam for not being here – she had her own yard to sort out and they were going to meet her at Greenlands.
‘Dad says we’re driving out of the yard at ten on the dot,’ he reminded Lucy, because she was being pathetic, taking ages to hose Puzzle’s leg, and letting him skip all over the place because she was trying to hold him and the hose in the same hand. She hadn’t even started grooming Firefly. She needn’t think he was going to do it – he had enough to do with Ty.
The yard was all bustle now, Aidan’s dad and Kitty grooming their horses too, and his mum filling hay-nets for the lorry. Aidan ran a body brush over Ty’s long body, which shone under the electric light like mahogany. It annoyed him this morning more than usual to see Lucy going into Firefly’s stable. Maybe it was because today was The Day, or maybe it was because yesterday’s wonderful ride had made Firefly feel properly his pony again. Anyway, this time tomorrow – no, less than that, by teatime today – Lucy would have to give him up.
‘Lucy!’ It was his dad’s voice. ‘What are you doing in there? Have you not got that pony ready yet?’
‘Um, not quite.’ Lucy’s voice was unusually hesitant. ‘Can somebody help me?’
Aidan sighed. Ty was ready, standing in his travelling rug, hooves shining with oil, looking like a racehorse ready to go to the Grand National. Aidan tied him up short, to make sure he didn’t roll, and slipped into Firefly’s stable next door.
Firefly wasn’t even half groomed! A stable stain, wet and mucky, smeared one chestnut hock, and he had shavings in his tail. Lucy was brushing him feebly with one hand, not even using the curry comb to clean the body brush as she went.
‘What are you doing?’ Aidan cried. ‘It’s five to ten!’
Lucy turned. Her face was streaked with tears, and greyish green. ‘I – I’ve done something to my arm,’ she whispered. ‘But don’t tell your dad, please. I’ll be OK. I can ride with one hand, if you just help me with this.’
‘What have you done to your arm?’
‘I – I don’t know. I fell off my bike.’ She bent over her arm and bit her lip so hard that it went as white as her face. ‘Owww,’ she moaned. She looked like she was going to be sick, and Aidan stood back a bit, but she said, ‘I’ll be OK.’ She straightened up. ‘If you groom him, I can ride him.’
Aidan didn’t know much about first aid, not human first aid, but if ever he saw someone who wasn’t fit to take charge of a pony – his pony – round a cross-country course, it was Lucy.
‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Dad won’t let you.’
‘I have to. I can’t let the team down.’
Aidan hadn’t a clue what to do. But there was Firefly, waiting to be groomed, so he took the brush out of Lucy’s hand. ‘Sit down on the grooming box,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better in a minute.’
She sat down and leaned against the wall. Ten minutes later Firefly was groomed, the other horses were on the lorry, and Lucy clearly wasn’t going to feel better in a minute or an hour or a day. And it looked as if Aidan would have to be the one to tell his dad.
Everybody stood round the stable doorway until his mum shooed Kitty away and told her to go and get Lucy’s mum. Then she bent down beside Lucy and made her show her the arm. Once Aidan’s mum took over, Lucy gave up all pretence at being OK and shook with sobs.
‘Looks like it’s broken,’ his mum said. ‘They’ll have to take her to hospital.’
Then Lucy’s mum appeared in her Merc, with Kitty in the passenger seat looking important, and Lucy was carted off to hospital, protesting that if they plastered up her arm tightly enough she might still be able to ride.
‘She’s brave enough, anyway,’ Aidan’s mum said, as they watched the big silver car drive down the lane.
‘Stubborn,’ his dad said. He sighed and ran his hand over his hair. ‘Well, I suppose we should start unloading these horses.’
Kitty shrieked. ‘You can’t! It’s the best three. They’ll let us ride.’
Dad shook his head. ‘Kitty – they won’t. I checked the rules back when – before we got Cam.’
‘But we have to enter!’
Aidan stood in the middle of them, holding Firefly’s head-collar rope. The words were there, he only had to open his mouth and they would be out. But he couldn’t. Even if his dad let him, he would be worse than useless.
He swallowed. Firefly stood beside him, solid and strong, glowing with fitness and good grooming, thinking he was going jumping, as he had done so many times before in his pre-Rosevale life.
He can do it. Firefly can jump round that course. It’s only me …
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, his voice coming out scratchy so that he had to cough and say it again. ‘I’ll ride.’
Chapter 17
Frightened Pony
AIDAN sat beside his dad in the lorry cab. Kitty and Mum were in the back with all the mountains of stuff four horses and four riders needed. It was Mum who’d remembered about Lucy’s team shirt, which luckily she’d left hanging from a nail in the tack-room.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ his dad said for the millionth time.
His dad, never the most patient driver, swore as an overtaking car swerved in too tightly in front of the lorry. ‘You’re not ready. You haven’t prepared. This team thing – it was a stupid idea from the start. I should have known. It’s not the kind of thing we do.’
‘Well, it is today,’ Aidan said, surprised at how sturdy his voice sounded.
‘But you mustn’t take any risks, Aidan. Promise me. Only do the small jumps, and don’t worry about anything you aren’t happy about. As long as you’re there to make up the numbers, that’s all that matters.’
So he was only making up the numbers. And Olly and Josh were going to be there to see him make up the numbers. Every mistake, every failure of nerve – they’d be there to laugh and remember and tell everyone. Oh God, he really was going to be sick.
‘If Kitty’s jumping the small ones too,’ he said, and this time his voice was thick and small, ‘we aren’t going to have much chance, are we?’
His dad hesitated. ‘No,’ he said in a low tone, as if he didn’t want Kitty to hear this. ‘Not of winning. Which is why I’m saying we can still turn back.’
It was so tempting! Like walking out of school yesterday. But he imagined telling Lucy that he hadn’t even tried, that Rosevale couldn’t manage to field a team at all.
‘No.’ Aidan’s chin went up. ‘You’re the one always says we should be proud of the kind of yard we have. Folly and Firefly are both rescue horses. It’s their chance to show what they can do.’
At least, he thought, watching the wipers swish their slow arc across the windscreen, it is if I don’t mess up. He shivered.
Aidan had imagined the cross-country taking place right in front of the big house at Greenlands, which in his mind was a sort of mini Buckingham Palace. In fact the signs – CROSS-COUNTRY EVENT – directed them up a long tree-lined lane which led after half a mile to a huge bare hillside with a roped-off parking area at the bottom. Aidan counted at least twenty trailers and four lorries.
There was no sign of the big house, just some old stone outbuildings in the distance – stables perhaps – but the jumps marched menacingly up and down the hillside, flagged and huge and waiting. Aidan’s heart swelled with fear. Behind him the horses, sensing from the lorry’s slower movement that they had arrived, started to neigh.
‘I’ll get Firefly ready for you,’ his mum offered, when they had all got out and stretched and looked around. There seemed to be thousands of people here, but no sign as yet of the two he didn’t want to see.
Aidan shook his head. That was the easy bit, getting his pony tacked up, settling him down in the unfamiliar atmosphere – though, in fact, Firefly must have been used to places very like this in his jumping days. And he sensed that only by being with Firefly, reminding himself of the solid, kind reality of his pony, could he hope to calm down.
‘First thing is to walk the course,’ Cam said. ‘The nags are OK where they are for now. Seaneen, maybe you’d stay and keep an eye on them?’
‘Definitely,’ Mum said. ‘The last thing I want is to actually see close up what my kids and husband are mental enough to want to jump. I mean,’ – she caught Dad’s eye and changed tone abruptly –‘they all look big to me but I can see they aren’t. Not really.’
Trailing around with the rest of the team, huddling together away from all the other teams doing the same thing – only they all looked so professional – up the hill to the start and then down and round the figure-of-eight shape in which the jumps were laid out, Aidan tried to focus on what Cam was saying, but his head was so full of the terror of what he was about to do that he found it hard to make sense of the words.
You shouldn’t be here. You won’t be able to do it. And when you fail we’ll be here to watch!
‘It’s a very straightforward course,’ Cam was saying. ‘No tricks. Especially the small jumps– there’s only the water that might be a bit spooky. Keep your leg on here, Aidan. And you’ve got plenty of space, nothing too narrow. Good approaches. Now, it’ll be muddy by the time you come to jump, so be careful. Try to make up time between the jumps, but don’t take risks at them. Kitty – no heroics! Remember Midge is only twelve-two. You stick to the small jumps.’
‘But if I do the small ones and Aidan does the small ones, we won’t get enough –’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ their dad cut in. ‘Look, even with Lucy we didn’t have much of a chance. But what we can do is jump round and show all those people what rescue horses can do, show them what Rosevale is all about. OK?’
Kitty looked mulish. ‘I suppose.’
‘Aidan?’
He nodded, speech being beyond him. OK for Cam to say it was a straightforward course. OK for his dad to say he didn’t have to do it. They were both, he could see, eager to get round the jumps, wanting to test their horses and themselves. Kitty, too, half-drowned by her new team top, with all her curls forced into a tight plait, was weighing up the jumps with confident, knowledgeable eyes. Even if he’d had the weeks of Cam’s schooling that the others had had, Aidan knew he would still have been the weakest link. But as it was, coming in at the last minute – who was he trying to kid?
While they tacked up, his mum went off and did all the official stuff, coming back from the registration stand with numbers for them. They were team eleven.
‘Second last,’ Dad said. ‘It’s not a very big field, really. It only looks like it because it’s teams.’
Aidan recognised the names of some yards – riding schools and livery stables – but many of them were from other parts of the country, even a Donegal trekking centre with a very fancy green lorry. He both longed and dreaded to see the Sunnyside team, but when three of them did ride past, with the girls’ hair all in plaits with oversized purple scrunchies on the ends, he was so busy helping Cam to pacify a rather overwhelmed Ty that he only had time to notice that they were all in purple with huge purple fluffy numnahs and velvet brow-bands.
There was no sign of Olly or Josh. Maybe they weren’t really coming. The Sunnyside ponies looked nice enough – nothing special – but Jade’s grey, frothing at the mouth and already curling with sweat on his unclipped parts, was clearly unhappy.
I might not be the best rider in the world, Aidan thought – ‘Whoa, Ty, you’re OK, it’s just a loudspeaker’ – but at least I know better than to try to make my pony walk with its nose stuck to its chest. Though probably Jade would jump round like a champion while he fell off at the first jump. He gentled Ty, rubbing his nose in the way that always calmed him, and held him for Cam to mount.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Didn’t think he’d be this restless. Hope he doesn’t think he’s racing when he sees the course.’ She spoke casually, but her face betrayed a trace of anxiety. ‘Now, stop helping other people and go and get on! You’ll be fine. Firefly is going really well and he can do it with his eyes closed. All you have to do is steer and hold on.’ She gathered up Ty’s reins. ‘Don’t want to keep him standing around fretting,’ she called over his shoulder, riding away to find somewhere quiet to warm up.
Mounted, Aidan felt both better – because Firefly’s back was a familiar place to be, and Firefly wasn’t bothered by the hustle and noise – and worse, because now he knew this really was happening. Lucy’s red and blue top felt new and strange. His dad and Kitty rode beside him to the flat bit of field which was being used as a warm-up arena, and they all walked, trotted and cantered on each rein.
‘Now, you need to watch the first few rounds,’ Declan said, ‘just to get the idea of it.’
Although the course had grown in Aidan’s mind to the proportions of Badminton, he had to admit, when he watched the first team, that it wasn’t too bad. Unlike many cross-country courses, which disappear for ages into woodland and down the other sides of hills, the terrain here was such that you could see most o
f what went on from a couple of vantage points. The Rosevale team, with Aidan’s mum now promoted to head groom and holding Alfie on a lead rope, were lucky enough to seize positions which let them see how most of the jumps were being jumped. A thin, oldish man with a straggle of gingery hair under a baseball cap was watching too, with the intensity of someone who really likes horses. He smiled at them as they manoeuvred in beside the tape which marked the course.
‘I’ve heard of yous,’ he said in a strong Belfast accent like Aidan’s parents. ‘Yous do great work.’
Somehow the tiny exchange heartened Aidan and for the first time he was able to look at the course without feeling sick.
The jumps were arranged in a rough figure-of-eight, in three large fields. The hedges between the fields had, in places, been cut to make some of the jumps. In every case the small jump was right beside the big one. At every jump stood judges with score boards, to note which jump had been attempted. The scoring was eccentric – instead of the usual fault system, you gained ten points for clearing the big jump and five for the small. If you refused, you lost ten points. If more than one team finished on the same score, the fastest team won.
‘It’s a stupid system,’ trumpeted a large girl on a heavyset warmblood who was waiting beside Aidan. She sat with her legs flung forward, her heels exaggeratedly down. Her purple numnah had SUNNYSIDE FARM embroidered on it in pink. Aidan looked round for Jade and co, but the other riders were from a different yard, wearing black and silver. ‘Didn’t I say, Angela, didn’t I always say it was a stupid system?’
‘Yeah,’ said Angela. ‘You did, Susie.’
‘Sure, Dermie Doyle’s never been to an event in his life. He’s making it up as he goes along. He’s just trying to buy his way in to the horsey set.’
‘Somebody said he’s a gypsy.’
‘Everybody’s making fun of him.’
Kitty’s voice piped up shrilly from the other side of Aidan. ‘Well, then the snobby gets shouldn’t be here jumping over his land and trying to win his money. I think he must be a nice man.’
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