Foxy: Rivalry at Summer Camp

by Belinda Rapley

  “Okay,” said Melissa. “The rest of the instructors will be back in a while, then we’ll have a camp meeting.”

  There was a general murmuring as people wondered what was going to be said.

  Destiny was called back out when a vet arrived to check on the horses. Topaz was ordered home to rest after inhaling smoke. In the long hour that followed, Destiny’s mum arrived with a trailer. Destiny left with Topaz and her mum, promising to return once her pony had settled.

  The Pony Detectives carried on looking out of the window. One of the firemen was crouching near the end of the burned-out stables. He lifted something and showed it to Freddie, then he walked the instructors through the remains of the structure.

  They stopped by Skylark’s stable. Nothing was left but an empty shell, the grass around it charred. The fireman explained something to the instructors, who listened intently. Then Freddie raked his hands through his hair. He turned and began to walk away, then broke into a jog to his battered Land Rover. He jumped in, started the engine with a roar and flew off through the carriage arch, past the stable ruin and the tents, then onto the estate land.

  “I bet he can’t bear to hear about Skylark,” Rosie said. “His mum said that he chose him, remember? He must be as crushed as Holly.”

  The afternoon dragged on. Then, all of a sudden, Holly stiffened in her seat by the window. Everyone turned to look as she stood, slowly, her hands spread out on the glass. Her breath was still, her eyes fixed on a point in the distance – beyond the carriage arch, the stables and tents, through to the pastureland.

  Her lips moved but she whispered so quietly no one could hear her.

  “What did you say?” Mia asked, trying to follow Holly’s fixed gaze.

  Then Holly whispered again. “Skylark!”

  In an instant everyone fell silent. They peered out of the window and there, walking along the brow of the hill like a ghost, was the grey pony, his feathery hooves stepping high. Next to his noble, roman-nosed head, walked Freddie.

  “How…?” Charlie gasped, as everyone else quickly rushed to the open window. Holly pushed back through them, running to the stairs. They watched as she burst from the back door. She sprinted through the carriage arch, around the charred remains of the stables and through the tents.

  As she ran, she called out to Skylark. Alice saw Skylark prick his ears at the sound of Holly’s voice. Then they heard his welcoming whicker. Freddie let go of him and the grey pony broke into a jog, then a canter. Skylark careered towards Holly and the two of them skidded to a halt together. Holly jumped up, throwing her arms around the pony’s thick neck, burying her face against it. Skylark stood stock still, and for a moment they stood locked together on the grassy slope.

  “SO, was Skylark in the stables when they caught fire, then?” asked Destiny. She had just been dropped back at camp and had joined everyone in the reception room. The amazement of seeing Skylark, as if somehow he’d risen, phoenix-like, from the deadly flames, had stunned them all.

  “The firemen reckon he must have kicked his door open in a panic, and escaped before the fire really took hold,” Beth explained.

  “Is he okay?” Charlie asked.

  “The vet’s out there now with Holly and Freddie,” Melissa said. “They’re worried about his hooves. Freddie found him down near the barns, by the path that leads to Hilltop. If he’s been out for a while, he may have had a chance to settle and graze on all the rich grass down there.”

  “So even though he escaped the fire,” Rosie sighed, “he might end up with laminitis.”

  “He must’ve been trying to get home,” Charlie said.

  The next moment the door opened and Freddie and Holly stepped in. Holly looked in shock, like she couldn’t quite believe what was happening around her. The campers immediately rushed over to her, asking how Skylark was doing.

  “Let’s have some quiet for a moment, please!” Melissa called out over the noise. The conversations died down.

  The instructors stood near the television. Melissa nodded at them, as if she was checking something, then began to speak. Melissa asked the campers how they felt, and everyone talked for a while about how scared they’d been.

  “Do the firemen know what started the fire?” one of the boys from the green team asked.

  Freddie shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “They’re still looking into that.”

  Alice noticed Watty and Emily exchange a look, then glance at Amber.

  “Can we go out and check on our ponies?” Charlie asked. “I really, really want to see Phantom.”

  “I can’t wait to see Dancer, either,” Rosie chipped in, as everyone else started to say they wanted to see their ponies, too.

  “We’ve checked all the ponies in the fields,” Freddie reassured the campers, “and they’re all okay.”

  There was an audible sigh of relief around the room.

  “What’s going to happen to them tonight now the stables have gone?” Mia asked.

  “They’ll have to stay out overnight,” Melissa explained, “if you all still want to stay for the end of the camp. How does everyone feel? Do you want to stay? Or would you rather go home now?”

  Everyone turned to each other, checking with their friends next to them.

  “I’d like to stay,” Mia said to her three friends.

  “Me too,” Alice agreed as Charlie and Rosie nodded.

  Around them the rest of the campers were saying the same.

  “Okay, well, that’s brilliant,” Melissa said, looking round to check everyone agreed. “So, now we want to discuss something with you all about the competition. It’s amazing that both Skylark and Topaz have survived today, but neither of them will be able to take part in the cross-country tomorrow. So, given that they would lose out on the points from that activity, how does everyone feel about the cross-country – should we cancel it? If we do, the competition results will stand as they are as of today.”

  “We can’t cancel it!” Amber blurted out. Most of the campers turned and glared at her.

  “Maybe Holly and Destiny should decide,” Mia suggested.

  “Good idea,” Melissa agreed.

  “What do you think, Holly?” Destiny asked uncertainly.

  Holly twiddled the bit of tissue she was holding in her hand. “I guess… I guess it should go ahead,” she said, glancing at Amber. “I mean, it’s what everyone’s been training for.”

  Destiny nodded in agreement.

  “But what about the scores?” Charlie pointed out. “You’re in the lead, Holly. It’s not fair if you can’t compete, then get beaten.”

  Holly half smiled. “I can’t stop everyone competing just so I stay in the lead.”

  “Holly wouldn’t,” Watty whispered loudly, “but I wonder if someone else in this room would stoop that low?”

  Amber glanced up and turned slightly pink. “Can I go and see Copper now?” she asked, suddenly looking desperate for an excuse to leave the room as everyone’s eyes turned on her.

  “Just a sec, Amber,” Melissa said. “So we’re agreed then, campers. The cross-country competition tomorrow goes ahead. Now, off you go and see your ponies.”

  Everyone left the room and headed around the soaked, blackened outline of the stables to the paddocks. Phantom was still spooked, and Charlie couldn’t get near him or Hettie. But she could see by the way he floated around the field that he was okay. Dancer trotted over to Rosie, stopping abruptly as she bumped into her. The unsettled pony’s eyes were still goggly. As Rosie gave her a reassuring pat, Dancer took the opportunity to rummage for a treat. She shuffled an apple out of Rosie’s pocket and greedily scrumped it from the floor. Wish and Scout had already calmed down and were grazing. They walked over to see Mia and Alice, looking for some fuss.

  As Alice stood with Scout, she looked across the fields to the other ponies. Copper paced the paddock, unsettled like Phantom. Amber was sitting on the fence, kicking her heels against it. She looked over as Freddie, Melissa an
d Lara built a small area with electric fencing around the poorest grass, for Skylark to be turned out in. Then she turned with a sigh back to Copper.

  Scout nudged Alice to get her attention, then turned it into a general rub of his forehead against her arm. She’d just given him almost half her packet of strong mints when she heard Melissa calling out that it was time to feed the ponies.

  The evening conversations while everyone carried feed buckets to the paddocks and then had their own dinner were full of Skylark and Topaz’s dramatic escapes. After they’d eaten, Holly and Destiny went to check on Skylark while the others collected their cross-country start times for the next day. The red team, without Destiny, would be out on the course first, followed by the green team and then the purple team, minus Holly. Last to go would be the blue team. The start times were pinned up by the score sheet. Alice saw Amber move from the time sheet to the score sheet.

  “See you back in the tent,” she said quietly to the Pony Detectives, as Watty and Emily looked over with a bit of a scowl.

  Alice studied the score sheet, too, before she headed back to the tents with the rest of the Pony Detectives.

  “Amber could still win,” she said to the others, “now that Holly’s out of the competition. But she’ll have to jump the Joker to get enough points to do it.”

  Rosie shivered. “No prize would make me want to tackle that.”

  “And judging by her attempt earlier,” Charlie said, “Amber would be pretty silly if she tried it on Copper tomorrow.”

  “I bet you anything she does, though,” Mia said.

  When they reached the tent, Amber was already in there, lying quietly on her sleeping bag, her face to the tent wall. Holly joined them a few minutes later, covered in white hair.

  “How’s Skylark?” Rosie asked. “Is he settled?”

  Holly nodded.

  Once everyone was in the tent, Amber sat up and rummaged through her bag.

  “I’ve left my phone somewhere, I think,” she said, quietly. “I’ve been carrying it around in case Lily or Mum call about how things have gone today. I must’ve put it down somewhere. I better go and find it.”

  Amber slipped out of the tent. Alice frowned. Every night Amber had misplaced something vital, and she’d had to go back out of the tent after lights out to find it. At first it had seemed forgetful, now Alice was starting to wonder if there was more to it. While the Pony Detectives got changed for bed, Holly flipped open her notebook. She scanned through all the notes she’d made about the cross-country course.

  “That’ll still be useful one day,” Mia smiled, looking over. Then she noticed something about the notepad. She reached into her suitcase and found the letter that Amber had given them to read, then carefully opened it, out of sight, beside her camp bed. She glanced back at Holly’s notebook. The paper was the same – both sheets had pale horseshoes printed down one side. But in the notebook there was an image of a horse across the top of the page, too. That image was missing from the letter, as if the top of the letter had been cut off .

  As Holly shut her notepad and put it down, an old black-and-white photo slipped out. It was of a huge, raw-boned horse with a small lady rider in the saddle.

  “Wow,” Mia said, impressed. “Who’s that?”

  Holly picked up the photo and studied it for a second. “Meet Flame Thrower,” she said, glancing up quickly, then back at the photo. “And that’s Grammy in the saddle.”

  Holly fell silent, aware of everyone looking over at her.

  Charlie leaned closer to get a better view of the photo. “How come you brought this with you?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, it’s a bit of a long story,” Holly said, looking uncertain. The Pony Detectives nodded encouragingly, eager to hear more.

  Holly smiled. “This picture was taken at Chestnut Grove, ages ago. Grammy used to work there when she was young. It was a stud back then and she helped deliver Flame as a foal. After a few years handling him, she broke Flame in and did all his early training. He was sold to someone called Captain Stobbard and they won Burghley together. Apparently, the captain always said that it was Grammy’s hard work that made Flame Thrower such a brilliant horse. When the Captain retired Flame, he sent him back to Grammy. She still worked at Chestnut Grove at that point, so that’s where Flame lived for the rest of his life.”

  Holly stared at the photo and took a deep breath before continuing. “When he died, at twenty-seven years old, he was buried near a big chestnut tree in the furthest paddock. Soon afterwards, Grammy retired too, and moved into a little blue cottage, just the other side of the paddock. She couldn’t bear to be parted from Flame. She’s lived there for years and years now. I visit her every spare second I get – I love hearing all her stories about the old horses she used to foal and break in. She’s got photos and old rosettes everywhere, and bits of old tack. It’s nothing like my house. Mum and Dad are complete neat freaks – they get stressed if my dirty riding boots clutter up the hallway. Anyway, I thought Lily would like to see this picture. I thought that if she knew a chestnut horse from her yard had been trained to win Burghley years ago, it might inspire her to win even more.”

  “So, did you get to show it to her?” Alice asked.

  Holly shook her head, and cringed slightly, sheepishly looking round at the girls. “I wrote to her when she first moved here, at the beginning of the school summer holidays. I said I had something important to tell her. I never heard back anything though, even though I wrote my address at the top. I wrote the date and ‘Welcome to our village!’ in different coloured felt tips to try and make it stand out. The other day I wondered if Amber might like to see the photo. I know we’re not meant to leave camp, but I sneaked out to ask Grammy if I could borrow it. She dug it out for me yesterday, just before the course walk. I hoped if I showed it to Amber, it… it might make her like me. It was the only thing I could think of.”

  Mia’s mind began to race. She needed to talk to the other Pony Detectives alone. One thing was clear – the letter that Amber had shown them had been trimmed down, so that they hadn’t been able to tell when it had been written. Holly had told them she’d sent the letter at the start of the summer holidays – over a month ago – but Amber had said it had been delivered at the start of the week. And that could only be for one reason, Mia thought as her heart thumped: to put Holly squarely in the frame for Foxy’s disappearance.

  Suddenly a phone let out a neigh, buzzing with an incoming text, making everyone jump.

  “That’s Amber’s,” Rosie frowned. “But I thought she’d gone out to look for it?”

  Charlie leaned over Amber’s camp bed. Her wash bag was tucked down by the side, and her phone was sitting just inside it. As she looked, Charlie caught sight of some small rectangular sachets, shoved into a side pocket of the bag. They looked familiar. She pulled one out. The words ‘Devil’s Claw’ were emblazoned on the front. Suddenly the tent door zinged open. Charlie dropped the sachet like it was on fire and hastily jumped back off Amber’s camp bed.

  “Found my phone,” Amber said as she stepped back inside. She looked round at the sea of faces, and frowned as she sat down on her sleeping bag. Then she froze for a second. Charlie realised that she must not have put the devil’s claw packet back in the right part of Amber’s wash bag. And Amber must have realised that the whole tent had worked out she’d lied about her phone.

  But Amber didn’t say anything. She just chucked a T-shirt over her wash bag and silently climbed into bed.

  FROM the moment they climbed out of their tents the next morning, everyone was rushing round like crazy, getting ready for the cross-country competition. There were no stables to muck out, but the ponies had to be groomed to perfection, and their tack polished.

  The Pony Detectives hardly had a minute to themselves to catch up from the night before, but over breakfast they managed to huddle together at the end of one table.

  “So, Holly can’t have had anything to do with Foxy’s disappearance,”
Charlie whispered, “not now her letter to Lily’s been explained.”

  “But I don’t get why Amber would try to frame Holly,” Alice said.

  “Or why she’d be wandering about with devil’s claw in her wash bag,” Charlie added.

  “Unless…” Mia said, her eyebrows pinching together, “unless she’s feeding it to one of the ponies here?”

  Rosie gasped. “What if Amber’s been sneaking off to the feed room every night?” she whispered. “It would have been the perfect opportunity to add it into one of the feeds without anyone seeing her. They’d be made up ready for breakfast.”

  Alice noticed Amber look over at the four of them. Her pale eyebrows furrowed as she stood up and carried her plate over to the side. Alice saw that her hands were shaking.

  “Come on, everyone,” Melissa said, as the instructors stood up to leave the hall, “time to start tacking up!”

  “Well, there’s not much we can do right this second,” Charlie said to the others in frustration. They still had no clue where Foxy was, and they were rapidly running out of time left at camp to find him – the holiday was nearly over and they’d be going home the next day. “We’ll have to wait until after the cross-country now.”

  They headed outside. The ponies, sleek coats shining in the early morning sunshine, were tied to the paddock fences as their riders buzzed about. Holly and Destiny were both outside, helping the riders by fetching water buckets and sponges or sprinting to the hall to fetch ice-cold drinks.

  “Okay, first team ready?” Melissa called out, as the reds made last-minute adjustments to their tack. They jumped on board, then rode over to the warm-up area.

  Once they were ready, riders would set off every three minutes. The blue team started to tack up, getting their ponies’ boots and saddles on. They left the bridles hanging on the paddock rails next to them. The ponies stood, their eyes half closed, one back leg resting. Their tails casually swished the flies away and they shook their heads, stomping a front hoof.