Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘It won’t!’ I grin.

  ‘Lawrie?’ she yells across the yard. ‘Can you get Caramel saddled up, please? For Coco here.’

  Lawrie raises an eyebrow. ‘I thought you said only experienced riders could take Caramel?’ he questions, and I can tell Kelly feels hassled by the comment. Now that the decision is made, she doesn’t want to go back on it.

  ‘Jean said it would be OK,’ she tells Lawrie, walking away to help the other students get mounted. There are six of us today, but the other five are younger than me and need more support. They wait patiently as Kelly matches them with their ponies.

  ‘I am an experienced rider, you know,’ I say, as Lawrie saddles up Caramel and adjusts the stirrups. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I doubt that somehow,’ Lawrie says. ‘Caramel is easily scared, OK? Go easy with her.’

  ‘She likes me!’

  ‘That makes one of us, I suppose,’ he mutters, leading the pony out into the yard and holding her while I climb on. Luckily, Caramel stands as quiet and still as a mouse and I manage it smoothly. I collect the reins and press my heels gently into the pony’s sides, and we walk forward across the yard to join Kelly and the other kids.

  Caramel really does like me, I can tell. She seems calm and steady and settled as we walk down to the paddock and circle round, and when Kelly asks us to follow a figure-of-eight pattern and then negotiate a basic obstacle course, she takes it all in her stride. Nobody would ever guess she was a ‘problem’ pony.

  Kelly looks less anxious now, more confident. She has taken a risk letting me ride Caramel – I am not about to let her down. I plan to show her that I am a good rider, and more than that, that Caramel really can be trusted. All she needs is to be treated gently.

  ‘Rising trot,’ Kelly calls out, and I ease the pony forward smoothly. She trots beautifully, and when Kelly suggests that three of us try a canter, I know she is really starting to trust me. Caramel speeds up and I lean forward, exhilarated, enjoying every moment. This is without a doubt the best riding lesson I’ve ever had – it’s as though the pony is a part of me, or I am part of her. We understand each other, and I know that she is loving this as much as I am.

  Maybe Caramel was born of feral stock, the ponies living wild on the moors; maybe she was treated roughly at some point in her past; maybe, but I know she trusts me and I know she has it in her to be the best pony ever.

  ‘Excellent, Coco!’ Kelly calls as we slow to a walk again, and I can feel myself glowing with pride. ‘Great, all of you. Right, folks, we’ll cool down with some control exercises. Let’s start off with “Round the World”. If you’re not sure, kids, watch Coco, she does this one really well …’

  My cheeks glow pink with pleasure at the compliment, but I’ve been doing the paddock exercises for ages now, and I know I am good at them. ‘Round the World’ is all about teaching the rider balance and control – you have to scissor one leg over the pony’s neck, so that you are balanced sideways on the saddle; then scissor again until you are sitting backwards in the saddle; again so that you are riding sideways to the other side; and once more until you are finally facing front again.

  This exercise is always a little chaotic, with riders slipping and slithering about in a very undignified way, but I have it down to a fine art. To start with, you do it while your pony is standing still, then work up to doing it on the move. I am pretty good at both. I squeeze my heels gently inwards so that Caramel walks forward, then slide my feet out of the stirrups. Aware of the younger kids watching me, I shift my balance and scissor my leg up over Caramel’s neck and down again.

  My leg is still hovering in mid-air when the pony lurches forward into a sprint, then jolts to an abrupt stop. Caramel rears up, whinnying, and suddenly I am flying through the air. There’s a thump as I land in a heap on the grass, my head hitting the edge of one of the obstacle course markers, my jaw hitting the gravel path. For a moment, I am seeing stars.

  ‘Coco?’ Kelly is saying, on her knees beside me. ‘Coco, are you all right?’

  I try to sit up and fall back again instantly. My head feels like it has been sliced open with an axe.

  ‘Ouchheee …’

  Kelly stands up and yells at the top of her voice for the first-aid kit, and I scrunch my eyes tightly closed and wish the ground would open up and swallow me. It doesn’t, of course, and even with my eyes closed I know that five little kids watched my fall from grace with shock and horror. Oh, the shame of it …

  Caramel, how could you do this to me? I thought we had an understanding …

  A damp cloth smelling of witch hazel is pressed to my chin and my eyes snap open abruptly.

  ‘There, that should help,’ Kelly says, and over her shoulder I see Lawrie Marshall with the first-aid box and the witch hazel, his face dark and disapproving.

  I think I will survive the bump, but the wound to my pride may be fatal. This is the most humiliating moment of my life.

  6

  Sadly, it is not just my pride that has taken a battering. It would have been a lot worse without the riding hat, but still, there is a purple-red graze along my jaw and a whole constellation of bruises all over my bum and legs. Great.

  ‘What did you do?’ Skye demands as I hobble into the kitchen at Tanglewood, the cloth soaked in witch hazel pressed to my jaw. ‘You look awful!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I sigh. ‘You’re a real comfort, Skye. I had an argument with my favourite pony … she got tired of behaving beautifully and decided to throw me off.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Summer chimes in. ‘She threw you? What kind of psycho horses do they have at that place? It’s supposed to be a riding school, not a rodeo!’

  ‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘It’s taken me the whole drive home to convince Mum not to make a complaint.’

  ‘I didn’t want to complain, exactly,’ Mum sighs. ‘I just wanted to say … well, that pony really shouldn’t be part of a riding school. She’s too high-spirited, too nervy!’

  ‘Mum,’ I argue, ‘I told you – it was all my own fault.’

  ‘How come?’ Cherry demands.

  A dark blush seeps across my cheeks. I don’t want to come clean, but if Caramel’s future is in question I can’t stay quiet.

  ‘I didn’t have permission to ride Caramel,’ I admit. ‘She’s a bit unpredictable. Hard to handle. Jean and Roy only let the really confident riders take her out, but she’s my favourite pony and they were away today. So I managed to convince one of the assistants to let me ride Caramel … I kind of pretended I’d been told I could.’

  ‘But you hadn’t,’ Skye says. ‘Boy, will you be in trouble!’

  ‘I don’t expect Jean and Roy will be impressed,’ Mum comments, making teas and hot chocolates all round.

  ‘Well, I agree with Mum,’ Summer frowns. ‘This Caramel doesn’t sound like the kind of horse that should be around kids at all. She sounds dangerous.’

  I put a hand to my aching head. Suppose Jean and Roy think that too? I wanted to help Caramel, but maybe I’ve made things worse for her. Whatever my sisters think, I know that Caramel did everything perfectly. It was only when I started shifting about that she lost the plot … she freaked out when I scissored my leg up over her neck. Maybe she doesn’t like unexpected things, or things she can’t see properly. Perhaps she thought I was going to hurt her?

  If I could find out what was happening the other times she’s behaved badly, maybe I could work out what’s upsetting her and solve the problem, and then surely Jean and Roy won’t even think about getting rid of her.

  ‘Good job you had your hard hat on, baby sister,’ Summer grins. ‘You might have done some real
damage!’

  ‘I am not a baby,’ I scowl. ‘C’mon, you’re only seventeen months older than me!’

  ‘Maybe, but you’ll always be the baby of the family to us,’ Skye teases. ‘We worry about you!’

  ‘Well, don’t!’ I huff. ‘I am very grown-up and independent, and you know it!’

  ‘Now, now,’ Mum says. ‘Don’t tease your sister, girls!’

  That makes me feel like a three-year-old in the middle of a squabble.

  Mum sets down hot drinks and a plate of home-baked chocolate chip cookies, scooping up a couple along with a mug of tea to take out to the workshop because Paddy is working late on a special sample order for some big department store. It has to be finished and sent off by Special Delivery to arrive on Monday, but apparently it will be worth all the hard work and long hours if they land the contract.

  As soon as Mum has gone, Skye leans forward. ‘It’s not you I’m worrying about really, Coco,’ she says in a whisper. ‘It’s Honey. I honestly thought she was trying harder after the mix-up at the start of term when we thought she’d gone missing, and all that stirring it with Shay. Well, it doesn’t look like it. My art teacher asked me today when Honey would be back at school – she must have been skipping lessons. The teachers seem to think she’s ill, so maybe she’s sent in a forged note or something?’

  ‘No way!’ I gasp.

  ‘She gets the school bus with us every day, the same as always,’ Cherry says. ‘None of us had a clue she was skiving!’

  ‘She may be on the bus, but she obviously isn’t making it past the gates,’ Skye shrugs. ‘I know she likes to hang around by the wall at the front before the bell goes, but it looks like that’s as far as she’s getting. Wait till Mum finds out – she’ll go nuts!’

  ‘She will,’ Summer says softly. ‘Mum has enough on her plate already, with the B&B and the chocolate business and … well, stuff.’

  Nobody comments, but we all know that Summer’s illness is the part of the ‘stuff’ that is bothering Mum just now. A few months back, Summer put herself under so much pressure to succeed she just about unravelled in the process. For a while it seemed like she was trying to starve herself, and now she has to go to twice-weekly meetings at an eating-disorders clinic at the hospital in Exeter.

  She had to give up her dance school place and watch her friend Jodie take it instead. Summer still goes to ballet class in Minehead, but she must think about the scholarship place she let slip through her fingers. We don’t really talk about that and we don’t mention her eating disorder either – we just tiptoe around her, scared to upset her, scared to say something that might make her feel bad. Although she has put a little weight back on, Summer is still fragile, brittle, with pale skin and blue shadows beneath her beautiful eyes. You get the feeling that if you held her too hard she might snap, crumble.

  Mum says that time is a great healer, that we need to be patient and positive and kind, but I know that she worries about Summer – we all do. The last thing any of us needs is for Honey to go off the rails again on top of that.

  Summer frowns. ‘It’s like Honey just can’t help it, you know? She tries to get her act together, but she can’t keep it up …’

  I think that Honey can help it, actually. Ever since Dad left a few years ago, my big sister has been lurching from one disaster to the next. It’s kind of exhausting to live with, and these days my patience is wearing thin.

  ‘D’you think we should keep quiet about this?’ Skye asks. ‘Pretend we don’t know? Or … should we tell? Not to get Honey into trouble, obviously, but … well, to stop her from getting into more trouble than she is in already, if that makes sense?’

  ‘We can’t,’ Summer says. ‘Sisters stick together, right?’

  I bite my lip. The family rule that we don’t tell tales is unshakeable, but I can’t help wishing someone would speak out about Honey. It’s no fun watching your big sister mess her life up.

  ‘Maybe we should tell?’ I venture.

  ‘But … she’d never forgive us,’ Summer points out.

  There’s a silence as we think about the fallout if we did dare tell. More than once, Mum has threatened Honey with boarding school, and this could just be the last straw. None of us wants to be responsible for that.

  ‘The high school reports are out next Wednesday,’ Cherry says. ‘I guess Charlotte will find out then. No use stirring things up when we know it’s going to come out anyway, right?’

  ‘Right,’ we agree.

  The kitchen door swings open and Mum comes in again with an empty tray, humming some old tune from the Dark Ages. ‘Nobody hungry?’ she asks, scanning the untouched plate of cookies. ‘That makes a change!’

  We all reach for the biscuits and bite into them guiltily, except for Summer who just breaks hers in half and feeds fragments slowly to Fred the dog.

  Let’s just say I am not looking forward to Wednesday.

  7

  By the time Wednesday rolls around my graze is healing, but the bruises on my legs have mellowed to rainbow shades of blue, purple and greenish-yellow. They look especially attractive with my gym shorts, and I have to recount the story of how the unpredictable, half-wild Exmoor pony at Woodlands got startled by something and threw me off.

  ‘You have to get used to these things when you move on to riding more challenging horses,’ I say. ‘But they’re the most rewarding ones, of course …’

  I am not sure how many of my friends totally believe this version of events, but they say nothing.

  I have been trying to steer clear of Lawrie Marshall. He wasn’t in science on Monday – there was a football match apparently – but we have science again last lesson today and I am not looking forward to that. Should I blank him? Or smile sweetly and thank him for his help on Friday in the hope that he chokes on his own self-righteousness? He was as grumpy as ever when he handed over the first-aid kit, but while I was getting my bearings again I watched him catch Caramel and calm and coax her back up to the stable yard. Lawrie Marshall has zero charm with human beings, but I have to admit he’s good with horses.

  I have almost decided to swallow my pride and let bygones be bygones when Lawrie walks into class, throws his bag down across the aisle and shoots me the kind of look that could curdle milk.

  ‘Pleased with yourself, are you?’ he says coldly.

  ‘Pleased?’ I frown. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You don’t even know?’ he asks, shaking his head slowly. ‘You don’t even care?’

  ‘About what?’ I frown, but Lawrie Marshall just glares and turns his back on me. Mr Harper starts the lesson and I have to sit there for fifty whole minutes gritting my teeth and wondering why I ever thought that saying thank you to the Year Eight bully was a good plan. He is sourer than stewed rhubarb without the sugar, bitter as aspirin.

  What a loser. How come he always manages to make me feel like I’m the one who’s done something wrong?

  His comments get under my skin and bug me all lesson, and by the time the bell goes I decide to confront him. I tell Sarah I want to talk to Mr Harper about endangered antelopes because she may be my best friend, but she has a one-track mind when it comes to boys. Lately, she is much more interested in who fancies who than the plight of the white rhino and the blue whale, and if she made some quip about me and Lawrie Marshall I would not be amused. The minute she’s gone I pack my things and run; I catch up with Lawrie on the playground, and my temper boils over.

  ‘Hey!’ I yell. ‘I want to talk to you!’

  He turns round, raising one eyebrow. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, so tough luck,’ he snaps.

  ‘What is your pr
oblem?’ I demand. ‘No wonder you don’t have any friends! No wonder everyone thinks you’re weird. You’re just a spiteful, horrible bully!’

  Lawrie Marshall flinches as if I’ve slapped him.

  ‘Shut up,’ he scowls. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m talking about,’ I tell him. ‘But you – you just spout rubbish! What did you mean earlier, about me feeling pleased with myself, and not even caring?’

  He shakes his head. ‘You are probably the most spoilt, selfish girl I have ever met,’ he says. ‘You lied about being allowed to ride Caramel, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘You lied, and it all went wrong, and Kelly was in trouble.’

  ‘What about me?’ I protest. ‘I was the one who got hurt!’

  ‘You deserved it,’ he shrugs. ‘And after all that, you didn’t even bother to apologize or call the stables to find out what was happening.’

  A flicker of unease stirs within me.

  ‘So … what is happening?’ I ask.

  ‘Plenty,’ he snarls. ‘The stables are selling Caramel. So, yeah, like I said, I hope you’re pleased with yourself. It’s all your fault.’

  He turns on his heel and walks away. Me, I stand very still in the playground, letting the waves of shame and guilt slide over me.

  Then the school bus toots and starts its engine, and I run down to the gates and scramble aboard, just in time.

  I am still upset when I arrive home. We finish a little ahead of the high school, so I’m usually home before my sisters and I’m planning to ask Mum if we can call the stables and ask them to hang on to Caramel. It’s a long shot, but it has to be worth a try. When I walk into the kitchen, though, I find Mum and Paddy dancing around with champagne glasses in their hands. Fred the dog is leaping madly round their feet, and even Humbug my pet sheep has made her way into the kitchen and is curled up on an armchair in the corner.