‘Do you think they’ll take her?’ Lawrie asks.
‘No idea, but we have time to work on that, don’t we?’
‘Might work,’ he concedes. ‘As long as the sanctuary hasn’t heard about the theft. At least you didn’t suggest painting her brown and setting her loose on the moors.’
‘That was my Plan B,’ I grin. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. We’d have to use poster paint, and it rains a lot in Somerset …’
Images of a paint-streaked pony, rainbow-bright and round as a barrel, flash across my mind. I think Lawrie may be thinking something similar because he starts to grin, and by the time we reach the ruined cottage, the two of us are laughing.
We work together in the twilight, feeding the ponies and grooming them as best we can. While I focus on Caramel, I notice that Lawrie is stroking the dapple-grey pony and feeding her grain from his palm … her trust is growing day by day, as if she knows that we mean her no harm.
‘She’s definitely not so frightened,’ Lawrie says. ‘Now that she’s putting on a little weight, though, I’m sure she’s nearer to foaling than we think.’
Disquiet settles inside me, and I shake it off, briskly.
‘We need a name for her,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘We can’t just keep calling her “the grey”. Something positive, hopeful. Any ideas?’
‘We’ll never agree,’ Lawrie says. ‘Not a chance. You’ll want to call her something sickly, like Sugar or … I dunno, Shortcake.’
‘We’ll pull names out of a hat,’ I tell him. ‘Compromise.’
‘You? Compromise?’ he teases. ‘That’ll be the day.’
An hour later, we are huddled in the kitchen drinking hot chocolate from the flask, a fire made of fallen branches roaring in the grate, candle lanterns that give out yellow pools of light hanging from the ceiling. A worn Indian rug covers the cold flagstones, cushions and blankets scattered across it. It’s still cold because half the door is missing, and Caramel is leaning over what is left of it, her brown eyes glinting in the darkness.
‘Any more suggestions?’ I ask, scribbling names on scraps of paper and folding them before dropping them into the fluffy panda hat positioned between us.
‘Shadow?’ he offers. ‘Misty? Swift? Whisper?’
‘Good ones,’ I say, scribbling them down and adding them to the lucky dip. ‘OK. New name, new start … I’ll mix them up and you pick.’
I stick my hand into the fun-fur hat to stir up the folded papers at exactly the same time as Lawrie goes to fish out a name, and both of us jump and mutter ‘sorry’ and pull our hands away as if we’ve been burnt.
Awkward.
‘Did you pick?’ I ask, watching him unfold his piece of paper.
‘Spirit,’ he reads. ‘OK … that kind of suits her. Sorted then.’
Lawrie grins in the half-light, chinking his tin mug of hot chocolate against mine. ‘So … do you want to come up on Saturday for a while?’ he asks. ‘If you’re not busy, that is?’
‘Don’t you have to do something with your little sister?’ I recall.
He shrugs. ‘She has a ballet class at ten, but Mum can take her just this once. We could meet at ten or eleven, spend the whole day if you want to. It’d be nice to work with the ponies in daylight for a change. Or I could just come by myself …’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll come. I have to go out later because it’s Sarah’s birthday and we’re all going to the firework display in Minehead and on to the fair, but that won’t be until evening, obviously, so I can still be here. Hey, I meant to ask, what’s your sister’s name? My big sister Summer goes to the dance school – she might know her. She often works with the little ones.’
‘She hasn’t been there long,’ Lawrie says vaguely. ‘She’s not a great dancer, it’s more a way of getting her out of the house, having her involved in something, y’know?’
I don’t know, but Lawrie isn’t giving any more away. His family, even his little sister, seems to be strictly off-limits. I fish the foil-wrapped cupcakes from earlier out of my rucksack. ‘You didn’t buy any cakes today, but I thought your little sister might like some anyway,’ I tell him. ‘I saved her some – you said she liked them.’
Lawrie smiles. ‘She’ll love them,’ he says. ‘Thanks, Coco. What is it with girls and cake?’
‘True love,’ I tell him. ‘Cake never lets you down.’
19
I’ve been dreading Friday’s riding lesson. I’m worried that everyone will be talking about the pony rustlers and that I’ll somehow give myself away – and I haven’t managed to apologize yet about riding Caramel without permission.
Besides, I’d much rather be up on the moors with Caramel and Spirit.
As predicted, my lesson is not the same without Caramel. An hour of hacking through the woods on Bailey with Kelly telling me about ‘poor Mr Seddon’ just about kills me. ‘He won’t let a bunch of horse thieves stop him,’ Kelly insists. ‘He wants to open a trekking centre – Jean and Roy reckon he’s been asking around, trying to get new ponies. I think they’re sorry they sold him Caramel now, what with the horse thieves and everything. And it’s a bit cheeky to start up a trekking business so close to the stables. It would take custom from Jean and Roy, wouldn’t it? Still, I do feel sorry for Seddon, losing two lovely horses to lowlife thieves …’
I open my mouth to tell Kelly exactly what I think of Seddon, then close it again. I would only incriminate myself. I realize then that no matter what Lawrie and I have done to get Caramel and Spirit to safety, we can’t stop Seddon – he has money, status, power. It is all very depressing.
‘I don’t think I can face any more riding lessons right now,’ I tell Lawrie afterwards, leading Bailey back to his stable. ‘It’s all spoilt. I don’t want to be here now that Caramel’s gone, and if Kelly tells me one more time what a shame it is for that rat Seddon I might lose the plot and tell her what a loser he really is.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he says, lifting Bailey’s saddle off and brushing him down. ‘She’ll start to wonder why you think so, and there’s no way you can tell her without setting off alarm bells. Seddon’s respected around here – nobody’d believe you, and it’d put the ponies in danger.’
I sigh. ‘Well, if I stick around here I will put my foot in it for sure. I love riding, obviously, but … I think I’ll take a break from lessons for now. Caramel and Spirit need me.’
‘What will you tell your parents?’ Lawrie asks. ‘If you just stop, it might look suspicious!’
I shrug. ‘I won’t tell them. I’ll find something else to do on Fridays – the school orchestra practise that day and Miss Noble is running auditions for new members. Paddy’s taught me a few tunes and I practise every day, so they’d probably snap me up.’
‘Modest, aren’t you?’ Lawrie asks.
‘Just confident,’ I shrug. ‘And hopeful.’
Lawrie rolls his eyes. ‘It’s like you just naturally expect things to work out for you. As if you can pass every exam, get to uni, be a vet or whatever it is you want to do and then play in some orchestra in your spare time …’
‘Don’t forget about saving the whale, the tiger and the giant panda,’ I grin. ‘And setting up my own animal sanctuary. You’ve got to dream, haven’t you? And it’s no fun at all unless you believe that you can make it happen. It’s hardly going to happen if you don’t believe it, is it?’
‘You make it sound so easy!’
‘Not easy, exactly, but … well, I don’t see why it can’t happen. Some of it, anyway. What about you? What would you like to be doing in ten years’ time?’
‘I’ll still
be shovelling wet straw, cleaning out stables,’ Lawrie says gloomily. ‘Not that I mind, exactly – I love working with horses. But I’m not like you, Coco. School stuff isn’t easy for me.’
‘It isn’t easy for anyone, you just have to be organized and put in the work –’
‘Not that simple,’ he interrupts. ‘Trust me.’
‘But –’
‘But nothing, OK? Just leave it!’
Lawrie ruffles Bailey’s mane and walks out of the stable, leaving me pink-cheeked and open-mouthed. I hate the way that boy can switch from friendly to furious in the blink of an eye.
Some people are just plain impossible.
With ponies, you have to be patient, gentle, kind. You need to build up a trust. It’s the same with any animal, really – Grandma Kate once had an old rescue dog called Gigi who would growl like crazy if you ever tried to take anything away from her. I found that out the hard way on one visit – Gigi had run off with one of my new red sandals and was trying to shred it, and I yelled and made a grab for it and ended up with grazed knuckles where she’d snapped at me.
Grandma Kate explained that rescue dogs have had a tough past, coping with things we can barely imagine – Gigi had been abandoned and lived on the streets for months, foraging and fighting for food. That was why she was so possessive about things now. Grandma Kate showed me how to talk softly to Gigi, calming her, stroking her, and when I finally took the chewed-up sandal away she barely even noticed. Minutes later, the grumpy old mongrel was rolling on her back, sighing with contentment while I tickled her tummy and scratched her ears. It was like being given a secret – instead of reacting with anger or exasperation, show animals kindness and most of the time they will do pretty much anything you want.
Lawrie’s approach to the ponies is the same; he is calm, firm, gentle. It’s like watching a completely different boy from the mean, moody middle-school version. Animals bring out the best in him, I can see that.
I wonder if the calm, gentle approach works with people too?
I have already decided to tame Lawrie Marshall with smiles and kind words, but progress is painfully slow. He is worse than Spirit – he edges towards friendliness, then backs away, bucking and rearing. Well, not actually bucking and rearing, but you know what I mean. He is wild and angry and totally closed off.
If he were a pony I would offer him food, stroke his ears and scratch his neck; but he curls his lip at the idea of cake and I am seriously not going to stroke him. That would be just gross.
In spite of it all, the two of us have found a way to work together. By Saturday afternoon, Jasmine Cottage is starting to feel less like a ruin in the middle of nowhere and more like a den, a hideout. We’ve hauled more firewood into the murky kitchen, hung up extra lanterns and covered the wrecked armchair with an old quilt so it looks almost inviting, even if it is still wobbly to sit on. Outside, we have draped solar lights around the bushes to help when we’re up there after dark and cleared the path that winds through the overgrown garden to the broken-down front door.
‘It’s a bit of a giveaway if the police come looking,’ Lawrie frowns. ‘You may not be able to see anything from the moors, but once they’re inside the gate they’d suss something was up.’
‘If they came through the gate the ponies would definitely give the game away,’ I point out. ‘They’re much less jumpy now. Caramel’s really relaxed and even Spirit is much less shy than she was – the minute they hear the gate creak they trot over, looking for a treat or a cuddle. Face it, if the police find Jasmine Cottage, we’ve had it – we just have to hope they won’t look here.’
‘They won’t,’ he says firmly. ‘I hope.’
As if on cue, Spirit appears, nudging me, looking for carrots and hugs. In just a couple of days she has transformed from a nervous, neglected mare into a bright-eyed pony with tons of personality. This morning I groomed and petted her while Lawrie mixed up the feed, and if I wasn’t already in love with Caramel I am pretty sure I’d be falling for Spirit.
‘She’s much calmer,’ Lawrie comments. ‘It’s like she’s shrugging off the past six weeks, letting go of it all.’
‘Six weeks?’ I question. ‘Is that how long Seddon had her? How d’you know?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t, obviously,’ he says gruffly. ‘Just guessing. What I mean is, she seems to have a good, steady temperament in spite of what she’s been through, and she’s young enough to learn to trust again. If we can just get her to that rescue place you talked about before she foals …’
‘Not such a crazy idea after all then?’
‘Sometimes the crazy ideas are the best,’ he says.
‘OK, so here’s another – can I ride Caramel?’ I ask, an arm slung around her neck, my face pressed against hers. ‘Outside the garden, I mean? On the moors? Would it be safe?’
Lawrie frowns. ‘It’s just the risk of somebody seeing, but the moors really do seem deserted today …’
‘So …?’
He pulls a face. ‘Knowing you, you’ll do something stupid and she’ll throw you, and I’ll have to leg it to the road and flag down a passing ambulance.’
‘Funny,’ I say. ‘I am pretty sure it was the scissors exercise that spooked her that day, and Kelly told me the last time Caramel reared the rider had been waving – she gets scared by anything happening behind her head. Maybe she’s been hit or startled by something coming at her from behind?’
Lawrie narrows his eyes. ‘I think you might be right,’ he says. ‘In any case, I think that with time and understanding she will overcome her fears. She just needs to learn to trust.’
‘Like Spirit,’ I say.
Like all of us, really, I think. Lawrie, Honey, Summer … maybe even me.
‘I won’t do anything to spook her,’ I promise. ‘I just think she needs the run.’
Lawrie shrugs. ‘Well … up here I reckon we’d see people coming from miles away. I’ll turn Spirit loose in the walled field, it’ll do her good. Yeah … let’s give it a try.’
I saddle Caramel, mount and ride her out along the crooked path and through the rickety iron gate. Starry white jasmine brushes my hair as I duck through, Lawrie leading Spirit behind me. He unlatches the gate of the enclosed field and lets the grey mare free. She hesitates for a moment, as if it’s been way too long since she’s had a taste of freedom, then begins to prance and play, finally bursting into a trot, her mane and tail flying.
‘Will she come back, d’you think?’ I ask.
‘I reckon so,’ Lawrie says. ‘The field’s all walled in, and she’s getting to know us now. She’ll come back, don’t worry.’
I scan the moors around me, a patchwork of rough grass, purple heather and rust-brown bracken. Far below us in the distance the road snakes through the landscape, a dull grey thread occasionally brightened by the buzz of a car. There are no walkers, no birdwatchers, no tourists at all to worry about. Apart from a couple of rabbits mooching about in the distance, I cannot see another living creature anywhere. It feels like being on top of the world.
Caramel shakes her head, nostrils flared, and a shiver of excitement runs through her body. This is her habitat, her element; she fits into the wild landscape as if she was born to be here.
‘Careful,’ Lawrie tells me. ‘Go easy. No riding hat and all that …’
‘What are you, my mother?’ I ask. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Sure. But Caramel can be a handful, you know that. Keep it slow, remember what happened last time.’
‘Who’s doing this?’ I challenge, irritated. ‘You or me?’
‘There’s no telling some people,’ Lawrie grumbles, and before I can
work out what he’s doing, he takes Caramel’s halter, leads her over to the field wall, clambers up over the mossy stones and slides into the saddle behind me. His arms close round me, warm hands covering mine, gathering up the reins.
‘Lawrie, what the –’
My protests are lost in the wind as Caramel bursts forward into a trot, and as I struggle to adjust she moves seamlessly into a canter that lifts my hair and blows it back into his face.
‘I don’t need you or anyone else looking out for me,’ I argue, but my protests are lost on the wind. ‘I’m not some little kid, I –’
I swallow my words abruptly as Caramel lunges into a gallop that takes the breath from my body. I have never actually progressed as far as galloping, and suddenly I am terrified, clinging on for dear life.
‘Relax,’ Lawrie says into my ear. ‘Let yourself be part of the movement – lift yourself up out of the saddle, stand up in the stirrups …’
As I rise up in the stirrups, shakily, I am aware of Lawrie’s body behind me, lean and muscled, and I can feel his warm breath against my neck, the roughness of the green Aran sweater he’s wearing. Slowly, fear turns into exhilaration and I surrender to the hammering of my heart, the thud of hoofbeats on moorland. I have never felt so alive, not ever.
Moments later, Caramel slows again to a canter, then a trot and finally a walk, and I allow myself to slump back against Lawrie. I can feel the thumping of his heart as clearly as I can feel my own.
‘What did you do that for?’ I gasp, as soon as I can speak again. ‘I thought you told me to go easy?’
‘She wanted to gallop,’ he says into my hair. ‘I could have stopped her, but she’s been cooped up all week – like you said, she needed the run. I didn’t mean to scare you – you should have told me you’d never galloped before!’
Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel Page 10
