Comet and the Champion's Cup (6 page)

“Ten,” said Trisha.

“Tina and Trisha attend their local riding school each week. Is that right?” Tina and Trisha nodded vigorously. “You girls will be on Paris and Nicole,” Hester told them. “Matching hair and matching horses!” Tina and Trisha looked pleased with this and instantly began discussing between themselves which one would have Paris and which one would get Nicole.

The next two girls were much younger, perhaps around eight. “Lucy and Sophie have only had a few riding lessons. They can do the basics like rising to trot,”
Hester explained to Issie, Stella and Kate. Then she turned to the two girls. “We've put you on Molly and Pippen. Lucy, you've got Pippen; he's the little grey in the stable here.”

“He's beautiful!” Lucy said breathlessly. Sophie was just as impressed with Molly.

“These will be your ponies for the holidays. You'll be totally responsible for them and will feed, groom and care for them as well as riding them, OK?”

Lucy and Sophie were instantly up from the hay bales and glued to their ponies' sides. Sophie even produced a carrot that she had been carrying in her pocket for the whole trip to the farm in anticipation of this moment. She held out her palm to feed it to the eager Molly.

Hester moved on to a girl with white blonde hair and a boy standing next to her who had the same hair and was clearly her brother. “Kitty and George…” Hester continued, “who are both horse-mad according to their mum.”

“I'm not horse-mad,” George said. “Kitty is. Mum makes me have lessons and she made me come on this stupid holiday because she couldn't be bothered booking two school holiday programmes. I'd rather be riding a BMX.”

Hester looked slightly taken aback at this. “Well, George, how about if you ride Diablo?” she said. “He's the perfect colour for a cowboy like you and he knows all the best tricks. He can count to ten with his hoof, you know.” George looked quite impressed by this. Kitty, on the other hand, was standing there quietly, not daring to say a word. It was almost as if she couldn't believe her luck being here at all. Unlike her brother, she obviously adored horses. She looked so desperate to ride a horse, any horse, that you could tell it wouldn't matter which.

Kitty,” Hester said, “I think we'll put you on Timmy” Hester opened the top door of a loose box to her right and there stood a chubby little chestnut pony with a star on his forehead and three white socks. He was quite clearly one of the Blackthorn Ponies, stocky with a shaggy mane and tail.

“I love chestnuts!” Kitty said. “They are my absolute favourite colour.”

“Well, that's worked out perfectly then,” said Hester.

She continued along the queue to the second boy who also looked about eight years old. He had a thick mop of dark brown hair and chubby cheeks. Hester looked at him suspiciously as if he might start on about BMX bikes too if she gave him the chance. “You'll be on Glennie,
Arthur.” Hester gestured to the cattle pens just outside the back door where a dapple-grey Blackthorn Pony had his head over the fence and was watching them intently.

They had now reached the last child in the row, a sullen-looking girl with dark hair cut into a blunt-fringed bob. “And last but not least we have Kelly-Anne,” Hester said. “Kelly-Anne will be on Julian.”

Kelly-Anne looked at Julian as if he were something she'd had to scrape off the bottom of her riding boot. Julian, who was a rather ill-tempered little brown butterball of a pony, stared straight back at her with exactly the same expression.

“He looks useless!” Kelly-Anne said. “I don't want him. I want that one!” She pointed across the stable at Comet who was minding his own business for once and standing peacefully with his head over the loose-box door.

“Kelly-Anne, I'm sorry, but at this school you ride the horse you're given,” Hester said quite patiently. “Comet is not a beginner's pony.”

“I'm not a beginner. I'm a really good rider, so I want the best horse,” Kelly-Anne piped up.

“Have you been riding long, dear?” Hester asked. “Do you go to pony club or do you have a local riding school?”

“No,” Kelly-Anne said dismissively. “I don't like pony club, it's dumb. Besides, I can already ride, I don't need lessons. I have ridden loads and loads of times and I can do jumping and cantering and everything!”

“Well,” Hester said, her patient tone slipping a little, “even the best riders have lessons. I'm sure you'll learn a lot from listening to Issie and Stella and Kate. When it comes to horses we can always learn more, can't we?”

Kelly-Anne didn't look at all convinced by this. “I knew this camp would be useless,” she muttered as she stomped back to the horse truck to grab her bag.

Stella watched her go and then leant over and whispered to Issie and Kate, “There's always a Natasha Tucker in every group, isn't there?” The three girls exploded in a fit of giggles and had to rather unprofessionally hide in the tack room and pull themselves together while Hester led the young riders through the stables to Aidan's cottage to show them where they would be sleeping.

There was one room for the girls and the other bedroom was for George and Arthur. The girls had claimed that the sleeping arrangements were unfair as there were six of them in one room and only George and Arthur in the other. But then again, none of the girls
actually wanted to move in and share George and Arthur's room. “Boy germs!” Lucy had shrieked, so that was the end of that complaint. That left the lumpy sofa in the living room. “For the dorm room monitor,” Hester explained. “The girls are going to take turns staying out here at the cottage to keep an eye on you all.”

This was news to Issie, Stella and Kate. It also didn't go down very well with the Blackthorn riders. “We don't need babysitting, you know,” George said, clearly insulted by the idea.

That afternoon was pronounced “free time”. Issie and Aidan gave the riders a tour of the farm, introducing them to Hester's performing animals. The younger riders stayed back to feed the goats, the rabbits and the chickens while the others went with Aidan to find racquets for the dilapidated old tennis court and fishing lines for catching eels in the duck pond by the cottage.

After dinner that night–big platters of spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese cooked by Kate and Stella–it was time to relax before the first full day of riding tomorrow.

“You can watch TV until 9.30 then it's lights out,” said Hester sternly. “We have early nights at the farm because we need to get up early too. You must all be back here dressed and ready for breakfast by 7 a.m.”

There was a groan from George at this and Kelly-Anne looked sulky as usual, but the others seemed cheery enough as they stacked their plates and headed back down the hill for their first night in the cottage dormitory.

Issie was just about to get changed for bed herself when Aunt Hester knocked on the door of her room.

“Would you mind taking the first shift down at the dorm tonight, Issie?” she said. “I know the cottage is perfectly safe, but I think it's a good idea to have you there to make sure our guests are all right. Just for the first night at least. I know I'm a bit of a worry wart…”

“Sure, Aunty Hess,” Issie grinned. “I'll look after them.”

Issie stepped out on to the back verandah with her sleeping bag rolled up under her arm. She pulled on her boots and switched on her torch. It was funny how much darker the night was when you were in the countryside, she thought. No city lights, just the moonlight and the stars and the white beam of her torchlight as she walked across the lawn towards the cottage.

The lights were already out in the cottage. But as Issie
approached, she could see the flicker of a flame, possibly a candle, burning in the kitchen.

That's weird
, she thought. Hester would never leave a candle on at night–it was too dangerous. What were those kids up to? As she came up to the front door of the cottage Issie was about to turn the handle, but something made her hesitate. Instead, she crept to the left of the door where a small, low window meant that she could see into the living room inside. It was hard for her eyes to adjust and Issie had to press her nose up against the glass to see in.

At first, she could hardly believe what she was seeing. Sitting there in the middle of the room, cross-legged in a circle around the candle flame, were the eight young riders. Their heads were shrouded in blankets so that they looked a bit like medieval monks. One by one, as if taking part in a mystical ceremony, they were picking up the candle and passing it to each other. Finally, the candle had travelled all the way around the circle until it came into the hands of George, who put it back down on the floor. George gave a wicked smile and looked at the two youngest children, Lucy and Sophie. The girls looked completely terrified. Issie couldn't hear what he was saying, but as George spoke Sophie looked like she might cry.

George looked at her with a devilish grin and then he blew out the candle! The cottage was now pitch-black! Issie couldn't stand it any longer. She had seen enough. She burst through the door and there were shrieks and screams from the startled kids inside as she switched on the light.

“What are you doing?” George squeaked.

“I came to check on you,” Issie said, trembling. “And it's just as well!” She looked around the room at the frightened faces. “Now, who's going to tell me…what's going on?”

Issie looked around the room at the faces of the terrified young riders. “Why are you all sitting here in the dark? What are you doing?”

They sat there mutely. No one was willing to answer. Issie looked at George, who had blown out the candle and was still holding on to it, looking the guiltiest of all of them.

“George?” Issie said. “Do you want to tell me what's going on here?”

“It was Arthur's idea!” George blurted out. “He started it!”

“Did not!” Arthur snapped back.

“Started what?” demanded Issie.

George hesitated. “We've been telling ghost stories,”
he said. “It was a competition to see who could tell the scariest one.”

“Trisha is winning so far!” added Kitty. “She told that one about the hand with the hook, you know, in the forest, when they hear the tapping on the roof of the car? And then they find the hook stuck in the door?”

“That story was so lame!” Kelly-Anne groaned. “I never wanted to do stupid ghost stories in the first place. They're for babies.”

“You're just in a sulk cos no one was scared of your story!” George shot back. Lucy and Sophie, the youngest ones in the group, were silent during all of this, huddled together in the corner under a blanket.

“Are you girls OK?” Issie asked. “Is this too scary for you?”

“No way!” Sophie grinned. “I love ghost stories!”

“We told the one about the bloody fingers!” beamed Lucy.

“Can you tell us one, Issie?” Tina asked.

“Go on!” Trisha begged.

“No,” Issie said firmly. “It's lights out time. It's too late to be up telling ghost stories.”

“But it's only ten o'clock; it's not even late!” Sophie said.

“Just one story and then we'll go to bed,” added Tina. There was a murmur of agreement from the circle.

Issie sighed. “OK then. But after I tell you a story, everyone has to go to bed and straight to sleep, OK?”

Lucy and Sophie made a space in the circle between them and Issie nudged her way into it.

“Wait!” Arthur said, leaping up to grab the matches so that he could relight the candle. Then he switched off the light and the cottage was once again in darkness apart from a flickering flame.

Issie pulled a spare blanket up over her head like a hood, took the candle from Arthur and sat silently for a moment, the soft glow of the flame illuminating her face. “You won't have heard this ghost story before,” she said in a low voice, “because what I'm about to tell you isn't a story at all. It is absolutely real. And it happened right here at Blackthorn Farm.” She paused. “Are you sure you are brave enough to hear it?”

“Yes!” George and Arthur were both desperate for Issie to begin.

“Have you ever heard of the Grimalkin?” Issie asked. They all shook their heads. “The Grimalkin was a giant black cat that roamed the hills of Gisborne,” Issie continued. “When I first heard the stories about him,
they said he had escaped from the circus or the zoo and was living in the hills, wild and dangerous. Of course, no one really believed in him. They didn't think he was real. But I knew he was real because I saw him.”

“Did you really?” Kitty said. “How big was he?”

“Big enough to eat a horse,” said Issie. “The first time I saw him was just outside this cottage,” she continued, “walking along the railings of the cattle pens. I could see him in the moonlight; he was jet black with this tail that was at least two metres long…”

“You're making this up to scare us!” Kelly-Anne objected.

Issie looked at her with a steely gaze. “I am not. You can ask Aunty Hess when you see her in the morning if you like.”

“Shut up, Kelly-Anne!” George snapped. “The rest of us want to hear about the Grimalkin.”

Issie had the sense to spare them the really gory details of that awful night when she and Aidan had found Meadow's body. The big black cat had killed the calf by slashing its throat with its powerful claws. Issie still had nightmares about poor Meadow, lying there with her rust and white coat soaked with blood. There was no need to give Sophie and Lucy nightmares too.

Huddled under their blankets, the Blackthorn Riders hung on Issie's every word. There was an audible groan of dismay when she finally finished her story and switched the lights back on.

“Was that all really true?” Tina asked. Issie nodded.