by Holly Ford
Ash glanced back. ‘You’re a natural.’
Yeah, right. Cally tried to remember if anyone had ever said that to her about anything. Oh, yes — Mr Harris. Year Three Maths. Their first day of long division.
Over her own horse’s frothy cream mane, she watched the graceful way Ash’s horse picked up his dark feet. With his deep black coat, he was almost as beautiful as Windy. ‘What happened,’ she asked, ‘to the Quarter Horse stud?’
‘Oh …’ Ash sighed heavily. ‘I guess it was more Mum’s thing. She liked to show. After she left …’
Left? Left Carr? And that house? Was she insane?
‘… Dad pretty much gave the stud away. He’s not really your Breed Standards type of guy.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, he was trying to run this place without shepherds back then. With Mum and me gone as well, he wouldn’t have had much time.’
‘You?’ Cally was taken aback. ‘You mean, you went with her?’
‘Yep. All the way to Auckland. I’m a Grammar boy. Can’t you tell?’
Jeez. Could his mother have taken him further away?
‘So your father lost both of you?’ Cally’s indignant imagination flew to the deserted Carr in his empty, echoing house. ‘He must have been devastated.’
She heard a small snort — was it Ash, or the horse? ‘Yeah.’ Ash kept looking ahead. ‘He really put up a fight to keep us.’
The horses stepped on, hooves echoing as they struck the schist. Cally watched the set of Ash’s shoulders.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, after a while, ‘Dad ended up selling most of the stud horses on. He kept Rizzo here, and old Pooch’ — he nodded back at Cally’s mount — ‘and Barry, of course. But these days he just breeds what we need for the station.’
‘Rizzo,’ Cally echoed, swallowing a thousand questions in her relief that Ash had found his way back to a happier subject. ‘Being short for …?’
‘Windscleugh Arabica Ristretto,’ Ash confessed.
‘So … Pooch,’ she guessed, looking down at her horse’s café-au-lait coat, ‘would be — Cappuccino?’
‘You’ve got it.’
She worked her way down an imaginary blackboard menu. ‘Barry?’ she asked, stuck.
Ash grinned back at her. ‘Dad’s go-to stallion. Windscleugh The Barista.’ His eyes moved over her. ‘How are you getting on up there?’
‘Good,’ she told him, as surprised as anyone to find it was true. She frowned. ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something, though?’
‘You are.’
Like … sitting on a horse? She was starting to feel she might have that down.
‘You’re learning to want to ride,’ Ash smiled. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t always be this easy.’
He wasn’t kidding, as she would find out the following day.
Having deliberately slept in to give Carr and Lizzie some space, Cally got up to an empty house. She made herself a coffee, and then, feeling unusually hungry, decided to have a slice of toast. Since it seemed a shame to waste the other slot of the toaster and she had nothing better to do, she put in two slices, spread some Marmite over the spare slice, quartered it, and took it down to Windy.
The horse looked at her in an alarmed sort of way when she walked up to his fence. But as soon as she held out the toast he hurried over and took it from her gently with his big, soft mouth, his few spiky whiskers tickling her hand. Cally rubbed his forehead and scratched his ears, and then, just to see what would happen, ran her hand under his halter. Still chewing happily, Windy didn’t react at all. Taking hold of the halter more firmly, she fed him the last quarter of toast. Windy snorted a few crumbs down her shirt, but seemed otherwise unmoved. Thinking of how much trouble Ash had gone through to catch him yesterday, she frowned to herself. Wasn’t this an easier way to go about it?
‘Very good.’
She looked up to see Ash leaning on the top rail of the gate, a lead rope draped around his neck, watching her from the yard. He appeared amused.
‘Now let’s see you do it without the toast.’
‘You had toast yesterday.’
‘Yes,’ Ash said. ‘But he didn’t know that.’ He opened the gate. ‘You’d better let go now.’
‘You don’t want me to hold onto him?’
Eyes on the horse, Ash shook his head. ‘That would make it a trick. It has to be an agreement.’ Casually, he began walking towards them. ‘Doesn’t it, Windy mate?’
Seeing him, Windy tensed. Cally let go of his halter. Immediately, Windy swung around to face Ash head-on, but to her surprise, he stayed beside her.
‘He seems to think’ — looking equally surprised, Ash clipped the lead rope to his halter — ‘that you’re on his side.’
‘I am.’ Cally rubbed the horse’s nose as he mouthed the sleeve of her shirt.
‘We all are, mate.’ Running a hand over Windy’s dappled neck, Ash produced his own quarters of toast. ‘We all are.’ He glanced over at Cally. ‘How did you get down here? Is Dad with you?’
‘No, I walked.’
‘You walked?’ Ash looked astonished. ‘From the house?’
She laughed at him. ‘It’s not that far.’ In fact, she’d had to walk to bus stops further away. But then, she supposed the Fergussons weren’t so familiar with public transport.
Which had reminded her: ‘Who lives in that other house back there? The one tucked into the trees?’ So tucked in, in fact, that she hadn’t even noticed it when they’d driven down the day before.
‘The cottage? Nobody, at the moment. It’s usually the head shepherd’s house, but’ — Ash had shrugged — ‘I guess that’s me, so …’
Cally nodded. Who wouldn’t rather live in the homestead, if they could? She watched Ash saddle Windy again, the horse appearing much less worried about the process than the day before.
After his lunge-rein workout, instead of tacking him down, Ash tethered Windy beside the mounting block. Then, watching Windy toss his head against the rope, he untied it again and handed it to Cally.
‘Here, you hold him.’ He gave her a very serious look. ‘Don’t let go, okay?’
Struggling to radiate calm, she held Windy’s halter as Ash climbed the mounting block — an aid he’d disdained the previous day — and lay across Windy’s back. The horse shifted a little under his weight, then let out a sigh of what sounded suspiciously like boredom.
‘Okay.’ Easing himself back down onto the block, Ash looked thoughtful for a second. The next, he was in the saddle. Windy’s head jerked up, but he stayed where he was.
After a minute or so, Ash got off and took the rope back from Cally. ‘That went better than I expected,’ he said. Windy nosed his pocket hopefully.
‘Can I do anything?’ she asked, as Ash slipped the bridle over Windy’s ears.
‘Yeah,’ he told her, rubbing Windy’s nose. ‘You can get another rope from the tack shed and bring in Pooch. It’s your turn.’
It was during the highly technical lunge-rein session that followed that Cally discovered there was more to sitting on a horse than she’d thought.
She had hoped they might go for an actual ride at the end of it all, but instead, she ended up soaping tack inside a dimly lit shed that could have doubled as a saddlery museum. And a spider retirement village.
Cally sighed to herself. But it was about time she cleaned something, she supposed. And really, she thought, watching Ash’s forearms work as he rubbed oil into a saddle, there were a lot worse ways to spend a Sunday. He looked so right there in his battered shirt and jeans, sleeves rolled up above his elbows, surrounded by the smells of hot horse and old leather. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen anyone belong in a place so completely. Her brow furrowed at the thought of how hard it must have been for him to leave it.
‘How old were you,’ she asked, ‘when your— when you went to Auckland?’
He looked up with an expression that suggested he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Twelve,’ he said, going back to his work. ‘It was just before I s
tarted high school.’
Cally tried not to stare down his shirt as he leaned over the saddle. ‘Did you live right in the city?’
She averted her eyes quickly as Ash glanced up.
‘Why do people always ask me that?’ he grinned. ‘Yeah, during the week we did. My stepfather had a block out at Karaka, though. Weekends we went out there.’
Stepfather? ‘Did you get on?’ Cally asked, curiosity overcoming her manners. Ashamed as she was to admit it now, as a kid the mere thought that her mother might marry someone had cost her a lot of sleep.
‘Paul and I?’ Ash smiled. ‘Or the three of us?’
Cally waited, watching his eyes.
‘Mum and I had our moments,’ he joked, his gaze sliding away. ‘She and Paul did, too. But Paul and I were pretty solid. He’s a good guy. Anyway, being out there meant I got to keep up the horses.’
Crossing behind her, he hung the saddle back on the wall. Cally willed her pulse not to quicken as he leaned in over her shoulder.
‘Want me to have a go at that?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ Finally easing the swollen strap from the buckle of the bridle, she gave him a quick smile. ‘I’m good.’
Ash moved off. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him pick up a scrubbing brush and get to work on the girth of the second saddle. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Where did you grow up?’
‘Christchurch.’ She could think of nothing to add. Why did this always happen to her? Cute guys and recruitment agents — she could never come up with anything interesting to say to either of them.
‘Family still there?’ Ash suggested into the silence.
Cally nodded gratefully. ‘Mum is. And my Aunt Di — that’s Hannah’s mother.’ She thought hard. ‘A few cousins, too.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘He lives in Perth.’ At least, she presumed he still did.
‘You see much of him?’
She shook her head. ‘He and Mum split up when I was a baby. I don’t remember much about him, to be honest.’
‘He didn’t keep in touch?’
‘Oh, you know, cards, stuff like that.’ She worked her way along a rein. ‘He and his wife have got four kids of their own, so I guess he’s pretty busy.’
Cally glanced up to see Ash watching her, his brown eyes clouded with concern. She felt sorrier for him. She couldn’t miss what she’d never had. But Carr — now there was a man who would leave a hole in your life. One you couldn’t entirely fill with horses. And as for being ripped out of this place …
‘You must have been so homesick,’ she found herself saying out loud.
‘As hell,’ he admitted, still looking at her.
She waited.
Ash shrugged, appearing to remember who he was talking to. ‘I was headed for boarding school anyway, so I guess it didn’t really make much difference.’
Cally nodded, letting the lie pass. ‘You had the holidays,’ she said encouragingly.
‘Yeah.’ Ash frowned at the saddle. ‘Well, once I got past fourteen, I did. For the first couple of years, Dad was flat out between the station and charter work and Mum didn’t—’ He stopped. ‘She was worried that I’d get left alone. She had kind of a thing about that after the accident.’
‘Accident?’
‘Oh’ — he shook his head dismissively — ‘I came off Rizzo and managed to bang myself up a bit. It was my fault, not his. He was just a young horse. He didn’t know any better.’
Cally’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did you break anything?’
‘My shoulder, mainly.’ He stretched it reflexively. ‘Smashed the top of the blade and the ball. Cracked a few bones in my wrist, snapped the radius, did a couple of ribs.’ He thought hard. ‘I think that was it … Oh — plus my nose and a cheekbone.’
Jesus. She stared at him. ‘I’m surprised your mother ever let you back on a horse.’
‘It wasn’t the horse she blamed.’
Ah. Cally took a guess. ‘You were with your dad?’
‘I was supposed to be. He got called away.’
‘So you decided you’d go for a ride by yourself?’
‘Dad had just ridden Rizzo for the first time. I thought I could, too.’ Ash grinned. ‘Turned out I was wrong.’
‘It must have taken some guts,’ she frowned, ‘to ride again after that.’
‘I don’t know about guts. It took some time, that’s for sure. They had to keep shifting the pins in the joint. Mum and I saw a lot of waiting rooms that year.’
‘The shoulder’s a nasty break. Especially when your bones are still growing.’ Cally nodded sympathetically. ‘My mother’s an orthopaedic nurse,’ she added, by way of explanation, choosing not to mention that she herself had done a pre-med year before retreating to the relative certainties of mathematics.
‘Yeah? Your mum might know Paul.’ Ash tipped some more saddle oil onto his cloth. ‘He was my surgeon.’
‘You poor thing.’ Standing on tiptoe in front of the fireplace in the library, Cally looked up into the stag’s dark glass eyes as she dusted its nose. Between the points of its antlers, a spider’s web caught the morning light. ‘Fancy cutting your head off and hanging you on the wall.’ In vain, Cally stretched up a little more. ‘What had you ever done to them, eh?’
‘I’m pretty sure he can’t hear you.’
Jesus! Cally looked back to see Ash standing in the doorway, a grin on his face. As her heart rate slowed, he crossed the room towards her. Reaching over her shoulder, he took the duster from her hand and swiped it over the top of the stag’s antlers.
‘He’s over a hundred and ten years old, you know,’ he said, handing the duster back. ‘He’s got to be deaf by now.’
She smiled.
‘I just came to see’ — Ash took a step back — ‘if you need anything. I’ve got to head into town.’
God, did she? Probably. But on her first day in charge of the house, she had no idea what. A long-handled duster, maybe? Tentatively, she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Thanks.’
‘Okay.’ He smiled. ‘See you later.’ In the doorway, he turned again. ‘I’ll be back before dinner.’
Dinner. God. Cally checked her watch. She’d better get on with the dusting.
A few minutes later, she heard Ash’s ute chug away, gears grating, down the drive. She had been surprised to see Lizzie drive off early that morning in the only decent vehicle she’d glimpsed at Glencairn Station so far. How could the Fergussons live in a castle like this and drive nothing but dodgy old trucks? It didn’t make sense. Surely there had to be something — a Bentley, at least — concealed around the place somewhere?
Dusting the ground floor took her most of the rest of the day — but hey, there were a lot of interesting things to dust. The first time, at least. And if she hadn’t stopped to examine so many of them, she could have got round a lot quicker.
The garden was already losing the sun when she finally made it out there to forage up what she needed for dinner. Surveying the vegetable patch, Cally felt a moment’s panic. Vegetables were a lot easier to identify when they were sitting on supermarket shelves. Maybe she should go back inside and download some sort of chart … But no, those were carrot tops, she recognised them. And broccoli, and spinach. She could totally do this.
She was making lasagne, because — well, who didn’t like that? All she needed was one green vegetable to go with it. Lasagne with … spinach! Perfect. She ripped off a few handfuls of leaves.
Inside, she glanced up at the clock on the wall. Gosh, she’d better crack on with it. She didn’t have much time. First, she needed to find a pot … That accomplished, Cally got the pasta on to boil and started chopping onions. Fast. She had just tipped them into the frying pan when she heard a truck pull up outside. Okay, so the mince could just go straight in with the onions, couldn’t it? That would save some time. She turned the heat up.
‘Hi.’ Walking into the kitchen, Ash placed a large cardboard box on top of the ta
ble.
‘What have you got there?’
As Cally looked at it, the box emitted a series of hollow bangs and a resounding miaow.
‘It’s a cat,’ Ash told her, somewhat redundantly. ‘The vet gave it to me. We’re looking for one, apparently.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘I hope they weren’t having me on.’
Unfolding the lid, he lifted out a silver tabby.
Cally brushed the onions from her palms. ‘Where’d he come from?’ she asked, joining Ash for a closer look.
‘They found him in the car park.’ Still dangling from Ash’s hand, the little cat began to purr.
Cally rubbed the cat’s cheek. ‘Does he have a name?’
‘Tom?’ Ash suggested, with a grin, allowing the cat to pour from his hands to hers. He glanced behind her. ‘Is that pot supposed to be doing that?’
Shit! Thrusting the cat back at him, Cally ran to rescue the pasta. A powerful smell of burning onions met her at the range. Quickly, she sloshed the lasagne into a colander, swearing under her breath as the cloud of steam hit her hands, and hacked at the blackening onions and mince on the bottom of the frying pan. God, what was that smell? The mince? Beef shouldn’t smell like that, should it? Or maybe it should. Maybe this was what it was like when it was — whatever — grass-fed, organic, free-range. When it didn’t come out of a plastic supermarket tray.
She frowned at the pan. Whatever else the beef was, it was certainly done. Well-done, you might say. She threw in a can of tomatoes, gave it another quick stir, and took it off the range.
Half an hour later, Cally took the finished lasagne from the oven and set it down on the table in front of Ash and Carr.
‘Thanks.’ Carr smiled at her encouragingly. ‘That looks great.’
Shooing the cat off her chair, she sat down and watched Carr dig in the serving spoon. The over-cooked pasta had turned to mush, she saw, but that didn’t matter — it usually did. No one cared. It was part of the fun of lasagne.
‘Great,’ repeated Ash, surveying his plate.
Carr brought his fork to his mouth.
