Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel (21 page)

‘The violin was good,’ he says.
‘Who needs the school orchestra? You are clearly more of a ruined-cottage
violinist, gloves and icicles and jasmine in the hair, at one with nature.’

I laugh. ‘You’re a music expert
now? Well, whatever, I’ll take the compliment. My fan club consists of you and two
ponies.’

Lawrie grins. ‘Three, actually. Star
is your biggest fan. And we all have very good taste.’

I stroke the foal so gently that it feels
like I am holding
my breath. Spirit looks on, calm and trusting.
She’s wrong to trust me, though. If anything had gone wrong tonight, the ponies
would have been in danger – because of me.

I thought I had things all mapped out with
no margin for error – but my plans are unravelling by the minute. Life is not a box of
chocolates, a pick ’n’ mix where I can choose just what I want; it turns out
that someone has tricked me, switched the whole box for something less appealing.
Lately, more and more, I find myself biting into something tough, tasteless, stale;
something that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It turns out I am hopeless at the violin,
and how am I supposed to stop bullies like Seddon and save the world when my own family
is falling to bits right before my eyes? I am keeping so many secrets, telling so many
lies to so many people that I can barely sleep at night. Not even Cherry, Sarah, Amy and
Jayde know the whole story – they just know snippets of what’s happening, my own
edited version.

My big sister isn’t the only one
breaking the rules, the law.

Caramel comes close, nuzzling my hair, and I
feel the
gentle pressure of a hand on my shoulder. ‘Hey,’
Lawrie says. ‘Don’t go all slushy on me now …’

I wipe a sleeve across my eyes, fierce,
furious. ‘I’m not,’ I lie. ‘I just … got something in
my eye. A speck of dust or something … OK?’

Lawrie nods, and I reflect that there is
something to be said for having a mate like him, someone who just gets on with stuff and
doesn’t try to dig out your deepest, darkest secrets. And it is difficult to be
sad for too long when a scruffy Exmoor pony is breathing down your neck and chewing the
hood of your duffel coat, seriously.

I huddle next to the fire beside Lawrie, who
hands me apples and chocolate, and we watch as Star battles to his feet, long legs
buckling and sliding as he nudges against Spirit and begins to feed. My fingers begin to
thaw a little as I hold them out to the flames.

‘What will happen about your
sister?’ Lawrie asks quietly. ‘What will your family do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit.
‘Mum and Paddy have given her so many chances … but the truth is, she
doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be a part of our family. That hurts
– for all of us. She used to be Dad’s favourite;
she thinks that
if he were still around things would be different. Thing is, Dad’s moved on – he
never bothered seeing us when he was in London, and now he lives on the other side of
the world.’

‘We’re not so different, you and
me,’ Lawrie muses. ‘Our dads both let us down. What’s your stepdad
like?’

‘Great,’ I say easily.
‘Paddy’s good fun and he makes Mum happy – that’s the biggest thing.
He’s working really hard to make us into a family, and I think he does care about
Honey – if she’d just give him a chance!’

‘Sounds like one of the good
guys,’ Lawrie says. ‘You’re lucky. Not everyone is like
that.’

I shrug. ‘Well, most people are OK, I
guess …’

‘Huh,’ he says. ‘I used to
think that too, once. After Dad left, Mum wanted a new start, to put some distance
between us and him. She got a job as a housekeeper for some holiday cottages; the work
was easy and there was a rent-free flat thrown in. Then it all went pear-shaped, and now
we’re stuck here, trapped.’

‘Trapped?’ I echo. ‘How
come?’

Lawrie shrugs. The shutters come down again
as if he has changed his mind, said too much.

‘I’ll tell you sometime,’ he
says, getting up to fetch more firewood. ‘Maybe. Don’t worry about it. What
does it matter how messed up our lives are right now? It won’t be forever. One day
soon you’ll be a violin-playing vet, travelling from place to place on horseback,
handing out panda cupcakes to the poor and needy … and I’ll run my own
stables back home in Cumbria. We’ll look back at all this and laugh.’

‘You think?’ I ask.

‘No, probably not,’ he says.
‘Maybe we’ll end our days in prison. Coco and Marshall, the notorious
under-age Exmoor horse rustlers …’ He pulls his woolly scarf up over his
nose, gangster style, raising his hands in surrender, and the two of us dissolve into
laughter.

A couple of hours later, the birthing is
safely over and Lawrie has cleared everything away and brought in fresh hay for Spirit
and Star and Caramel. We sit for hours, huddled in blankets beside the crackling fire,
watching the three ponies and talking about an imaginary future where no animals are
ever ill-treated.

‘Panda hats will be considered the
height of fashion,’ Lawrie declares. ‘And all music lessons will be
conducted
a minimum of ten feet off the ground, in the branches of an
oak tree.’

‘All animals will be equal,’ I
add. ‘Cruelty will be abolished and annoying Year Six boys with cake addictions
and bullying tendencies will be hoisted up the school flagpole.’

‘Certificates of excellence will be
awarded for science students who succeed in singeing their own hair with a Bunsen
burner. I don’t know why we don’t go into politics. We’d soon get this
country straightened out – we’d be unstoppable!’

My laughter fades and I remember that in
real life we don’t have quite so much to laugh about, but I have never been the
kind of person to accept defeat.

I bite my lip. ‘Listen, Lawrie,’
I say. ‘I know it’s risky, but … we have to rescue Seddon’s
new ponies. We don’t have a choice, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Coco, just hold on –’

‘We can’t leave them
there!’ I argue. ‘Seddon’s a thug, you know that – he won’t
treat them well. We don’t have to bring them up here – that would endanger Caramel
and Spirit and Star. But if we get them out and take
them somewhere
safe – like the riding school perhaps – well, that would be a message to the police that
we’re not stealing them for profit. We could send a note to the police and to the
Gazette
, maybe, about how Seddon treats his animals …’

Lawrie frowns. ‘It could work. We
could tip off the police and the papers, then Jean and Roy wouldn’t get into
trouble. Maybe someone will actually check up on Seddon and find out what he’s
like. It wouldn’t be stealing … more moving the ponies around. I think
you’re on to something, Coco!’

‘I know I am,’ I tell him.
‘So … tomorrow night? I’ll draft some letters for the police and
the newspaper.’

‘Meet in the woods by Blue Downs House
then?’ Lawrie suggests. ‘At midnight?’

‘I’ll be there.
And … I’ll never forget this night, Lawrie. Spirit and
Star … and, well, everything.’

‘Nor me.’

I yawn and stretch, suddenly aware of how
late it must be. Lawrie puts together a nest of cushions and blankets and I curl inside
it, bone-weary, while he banks up the fire with fresh logs.

I wake achey and cold, with the heavy arm of
the school’s moodiest boy flung over me beneath the blankets that cocoon us both,
his breath warm on my neck, his hand holding mine.

The fallout from Honey’s expulsion from
school is still settling when I return home on Saturday morning. The chocolate factory
is deserted, the kitchen looks like a bomb has hit it and Mum and Paddy look shattered,
as if they haven’t slept at all. Well, maybe they haven’t.

Honey is stretched out on one of the blue
velvet sofas, watching our
Bambi
DVD and eating crumpets. She looks unbothered,
as if today is just any old Saturday and not the day after she got kicked out of Exmoor
High. I remember the time I first watched
Bambi
, years ago when I was little,
with Honey, Summer and Skye. I was mad about animals even then and I loved it – right up
until the moment that Bambi’s mum got shot. I cried so hard then that Mum had to
switch it off, and my sisters
grumbled and told me I was a baby, and
not to be stupid because it was just a movie.

There’s a lump in my throat as I flop
down beside Honey now.

‘You OK?’ I ask. ‘Are you
grounded again?’

‘Don’t think so,’ she
shrugs. ‘What’s the point? They know I’ll find a way round it.
Besides, I don’t care any more. I’m out of here!’

My mind buzzes with past threats of boarding
school. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Ask Mum,’ Honey says.
‘She and Paddy have got what they wanted – to be rid of me.’

‘That’s not true!’ I
argue. ‘You’re twisting things round!’

She shrugs. ‘Whatever. It
doesn’t matter because I got what I wanted too. Sorry to ditch you, little sis,
but I finally get to escape this dump. Apparently boarding school is too expensive –
trust Paddy, stingy with the cash right to the last – but hey, this time it works in my
favour. I’m going out to Australia to live with Dad. This time next week
I’ll be on a flight to Sydney!’

I feel cold all over. My big sister is a
chancer, a drama
queen, a rule-breaker. She’s lazy, rebellious
and sometimes downright bitchy, but I love her to pieces and I cannot imagine life
without her.

‘You can’t!’ I whisper.
‘What about us?’

‘What about you?’ Honey asks.
‘You’ve made your choice, Coco. You just can’t see how Paddy has
ruined this family, can you? If it wasn’t for him, Dad and Mum might have been
back together by now.’

‘Honey, you know that’s not
true!’

‘Well, it was possible, wasn’t
it?’ she snaps. ‘Until Mum married that loser! Now she puts him first the
whole time. Admit it, we have hardly seen them this last week or two!’

‘That’s because of the
department store order,’ I argue. ‘You’re not being fair. Mum has done
everything in her power to help you and Paddy is trying his very best too!’

Honey shrugs. ‘His best isn’t
good enough,’ she says. ‘Not for me. Paddy doesn’t belong here –
he’s not my dad, and he never will be!’

She picks up a fluffy cushion and hugs it to
her, her lower lip quivering. I think Honey is a whole lot more bothered by all this
than she is letting on. ‘I can’t get
along with Cherry
either – and the rest of you are so totally taken in by her,’ she goes on.
‘She’s pushed me out – with Mum, with Shay, even with you …’

‘No way!’ I protest.
‘Nobody could ever do that! Honey, please don’t go away. If you could only
try harder at school, stay away from the fairground crowd and just calm
down … it’s not too late!’

Honey shakes her head. ‘I think it is.
I’ve tried too, Coco – really I have. I just can’t seem to get anything
right, and the whole school thing has gone way too far. They wouldn’t have me back
even if I wanted them to, and trust me, I don’t. I made one massive mistake
trusting Anthony. It was his idea, about hacking into the school system and changing my
report – I should have known we’d never get away with it. And now he’s not
even speaking to me – he says it’s all my fault!’

I remember seeing Anthony at one of our
beach parties in the summer, a misfit loner whose puppy-dog eyes trailed after Honey
wherever she went. He had a major crush on her, but of course, Anthony has never even
been on my sister’s radar. It’s all too easy to imagine him thinking up
plots and plans to hike up her school grades, to please
her, hoping
she might see him differently. Instead it all backfired, and Anthony’s perfect
school career is over in one dramatic fall from grace. I guess that would cure a crush,
all right.

‘The truth is I don’t fit in
here any more,’ Honey is saying. ‘I am a walking disaster area. My friends
are the kind of kids who think it’s cool to break the rules. As for boys, the ones
I like have “trouble” stamped all over them. And when things go wrong, not
one of them is anywhere to be seen.’