Phantom: One Last Chance

by Belinda Rapley

  He hoovered it up, and as he crunched it noisily, Charlie gave him a hug. Then she jumped back on her bike and cycled on, looking back over her shoulder as the other Pony Detectives headed towards the woods. Her heart ached when she saw Pirate’s little face. His ears were pricked and his eyes bright as he stood right up against the fence, watching them disappear without him, and not understanding why.

  Mia led the group as they entered the woods. Charlie cycled at the back, weaving the bike along the path behind Dancer. She giggled as the unruly pony attempted to clamp her teeth around any bit of foliage that looked even slightly green, much to Rosie’s frustration. It was as Dancer dived off the path and towards a bush for about the hundredth time that Charlie noticed a flash of something white on the ground, poking out from under some leaves that Dancer’s hoof had disturbed. Charlie braked.

  “Hang on,” she called forward to the others. “I think I’ve found something!”

  As the rest of the Pony Detectives pulled up their ponies and turned round to look, Charlie stepped off the bike and leaned it against a tree. She shuffled the damp, mulchy leaves to one side with her gloves and picked up a rectangle of pale, whiteish shiny paper. It looked weathered, and the corner had a big crease from Dancer’s large hoof. Charlie turned it over.

  “It’s a photo,” she said, puzzled.

  “What of?” Alice asked, peering to get a look.

  “A horse,” Charlie replied quietly, staring at the picture. For a second she was transfixed. “That’s so weird – it looks just like Phantom!”

  “It does, too,” Rosie said, leaning over and squinting at it. “How odd is that?”

  They all crowded together to get a better look at the photo of a beautiful but thin, wild-looking black thoroughbred in a red headcollar. The horse was being held by a small woman, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her black hair tied back. The shade from a riding hat almost covered her face.

  “Look, there’s a date on the back. It looks like this was taken… six years ago,” Charlie said, flipping the picture back over and showing the others.

  “I wonder who it belongs to?” Alice asked. “I can’t see any clues in the picture.”

  “Ooh, hang on,” Mia said, leaning down from Wish to study the photo more closely. “Do you think that might be Hope Farm in the background? Look! You can just see the corner of the sign on their gate.”

  The others peered at the picture which, like the writing on the back, had faded slightly with time. The edges were bent and scuffed.

  “It might be,” Rosie said uncertainly.

  “Well, we’re riding there to drop off a card anyway, so we can ask,” Mia suggested. “If that is Hope Farm in the background, Fran Hope, who runs the place, might recognise the horse. Then we might be able to find out who the owner of the photo is.”

  “And then we could return it,” Charlie agreed, intrigued by the picture.

  They looked at each other and smiled. “It’s not much of a mystery,” Alice said, knowing the others were thinking the same as her, “but the Pony Detectives haven’t had anything to do for ages, and this could count as a mini mystery, couldn’t it?”

  “Yes!” Mia and Rosie chorused, getting excited.

  They rushed round to drop off their other cards, deciding to leave Hope Farm till last.

  The wintry-looking lane leading to the farm twisted gently downhill between tall, bare hedges, their branches crusted in white and laden with red frost-dusted berries. Dancer picked her way down very slowly, her hooves sliding on the icy ground every few strides – so much so that Rosie had to concentrate hard and keep her reins a bit shorter, rather than riding at the buckle end like she normally did. Rosie puffed as the lane evened out and gave Dancer a squeeze to urge her to catch up with the others, producing a long-necked, gogglyeyed, shuffling trot from her mare.

  They soon turned off into a field, which had a strip of grass around the edge. Charlie smiled, thinking that if she were riding Pirate he’d be bunny-hopping, desperate to gallop. Her smile faded as she remembered the time she’d taken Phantom along there and he’d flown out of control, his hooves thundering as Charlie had fought to pull him up before the vast hedge at the end. She quietly patted the bike, pretending it was Pirate.

  Dancer managed to trip on every lump and bump going, catching Rosie by surprise each time. Alice and Charlie couldn’t hold in their giggles, which set Rosie off too, just as Dancer almost tipped onto her nose, sliding Rosie up her neck. Mia shook her head at her friend’s clumsiness as Wish carefully placed her delicate hooves without stumbling once.

  “There it is,” Mia pointed out once Rosie had recovered herself. They had reached a five-bar gate in the high hedge that edged the field and could see out onto the lane. Opposite was the entrance to Hope Farm, with its ancient post-and-rail fencing dividing a patchwork of paddocks and barns. A rutted dirt track led from the lane up to a large square stable yard with a huge three-storey blue-and-white cottage to the side.

  The ponies clattered across the lane and onto the track. Charlie felt a tingle of nerves as she took the photo from her pocket and gave it one last look before clanging the gate shut behind them.

  AS the Pony Detectives got to the top of the drive, Fran Hope, who had begun rescuing badly treated animals nearly twenty years earlier, appeared from one of the fields carrying a knot of baler twine. Her curly brown hair was pulled back into a scrappy ponytail and she was covered in wisps of hay. Fran knew the girls well from sponsored rides and competitions held at Hope Farm, and she beamed at them, calling out her hellos. She opened the wooden gate with its weatherworn, hand-painted sign saying ‘Hope Farm’ and ushered them into the yard. They were immediately surrounded by a seething mass of dogs, snuffling and wagging their tails wildly. The girls jumped off their ponies and Charlie parked her bike in the corner.

  “Now, what can I do for you?” Fran asked, wiping her hands on her navy jods.

  “First of all, we brought you and all the animals a Christmas card,” Rosie said, passing the slightly bent envelope to Fran.

  “That’s very thoughtful,” Fran replied, smiling brightly. “Thanks.”

  “But that isn’t all. We found a photo in the woods near us just after we left the yard today,” Mia explained as Charlie pulled the picture out of her jacket pocket again, “and we thought that it might have been of a horse from here – you can just make out the sign I think. There’s a date on the back: it was taken six years ago. We wondered if you knew anything about the horse, or who the picture might belong to, so we could return it to the owner.”

  Fran took the photo and gave a little start. Her eyes grew moist as she continued to stare at it, until finally, she smiled sadly. “Well, this was taken here all right, but you’ll struggle to return it to its rightful owner,” she said cryptically. “I think we’d better find somewhere to put your ponies for a while, then we can go inside.”

  The girls exchanged puzzled glances. Alice, Rosie and Mia untacked their ponies and tied them up in the sheltered yard, giving them small piles of sweet-smelling hay. Fran rooted out three rugs which had just come back from the cleaners and were almost the right size to keep the ponies warm. The girls followed her inside the rambling blue and white cottage and into the large flagstoned kitchen.

  “Take a seat, take a seat,” Fran said, immediately sloshing some milk into a saucepan on the stove. Every surface was covered in horse magazines, headcollars with frayed stitching, unconnected bits of bridle, numnahs, stirrup irons, and an assortment of cats and kittens. The girls had never been inside the higgledy-piggledy cottage before, and they smiled at each other as they cleared some chairs so they could all sit at the solid, old wooden table. A large brown hen wandered in through the huge dog flap in the door, and clucked around, pecking at the floor before head-nodding her way back out again.

  “It’s odd that this photo should come to light now, I must say,” Fran said, putting mugs of hot chocolate down in front of each of them. She took a noisy sl
urp from one herself and looked at the photo again. “You found it in the woods, you say?”

  The girls nodded. “Why is it odd?” Mia asked.

  “Why?” Fran repeated, sadly. “Because both the horse and the woman standing next to her in this picture died not so long ago.”

  The girls gasped.

  “No way!” Rosie said, feeling goosebumps race up her neck.

  “I’m afraid so,” Fran said. “The woman was my good friend Caitlin McCuthers. She was the daughter of the vet, Mr McCuthers, who lives in the village. He’s treated all our animals for many years, right up until Caitlin’s death a few weeks ago. He was coming up for retirement at the end of the year anyway, but he decided to stop work a bit earlier than planned. Don’t blame him, either – I’d have done the same.”

  The girls suddenly looked at each other at the mention of Mr McCuthers – that was Neve’s grandfather! But Fran didn’t notice their glances, and before they had a chance to ask any questions, she carried on. “But I’m rushing ahead – I’d better start at the beginning… Caitlin loved it here and spent every spare second helping out when she was a teenager. Then, when she was old enough, I gave her a full-time paid job and she moved into the annexe next to this house. She was a natural with the mistreated horses and ponies that came through these gates. She had such patience and understanding, it was amazing to see. It was like she knew what each horse was thinking – she could really tune into them. Then Caitlin found out she was going to have a baby. She wanted to carry on living and working here, so I agreed. Never knew much about the father – he disappeared as soon as the baby was born. But Caitlin’s little girl grew up here and was always bobbing about the place, just like her mum.”

  “Neve?” Mia mouthed to the other girls as Fran took a gulp of her hot chocolate, lost in the photo. They shrugged, uncertain, then Fran continued. “Let me leave that there for a moment while we move to the horse. The horse in the picture is a mare called Fable. She was a thoroughbred – trickiest horse Caitlin and I had ever seen. Caitlin discovered her in the spring six years ago, while she was riding through the lanes on a hack. The mare was about to be loaded into a trailer. The man with her was being very mean, using a long whip and shouting at her. I remember Caitlin telling me that the mare turned to look at her and let out the most heartbreaking neigh, so she rode over to find out what was happening. She spoke to the man, a breeder called Tim Leech, who said he was taking the mare to the knacker’s yard because she was dangerous and useless. Caitlin agreed to buy her for peanuts and led her away there and then. She called me, and I came out to meet her with the horsebox.”

  The girls were silent, stunned by Fran’s story.

  “We got Fable back here, but she arrived ready to give up on life. She was skin and bone, listless, with no interest in anything. It was like she didn’t know we were there, she was so far lost within herself. But there was something so… so hauntingly special about her. She’d been something, we could tell. Caitlin was determined to find out Fable’s history – she wouldn’t give up, said it could be the key to turning her around and making her live again.”

  A kitten scrabbled up onto Alice’s lap as she listened, transfixed.

  “So Caitlin drove back to Tim Leech’s yard,” Fran continued. “He hadn’t really wanted to talk, but he did say that Fable had just bred a foal, only the little scrap had died at just four months old. Tim wouldn’t say any more, and got quite rude about all the questions Caitlin was asking. He told her to leave, but Caitlin wouldn’t give up. So she asked about Tim in the local village.

  “A shopkeeper who also had horses filled Caitlin in on what Tim had said about Fable’s past. She’d started out life on the racetrack, but had been injured and was sold to be retrained. She proved to be talented – could jump anything you faced her with, apparently – but she had a delicate temperament and you had to know how to handle her. She wouldn’t perform for just anyone. None of her owners took the time to understand her, they wanted a jumping machine. But instead they got a fractious mare who learned to use her teeth and her hooves to keep everyone at bay. She quickly got a reputation for being dangerous and the scared little mare got passed from owner to owner.”

  Mia shook her head. “That’s so horrible.”

  “I know,” Fran sighed, wiping her nose with a huge hankie. “And that’s how she finally ended up with the shady breeder, Tim Leech. Apparently he’d bragged about buying a top-class mare for a rock-bottom price – he hadn’t cared about her having a bad reputation, as long as she could breed valuable foals. But she was so tricky to handle by then that he could hardly get near her. He used broom handles and whips. Once the foal – a colt – was born, Fable was fiercely protective of him. Tim had mentioned to the shopkeeper that it was making the foal as mad as the mare. So Tim weaned him early and took him away from Fable. The next time Tim came into the village, the shopkeeper asked after the foal. Tim said that he’d died and that the mare was bad luck.”

  “Losing her first foal devastated Fable. What we brought back to Hope Farm that spring day six years ago was a shell of a horse and not much more. But Fable changed – that photo you found was taken after she’d been here a few months. If we go next door, I’ll dig out some more.”

  The girls followed Fran into the hallway, taking their drinks with them. They stepped over a threadbare mat and an ancient, sleepy one-eyed pointer dog called Jasper, whose tail thumped lazily as they walked past him, and into a room with box files scattered everywhere. Dusty photographs and rainbows of faded rosettes covered every inch of wall space, some of the photos as much as twenty years old, showing Fran when she first started Hope Farm with only two donkeys and a retired racehorse.

  “Six years ago… let’s see, should be over here,” Fran muttered, clambering over to the corner of the room, where there was a desk stacked high with big boxes with dates scribbled on the front. “Ah, here it is on top – that’s handy.”

  She pulled off the lid and started to shuffle through the big A4 exercise book inside. “We always log every horse in, with pictures of them when they first arrive and as full a history as we can gather. Then we update it as they progress. We should have Fable’s passport in here, too.”

  Charlie shifted forward as Fran, sitting in the large wooden chair at the desk, opened the book. She licked her finger and thumbed through the pages. “Ah…” she said, flicking backwards and forwards a few times to separate a couple of pages. There were some gaps in the text where photos had once been stuck down. The Sellotape was still in position. “Of course – Caitlin must have taken them when… when she left. And the passport – she must have taken that too. Still, now, where was I?”

  “You said that you brought Fable here in the spring,” Charlie prompted. She wanted to hear more, but at the same time she knew that the mare in the photo hadn’t made it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know about that bit.

  “That’s right,” Fran continued, staring down at the notes on the page in front of her. “Caitlin worked tirelessly to bring Fable round. Once she knew the mare’s background, with the poor handling and the loss of the foal she was so protective over, Caitlin knew what her approach should be. She used every herbal remedy she could think of and spent hours with her. Then, finally, the mare started to show signs of improvement, signs of interest. She suddenly started to realise that Caitlin was there, that other ponies were around, that there was grass under her feet. But the more she came to life, the less trusting she became, as if all her old fears were reawakened. Caitlin didn’t give up though.

  “Then, finally, the mare turned a corner. I’ll never forget the day Fable actually whickered to Caitlin as she walked to the field, early in September. Just quietly, uncertainly at first, but Caitlin couldn’t stop smiling. Or crying! After that the mare seemed to get stronger. It was slow, but she improved every day. One morning, she even took an apple from Caitlin’s daughter – everyone felt like celebrating! But the next day… well, it came as a horrible sho
ck to us all… Fable got colic. Badly – twisted gut. Caitlin’s dad, Mr McCuthers the vet, came out but there was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could have done.”

  Fran sighed, wiping a tear from her cheek. She cleared her throat. “That was six years ago now. Fable wasn’t here that long, but her last months were good ones. Losing Fable so soon broke Caitlin’s heart though, I know it did. She moved back to Ireland with her little girl soon afterwards. She’d grown up there before her parents came to England. She set up a rescue centre like this one near Dublin with a couple of friends. They called it Fable’s Rest. Took the mare’s ashes and buried them over there under an apple tree.”

  Fran held the photo and took a deep breath. “And now Caitlin’s dead, too. I can barely believe it. Killed in a car crash just weeks ago. I didn’t go over for the funeral; I couldn’t leave all the horses and ponies here. Still, I know Caitlin would’ve understood.”

  They sat silently for a moment, then Fran frowned.

  “So why would this photo turn up, six years later, in the woods by Blackberry Farm?” she asked.

  “We think we know,” Mia said. “You mentioned Caitlin’s daughter. I think she might be connected to all this.”

  “Neve?” Fran said, rummaging inside the box again. “Mr and Mrs McCuthers brought her over with them when they came back from the funeral. Why, do you know her?”

  “Not really. We bumped into her the other day,” Mia explained.

  “No wonder she was so pale,” Rosie said, remembering the lost look in her face.

  “She must be devastated about losing her mum,” Alice said quietly.