'Blythe,' she said, thrusting out her hand. 'Nice to meet you.'
'This is my daughter, Shelby,' her dad said. 'My aunt, Jen, came to see you a while back.'
'Oh yes! I remember. The famous Blue.'
Shelby narrowed her eyes. 'You remembered that?' They mustn't have too many new clients coming through for her to remember something like that.
'I remember all ponies,' Blythe confessed. 'Let me show you around. We may as well start here. This is our feed shed. We feed our horses hay, and then green chaff, oats or pony pellets depending on the horse.'
'What about if I want to feed him my own stuff?'
'We don't recommend it because it gets mixed up and then people argue, so this is what we feed them. If you'll follow me.' Blythe walked down through the breezeway. 'We have four stables.'
'Four?' Shelby couldn't believe it. Only four? She looked in one. They used shavings for bedding, and they mustn't have cleaned them out properly, or very often, because it looked dusty and broken down.
'No adjoining yard,' she said
'Most people prefer turnout,' Blythe replied. 'Out here behind the arena you can see this is where we turn out the stabled horses during the day. They're all in together.'
The four horses stood together under a tree.
Shelby's dad nudged her with his elbow. 'See? Turned out.'
'Yeah, I can see that,' she muttered.
Blythe continued. 'And then on this side . . .' They walked through an empty stable. 'We have more paddocks.'
Shelby stared. The paddocks were tiny. Each held four or five horses. It reminded her of the Jenny Craig paddock at Wanada Park.
'There's no feed in them,' Shelby said.
'That's why we give them the hay,' Blythe explained.
Shelby looked dubious.
'It's actually better for them,' Blythe said.
'That's just your opinion.'
'Shelby!' her father said.
'Well, it is,' she replied.
He turned to Blythe. 'Shelby works at an agistment centre in Sydney.'
'Great! We can always use people with equine management experience around here. Which one? Would I know it?'
'The Gully Stables,' Shelby said, watching Blythe to see her reaction.
'That's quite a big one, isn't it?' she said.
'Over a hundred horses on one hundred and seventy-five acres, so yes, quite big,' Shelby said.
There was an awkward silence. Shelby knew she was being a brat, but for some reason she was finding it hard to stop.
'So if I was to bring Blue here where would he be? In here? How come there are no horses in the front paddocks?'
'We rotate them fairly regularly. You could keep him in one of the front paddocks if you wanted to. Most people prefer it when they are out here because it's closer to the tack shed and arena, and also it's a busy road, so some people are nervous about their horses getting out.'
'Do you have a problem with horses getting out?' Shelby asked.
'Shelby!' her father said again.
'It's kind of an important thing to know, don't you reckon?' she asked him. 'And there's only one arena? No sand?'
Blythe frowned. 'We do back onto the crown land here, and most people like to ride out on the dunes. There's lots and lots of sand there. That's where we take our camels on the weekends.'
'I was going to ask about the camels,' Shelby's dad said. 'Can we have a closer look?'
Blythe smiled again. 'Sure!'
'I'm going to stay here,' Shelby said.
What did she want to see a bunch of dumb camels for? She glowered. This place was dinky.
After a few minutes her dad called out, 'Are you ready to go?'
Shelby stomped along the path between the paddock and the stables.
'Say thank you to Blythe, Shelby,' he instructed. He was using his wait-till-you-get-home-young-lady voice, so she obliged.
'Thanks for showing me around,' she mumbled.
She got in the car and slammed the door. When her father climbed in the car she said, 'Bunch of amateurs. There is no way I am subjecting Blue to that place.'
Her dad's face was turning from red to purple. 'Not so long ago you were trying to talk us into keeping Blue on our back patio,' he said through gritted teeth.
'Turnout! Pfft,' she continued as the car crept down the driveway. 'Turnout for a goat maybe – a miniature goat.'
They reached the road. She folded her arms. 'A miniature goat with no legs and a poor appetite.'
'Shelby Shaw!' her dad roared. 'I have never been so embarrassed!'
'I don't want to move house!' she shouted back.
Neither of them spoke until they reached Aunty Jenny's place a few blocks away.
When Shelby's great-aunt opened the door she looked at the expressions on their faces and said, 'Oh! You both look like you could use a cup of tea.'
'Yeah, a cup of tea will fix it,' Shelby said.
'Shelby, you're not too old to go over my knee!' her father warned.
She put her hands on her hips. 'You've never hit me in my whole life.'
'There could always be a first time!'
'I'll put the kettle on, shall I?' Aunty Jenny said.
21 Tongue-tied
Aunty Jenny pulled her kettle out of an open box in the kitchen. She had three cups waiting on the bench. Shelby wandered through the empty house.
Her great-aunt had left some pieces of furniture out – her upright piano was still in the corner of the lounge room and there was an old-fashioned bureau in the hall near the front door. The house seemed much bigger now. She'd never noticed how high the ceilings were, or the lovely woollen rug that had been under the dining table. It seemed fresher and more open too, since all the curtains were gone.
Her footsteps echoed as she walked down the hallway to the bedrooms. She glanced into the first one. It had been her great-aunt's. She supposed it would be her parents' now.
There were another two smaller ones on the left-hand side of the hallway that looked out to the side wall of the house next door. She guessed her brothers would have one each. Connor would be pleased. Although Blake would probably miss having his older brother around, he would probably enjoy the extra space too.
At the end of the hall at the back corner of the house was the spare room. Normally Aunty Jenny kept the curtains closed because the larger windows in the room faced west. It received a lot of the afternoon light, but with no curtains Shelby could see into the back garden.
Her great-aunt was very proud of her garden. She had different beds of native trees and grasses. Shelby recognised some of them from her rides in the gully, and winding between the beds there were paths made from different coloured stones. A hammock was strung up on the back veranda, in speckled shade, surrounded by plants spilling from their pots. To the right was a large garage. The doors were closed, so Shelby couldn't see in.
There was a huge mulberry tree in the neighbour's yard that hung over the fence. There was a tree house in it – more of a platform with a ladder to it. There was a small girl about Connor's age. She was holding a stick, fencing against an imaginary adversary. She stopped, brushed back the tendrils of curly hair from her forehead, and then began again with a flurry of blows. Shelby opened the window and the girl's voice floated in. 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' she called out. 'Now climb the midden mast, you scurvy rat!'
She would get along with Connor very well! Shelby thought. The adventures of Jack Sparrow and Spiderman.
It was a pleasant view from this window, and at the back of the house it was quite private too. She would put her desk against this window, and then the bed along the back wall. Her smaller bookcase would fit under the window on the north side. There was even enough room in here for an armchair.
Perhaps she could have the boys' bunk beds now that they had their own rooms. That way Erin could stay over some weekends. It really wasn't that far away and Erin had said that she wanted to go to the beach sometimes. There was room for an airbed too. Sh
e could have a slumber party with Lindsey and Hayley as well.
She heard footsteps up the hall and her dad stood in the doorway.
'What do you think?' He handed her a cup of tea.
'Can I paint it?' she asked.
'Of course.'
'Maybe it could be all right,' she grunted, and then headed back to the front of the house.
Since there was no furniture they drank their tea sitting on the front step.
Her great-aunt told Shelby's father how she had sent the curtains and blinds to be cleaned and they would be delivered the following week. She explained about the post box she had rented at the post office, and how the two-stroke fuel for the whipper snipper was in the red metal can and the unleaded for the push mower was in the red plastic jerry can, and she should have marked them, but she forgot.
Shelby tuned out. She finished her tea and set the mug on the top step. Aunty Jenny's house was on the crown of the hill, facing east, and so from the front of the house they could see the bay spread out below them. The water twinkled in the sunlight, and Shelby could smell salt on the air.
'Are you hungry? Why don't you run down to the shop and buy us some lunch?' her dad suggested.
Shelby took the twenty-dollar note he held out and headed down the hill. The cement footpath was cracked in places, but most of the nature strips were mowed and edged with precision. She saw several old people in their gardens, or sitting on their verandas.
At the bottom of the hill there was a strip of shops. Shelby went inside to order some chips and a barbecue chicken and then she crossed the road and sat on the picnic table overlooking the beach.
'Shelby?'
She turned around and there was Chad. She got a shock seeing him there, a feeling like when you first plunge into cold water. Then she remembered Molly had said something about him heading up this way.
'We keep meeting here!' he said.
'What are you doing here?' she asked.
'Oh, just a family thing at my brother's,' he explained. 'What about you?'
Shelby told him about Dandelion Flat. She said that she'd decided not to sell Blue after all. And now she had to find a new place to keep him.
'It's bad enough that he would have to stay there when I'm living here, but what about when we go away? He would be there on his own, and I don't reckon they know what they're doing.'
But even as she was speaking she realised that it was all about her. She should ask him something about himself. How was your day? sounded too distant. It had to be something friendly and funny as well, but not something he could misread as mean.
They sat silently for a moment.
'I'm here every few weeks. I could check on him for you, if it would make you feel better,' he offered. 'I don't know that much about horses, but at least Blue knows me.'
Shelby took off her shoe and tipped out the sand. She should talk about the date. She could just explain what happened from her side. But it was so embarrassing! Shelby hardly ever talked about her feelings to anyone. And she still wasn't absolutely positive that there wasn't some other girl. She sighed.
'I know you don't want to move,' Chad said. 'And Dandelion Flat sounds like a really crap place, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way around. The Edels don't need you at the stables. It could be anyone doing that job. But you could go to this new place and show them how it's done.'
Shelby stared out at the sea.
Chad picked at flakes of paint on the picnic table. 'And you're so busy thinking about what's bad about moving that you're not seeing what's good. Because I'm here some of the time. We can still hang out almost as much as we used to. That's good, isn't it?'
Here was the chance she had been looking for, but she didn't know what to say. She had to say something, because she didn't want him to think she wasn't interested.
'Yeah, that will be good.' She blushed furiously.
That wasn't what she meant. She wanted to say that she had never met a boy like him before. She wanted to tell him that she sought out his opinion on things because he seemed to have a way of making sense, and making her feel better. She meant that she loved spending time with him, because he made her laugh, and afterwards she would find herself humming or smiling for no reason except that she felt good. He gave her a fluttery feeling in her stomach that she'd never experienced before. She wanted to say that she was really sorry that his feelings were hurt about the whole date business, but the only reason it happened was because he was such a great guy and so good-looking that she assumed he could never be interested in someone as normal as her.
She said, 'What I mean is that it will be really good.'
He grinned at her. His hand sneaked over the table a little bit and she looked at it in horror as she realised that he was going to hold her hand. She really wanted him to, but at the same time she couldn't do it, because she didn't know what to do after that. What would they talk about while the hand-holding was happening? She was finding it hard enough to string a sentence together when there was no contact.
'My chips are probably ready,' she said, jumping up.
They walked back across the road together. Shelby collected her food and then they stood outside the shop looking in opposite directions. The heat of the chips was burning her arm, but still she stood there.
'I'm glad that you will be here when I'm here,' she said. Their eyes met and she quickly looked away again.
'Me too,' he said.
'See ya!' she said, and jogged up the hill. When she was a few hundred metres away she turned around to see if he was still watching, but he had gone.
22 Sunk
On the way home Shelby's dad asked whether they minded if they stopped in at the Alfa workshop to pick up a car part he had been waiting on. Aunty Jenny, sitting in the front, said she didn't mind.
Shelby was in no hurry to get home. She was wrapped in her own thoughts.
She thought briefly about Lydia as they turned into the industrial estate, but then her mind went back to her own problems. She would definitely message Chad when she got home, if he was online.
The problem wasn't so much moving any more. Now that she had seen the room she could imagine living in it. And she was a bit excited about going to London. The problem was Blue. The stupid camel club wasn't right for him. Would there be time to find another place before they moved? What if Dandelion Flat was the best place? She wished she could find somewhere up there that was set up like Clint's place. That would be perfect – especially when they were away overseas.
The workshop was off by itself at the end of the block. Shelby's father turned the corner and then slowed down. 'What's that in the road?' He leaned over the steering wheel peering through the windscreen. 'Is that a horse?'
There, lying on his side in the middle of the road, was Chance. Lydia was hauling at the reins and crying. Shelby had the window open and could hear her from inside the car. Before the car had even stopped, Shelby jumped out and ran towards her classmate.
'Get up! Get up, you stupid thing!' Lydia screamed. Her breaths were coming in huge gulps. Her face was a deep red and wet with tears. Her hair stuck to her cheeks in tendrils. She pulled at the pony's head, her arms and shoulders white with tension. She grunted with the strain.
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