Top Ten: (Pony Jumpers #10) Read online

  Pony Jumpers

  #10

  TOP TEN

  Kate Lattey

  1st Edition

  Copyright 2018 © by Kate Lattey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  * * *

  “There’s a difference between arrogance and confidence.

  If you can’t walk into that ring with your head held high,

  believing you have what it takes, no one else will

  – and neither will your horse.”

  – Reed Kessler

  * * *

  1

  Departure

  The morning dew was heavy on the grass outside my bedroom window, and the clear sky above promised a sunny day to come. Not that I would be here to see it. I leaned my forehead against the window pane and stared out at the unkempt garden, overgrown with weeds because Mum and I didn’t waste our time on pointless things like gardening. Beyond the scraggly shrubs lay our neatly fenced paddocks, and I counted off the ponies grazing contentedly in them. Lucas and Puppet happily coexisting in one paddock, with Molly in the smaller field next to them. Squib and Robin in the narrow ‘fatty’ paddock without much grass, because they lived off the smell of it. And my horse Tori, just visible from here if I turned my head and leaned into the cold glass, impossibly beautiful, impossible to ride.

  Tori lifted her head and pricked her ears, staring at something away in the distance. I opened the window and leaned out, ignoring the chilly wind that went straight through the thin t-shirt I was wearing, and as Tori snorted and spun on her hocks, I heard the same thing she did. The growl of a dirt bike, coming our way.

  Like my horse, the sound jolted me into action. I pulled the window shut and grabbed a hoodie off the floor, tugging it on before pulling on a pair of jeans and buttoning the fly. The dirt bike got louder and louder, then cut out abruptly, and I hurried down the hall in bare feet and threw the back door open to see Phil step off the bike and pull his helmet off, revealing his thick mop of dark hair.

  “Hey.”

  He turned towards me and smiled, that slow smile that I especially liked. “Hey yourself.”

  I stopped on the bottom step of the front verandah, curling my toes over the wooden edge, unwilling to venture barefoot onto the stones. “You’re up early.”

  He shrugged. “You said you were leaving at half six, and I wanted to see you before you were gone.” His boots crunched across the loose gravel as he made his way towards me.

  “That’s funny, because I could’ve sworn we said goodbye last night.”

  Phil shrugged sheepishly and stopped in front of me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him, and he pulled me close, holding me tight against his warm body.

  “I don’t want to go,” I whispered into his ear, knowing I could say that to him. Knowing he’d understand. That he wouldn’t tell me that I was crazy, that going to Ireland to ride for my country was the opportunity of a lifetime, that I was sure to love it once I got there, and all the other things everyone else kept saying. Phil knew how I really felt – that deep down, I was utterly terrified.

  “I know. I don’t want you to go either.”

  A flicker of light made me turn my head, and I saw Mum walk into the kitchen and pull a loaf of bread out of the pantry. My stomach clenched at the thought of breakfast this early in the morning, even knowing that a long day of travel lay ahead.

  Phil lifted his head and when I looked back at him, he kissed me. Like everything he did, it was intense, no-holds-barred, his hands in my tousled hair, lean body pressed against mine. His lips were soft and he tasted of spearmint, and closed my eyes and kissed him back, trying not to be distracted by the prospect of subjecting him to my own terrible morning breath.

  I heard the window swing open behind us, then Mum’s voice. “Katy, breakfast.”

  I broke off the kiss, and looked up into Phil’s dark eyes. “You hungry?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I could eat.”

  I don’t think Mum was super happy to have Phil eating with us, although I’m not sure whether it was because she was running low on eggs or because we sat at the table holding hands while we ate. I knew that annoyed her, even though she liked Phil okay. I didn’t care. I wanted to hold tight to everything I had before I had to leave it behind. My little dog Critter was curled up in my lap, unimpressed by the early start, and his warm body and Phil’s warm hand comforted me in a way that no reassuring words out of Mum’s mouth ever could.

  Mum sat down opposite us and started cutting into her bacon. “Nervous?” she asked me.

  Couldn’t she tell that by looking at my face? “What do you think?”

  Phil squeezed my hand, and I responded in kind as Critter sat up and licked my chin.

  “Don’t let him do that at the table,” Mum complained.

  “He can do what he likes,” I replied, because my nerves were making me irritable and I didn’t feel like being read a lecture when I felt this edgy. “He loves me, don’t you Crit?”

  I put down my fork and wrapped my arm around the little dog, clutching him to my chest. He squirmed uncomfortably, but I selfishly held him for a few seconds longer before letting him go. Critter leapt onto the floor and stalked off to his basket indignantly, his short tail sticking up in the air.

  “I’ll miss you too,” I told his rear end.

  “Eat up,” Mum nagged, and I reluctantly picked up my fork as Phil’s thumb methodically stroked the back of my hand. I didn’t know what I’d be doing right now if he wasn’t there to keep me calm. Having a full-blown panic attack, most likely.

  Mum was still watching me like a hawk, so I filled my mouth with scrambled eggs, forcing myself to chew and swallow the food. My stomach argued, insisting that there was too much uncertainty ahead to bother with such unnecessary things as eating, but in the face of my mother’s glare, I overrode my instincts and ate half of what was on my plate, before lowering my fork definitively. Mum accepted that, because she knew me well enough to pick her battles, and she stood up and started clearing the plates.

  “It’s five past,” she announced, as though nobody else in the room could see the clock on the wall. “Are you all packed?”

  “Almost.”

  “Well, hurry up then. We need to leave in ten minutes.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to steady my anxiety. Pretend you’re going to a show, I counselled myself. Just another early morning on the way to a competition, like you’ve done hundreds of times. Only this time we would be in the car, not the truck, with no reassuring bulk of warm ponies behind us. I’d be going alone, without my team.

  “Can Phil come to the airport with us?” I asked her.

  Mum frowned, but Phil spoke before she did.

  “Can’t,” he said ruefully. “I’ve got work.” He’d recently started working at a local supermarket, stocking shelves. He hated it, but it was a way to both get out of his house and earn some money, so he put up with the inconvenient hours and working conditions.

  “Call in sick?” I suggested, but he shook his head.

  “I wish.” He stood up as Mum cleared his plate away. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “Any time,” she said, probably not meaning it.

  “I’ll walk you out,” I told him.

  “Seven minutes,” Mum warned me.

  I ignored her, following Phil outside and giving
him a long hug and another lingering kiss before he got back onto his dirt bike and rode it back home. I watched him go, the cloud of dust he’d kicked up making my throat dry. Mum flung the kitchen window open and yelled at me again.

  “Katy! Would you get a move on?”

  There wasn’t much traffic on the road at that time of the morning. I stared out of the window while Mum ran over my itinerary again, out loud, in case I’d somehow forgotten it in the last half hour.

  “You have three hours at Auckland airport before your international flight leaves,” she said. “Your luggage is being sent straight through, and you’ve got your boarding pass, so you just have to find the Christiansons and they’ll take care of you.”

  “So you keep saying,” I muttered.

  With Mum utterly unable to get three-plus weeks of leave from work, and Dad having some apparently crucial business trip in Singapore to attend, my supervision had been lumped onto my teammate Lily and her parents. I’d assumed, naively as it turned out, that when you went on a team trip, the entire team would all meet at the airport and fly over together. But the two senior riders who’d been selected, Ellie Warren and Imogen Davis-Blake, had found working pupil positions at show jumping yards in Europe back in March, so they were already in the northern hemisphere. The two intermediate riders, Anna Harcourt and Charlotte Yeats, had flown over a few days ago with their mothers to spend a week with Charlotte’s relatives in Hampshire, leaving just me and Lily to bring up the rear. Charlotte’s mother Maureen was our team chef d’equipe, and although Dennis Foxhall-James had been announced as our team coach, he’d pulled out at the last minute over a pay dispute, which had caused an enormous kerfuffle that I had done my best to stay out of. In the end, they’d decided that Maureen would coach us as well as managing the team, which sounded to me like a recipe for disaster, but nobody had asked me.

  “You’ll have a six hour layover in Los Angeles, then fly on to Dublin,” Mum continued, breaking into my thoughts.

  “I know,” I reminded her. “I have read the itinerary, you know.”

  To shut her up and to distract myself, I took the paperwork out of its folder and smoothed it out on my lap, staring down at the printed itinerary. Dennis had been arranging our first week of training and competition, but when he walked, rather than arrange anything else, Maureen had just shortened the tour by a week. After we’d bought non-transferable flights, of course. That had left me with ten unallocated days between my arrival in the country and the day that we would all finally come together as a team. Mum’s utter panic had resulted in me being handed off to the Christiansons to look after, a fate I was sure that none of us wanted, but were all stuck with.

  Lily was my teammate in the Junior division for the Youth Nations Cup, and quite what the selectors had been thinking when they’d picked her ahead of my friend Susannah Andrews, I couldn’t tell you. Lily was twelve years old, had only just started jumping at the top level a year ago, and although she had a decent seat, was as green as grass. Although she had very good ponies which she had steered competently enough to win some big classes at home, if she drew any kind of pony in Ireland that required actual riding, we were stuffed. Susannah had been named as a non-travelling reserve, so I’d been keeping my fingers crossed that Lily would fall off or fall ill before the trip, meaning Susannah could come instead, but to no avail.

  I looked down at the itinerary again, trying to focus on the part of the trip that actually had been organised. A training camp at a big venue in Co. Wexford with a top Irish trainer, followed by a week of sightseeing before the big event – the Youth Nations Cup. My stomach clenched apprehensively.

  “You’ll have a wonderful time, Katy,” Mum said, as if she could read my mind. “I’m so jealous. And even if the first week or so is a bit tough to get through, it’ll be worth it once you’re on a horse, wearing the silver fern on your jacket.” She sighed heavily, returning her eyes to the road. “God, I wish I was coming with you.”

  Don’t say that. Not out loud. I blinked hard and looked out of my side of the car, fighting back tears. I couldn’t reply, or I’d start crying and begging her not to make me do this alone. Both of us had dreamed of this for years, the chance to ride for New Zealand, to wear that silver fern and see our flag waving from the rafters of a big indoor stadium. And maybe, just maybe, standing on a podium and hearing the national anthem being played in victory. I’d laid in bed and imagined it all, many times – but never in my wildest dreams had I imagined doing any of it without my mother by my side.

  My phone buzzed, and I looked down as the screen lit up with a message from Susannah.

  Good luck go hard and have an amazing time! Wish I was coming with you :(

  I wish that toooooo, I typed back. Which was crazy, really, because if you’d told me a year ago that I’d have to spend three weeks with Susannah Andrews, I would have told you that I’d rather pull my fingernails out with pliers. But over the past few months we’d gone from despising each other to actually becoming friends.

  I’d assumed that Susannah was texting me from her bed, which is where I’d be at this time of any normal morning, but she sent back a selfie of her and Forbes, the warmblood pony she’d bought from me a few months ago. He was standing in his stable with his ears pricked, his coat gleaming, and she had her arm over his neck as she smiled brilliantly at the camera, all blonde hair and blue eyes and straight white teeth, looking polished and pretty despite the early hour. Only Susannah could make mucking out look glamourous. I still had no idea how she did it.

  I sent her back a row of four-leaf clover emojis, because I couldn’t think of any other response. The car jolted over a speed hump, and I looked up to see that we were driving into the Napier airport already. Sick dread lay over me like a shroud, but I did my best to hide it. Although my flight wasn’t for ages, Mum hurried me into the building and checked the departure board anxiously while I dragged my suitcase behind me.

  I followed her to the check-in area, smiled weakly at the cheerful woman behind the counter, and lugged my suitcase onto the conveyor belt as instructed. It was heavy and cumbersome, and the whole effort was made more awkward by having to surreptitiously shoulder my mother’s attempts to help me out of the way.

  “I can do it,” I muttered, wondering how she thought I was going to get along for three-and-a-half weeks without her if she didn’t even trust me to be able to lift my own suitcase thirty centimetres off the ground.

  Mum said nothing, just threw her hands up and stepped backwards as the woman stuck a label on the handle, then hit a button that sent my suitcase trundling off onto the bigger conveyor and on down the line into oblivion, only to be seen again when we reached Irish soil. It suddenly seemed terrifyingly far away, and I stepped back shakily, my passport clutched tightly in my hand.

  “Where do I go now?”

  “Check your boarding pass,” Mum suggested, then read it over my shoulder. “Gate two. This way.”

  As we walked in that direction, I bumped my arm against my mother’s in silent affirmation that she was still there, by my side – at least for now. I was starting to realise how terrified I was to leave her behind, and how much I was going to miss her while I was gone. We drove each other crazy on a daily basis, and argued all the time, but she was my mother. For years, it had just been the two of us, and we’d never been apart for this long. Ever. A lump rose in my throat, but I gritted my teeth and stared determinedly ahead.

  Don’t be a wimp. You’re going on an adventure, not to your execution.

  “Are you hungry?” Mum asked, oblivious to my internal anguish. “We’ve got a bit of time. Do you want something to eat before you go?” I shook my head, unable to stomach the thought of food, but she pressed me. “Are you sure?”

  Her nagging irritated me, and I grasped the excuse to snap at her, because otherwise I was in danger of bursting into tears and begging her to just drop everything and come with me.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I snapped. “T
hey do serve food on planes, you know.”

  Mum responded to my narkiness the same way she always did – by averting her eyes and letting out a small sigh, staring into the distance towards a time and place when I would no longer be a horrible teenager and would be bearable to be around. But when it came time to board, I lost the struggle to hold back my tears. It didn’t help that Mum cried too as she hugged me goodbye, and I sobbed into her t-shirt as she stroked my hair and told me that I’d be fine once I was on my way, and this was the adventure of a lifetime, and she loved me no matter what. I pulled myself away from her at last, wiping my eyes and leaving a damp patch on her shoulder as I grabbed my hand luggage and turned around, knowing I couldn’t turn back because I’d just start bawling again. And so I walked on, through the sliding doors and out onto the warm tarmac, reminding myself with every step that I would only be gone for three-and-a-half weeks. Twenty-five days. That was all. That was nothing, right?

  The flight to Auckland was short and smooth, and the plane landed a couple of minutes early. I grabbed my backpack and waited impatiently to get off the plane, feeling more and more hemmed in and claustrophobic the longer I had to wait. The thought of all the flying that still lay ahead of me was giving me nervous palpitations. How did people do this every day?

  Eventually I managed to get out into the main terminal of Auckland airport, where I was supposed to meet the Christiansons. It was a lot bigger than Napier, but although I wandered around a little bit, I couldn’t see any sign of them. A flight from Wellington was landing in ten minutes’ time, so I went to that arrivals gate and st down with my bag at my feet, staring at the clock on the wall and waiting.

  Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. The flight arrived, and I stood up, keeping my eyes peeled, but they weren’t there. I checked the arrivals board again and discovered that flights from Wellington came in every hour or so, but I didn’t know which one they were on. I was scrolling through Instagram in an attempt to distract myself from complete panic when I saw a selfie that Lily had posted nearly an hour earlier, grinning in front of a plate of fruit salad.