Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel (18 page)

‘You coming then?’ Lawrie asks a
while later. ‘It’s getting late; they’ll be sending out a search party
for you.’

‘Some people will do anything to get
out of doing an English essay,’ I quip, packing up my rucksack. ‘Moonlit
gardening, huh?’

‘Don’t recommend it,’ he
says. ‘I almost pruned Caramel in the dark there. She could have ended up with a
topiary tail …’

We walk down across the moors in silence,
but when we reach the hazel copse Lawrie turns to me, his face shadowed beneath the bare
tree branches.

‘I don’t understand you,’
he says. ‘I don’t understand why you stick around. You keep coming back,
keep asking awkward questions and making me say stuff I really don’t
want to talk about. You drive me nuts and I think I drive you nuts
too, but …’

His breath huffs out in a cloud of white,
hovering in the icy air, and his brows draw together in a frown. ‘I just
don’t get it!’

I sigh, wheeling my bike out on to the lane,
hook a foot over one pedal.

‘We’re friends,’ I tell
him, pushing off into the darkness.

I think it’s true.

At school, Lawrie mostly acts as though I
don’t exist, though if I pass him in the corridor or see him in the lunch hall he
drags up a grudging ‘hello’. He is a loner, dark wavy hair falling across
his face, mouth unsmiling, blue eyes guarded. Sometimes I think he’d like to be
invisible, but he’s not, not to me.

On Thursday morning, Sarah, Jayde and Amy
corner me at break.

‘Did you see the newspaper?’
Sarah asks, spreading a copy of the
Exmoor Gazette
out across the table.
‘There’s a big piece about the missing ponies. You’re famous! Or
infamous, maybe …’

‘Shhh!’ I hiss. ‘Keep your
voice down!’

I look at the headline –
Reward Offered
for Stolen Ponies: Horse Owners Urged to be Vigilant –
and my heart begins to
pound.

‘
Ten days ago near Hartshill,
heartless thieves stole a small girl’s birthday pony, leaving her
inconsolable
,’ I read out. ‘
The much-loved family pet was
taken, along with another valuable trekking pony in foal, in a well-planned midnight
raid. Local landowner James Seddon is offering a cash reward for information leading
to the return of the horses, and police fear the thugs may strike
again …
’

‘Are you sure they were being
ill-treated?’ Amy asks.

‘Of course I’m sure!’ I
splutter. ‘That article is rubbish! Trekking ponies? Spirit’s only
half-broken, and she was so petrified when we – I – first took her that I didn’t
think she’d ever calm down. And it’s a miracle she is still in foal, after
the way she’s been neglected. As for the little girl, she looked as scared of
Seddon as the ponies were. Honestly, I wish the newspaper knew what was really going
on.’

‘Offering a reward is bad news,’
Jayde points out. ‘People will be watching out for those ponies now. You
shouldn’t trust anyone.’

‘Especially not Jayde,’ Amy grins,
nudging her friend with an elbow. ‘She talks too much. Walls have ears,
right?’

‘Huh?’ Jayde asks. ‘What
walls? What are you talking about?’

‘She’s telling you to keep your
voice down,’ Sarah says, stuffing the paper into my schoolbag before anyone can
see what we were reading, and glancing around furtively. ‘We have to be extra
careful now. Coco, are the … um … refugees definitely in a safe
place?’

I blink.
‘
Refugees?
’

Sarah lowers her voice. ‘You know what
I mean! I don’t want to say the word “horse”. People might be
listening!’

‘Nobody’s listening,’ I
tell her. ‘I think they’re safe, but … well, it’s impossible
to be sure, isn’t it?’

‘Better step up security then,’
Sarah warns. ‘Or you’ll make the headlines again, as the youngest
horse-thief in Britain.’

My day goes from bad to worse.

Mr Wolfe springs a spot-test on us in
history, and I barely scrape through. In art I spend an hour making a carefully coiled
clay pot and then drop it on the floor,
squashing it flat; and in
science I can’t concentrate at all and almost set Sarah’s hair on fire with
a Bunsen burner. Sarah screams and Lawrie rolls his eyes at me across the lab and I end
up with a punishment exercise to write out the legend
I must learn to respect
laboratory equipment
one hundred times. Great.

‘What about respecting my hair?’
Sarah wants to know, but to be honest she has frazzled it more herself with excessive
use of straighteners, so one small singed bit is not going to matter. Much.

I think the stresses of being the youngest
horse-thief in Britain are beginning to tell.

After the bell, Lawrie corners me by the
lockers.

‘What’s up with you?’ he
demands. ‘You’ve been jumpy all day. Something wrong?’

‘This is wrong,’ I say, showing
him the newspaper. ‘We’re in big trouble.’

‘Don’t panic,’ Lawrie
says, scanning the
Gazette
. ‘Seddon was always likely to go to the press,
always going to lie. We have to stay calm. It doesn’t change anything.’

I bite my lip. ‘I know. I do –
it’s just hard not to worry.’

Lawrie frowns. ‘Tell me about
it,’ he says. ‘I heard some
bad news myself today.
Seddon’s bought two more horses. They’re not in foal and they don’t
need breaking, but …’

My heart sinks. It feels like the final
straw.

‘Can we rescue them?’ I ask.
‘Get them out of there?’

‘Don’t even think about it,
Coco,’ he tells me. ‘We may have got away with one rescue – so far – but
trying another would be madness. The police think it’s opportunist horse thieves
at the moment – target the same place again and it’s going to look very different.
We can’t risk it – it would put Caramel and Spirit in danger, blow the whole
thing!’

‘I hate him,’ I huff, kicking at
the wall in frustration. ‘I really, really hate him.’

‘You and me both,’ Lawrie says.
‘Look, we’ll talk about this later …’

Sarah appears at my side and Lawrie gives
her a dark look before striding away.

‘What did
he
want?’ she
whispers.

‘Just making some snarky comment about
me burning the school down if I don’t pay more attention,’ I lie.
‘He’s such a charmer.’

‘He fancies you,’ Sarah says.
‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you. All dark and smouldering.’

‘That’s the way he looks at
everyone,’ I tell her.

‘Maybe,’ Sarah says, watching
Lawrie disappear into the scrum of kids heading for the school gate. ‘Maybe not.
He likes you. Mark my words.’

I worry about that all the way home.

Back at Tanglewood, the little chocolate
factory is silent and for the first time in almost a fortnight there is no aroma of
melted chocolate drifting on the air. I head for the kitchen to make a flask of hot
chocolate to take up to the cottage as usual, but the moment I step inside I can see
that something is very wrong. Mum and Paddy are sitting at the big pine table, their
faces grim.

‘Everything OK?’ I ask.
‘Things going to plan with the order?’

‘Factory’s running like
clockwork,’ Paddy says. ‘Thank goodness. We should have everything shipped
off by the end of next week, but I’ve had to let the workers go early today,
obviously …’

‘I’ve been a fool,’ Mum
states flatly. ‘I’ve been kidding
myself – so wrapped up
in the business that I didn’t notice what was going on right under my
nose!’

‘What was going on?’ I ask
warily.

Is this to do with the newspaper article?
Have the police been round asking questions? Have Mum and Paddy worked out that I am not
seeing my friends every afternoon, but wandering around the moors in the dark with a boy
I barely know and a couple of stolen ponies?

I really hope not.

It’s not even as though our rescue has
changed anything – Seddon has just bought more ponies who will suffer in exactly the
same way as Spirit and Caramel. There is no way to stop him, and the knowledge makes me
feel crushed, hopeless.

Mum looks tired, with shadows under her
eyes, smudged eyeliner and a hopeless, defeated tilt to her shoulders. Fear curls in my
belly.

‘Mum? What is it?’

She picks up a letter typed on the
school’s headed paper, her hand shaking. ‘Oh, Coco … I was so
proud of her, so sure she’d turned the corner. And now this!’

The penny drops.

‘Honey,’ I say flatly, and Paddy
nods.

‘We’ve been asked to come into
school to discuss her continued absences and erratic grades,’ Mum says. ‘But
her report was excellent – how can things have gone downhill so fast? It doesn’t
make sense!’

‘Let me ring the school and find
out,’ Paddy suggests.

‘Not yet – we have to give Honey a
chance to explain,’ Mum argues. ‘Perhaps it’s a
mix-up … there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it
all.’

‘Charlotte, if we just speak to Mr
Keating …’

‘No,’ Mum pleads.
‘We’ll talk to Honey first. If something’s been going on, I want to
hear it from her. I’m her mother, she’ll tell me the truth!’

I doubt that somehow, but I stay silent and
put the kettle on. Instead of making a flask of hot chocolate I brew a pot of tea and
raid the cupboard for Jammie Dodgers.

Family trouble, I text Lawrie quickly. Mum
upset. Might be a bit late getting to the meeting place.

Will go without you, he texts back. Family
comes first. Take care xx

I stare at the message, wide-eyed. Two
kisses? Does
that mean anything, and if so, what? I would never have
imagined that Lawrie was the kind of boy to add text kisses – after all, he can barely
dredge up a smile for me most days.

By the time I’ve poured the tea and
arranged the biscuits on a plate, Skye, Summer, Cherry and Honey come clattering in.
Their chat fades to silence fast as they see Mum’s face, tight-lipped.

‘So … Honey?’ she
grates out, handing over the letter. ‘Tell me this isn’t true!’

Skye, Summer and Cherry huddle beside me,
out of the line of fire, and Fred the dog nudges my hand with his nose. I stroke his
ears and he leans against me, whining softly.

‘It’s a mistake,
obviously,’ Honey says, scanning the letter dismissively. ‘Ridiculous.
You’ve seen my report!’

‘They can’t both be
right,’ Mum says. ‘What’s going on, Honey?’

‘Nothing! The computers at school must
have been playing up, that’s all – loads of things have been going wrong these
last few days. Or maybe some stupid
secretary has picked up last
year’s file? I am doing fine this term, you know I am!’

‘We thought you were,’ Paddy
sighs. ‘Now we’re not too sure.’

Honey flings him an angry glance.
‘Look, it’s fine, all right?’ she says. ‘I was on the bus to
school this morning – ask the others. And I was on the bus home; you can’t argue
with that. I haven’t missed a day all term. Right, Summer? Skye? Cherry? We may
not be in the same year but you must see me in the corridors sometimes …’

Cherry shrugs, and her eyes slide away from
Honey’s, evasive. She does not want to answer, and nobody can blame her – Honey
has made her life a misery from day one.

Beside me, I can feel Summer shrink into
herself, hiding behind her hair, arms wrapped around her body as if for protection. She
was always the sister who stuck up for Honey, even when the rest of us despaired of her,
but I’m not sure she will defend her now.

‘I don’t know,’ she says
in a whisper. ‘I’m not at school all of the time any more, Honey, I have the
day clinic thing twice a week. I … I can’t say …’

‘I’ve seen you,’ Skye chips
in, taking the pressure off her twin. ‘Once or twice. Maybe. Not for quite a
while, though …’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
Honey growls.

My sisters have never looked more
uncomfortable. Nobody wants to break the ‘sisters-don’t-tell’ rule,
but all of us know it’s time to stop covering up for Honey. I am glad I’m
not at the high school, that nobody asks me. I would not want to tell how I see Honey
come and go at all hours of the day and night, getting lifts from boys whose cars blare
loud music and laughter. I would have to mention how she has been hanging out at the
fair with hard-faced girls and tattooed boys, working on an art project that may or may
not exist.