Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel (16 page)

‘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!’

‘I have!’ I scoff, but I’m
not sure who I’m fooling. ‘I’ve done it loads of times.’

Except that I haven’t, and I am pretty
sure it was obvious. As for riding double with a boy, I have never done that, never even
dreamt of it. I want to be angry, want to lash out and yell at Lawrie for treating me
like a child, but I don’t feel like a child right now. I am flushed and breathless
and I like the feeling of a boy’s arms wrapped round me, holding me close.

‘She coped great,’ Lawrie is
saying. ‘A flighty horse would have put her ears back and tried to throw us off,
but Caramel took it all in her stride.’

‘We weren’t too heavy for
her?’ I ask.

‘Doubt it. Neither of us weighs much –
you’re just a titch, and Exmoors were used as pit ponies once, y’know. She
wouldn’t have galloped like that if she’d been unhappy.’

Back at the cottage gate, we dismount
awkwardly, suddenly shy. I lead Caramel forward and Lawrie calls Spirit over; she comes
to him quietly, curious yet calm, as if she’s known him forever. I watch him take
her halter and realize that whatever his connection with animals, it goes way beyond
being gentle and patient. He has something special, something magical.

Back inside the walled garden we unsaddle
Caramel and set her loose, then sit for a moment in the crisp afternoon sunshine sharing
apples and chocolate bars; as far as my theories on training go, this is kind of like
offering grain to the ponies. Lawrie eats and smiles and pushes a tangle of hair out of
his eyes, but I cannot tell any more who is taming who.

Everything is the same as it was before, the
garden cold and sunny and still, the scent of late jasmine drifting on the air, the cry
of a buzzard circling overhead; but somehow, for me, everything is
different.

I am baffled; I don’t know what to make
of Lawrie Marshall at all. One minute he is sour and moody, a scowling boy with an
attitude problem the size of Exmoor; the next he is a hero, standing up for a bullied
kid, taming two nervous, ill-treated horses, vaulting up into the saddle behind me to
hold me tight as we gallop across the moors.

Sarah, Jayde and Amy would have a field day
if they knew that last bit, but I am not about to tell them. I would never hear the last
of it.

I pitch up at Sarah’s house at six
with a birthday card and prezzie, a fluffy tiger toy which is very cute and also very
cool because when you buy it £2 gets donated to a tiger charity. The others are already
there, eating pizza slices as they get ready for the firework display. Sarah
seems to like my prezzie, but I can’t help noticing that once
she’s thanked me she leaves it in a corner and goes back to experimenting with the
glittery nail polishes and shimmery eye colours Jayde and Amy have given her.

It is very strange; Sarah never used to be a
glittery kind of girl. She used to say that make-up was silly and pointless, but now she
is giggling and posing in front of a mirror and trying on different combinations of
clothes to wear to the firework display. I do not like the way growing up seems to be
brainwashing my friends, wiping away their interests and turning them all into giggling
boy-mad fashionistas.

‘So, are we going to make some
placards to take to the firework display?’ I ask, trying to drag my friends away
from the make-up. ‘I thought we could campaign to end the sale of fireworks except
for use in big displays … kids like that awful Darren are fiddling about with
rockets and screamers for weeks in the run-up to November the fifth. Most pets get
really freaked out by it all!’

Sarah, Amy and Jayde exchange glances.

‘Is there any point?’ Amy asks.
‘It’s a public firework display anyway. It’s the shops that sell
fireworks to the
public you should be talking to, Coco. Or you could
just leave it, try enjoying yourself instead. Why does everything have to be some kind
of campaign?’

‘It’s Sarah’s
birthday,’ Jayde reminds me. ‘Let’s just have fun!’

I sigh. There is only so long you can go on
trying to change the world when nobody else is interested. It is a big task for just one
person, and my friends seem to have switched allegiance lately. They still care about
animals, I know – they just find other things much more pressing.

I bite into a slice of pizza and try not to
wish I’d stayed up at the ruined cottage with Lawrie.

‘Aren’t you going to change,
Coco?’ Amy wants to know. ‘I brought a couple of different skirts along if
you want to borrow something, and Sarah’s got a sparkly top that would really suit
you.’

‘I’m not wearing a skirt to a
firework display,’ I grumble. ‘It’s freezing! I’ve wrapped up
warm specially, and besides, these are my best jeans!’

‘You are such a tomboy,’ Jayde
says disapprovingly. ‘Will you let me do your make-up? You could look
so
much more grown-up if you just used the teeniest bit of eyeliner and
shadow …’

‘I don’t want to look
grown-up,’ I huff. ‘I like looking like
me
!’

After an hour of fussing about in
Sarah’s bedroom, we escape out into the darkness, making our way down to the
seafront where the firework display will be held. I have managed to escape unscathed
apart from a slick of lipgloss and a little glitter across my cheekbones, but even so I
am glad it is dark; I feel awkward, over-decorated, like one of those OTT houses all
decked out in cheesy Christmas decorations that fascinate and appal at the same
time.

The fireworks begin as we make our way
across the beach, feet sinking into the gritty sand. We buy hot soup and huddle together
as plume after plume of rainbow colour unfurls across the dark sky, squealing and
laughing as the fireworks shoot and soar and shatter into tiny sparks and shards.

Fireworks are exciting, exhilarating; they
wake you up, make your heart thump, shock and scare you with their drama, their chaos,
their spectacle. There is a point where
you have to give in, stop
wishing you had a placard to wave and start letting yourself feel the celebration.

‘Fun?’ Sarah asks, linking my
arm with hers as the explosive finale dies away. ‘I know you don’t really
approve, but …’