by Sarah Lean
I saw Angel with Lunar, Belle leading all the horses and galloping towards them. They pulled up and surrounded them.
I ran, calling to Angel. She didn’t answer. I circled the wall of horses around her. But I wasn’t afraid of the horses any more. I touched them and they moved aside and let me through.
Inside them all Belle stood facing me. She breathed me in. I touched her, she knew me, she trusted me. I could see half of the moon above us, half of it hidden in the deep night sky.
Angel was crouched beside Lunar. He walked over to me; his nostrils twitched as he breathed the air, his dark eyes shining.
“I know the whole truth now, Angel.”
She reached up, her hands smoothing Lunar’s shoulders. She shook her head.
“I do. The story you told me about the hundredth horse. You’re the princess that…” I couldn’t say she was the one nobody looked after. I realised how terrible that part of the story was for her. “You’re the girl who climbed out of the window and rode the horses.”
Angel trembled.
“There wasn’t a big old angel, it was Mr Hemsworth, and they were his horses. You told him about what was happening to you and he wanted to help you, but he died and I’m sorry.”
Angel folded her arms and buried her face.
“Mr Hemsworth wanted you to have Lunar because he knew the horses made you feel safe,” I said. “He didn’t have a chance to do it himself.”
She looked up. The trembling made her watery eyes spill.
“He knew Belle was going to have a foal,” she said, standing up. “But you’re wrong about Mr Hemsworth. He must have been an angel.”
She caught my hand, before I could speak, as she unbuttoned the blue cardigan and slipped it from Lunar’s back. I saw the half-moon reflected in her eyes.
“You thought I was an angel. You kept wondering and staring at my coat, like I was hiding something under there, asking me about things, wondering if what Gem told you was true.”
“You’re not a real angel, I know that.” I felt stupid again because she knew I’d been thinking ridiculous things.
“Not me,” she whispered.
She put her hand over mine, put my hand where hers had been, at the top of the foal’s shoulders, at the base of his mane. The hair pricked on the back of my neck, the blood drained from my face and I thought I was going to fall.
I lifted my hand and looked at what I had felt there: the folded stumps of bones, the softness of new feathers growing on Lunar’s shoulders.
HEARD A CAR PULL UP AT THE GATE, DOORS opening and closing, lots of footsteps running across the field towards us. A voice called across the horses. It wasn’t the police.
“Nell? Please come out.”
“It’s my mum, Angel!”
I went to go, but Angel caught my arm.
“Just let me speak to her. I’ll come back.”
“Will you?”
Two weeks away from home, from everything I used to know, and I suddenly remembered what life had been like. Waiting, hiding. Hiding myself.
“Nell, it’s Mum. I’m here with Liv, Rita, Gem and Alfie.” Her voice cracked. “Nell, please. I need to see you.”
I helped Angel put the cardigan back on Lunar. My fingers trembled as I touched the feathers. I could barely believe what my eyes saw and what my hands felt. But I knew what I wanted now. I saw the tin girl in my mind. “I’m here,” she said.
“I’m scared I won’t come back too, Angel. And that I won’t ever see you again.”
“You’ll go back to being nobody.”
I felt the sting of her words.
“Don’t say that,” I said. “I’m your friend and I do care. I am somebody. You told me that. And you have to trust me.”
It was there in the small curve of her mouth. How she told the truth, how it made me tell the truth.
“Don’t tell them about Lunar,” she whispered.
“Nell, please!” Mum called. “You’re scaring me.”
I had to ignore Mum, just this once.
“I didn’t betray you before, Angel, and I won’t now.”
“Nell! If you won’t come out, I’m coming in!” Mum called.
I heard the horses jostling, Mum still calling me, her anxious voice. Angel suddenly pushed through the horses. She made a path through them. She came face to face with my mum. Mum took a sharp breath.
“For a moment I thought… I thought you were my daughter.”
I ran through the horses, hugged myself right into her.
“Aunt Liv called me at the conference and told me to come. She said I should be here. Are you all right?”
I looked at Mum. It was as though I’d never seen her before. Angel and I seemed to have swapped all sorts of things: our clothes and something inside. I looked at my mum as if I only knew the things about her that Angel knew about Belle. And nothing that had happened mattered, only what would happen next.
“This is Angel, Mum,” I said. “We have to help her.”
I didn’t know why I’d said it. It suddenly all seemed impossible. What did I think we were going to do? Hide Angel and Lunar forever? Mum didn’t know anything about Angel. She only knew about me. For her I was the same as when I last saw her.
“Tell her about the carousel,” Angel whispered.
And it poured out of me like a tap turned on full, about the clubs and all the things that I didn’t like. About finding the carousel. Why I wanted to build it again.
“I can’t help some of me is like Dad.”
Exhausted by everything that had happened, I had nothing left to hold it back.
“But I’m not like him. I won’t do those horrible things he did to us. Will I, Angel?”
Angel shook her head.
“Mum, I’m nobody if I can’t do the things my hands want to do. And I’m sorry I found the carousel Dad left behind and that I hid it from you, but—”
“He didn’t.” Mum’s voice was flat and clear.
“He didn’t what?”
“He didn’t leave it behind.”
The stillness then in the midst of a hundred horses was enormous, as I realised what she was saying before she said it.
“I kept it, Nell.”
“But why?”
Mum turned her shoulder away. I needed to hear. But she wouldn’t speak.
“It’s like the moon,” Angel said. “Because you know something’s there, even if you try to hide it.”
Mum nodded to Angel.
“You know something about this?”
“She does, Mum. And so do I. I know you’ve done everything to protect us, to protect me. But Rita, she’s the lady in the farm next to Aunt Liv—”
“I know who she is. I’ve spoken to Aunt Liv about what has been going on.”
“You have?”
“You don’t think I wouldn’t want to know when I needed to be here for you? I’ve spoken to your Aunt Liv a hundred times these last two weeks and she’s helped me realise that you needed to grow, you needed to work out things for yourself.”
She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t deciding, telling me. Nothing.
“Rita told me that sometimes, when you keep the bad things hidden, you end up keeping the good things hidden too,” I said.
Mum nodded. I wondered who she was. My mum. What we both thought about each other wasn’t the same any more. In between school and clubs and everything else, Mum was always there. In the waiting and the driving, the bit in between everything. And in the middle of all those horses, we were someone else. We were… who we truly were.
“Do you know what I’m saying, Mum?”
“I do.”
And then she said, “Hello. You must be Nell. What a mess, though.” Mum laughed then. “No, it’s not a mess, it’s just something that needs organising. And that’s what I do best.”
Just then Lunar walked past us. His gangly legs trotted through the horses and we watched him go out of the circle of the herd to where Aunt Liv was standing with her a
rms round Alfie and Gem. He passed them, breathed them in and went to Rita. He nudged her back and made her walk forward. He pushed her until she walked through the horses. He brought her into the circle, over to Belle, over to Angel.
“I know, my lovely,” Rita said, touching Belle. “You want your family back.”
She reached her arms round Angel and Angel let her hold on tight.
“I have a question for you, Nell,” Mum said. “You too, Angel. In fact all of you. What is it you want to happen now?”
Belle turned and stepped towards Mum. I looked in the dark glass of Belle’s eyes. Saw my mother there. Belle blew on her and I knew why she wanted to know her. Mum was the one most like her.
I looked at Angel and we knew what we wanted without speaking.
“To take the horses back to the farm,” Angel said.
“We want to put everything back together again,” I said.
Rita held Angel at arm’s length and looked into her eyes.
“Bring them back,” she said.
And, as we were about to do that, Gem ran over to Angel. She looked afraid for a moment and screwed her hands into little fists in front of her mouth.
“Hello,” Angel said.
“Hello,” Gem replied. “Lunar’s the hundredth horse, isn’t he? You told us a story in the playground and I remember it now.”
Angel nodded.
“Lunar told me it was true,” she said. “He told me he was coming to make you safe.”
NGEL AND ME, WE RODE BELLE WITH LUNAR at her heels. We led a hundred horses back to Keldacombe Farm, thundering across the field, clattering along the lane, their breath spilling the mist around them. Mum drove everyone else back there in her car. We let the horses into the fields once more, saw the farm as it used to be.
Mum, Aunt Liv and Rita went inside the house. The lights from the window without curtains glowed yellow in the dark yard.
Angel and I climbed on the gate to the field. We could hear the sigh of the horses’ breath; we saw the white of their skins under the light of the moon, the dark of their skins hidden in the night. Lunar rippled among the other horses like a flash of magic. It was way past midnight. It was Saturday. The day of the auction. I would not sleep; I would not have missed a moment because that was all we had left.
Rita called from the yard. “Angel?”
And that’s just what she looked like. An angel. Not because her hair was brushed and plaited or because she had my clothes on. But because we knew her. We knew everything she’d done was to keep the animals and the farm together. To watch over them like an angel would. It’s what the horses and Mr Hemsworth had taught her. It’s what Mr Hemsworth would have done if he could. Maybe Mr Hemsworth was an angel after all and maybe it was because of him that Lunar was who he was.
I saw the life in Rita as she came towards us, the life that Angel had brought back to her.
“Tell Rita about Lunar, about who he is,” I whispered to Angel as Rita came closer. “Tell her what Mr Hemsworth said.”
“I think there’s a story you need to tell me,” Rita said.
Angel took a deep breath and jumped over the gate. She fetched Lunar and he followed her back to Rita.
Angel held out her hand and took Rita’s. I saw the blue cardigan slipping from Lunar’s shoulders, I heard Rita gasp as Angel began to tell her the story of the hundredth horse.
*
I left them and went to the stable. I heard the music spring to life before I got there, the lights making a bright path to the open door.
The tin girl turned on the top of the carousel, looking at the sky, looking at me, her arms raised as if she knew she could fly. I thought I heard her laughing. I thought I heard her say, “Here I am.”
And then I saw Mum sitting in the shadows, in the straw, leaning against the panels.
“You found the tin girl!” I said. “Where was she? I looked for her everywhere.”
“She was with me all along,” Mum whispered. “I’ve carried her around in my handbag for seven years.”
OMORROW THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS WILL START. Mum and I are going to Keldacombe to stay with Aunt Liv and Alfie and Gem. Rita said she wanted to finish what Mr Hemsworth had never been able to – to make Angel safe. She is Angel’s foster mother now and they live together at Keldacombe Farm with a hundred horses.
Mum helped Rita organise some people to go and work there and run the stables and a riding school.
Rita gave Lunar to Angel. She said that just in case the old wives’ tale about the hundredth horse is true, just in case it spoils the rest of the herd, then Rita would keep her ninety-nine horses and Angel could have the hundredth horse. Which makes Lunar number one.
Angel had made up her own story about the hundredth horse, but all along the story was about her, only it was hidden inside the fairy tale. Rita said Lunar’s story was in Angel’s hands. They both believe that, because of who he is, he has to stay hidden. As he always was from the beginning.
But Angel and me both know that one day Lunar will want to kick, he will want to live and be what he is supposed to be.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jackie Morris, Artist and Writer, who introduced me to the beautiful gypsy cobs in Pembrokeshire, and much more. To Al Francis and Claire Butler who ran St David’s Trekking Centre, which I am sad to say no longer exists. The inspiration came from you, and I wish you well. My thanks are eternal to family, friends and my agent, Julia Churchill, who continue to support me in every way. To Rachel Denwood who motivates me to work harder, Gary Blythe for the beautiful illustrations, and the team at HarperCollins who make it all work together.
About the Author
SARAH LEAN grew up in Wells, Somerset but now lives in Dorset with her husband, son and dog. She has worked as a page-planner for a newspaper, a stencil-maker and a gardener, amongst various other things. She gained a first class English degree and became a primary school teacher before returning to complete an MA in Creative and Critical Writing with University of Winchester. A Horse for Angel is Sarah’s second novel for children.
Also by Sarah Lean
A Dog Called Homeless
“Heartbreakingly beautiful… I loved it.”
Cathy Cassidy
“An exceptional debut… richly characterised.”
The Sunday Times
“Genuinely moving and beautifully written.”
The Bookseller
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB.
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
1
Copyright © Sarah Lean 2013
Illustrations © Gary Blythe
ISBN 978-0-00-745505-8
Epub Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007455041
Epub Version 1
Sarah Lean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work. Gary Blythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
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