by Kate Lattey
“Whose fault is it?” he asked her again.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” I warned my father as I came into the house, slamming the front door behind me.
They fought a lot, my parents. More and more every day. But he’d never hit her, at least not that I was aware of. And I sure as hell wasn't going to stand here and watch it happen.
“Jonty, where have you been?” Mum demanded, stepping away from my father as though nothing unusual had been happening. “It’s almost nine o’clock and it’s a school night!”
I kept my eyes on my father, waiting for him to lower his hand. He met my gaze for a long moment, then shrugged and turned away, taking a swig from the bottle as he sat down on the couch and stretched his legs out in front of him.
“Well?” Mum asked me.
She picked up the fallen chair and pushed it back up against the table, acting as though nothing had happened.
“Sorry. We were clipping Toto and it took forever,” I told her, trying to keep my voice calm as I remembered something Frankie had told me last week. Nervous horses need calm riders. My mother was like a skittish horse, looking at me for reassurance that everything was okay. There wasn’t much I could give her, but I could give her that.
“You and that bloody poofter,” Dad said scathingly. “Spending enough time together lately, aren’t you? Too much, if you ask me.”
“Not as much as you and that bottle,” I replied, giving him an equally scathing look. “Go to bed, Dad. You’re drunk.”
Dad stood up, his eyes flashing. “And you’re a sanctimonious little…”
I could feel all of the blood surging around my body, almost daring him to start something again. This time I wouldn't stand idly by. This time... but Mum moved quickly, stepping between us.
“That's enough.” She put a hand on Dad's arm, caressing it gently. “Come on. Let's go to bed, eh?”
I swallowed hard, feeling my hands clench into fists as she led him across the room and into their bedroom. I watched her act as though nothing was wrong, as if he just needed to go to bed and sleep it off. As if everything would be fine in the morning. I wished that was true, but I knew him too well. I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath, then went to the door of my sisters’ room and rapped on it with my knuckles.
“You guys okay in here?” I asked, opening the door and peeking in.
I’d barely got the first two words out before Phoebe was scrambling out of her bed and flinging herself at me, wrapping her arms around my legs and pressing her face against my stomach.
“Aw, Phoebs. It’s okay.”
I stroked her soft hair, feeling her trembling against me. She hated it when they fought. We all did, but she seemed to take it the hardest. I leaned down and picked her up, holding her against my shoulder as I stepped into the small, sparsely furnished bedroom. Phoebe wrapped her little arms tightly around my neck, and I rubbed her back as I nudged the door shut behind me with my heel and carried her back to bed.
Bella was lying on her stomach in the bottom bunk bed, reading a magazine in the light of a dim keychain torch and pretending that nothing was wrong. Morgan was sitting up on the top bunk, her arms wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees, watching me with owlish eyes.
“Is she really going to leave him?” she asked as I sat down on Phoebe’s bed, which sagged under our combined weight.
“Of course not,” Bella said, her eyes still fixed on the page in front of her. “She just says that so he won’t hit her.”
The matter-of-fact way she said that alarmed me, but I couldn’t argue with the truth.
“If he does, we’re all leaving,” I told them as Phoebe wrapped her arms around my neck and curled up on my lap. “End of story.”
Bella just flipped the page of her magazine, pretending not to care. Morgan bit her lip, looking troubled.
“They were fighting about you,” she told me. “That’s what started it.”
“Me?”
“Because you hadn’t come home, and Mum wanted to go and look for you, but Dad said you’d be fine. He said some other things,” she said warily. “Do you want me to tell you?”
I shook my head. “No, it's okay. I’m sure I can guess.”
Phoebe’s arms tightened around my neck. “It’s not your fault Jonty,” she said. “You didn’t mean to make them angry.”
The door opened then and Mum looked in. “Aren’t you girls asleep yet?” she asked irritably. Her eyes flickered onto me, then away again, unwilling to meet my gaze. I refused to look away, daring her to admit that there was a problem. Knowing that she wouldn’t. “Come on, into bed and lights out. You too, Bella.”
Bella switched off her torch and put it on the floor with the magazine before rolling onto her side to face the wall, ignoring all of us. Morgan slid under her covers, watching me try to prise Phoebe’s arms away from around my neck.
“Come on Phoebs, we’ve all got to go to bed now,” I told her.
“Can I sleep on the couch with you?”
“No way. You’ll take up too much space, and probably push me onto the floor in the middle of the night.”
“I won’t, I promise,” she pleaded as I finally extricated myself from her grip.
“Still not a risk I’m willing to take. You’ve got a nice bed here to sleep in, you don’t want to share a couch with your stinky brother.”
Phoebe pouted as she crawled under the scratchy wool blankets. “You’re not stinky.”
“Yes he is,” came Bella’s voice from the bottom bunk. “I can smell him from here.”
“That’s why I’m going to go have a shower now. I might even use some of Bella’s strawberry shampoo,” I told Phoebe, tucking her into bed as Bella loudly warned me not to dare to even touch her stuff. “Na-night Phoebs. Sweet dreams.”
“Na-night Jonty.”
She curled up into a ball, her arms wrapped around her orange stuffed monkey and her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead into the darkness.
Mum went into the living room as I pulled the bedroom door ajar behind me, leaving a sliver of light for Phoebe. She’d always been afraid of the dark. Mum crouched in front of the fireplace and added another log of wood to the dying fire.
“You don’t need to do that,” I told her. “I’m going to bed in a minute anyway.”
She said nothing, just stayed there for a moment longer, staring into the embers as flames slowly woke, licking the edges of the log.
“If you want to make him sleep on the couch, I can find a spot on the floor,” I offered, but she shook her head and stood up.
“Don’t be silly,” Mum said lightly. “If anyone’s going to be sleeping on the floor, it should be your father.” She looked at the old couch that had been my bed since we’d moved here. “But you’re all right on the couch, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“This won't be forever, Jonty. You know that, right?”
She said that a lot, and I always pretended to believe her. But I was getting tired of the lies we told ourselves.
“It's been three years, Mum. Don’t you think that if things were going to change, they'd have done it by now?”
She looked away as the rain eased abruptly, and the house fell silent. Well, almost. I could hear my sisters whispering in their bedroom, telling each other to be quiet and go to sleep. I lowered my voice, looking into Mum’s eyes. We were the same height now, I realised. When had that happened?
“We could leave him, you know. If we really wanted to.”
My heart twisted as I spoke, hating the thought of leaving the farm, of waking up in the morning to a busy city street instead of looking out across endless rolling hills and paddocks. But I meant it. We all make sacrifices for the ones we love.
“But we don’t want to,” Mum said firmly, dismissing my concern. “We’re doing fine as we are.”
“Are we?”
“Jonty.” Mum put a hand on my cheek and smiled at me. “You worry too
much. We’ll be fine. It’s just a rough patch.”
I took a breath, and nodded. She stepped back, lowering her hand, then sniffed the air and crinkled her nose. “Go and have a shower before you go to bed, eh?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, peeling off my wet jacket and watching her walk back to her bedroom.
Dad was sitting on the bed, the bottle on the floor between his feet, and his elbows resting on his knees. He looked up as she entered the room, and as she pulled the door shut, I knew she would forgive him. Again.
I was almost asleep when small footsteps came pattering softly across the floorboards. They stopped in front of me, and I heard Phoebe breathing close to my face.
“Jonty?”
I groaned. “What?”
Her voice was little more than a whisper. “I can’t sleep.”
I sighed heavily and opened my eyes. I could just see her outline, backlit against the dying firelight. Her big dark eyes were staring into mine, and she shivered, her monkey clutched tightly to her chest. The fire crackled as I slowly lifted the edge of my blanket, and Phoebe crawled underneath it, curling up into a ball next to me. She pressed her cold, bare feet against my knees, and I pulled the blankets back over us, letting the steady rain lull us both to sleep.
CONCUSSION
“Sink the weight down into your heel,” Frankie told me as I cantered around the corner of the arena and aimed the bay mare at the jumps he’d built down the long side. “Keep your shoulders back, hold her together. Don’t let her rush.”
It had been almost six months since Frankie had arrived at Ken’s, and my riding had improved in leaps and bounds. Frankie was a good rider, but he didn’t like jumping, so it had fallen to me to give all of the horses their schooling over fences. I loved it, relishing the challenge, always wanting to jump higher and go faster. Frankie kept me as restrained as he could, but when a horse like Delta came into the yard, brimming with natural talent and confidence, it was hard for him to hold either of us back.
Delta threw her head up as she approached the line of jumps, and although I knew we were going too fast, I barely held her back. I loved her enthusiasm for her job, her sheer delight in leaping over the obstacles that lay ahead, and I quietly closed my legs around her sides, urging her on.
I was about to learn the hard way what happens when you let a horse approach a combination of jumps at speed.
Delta flung herself into the air over the first fence, and I folded forward, grabbing a hunk of her mane in one hand to stay with her as she soared over the poles. We landed smoothly, and Delta surged forward towards the second. It was a big, bold oxer and higher than anything I’d jumped before, so I sat down in the saddle and urged her on, following both of our instincts that said we needed speed to clear it.
We were both wrong, but we were both too late to realise it. Delta took off far too early, and scrambled in mid-air, searching for the back rail that was just out of her reach. She came down with one leg on either side of it, and the pole, Delta and I all hit the ground at speed. I landed on my shoulder, my head thudding onto the hard arena, then looked up to see the mare’s body rolling towards me.
I froze, knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop her from crushing me. Her hooves flashed towards my head, and I closed my eyes and instinctively tucked my chin in towards my chest. I was just in time, too. One shod hoof clipped my helmet, and a hind foot landed on my leg, just above my knee, and then I felt the ground shake as Delta landed behind me.
I braced myself for her to start kicking and flailing, but for a long moment, nothing happened. Then I felt Frankie’s hands grabbing me under my arms and dragging me backwards, and I opened my eyes to see Delta lying on her back, staring at me, not moving a muscle. The moment Frankie had me clear, she rolled onto her side with a groan, and lay still, her sides heaving.
I pushed myself into a sitting position, my vision blurring.
“Stay still. Don’t move,” Frankie told me.
I didn’t argue. I wasn’t sure I could have moved much more if I’d tried. I reached up to unclip my helmet and take it off, but my hand couldn’t find my chin. Frankie had gone to the mare’s side, and he stroked her neck for a moment before taking her reins and clicking his tongue to her. Delta rocked up onto her belly, took a deep breath and then scrambled to her feet. Frankie gave her a pat, then led her forward, watching her carefully.
“Is she okay?” I tried to stand up, but I felt as though someone was pushing me back down every time I attempted it.
“Stay down, I said,” he snapped at me before reaching over and running his hand down each of Delta’s legs in turn. “She seems to be fine, but she’ll be sore as hell for a few days.” He looked back over at me, but I couldn’t tell what expression his face was making because it was still out of focus. “Are you okay?”
“Um, no. I don’t think so.”
I tried again to stand up, but only got as far as my knees before I swayed and pitched sideways. Frankie swore, letting go of the mare’s reins and coming back towards me.
“Don’t move. You’ve given your head a hell of a bash.” I saw him reach up towards my helmet, and I winced instinctively, even though I couldn’t feel his touch. “You’ve gone and put a decent crack in that thing. Good thing you had it on though, or you wouldn’t be with us right now.”
My vision was still hazy, but I could hear the concern in his voice. He unclipped my chin strap and slowly lifted the helmet off my head, then ran his fingers over my sweaty hair.
“You’re lucky to be alive, mate.” He took a shaky breath, then put a hand on my shoulder. “Stay where you are. I’ll see to the mare, then come back and take you to hospital.”
“I’ll be okay in a moment,” I told him.
“You’ll do as you’re damn well told,” he snapped, sounding more like his usual self. “And you’ll stay right where you are, if you know what’s good for you.”
I tried to think of a smart response to that. I was sure that there was one, and it was on the tip of my tongue. Something about what was good for me not including getting my head smashed in by a horse, but I couldn’t quite put the right words in the right order. For some reason, that scared me more than the throbbing pain in my head, or the ache in my neck, or the vision that still hadn’t cleared properly, or even the fact that I couldn’t stand up. So I did as I was told, sat there and waited while Frankie put the mare away. It seemed to take him ages, but he swore it was only a few minutes before he came back and helped me to my feet, supporting my weight as we made our way over to his car.
That’s all I can remember of that entire day. The next memory I have is of lying on the couch at home, being woken up by a torch shining into my eyes, and trying to knock it away.
“Stop it.”
“What’s your name?” I recognised my mother’s voice, and wondered why she was asking such an obvious question.
“You’re the one who named me. Shouldn’t you be able to remember?”
“I need to make sure that you remember.”
“Jonty.”
“Jonty what?”
For a moment, I couldn’t remember, and again I felt that bolt of alarm shoot through me. I’d had injuries coming off horses before – there had been several of Ken’s that had been given to him because they were supposedly unrideable, and two of them had proven their detractors right – but I’d never had any memory loss or confusion. Fortunately, it didn’t last too long.
“Fisher. Jonty Fisher.”
“What day is it?”
I groaned. “I don’t know.” I thought for a moment. It was the weekend, because I’d been riding in the morning, but I had no idea which day it was. “Sunday,” I said, which turned out to be a lucky guess.
Mum pushed the hair back off my forehead, looking relieved. “You had me worried, son.”
“Sorry.”
“Just get some rest, okay?”
“If you stop shining that light in my eyes I might be able to,” I said, sq
uinting.
She turned the torch off, said goodnight, and started walking back towards her bedroom. It hurt to hold my eyes open, but it hurt to close them too, so I just lay there and watched her as she opened the door. A sliver of light tracked across the floorboards.
“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “The doctor said you should stay home all week. Think you can manage that?”
I smiled, despite the throbbing pain in my skull. “Yeah, I reckon I can.”
I was wrong. That turned into the longest week of my life, and I was going stir-crazy long before the pain in my head subsided. I’d always figured that I’d get a bad knock at some point, but I’d planned to spend my recuperation time reading, or catching up on homework, only to discover that I couldn’t do either. Reading made my vision blur and my head throb, and I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to write a coherent sentence, let alone solve maths equations that I barely understood when I had my full cognitive ability.
I ended up spending hours just lying on the couch, alternating between sleeping and staring at the wall. It took weeks before my memory came back properly, but it wasn’t until the first time I got back on a horse, almost a month after my fall, that I discovered what I’d really lost. In the back of my mind had been the fear that I would’ve lost my nerve, although since I barely remembered the accident, I was pretty sure that I’d be able to overcome any lingering fears. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the way that my balance had been affected. I couldn’t ride without getting serious vertigo, and I had completely forgotten how to rise to the trot, or give the aids to canter.
It felt like an abject failure, and became the hardest pill to swallow. I was forced to endure day after day of riding on the end of a lunge line, or walking and trotting quietly in the arena on the quietest horses Ken owned, with one hand through a neck strap in case I started to sway or slip to the side. I had to learn how to ride all over again, and while Frankie insisted that I’d been so sloppy before that it was no great loss to the equitation world for me to have to start over, it was still a deeply frustrating time for someone who’d only ever wanted to gallop and jump.
