Читать книгу Fortune and the Golden Trophy - Stacy Gregg - Страница 9

Chapter 3

Оглавление

The Coco mystery was solved not long after Aidan departed when there was a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Stella,” Mrs Brown said. “I told her you’d be home shortly. She said she was coming over as soon as you were back.”

When Issie opened the door Stella leapt through it and smothered her friend in a mammoth hug.

“You’re back!” she squealed. “Ohmygod! I missed you so much. Heaps of stuff has happened and it’s been awful not having you here…”

“I just went down to the River Paddock,” Issie interrupted her. “Where’s Coco?”

“That’s what I mean about it being awful,” Stella said. Her expression was grim beneath her red curly hair. “Coco is gone.”

“Gone? Where? What do you mean?”

“I sold her.”

“What?” Issie was stunned. “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Last week. I didn’t tell you because you weren’t here obviously,” Stella said glumly. “I was getting so big on her—I had to sell her really. Remember how you said my feet were almost dragging on the ground?”

“Did you have to do it while I was away?” said Issie. “I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to her!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Stella said, “but they wanted to take her immediately.”

She looked really miserable. “I wish you’d been here when she left. It was so awful watching them load her on the horse float and drive away. I’ve been crying all week.”

“Who bought her?” Issie asked.

“Do you remember Kitty from the riding school at Blackthorn Farm?” Stella sniffed. “Well, her mum said she could finally have her own pony and so they came and tried Coco out, and Kitty totally fell in love with her.”

“Stella, that’s great!” said Issie. “Kitty is super-nice and she’s a really good rider.”

Stella didn’t seem at all cheered up by this. The idea of her precious Coco being ridden by anyone else, even Kitty, didn’t make her any happier. “She’s all right I suppose,” she agreed grudgingly.

“But what about pony club?” Issie pointed out. “The new season is just about to start. It’s only a week until our first rally. What will you do?”

“That’s my big news!” Stella perked up. “He arrives tomorrow, so I’ll have him in time for the first rally next weekend.”

“Who arrives tomorrow?” Issie was confused.

“My new horse!”

“You’ve got a new horse already?”

“Well, not exactly,” Stella admitted. “He’s just on trial. I had one ride on him to try him out and now they’ve let me take him for a week to see if we get on. His name is Misty and he’s a fleabitten grey.”

“Has Tom checked him over yet?”

Stella shook her head. “He said he’d have a look at him for me this week before the first rally day.”

“I can’t believe it’s the beginning of the season already!” Issie said. “I wish I only had one horse. Now I’m stuck with three of them at once.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Issie! Just listen to yourself! Complaining because you have too many horses? Most riders would kill to have just one pony and you’re lucky enough to have three.”

“I know,” Issie checked herself. “I mean it’s amazing having three horses, but honestly, how will I cope? I was really looking forward to riding Blaze and Comet this season and now this great piebald lump from Blackthorn Farm has turned up and I have to train him too…”

“So Aidan just dropped him off and left him with you?” Stella said.

“Pretty much.” Issie nodded. She was still thinking about how odd Aidan had been when he’d turned up. Had he been trying to break up with her? If he was, she didn’t feel ready to tell Stella about it. Not yet anyway.

“What’s the piebald like?” Stella asked.

“He’s really tubby with a bit of a Roman nose and he’s got big black and white patches.”

“Does he have a name?”

Issie shook her head. “Aidan says I have to name him.”

“That is so cool!” Stella grinned. “I’ve always wanted to name my own horse.”

“What do you think I should call him then?”

“How about Tonto?” Stella said. “You know, like the Lone Ranger because he’s a cowboy colour?”

“What about Patchy?” Issie suggested.

“You’re kidding, right?” Stella pulled a face. “I tell you what, why don’t you come over to my house with Kate tomorrow night before the AGM. We can order a pizza and come up with pony names together.”

“OK,” Issie agreed.

“It must be awful for the poor piebald,” said Stella. “Imagine not knowing what you’re called! No wonder he’s a bit odd. I’m sure you’ll get on better once you’ve named him.”

Issie hoped Stella was right. Maybe her feelings about the new horse would change once he had a name, but right now the only thing she could think of calling him was a big fat nuisance.


From the very start, the following night was a disaster. First of all, the pizza arrived late and the girls were grossed out when they took a bite and discovered it had anchovies on it. Then the pony-naming session wasn’t a great success either. Stella and Kate’s list of suggestions all sounded like cuddly toys.

“I am not calling my horse Mr Snuggles!” Issie finally snapped.

“Geez, OK!” said Kate. “There’s no need to get grumpy.”

It was at that point that Stella’s mum, Mrs Tarrant, put her head round the bedroom door. “The AGM begins in ten minutes,” she said. “Pile into the car and let’s go!”

By the time Mrs Tarrant and the girls arrived at the Chevalier Point clubroom, most of the rows of fold-out chairs were already filled up with club members and their parents. There were loads of other riders that the girls hadn’t seen since last season and the first person that they bumped into was Morgan Chatswood-Smith.

“You’re back!” Issie said, giving Morgan a huge hug.

“How was the showjumping circuit?” asked Stella.

Morgan’s mum, Araminta, was a professional showjumper, and for the past season she had taken Morgan on the road with her, touring the country with her string of showjumping horses.

“Pretty cool,” Morgan said, “but you have to work really hard. I was doing loads of grooming for the other riders and I hardly ever got to do any riding myself.”

“At least you didn’t have to go to school! I would kill for three whole months without school work,” Stella said.

Morgan shook her head, “I wish! I still had to do the work—Mum home-schooled me. And you know how tough she can be about horse riding? Well, she’s even worse with maths!”

The girls nodded knowingly at this. When Issie first met Morgan she had been envious of her having such a famous horse-riding mum. But when Araminta put too much pressure on her daughter to compete Morgan started acting strangely—even sabotaging the other riders’ equipment at the pony club! Issie had found out what was going on and confronted Morgan and Araminta with the truth. Since then, things had been much better between them. Even so, Issie could tell that Morgan still struggled to live up to the high expectations of her competitive mother.

“Why don’t you guys come and sit with us?” Morgan said to Issie. “We’ve saved you seats.”

Issie looked across the clubroom and spotted Araminta in a seat in the front row next to Tom Avery. Two other riders, Dan Halliday and Ben MacIntosh, were sitting next to them.

Dan smiled and waved when he saw the girls. Issie grinned and waved back. It was hard to believe that there had been so much drama with Dan just a few months ago. He used to have a crush on Issie and there had been a stand-off between him and Aidan at the Horse of the Year Show as they fought for her attention. But that was all over now. Dan and Issie were back to being just the way they were before—really good friends.

“Hey, Issie!” Dan called down the row to her as the four girls took their seats. “What’s this I hear about you having a new horse? What’s he like?”

“Don’t ask!” Issie groaned. Everyone had taken their seats now and the meeting was about to begin. Issie glanced anxiously over her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.

“Natasha Tucker’s not here,” Issie said. She scanned the room again to be sure, but there was no sign of the sour-faced girl with the stiff blonde plaits. Issie couldn’t help but feel relieved.

“You want to know my theory about Stuck-up Tucker?” Stella said to Issie. “I think she has a love-hate relationship with you.”

“You’re wrong,” Issie sighed. “There’s definitely no love. She can’t stand me.”

Any hope that Issie had of ever being friends with Natasha had disappeared forever after the Horse of the Year Show. Bratty Natasha had been training on her horse Fabergé with her expensive private trainer Ginty McLintoch and she totally expected to win. No wonder then that she was furious when Issie and Comet beat her in the big competition that day.

It made matters even worse, when Natasha and Ginty McLintoch offered to buy Comet after the show, and Issie refused to sell him to them. Ever since then, it had officially been war between the two riders.

The meeting had been scheduled for 8 p.m. and at ten past, Mrs Tarrant stepped up to the podium. She tapped the microphone to make sure it was working and then began to read from the stack of papers in front of her.

“As your departing club president, I am going to take you through the minutes of our last meeting…”

“Ohmygod,” Stella hissed to Issie. “I’m bored already!”

Issie couldn’t help giggling, but she quickly pulled herself together again as Avery shot the girls a stern glance.

Stella was right though; it was hard not to fidget as Mrs Tarrant went on about club fees and equipment rosters. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she plonked her stack of papers back down on the podium in front of her. “That takes care of all our business from last season.”

“Crikey! About time!” Stella muttered. The girls tried hard to suppress their giggles again.

“As you know, we’ve already voted in the new committee for the year and tonight I’ll be ‘handing over the reins’!” Mrs Tarrant grinned at her own joke, which she thought was very funny since this was a pony club, but no one else seemed to get it.

“Anyway, at this stage in the evening, I was hoping to hand you over to our new club president, Oliver Tucker…but I don’t think he’s arrived yet…”

At that exact moment, as if on cue, the front door of the clubroom swung open.

“Ahhh, Mr Tucker,” Mrs Tarrant said. “I had just about given up on you.”

“That’s our new club president.” Dan leant across to Issie. “Natasha Tucker’s dad.”

“Really?” Issie said, staring at the tall, blond man in the suit who now had everyone in the room turning around to look at him. “I’ve never, ever seen him here before.”

It wasn’t surprising that Issie had never seen Oliver Tucker before because, despite the fact that he had spent a fortune on Natasha’s ponies, until tonight he had never set foot on the grounds of the Chevalier Point Pony Club. He was a big-shot businessman, far too busy with corporate takeovers and property deals to make time for his daughter’s little hobbies.

Oliver Tucker wore a designer suit that stretched taut over his pot belly, well-padded from extravagant company lunches. My friends call me Ollie, he would often say by way of introduction. But this was untrue. No one called him “Ollie” because Oliver Tucker had no friends. He didn’t care—money was much more important and he had loads of that. This was just as well because he’d spent a fair chunk of it on horses to keep his daughter happy.

“I can’t believe he’s the new pony-club president,” whispered Issie.

“Mum says he won the ballot because no one else dared to stand against him,” Dan shrugged.

“Ohhh, scary!” Stella said. “So if that’s Natasha’s dad, then where is Natasha?”

Stella’s question was answered by a grunting noise on the stairs right behind Mr Tucker. “Hey, Dad! Urghh!…Can I get a little help here?”

Natasha Tucker appeared in the doorway behind her dad. She wore her trademark scowl and seemed to be struggling to carry something enormous in her arms.

“Hurry up, Dad!” Natasha squealed. “Take an end. I’m going to drop it!”

There was a definite flicker of impatience on Mr Tucker’s face as he came to his daughter’s aid and took one end of the object, helping to ease it in through the door.

The mystery object, shrouded in a velvet curtain, was about a metre wide and almost as tall as Natasha. Whatever it was, clearly it was very heavy as it took both Natasha and Mr Tucker to carry it through the clubroom towards the podium.

“Careful, Natasha, careful!” Mr Tucker instructed as they manoeuvred their way between the rows of chairs to the front of the room. “Hang on to it! OK, now take a step to the left…no! My left, Natasha! Not yours! For Pete’s sake, can’t you do anything right?”

Natasha’s face was puce beneath her blonde plaits as she dropped her end of the object with a thud on to the floor. Mr Tucker tutted at her and lowered his end gently so that the mystery object stood in front of the audience, next to the podium.

“Good evening!” Mr Tucker said, greeting them all. “As Mrs Tarrant said, I’m your new club president. I’d just like to say that this is a great moment for the Chevalier Point Pony Club. It isn’t every day that a man like myself, with formidable business expertise, makes himself available for such a role…”

Mr Tucker had been expecting applause at this point and was clearly disappointed when he was met with stunned silence. Unabashed, he continued. “As your new president I have many great plans for this pony club, which you will hear in good time. Tonight, however, I thought this would be the perfect occasion to announce some very big news for the senior riders in the room.

“Many of you have enjoyed the pleasure of Natasha’s company here at the pony club over the years.” Mr Tucker gestured to his daughter, who had found a seat across the aisle from Issie and was watching her dad speak with a smug expression on her face.

“It seemed only fitting that the Tucker family should donate a special trophy in Natasha’s honour to commemorate her great achievements at the Chevalier Point Pony Club.”

Stella, who couldn’t believe what she was hearing, suddenly doubled over and began to have a coughing fit.

Mr Tucker frowned at the interruption and continued. “The Tucker family believe in rewarding success. Most of you will never achieve as much as my daughter has with the calibre of horses I’ve bought her, but it never hurts to dream, eh?”

There were astonished mumbles from the audience at the rudeness of this remark, but Mr Tucker never noticed when he was being rude and ploughed on. “Underneath this curtain is my contribution to the Chevalier Point Pony Club—a grand prize that will be awarded each year to the senior rider who accumulates the most points in the Open Gymkhana, which will be held at the end of next month, here at the club.”

He stretched out a hand, gripped the corner of the velvet cloth and gave it a firm yank. The velvet fell away dramatically as the trophy was revealed.

“Ohmygod!” Stella gasped. The trophy looked like it had come from a popstar millionaire’s mansion. It was a rearing horse over a metre high, coated from hoof to head in brilliant gold. The horse’s eyes were made of turquoise, its mane sparkled with diamanté crystals and its hooves were studded with fake rubies. The giant gold statue was set on an ornate walnut veneer base, upon which, in grandiose, curlicued gilt letters, were the words: Natasha Tucker Memorial Trophy.

“Memorial? I thought you had to be dead to have a memorial named after you?” Kate hissed.

“That’s a trophy? It looks like an explosion in a jewellery shop,” Stella giggled. Issie, however, wasn’t laughing quite so hard. She was in a state of shock. Where did Stuck-up Tucker get the nerve?

“I can’t believe she named a trophy after herself!” Issie whispered. “Don’t you have to, like, win Badminton or the Olympics or something before you can do that?”

As Mr Tucker stood there expectantly Mrs Tarrant tried to lead a round of rather reluctant applause. This soon petered out and nobody seemed to know what to do next. Finally, Natasha stood up and whispered something to her father.

Mr Tucker nodded and then cleared his throat. “My daughter just wants to make it clear that, of course, as a senior rider herself at Chevalier Point this year, she is also eligible to compete alongside the other riders for the Tucker Trophy.”

“You are kidding me!” Stella squeaked. “She’s competing to win her own trophy?”

Issie was stunned. Only Natasha Tucker could possibly have come up with something so outrageous!

Standing next to her father at the podium, Natasha looked over at Issie, Stella and Kate, who were sitting with their jaws hanging open, and gave them a self-satisfied smirk.

As she walked back out of the clubroom behind her father she paused for a moment and looked Issie straight in the eyes. “You should go up and get a close look at the trophy while you can. Daddy’s leaving it here in the clubroom on display for the next two months, until the gymkhana, so you’ll get the chance to see it.” Then she added with a sneer, “After that, it’ll be going home with me—Daddy’s already built a display case for it in the living room.”

“Don’t you think you should actually wait until you win it first before you build a case for it, Natasha?” Issie replied. “There are a lot of good senior riders at Chevalier Point you know…”

“And you think you’re the best, don’t you?” sneered Natasha. “You always have done. You act like you’re better than me. Well, OK then, here’s your chance to prove it!”

“I wasn’t saying…” Issie began, but Natasha cut her off.

“You’re not the best rider at this pony club, Isadora. In fact, you’re not even in my league any more. I’ve got a better horse and a better instructor than you and I plan to show everyone when I take home that trophy at the end of the gymkhana!”

And with that, the bratty blonde turned on her heels and swept out of the clubroom, leaving Issie sitting there, gobsmacked.

Issie had known that there was no love lost between her and Natasha, but she hadn’t been prepared for this latest outburst. She had no idea how much Natasha seemed to genuinely loathe her!

Natasha had Issie in her sights and their rivalry was about to come to a head in the battle for this trophy. The new season at Chevalier Point had begun and they were off to a cracking start.

Fortune and the Golden Trophy

Подняться наверх