Читать книгу When Sophie Met Darcy Day - Helen Yeadon - Страница 5

Foreword

Sophie was a puzzle. At first glance she was a slightly dumpy girl in her early teens who wore baggy, unflattering clothes and wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. Her posture was slumped, as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible to avoid being noticed. That was unremarkable in a girl of her age, but the most unusual thing about Sophie was that she hadn’t spoken for over two years. Not to anyone.

And no one could work out why. Her school work was suffering, she had no social life and her parents were at a loss to know what to do.

One day they brought her to Greatwood, the Devon farm where my husband Michael and I looked after retired racehorses.

‘I hear you let local children help out with the animals,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t suppose we could leave Sophie with you for a couple of hours to see how she gets on? She’s always liked horses.’

‘Of course,’ I said. There was so much to be done that we were always grateful for another pair of hands.

I was just on my way to change the dressings on a horse called Darcy Day, who’d arrived a few days earlier in a very poorly condition. She had painfully swollen, infected legs, diarrhoea, and she was drastically underweight, with her bones sticking out through a dull, matted coat. We spoke kindly to her, trying to get some kind of response, but her eyes were glazed, her head hanging. She was depressed and withdrawn. She’d lost interest in everything and everybody. We put her in a stable and she slunk to the back of it, not moving when I carefully arranged a rug over her, and not even attempting to sniff the fresh hay I placed nearby.

As we walked to the stable that morning, I explained to Sophie what was wrong with Darcy, and said that she needed very special care and attention while we tried to get her on the road to recovery. Her feed and medication needed constant monitoring and the bandages on her legs had to be changed regularly. Michael joined us in case I needed an extra pair of hands to hold her while I positioned the dressings. The three of us opened the stable door and walked in, and something quite remarkable happened. Darcy pricked up her ears, looked straight at Sophie, then turned and walked over towards her. As she got close, she lowered her head.

Michael and I looked at each other in astonishment. ‘That’s amazing,’ I exclaimed. ‘Look, Sophie – she’s come to say hello to you. She wants you to stroke her nose.’

Sophie stretched out a tentative hand to touch her.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ I remarked. ‘I bring her feed to her but she completely ignores me. You’re the first person she’s shown any interest in.’

A smile was twitching at the corners of Sophie’s mouth. She gently stroked Darcy’s nose.

‘She obviously likes you,’ Michael added, and Sophie gave a proper smile, just a quick one.

It was the beginning of a relationship that would change both Sophie’s and Darcy’s lives, although we weren’t to know it at the time.

We stood and watched for a moment, then we started laying out the bandages, soft wrap and ointments necessary to dress Darcy’s legs. With twenty horses, two goats, four dogs, umpteen chickens and a few unruly geese to look after, there was never any time to spare.