Top Ten: (Pony Jumpers #10) Page 2

  Ireland bound! Kickin back in the int’l Koru lounge while we wait to fly out #yestofreefood #onlywaytotravel #AKLairport

  I stared at it for a moment in shock, then stood up and looked around. I had no idea where the Koru Lounge was, but there was an information desk off to the side, so I went that way.

  “How do I get to the Koru Lounge?”

  The man behind the counter eyed me suspiciously. “Do you have a Club card?”

  “Well, no…” I started to say, and he shook his head.

  “Then you can’t go in. It’s not for everyone. You have to be a member.”

  “I know that. But my friends are in there.” I held up my phone to show him Lily’s Instagram, and he squinted at it.

  “That’s the international lounge,” he told me. “You’re at the wrong terminal.”

  “Oh. Right.” Duh. I started to turn away, then spun back. “Wait, how do I get there?”

  “You can take a shuttle, or it’s a ten minute walk,” the guy told me, pointing me towards a well-marked path that wound through the car park and along to the international terminal.

  I followed the painted trail, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my thin jacket as the straps of my heavy backpack dug painfully into my shoulders. The wind whipped around me, pulling strands of hair out of my ponytail and chasing them across my face as planes took off and landed around me.

  Once inside the international terminal, I walked down the wide expanse of carpet, surrounded on all sides by people in various states of transit – smartly-dressed people with briefcases and phones to their ears, only in town for the day; intrepid travellers with backpacks stuffed to bursting, hiking boots and sleeping bags dangling off the side; families with luggage trolleys piled high, bickering amongst themselves in languages that I didn’t understand. A small child sat on her hard plastic suitcase with a soft toy clutched in her arms, staring vacantly at the commotion around her, and I watched her enviously, wishing I could just be led around by someone who knew what they were doing, instead of being left to navigate my travel alone.

  Almost there. I spotted a sign for the Koru Lounge, and arrived there with a palpable sense of relief. The woman at the desk smiled at me, and I did my best to respond in kind.

  “Hi. My friends are in there and I need to go join them.”

  “Name?”

  “Katy O’Reilly.”

  She tapped something into the computer, then shook her head. “There’s no registration for O’Reilly.”

  “Oh. Um, their name is Christianson.”

  “First names?”

  “Uh…” I racked my brains, but I couldn’t remember Lily’s father’s name. Or her mother’s, for that matter. I knew it, but it wouldn’t come to me. “Lily?”

  She tapped a few keys, then looked at me again. “We do have a passenger booked under that name. I’ll see if I can get someone to locate her for you.”

  “I know what they look like,” I assured her. “Can’t I just go in?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, love, but I can’t let you do that. Let me just put a call through, and Lily can come out and sign you in. How’s that?”

  So I nodded and stood off to the side with my backpack at my feet as other travellers were swiped through the sliding glass doors into the promised land of the Koru Lounge. As I waited, it gradually occurred to me that maybe the Christiansons were making this awkward on purpose, as punishment for crashing their family trip. Mum said they’d assured her that it would be no problem to have me along, but I was dubious. My mother was a pretty poor liar, and I had a sneaking suspicion that they had only said yes out of obligation, not because they wanted me around. I looked at the floor, fighting the desire to get on the next flight back to Napier and tell Susannah to take my place on the team.

  Then I heard the sliding doors open with a swish, followed by a familiar voice. “Hi Katy.”

  I looked up to see Lily, and I smiled at her as I grabbed my bag off the floor and waited while she signed us in, then led me into the Koru Lounge. It was big and warm and in-your-face trendy. We walked past the long buffet table and over to where her parents were sitting. Her dad was tapping away on a laptop, and her mother was sipping coffee as she flipped through a glossy magazine.

  She looked up at my approach, and produced an insincere smile. “Katy, there you are. How was your flight?”

  I did my best to smile back as I took a seat next to Lily. “Um, fine thanks.”

  Sonya – I’d finally remembered her name – nodded vaguely and took another sip of coffee. “Lily, love, did you order that hot chocolate you wanted?”

  Lily was scrolling through her phone, and shook her head without looking up. “Not yet.”

  “Well, hurry up if you want time to drink it. We’ll be boarding soon. Are you as excited for this trip as our daughter is, Katy?” she asked. “Lily has been talking about it non-stop for weeks, we just can’t shut her up about it!” She laughed in a fake kind of way, then nudged her daughter with her toe. “Lily, get ordering.”

  “I’ve just done it,” she muttered. “I texted it through.”

  “Of course you did. Technology!” she told me with a laugh, as though I was supposed to be impressed that you could text your drink order to a bar only a few metres away instead of just getting up and walking to it. “Oh, did you want a hot chocolate too? Lily, add one onto the order for Katy.”

  “I can’t just add one on,” her daughter replied. “I would have to do a second order.”

  “Well, do that then.”

  I spoke quickly, before I ended up with a hot chocolate that I would have to drink. I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle anything right now, and certainly not anything that sweet. Or milky. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I don’t really like hot chocolate.”

  “Sure?” Sonya asked. “Well, there’s a buffet over there. Go help yourself if you’re hungry.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  She shrugged and went back to flicking through her magazine, but Lily looked at me. “The chocolate chip biscuits are really good,” she said conspiratorially. “I’ve got like, ten of them in my bag. Plane food sucks, so it’s always good to have a backup.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I repeated. I was starting to sound like a broken record, even to myself.

  Lily shrugged and went back to her phone, so I reached into my pocket to check mine too – only to discover that it was no longer there.

  2

  Long Haul

  Don’t panic yet, I told myself. Check your other pockets before you panic. But it wasn’t in my other pocket either, or any of the pockets in my jeans. I grabbed my backpack and hauled it up onto my lap, then started rummaging through it. Lily glanced at me a couple of times, but nobody said anything until I had completed my search, and dropped the bag at my feet with a thud.

  “Everything okay?” Sonya asked.

  “I’ve lost my phone.” My voice came out shaky, and I swallowed hard.

  “Oh dear.” Sonya was trying to sound sympathetic, but her expression clearly told me that found my carelessness exasperating. “Where did you last use it?”

  I thought back. “Um…when I was in the Domestic terminal.” I’d pulled it out of my pocket to show the guy who’d told me I couldn’t get into the Koru Lounge, and I couldn’t remember having it since.

  “Did you leave it there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” I was already trying to work out if I had enough time to run back and get it. How far had it been? How long would it take?

  “You should keep better track of your belongings,” Lily’s father said, the first words he’d spoken to me since I’d got there.

  “Oh, Hugh,” Sonya scolded him. “Lily loses things all the time as well.”

  “I know where it is,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m pretty sure I left it at an information desk. I can go get it.”

  Hugh looked up at me. “You don’t have time. We’ll be boarding shortly.”

  “I’m a fast runner,” I said desperately.

  “Are you sure you need it?” Hugh asked me, and Sonya slapped his arm with the back of her hand.

  “Come on Hugh, she’s a teenage girl. They don’t last five minutes without their phones. Frankly, I’m surprised it took her this long to realise she’d left it behind.” Sonya sighed heavily, then put her magazine down and stood up. “Okay, Katy. Come with me.”

  I followed her through the lounge and over to an information desk, where she explained the situation to a bemused airline assistant. I was about to find out that one of the perks of being rich enough to join the Koru Club was excellent customer service, because the woman was very understanding and immediately rang over to the Domestic terminal to see if she could track my phone down. It took forever, and I stood nervously aside as she was transferred from one desk to another, pausing a few times to ask me questions about where exactly I’d been, and which booth I’d asked at. I just shrugged.

  “It said Information,” I told her.

  “We’ll find it,” she assured me, just as announcement came over the speakers that our flight was about to commence boarding.

  Sonya sighed, then looked at me. “You’ll just have to buy a new phone in Dublin.”

  “I can’t do that,” I told Sonya. “I need my phone.”

  Sonya rolled her eyes and walked away, leaving me with the woman behind the desk.

  “I’ll keep trying,” she promised, giving me a sympathetic smile as she slid a notepad and pen over. “If we track it down before your departure, we’ll bring it to the gate for you. But in case we don’t, you’d better write down your name and home address, and we can pop it on a courier.”

  I just wanted to cry. It wasn’t so much that I was addicted to my
phone – okay, I was kind of addicted – but that it was the only connection I’d have to the people that I was leaving behind. The prospect of pending almost three weeks without being able to contact Mum, Phil or AJ was terrifying, but there was nothing else that I could do.

  A few minutes later, I was trailing the Christiansons out of the lounge and across the airport to our gate. They showed their tickets and were ushered straight through, but when I attempted to follow them, I was stopped.

  “Business class only. You’ll have to wait for main boarding.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at the boarding pass in my hand, then watched as Lily and her family disappeared down the chute and onto the plane without a backward glance.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are about to begin our descent into Dublin…”

  I opened my eyes and blinked in the bright cabin lights. The woman sitting by the window had pushed the shade up, but all I could see was clouds. On paper, 26 hours in transit hadn’t seemed like all that much. It was more than a whole day, sure, but I’d intended to spend most of the time watching movies and sleeping. But I’d never flown so far before, and I hadn’t been prepared for how loud it would be, or how difficult it was to sleep sitting up. The cabin pressure was giving me a headache, my eyes were gritty, and my neck ached from the position I’d put it in when I’d finally fallen asleep. I couldn’t wait to land and get off the plane. Three-and-a-half weeks suddenly seemed like a very short time to wait before having to go through all this again on the way home. My eyes welled up with exhausted, lonely tears as we dropped below the clouds, and I caught my first glimpse of Ireland. The grass was green but the sky was grey, and raindrops spattered the plane’s windows as we made our slow descent.

  It seemed to take forever for us to touch down onto the tarmac, and even longer before the seatbelt sign went off. I stood up immediately, desperate to stretch my legs and get out of this sardine can. The air conditioning had been switched off, and the air was moist and warm with all of the human bodies squished into such a small space. My heartbeat quickened, and my breath came more quickly. Just breathe, I told myself. This was not the time or place to have a full-blown anxiety attack. I knelt on my seat and closed my eyes, breathing deeply as the people around me chatted and laughed. Up the front of the plane, a baby started to cry.

  Finally, there was movement. I shoved my way out into the aisle as people began shuffling towards the exit, almost forgetting my backpack in the overhead locker and having to go back for it. It took an interminably long time to get down the aisle, but finally I was in the terminal, my feet on solid ground at last. The Christiansons were waiting for me this time, looking relaxed and well-groomed as usual, and I staggered towards them with my headache bashing against my skull.

  I wanted to be excited, to bask in the thrill of having arrived at a foreign destination, but all I could think about was getting to the hotel, having a shower, taking some painkillers and falling into a deep, much-needed sleep.

  We piled into a taxi, which wove its way through the stone buildings of Dublin before pulling up outside a vast hotel. When Mum and I went on holiday, we stayed in the cheapest places available, but the Christiansons preferred to travel in style. They were rich, and they obviously enjoyed flaunting it. Our hotel door was opened for us by a man in a top hat, and porters rushed forward to take our bags. My suitcase looked cheap and tacky in their gloved hands, especially when placed next to the Christiansons’ matching Louis Vuitton luggage in the foyer.

  There were sparkling chandeliers and marble pillars, and a sweeping staircase which led up to a five-star restaurant. The staff fawned over us before escorting us up to our suite, which was absolutely insane. It was bigger than my entire house, with its own lounge and bar kitchen, and two huge bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. I stood in the middle of the room that I was sharing with Lily and stared around me at the impossible grandeur.

  I could hear Sonya in the lounge, gushing over the décor, while Hugh said things like “it should be nice, it cost enough” and “that’s what you’d expect, for what we’re paying”.

  While Lily was distracted logging her phone into the hotel wi-fi, I went to take a shower. The bathroom was sparkling clean, and the water pressure was so strong it felt like needles stabbing into my skin. I washed my hair and scrubbed myself down twice, then dried off and wrapped my hair in another thick white towel before going back out into our shared room.

  “Finally,” Lily said, sitting up and picking up her things before heading into the bathroom. “You took forever!”

  While she was gone, I pulled the curtains and shut the door into the lounge, then lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I’d never appreciated just how good it felt to lie flat on my back, and I stretched all of my muscles in turn, then relaxed my whole body into the springy mattress. I just needed a short nap, just a brief pause to let my headache abate and my stomach settle. The traffic roared past outside, but I quickly became oblivious to it as I sank down into a deep slumber.

  When I woke up, the room was empty. I rubbed my eyes, then sat up, my head foggy and throat thick and sore. At least my headache had subsided, but my stomach had realised how much it had been deprived of food since leaving New Zealand, and was painfully hungry. I ran my fingers through my damp hair, trying to look presentable, then opened the door into the lounge, ready to apologise for having overslept. I’d expected to find Lily and her parents in there, sitting on the couch or watching TV, but they weren’t there. I walked across and peered through the half-open door into the master bedroom, but it was empty as well.

  They had gone out, and left me here alone. I sat down on the couch and stared out of the window at the rooftops of Dublin. I’d assumed that riding in the Nations Cup was going to be the most challenging factor in this trip, but at that moment, I would’ve given anything to have been walking through a stable or sitting in a saddle, instead of alone in a strange hotel room, feeling stranded, like a fish miles from the nearest water…

  Suck it up, Katy, I told myself firmly. You’re being pathetic. My stomach rumbled, and I looked around the hotel room, my eyes alighting on a large basket of snack food that the hotel had left out for us. They really do think of everything around here, I thought with relief, and I’d consumed a bag of potato chips, half a packet of pistachio nuts and a can of Coke before the Christiansons returned.

  “Katy, you’re awake,” Sonya declared, as though it wasn’t obvious by the fact that I was sitting there, staring at her. “Did you have a nice sleep?” As though I was five years old and had just woken from my afternoon nap.

  I forced myself to remain civil. “Fine, thanks.”

  “I see you got hungry,” she said, eying my empty food wrappers.

  “Yeah, a bit.” I wondered if I should have asked first, but it wasn’t as though there wasn’t heaps left. “Lily was right. The food on the plane was horrible.”

  “Oh really? Ours was quite nice, I thought,” Sonya said as Hugh walked up behind her and glared at me.

  “Raiding the mini-bar already, are we?” he asked. “I’ll put it on your tab.” I smiled at him, thinking it was a joke, but his expression didn’t change.

  “We’ve made a dinner reservation at the hotel restaurant for seven,” Sonya told me. “So you’d better get changed.”

  I looked down at the jeans and sweatshirt I was wearing. “Changed?”

  “It’s a nice restaurant, Katy,” she said, as though explaining something obvious to a toddler. “There’s a dress code.”

  Fortunately, I’d packed a dress, just in case I’d be required us to go to any fancy shindigs, although I hadn’t expected to need it so soon. I went back to my room to change, then waited while Lily hogged the bathroom, applying a ridiculous amount of makeup for a twelve-year-old girl and leaving me barely time to slap some mascara and lip gloss on before Sonya summoned us into the lounge.

  Before I’d left, I’d thought that my simple blue dress was perfect for the trip – classy enough for a fancy occasion, but understated enough for a more casual one. Yet when I walked out into the lounge and saw what everyone else was wearing, I felt incredibly underdressed.