There was a long pause. Finally, when he spoke, incredulity and delight filled his voice. ‘But you haven’t ridden for years, Poppy!’

‘I know, but I can ride, can’t I? One doesn’t forget?’

‘Oh, sure, it’s like riding a bike, but –’

‘But what?’

‘Well, hunting is a slightly different kettle of fish, love.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, everything goes up a gear. Fences, ditches – the horse itself. More adrenalin. Much more speed.’

I thought of Sam, galloping along on some gleaming steed, spurred and confident, the Grangers behind him.

‘I can go up a gear.’

‘Of course you can!’

My dad had a terrific can-do attitude. All he’d felt honour-bound to do was voice some caution, which he’d surely done. Now, however, the brakes would come smartly off.

‘Come over tomorrow,’ he said eagerly. ‘I’ll see what I can fit you up with. Tosca, perhaps. Or even Badger? Quite a challenge. A mount for my girl! Yes, pop by tomorrow and we’ll sort you out. Day after tomorrow, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you can take it back in my lorry. Leave your car here.’

‘Except … where would I put it?’ I glanced wildly around my very small sitting room.

‘Hasn’t your friend Angie got stables? You can pop it in with hers for the night, can’t you?’

‘She has got stables …’ I stood up from the sofa and caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror above the mantle: quite flushed for me. Some unfamiliar bright eyes looked back too. I licked my lips. ‘Except, I quite wanted to keep it a secret. Just – you know. Turn up. Surprise everyone.’

My father barely missed a beat. If there was one thing he liked more than a challenge, it was a surprise. ‘Oh yes, much better! That’ll show them. Anyone who’d written you off as a wilting widow.’

‘Well, quite,’ I said quickly. He’d got the gist. I walked to the window, arm still clenched round my stomach. ‘But … where would I put it, Dad? Would it be all right in the field with the sheep at the back, if I cleared it with the farmer?’

‘Farmers can be awfully antsy about that sort of thing. Haven’t you got some sort of outbuilding at the bottom of your garden?’

‘It’s called a garden shed, Dad. With a lawnmower and spades inside it.’

‘Well, you can move the lawnmower, love. Don’t get bogged down by the minutiae.’

I sensed my father warming to this. He’d been known to employ some pretty eccentric dwellings for animals in the past and we’d once had a miniature Shetland pony that wandered into the kitchen when it rained, to lie down by the stove. And of course the fish in the bath. I could sense him powering on regardless.

‘Saw the door in half,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t visualize that shed offhand but I’m sure it’s big enough. Anyway, don’t you worry – we’ll sort something out. I’m just so thrilled you’re up for it Poppy! Atta-girl! Good for you.’

It occurred to me as I put the phone down, that for all his relaxed attitude, Dad might have been more worried about me than he’d let on. He was clearly thrilled to bits. I should have taken more time previously, to reassure him. Oh well, he was certainly reassured now.

As I bounded up the stairs to Archie, who I could hear crying – clearly not as sleepy as I’d thought – I realized I was humming. ‘Raindrops on Roses’, Mum’s favourite. And cheesy though it was, The Sound of Music always came to me in moments of elation. Elation, I thought in some surprise, as I lifted my son from his cot. I twirled him round the room in my arms and he gurgled in astonished delight. I planted a resounding kiss on his flushed cheek. No, I would not be written off. Not yet, anyway. I would not sit quietly in partial shade. I would have a stab at the sunlight. I would trot up the road alongside Sam Hetherington, cheeks pink, lipstick gleaming, I would not be sweet Poppy Shilling who was slowly finding her feet; I’d be up and running. Galloping, even. I sailed out of the room with Archie in my arms. Even if I broke my bloody neck in the process.




20

I found my father in front of an old Elvis DVD, slumped on the exploding beige sofa, the one where you had to know where to sit to avoid the springs. A couple of bantam hens seemed to be watching too, from the top of the piano, where they roosted occasionally amongst elderly copies of the Racing Times. The two dogs lay across his lap. Dad was playing an acoustic air guitar, winsomely plucking at imaginary strings, crooning softly. As I came in the room he turned and I saw his florid cheeks were damp with tears.

‘It’s the bit where she tells him she can’t marry him because she’s dying of that dreadful disease and he sings “This is My Heaven”. The hula-hula girls are about to come on.’

‘Ah.’

I sank down beside him with a smile, shoving Mitch up a bit. I was still in my coat, but then coats were a necessity in Dad’s house; he was still in his. I’d seen this movie a million times, had grown up on it, along with all the other black and whites in Dad’s collection, but it still held a certain allure, and before long my eyes were filling too. We even swayed a bit and waved our hands along with the hula-hula girls at the end. As more tears rolled along with the credits, I wondered if they were for Elvis and his lost love or the way this house always made me feel: its cosy shambolic familiarity, the peeling paint, the clutter of tack and books and bottles, the terrible carpet and the terrible aching feeling I got whenever I came. The temptation to stick my thumb in my mouth and stay for ever, curled up with Dad watching old movies, Mum’s photo on the crowded sideboard smiling down at us. Safe. Surely most children feel like that when they’re little but then can’t wait to get away, achieve some distance. Most would surely hurtle from a place like this; so why, then, did I still feel some incredibly visceral, gravitational pull?

‘Right. Party’s over.’ Dad’s familiar way of drawing a veil over all things emotional. He got to his feet with an almighty sniff, pulling a red and white spotty hanky from his pocket and blowing his nose hard. ‘Important to get it all out, though, every now and again,’ he observed gruffly.

Important to have a good sob, was what he meant. About Mum. Which I knew we’d both been doing, the weepy movie giving us an excuse. At least I’d never have to do that to get over my more recent bereavement, I thought. In fact if I did get out a movie, it might well be Put Out the Flags.

‘Where are the kids?’ Dad asked, stuffing the hanky back in his pocket and helping himself to a tumbler of Famous Grouse to steady the nerves. Not the first of the day, I’d hazard, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock.

‘With Jennie.’ I leaned my head back on the sofa and looked up at him. ‘I couldn’t take them back in the lorry, Dad. No belts.’

‘Oh.’ His face fell like a child’s, as I knew it would. He was disappointed. Couldn’t understand why, since I’d rattled around in that lorry unfettered, my children couldn’t. No matter how often I told him about laws and fines, not to mention terrible injuries, he still didn’t get it.

‘But you were perfectly OK,’ he’d say. ‘And I drive safely …’

‘I know, Dad,’ I’d say sheepishly, scratching my neck, and never pointing out how irresponsible or uncaring he’d been, for Dad was neither. Although in the eyes of others he might be.

‘But I thought you could take them to the meet?’ I said to him now. ‘Maybe follow for a bit? They’d love that.’

‘And I’d love it too. Good idea. I’ll do that.’ He rubbed his hands together, pleased. ‘Now. Come on, let’s go and see what I’ve got for you.’ Cheered immeasurably by a bloody good cry, the whisky and the prospect of a day out with his grandchildren, he made for the back door and his boots.

I got to my feet hurriedly. ‘You mean, you’ve definitely got me one?’

‘Of course I’ve got you one. I’ve got two. You’re spoiled for choice. Come on, they’re in the yard.’

I felt a flutter of excitement as I followed him outside. Dolls, ponies, boys – these apparently mark the three stages of girlhood: the definitive rites of passage. And although I would never regress to Tiny Tears (having said that, on occasion I have found myself on Clemmie’s bedroom floor, brushing Barbie’s hair with a gormless, faraway expression on my face), in moments of crisis, or general barrenness on the man front, I can quite easily resort to horse flesh to make my heart beat faster. Like my father before me, I find the equine world not only more reliable and dependable, but infinitely more sensitive. It was with a quickening pulse, therefore, that I swapped my shoes for one of the many pairs of boots by the back door and scurried after Dad to the yard.

At this time of year most of his horses were rugged up and grazing in the fields, having been in all night, but sure enough, in the otherwise empty row of loose boxes, occupying the nearest one was a good-looking bay, his head over the door. He watched as we approached. He had a kind, intelligent face and his ears were pricked. My ribcage hosted another little dance.

‘Ooh … handsome brute.’

‘Isn’t he just?’ Dad said softly. ‘Dutch Warmblood. Bags of breeding.’

We stopped at his stall and I stroked his velvety nose as he blew into my hand. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Well, his full title is Thundering Pennyford, but he answers to Thumper.’

‘Thumper,’ I echoed. God, he was gorgeous. Sleek, dark and delicious. Quite big too, I thought nervously as I looked down his arched neck to his shapely quarters. Another head appeared next door.

‘And this one?’ I moved on to the adjoining stable where a smaller, scruffier piebald, with a wall eye and a back so broad you could lay it with knives and forks, had come to see what all the fuss was about.

‘Agnes. The safer bet.’

‘Ah.’ I gave her nose a stroke too. ‘Thumper isn’t safe?’

‘Oh, he’s safe, but he’s fast. He’s a thoroughbred, Poppy. Got more temperament.’

Temperament. On my first hunt. Did I need that? Or did I need Agnes? Safe and solid? Thumper was rather splendid, though. And I’d look so much better up there in skintight jodhpurs and shiny leather boots. Which was surely the point. Agnes was sweet, but nevertheless had a touch of ‘Where’s the cart?’ about her.

Dad was already putting a bridle on Thumper. ‘Want to try him?’ he asked casually, leading him out.

‘Sure. Why not.’ Equally casually.

Dad swiftly added a saddle.

‘Just take him for a spin in the paddock over there, then, and see how you get on.’ In one deft movement he’d done up the girth and was holding the stirrup leather to steady the saddle.

I jumped on, pleased I could still do that without a leg up, and, as I say, Thumper wasn’t small. Then I found my other stirrup and trotted off smartly. Should have walked first, obviously, and Thumper got a bit of a start at being asked to trot out of the yard from a standstill, but, apart from a slight jolt, he mastered his surprise beautifully. Terrific manners, I thought, as we glided on and he succumbed to the bit, which I was pleased to see I could still ask him to take, arching his neck accordingly. Fantastic suspension, excellent brakes, no rushing. But then Dad had only the best in his yard. In the paddock I let the throttle out and asked for a canter, which was never going to descend into a gallop, I decided, then changed the rein and did it all the other way round. I came back to the gate flushed and elated. Puffing like billy-o too, and sweating profusely.

‘Not as fit as you used to be,’ my father observed with a grin, leaning on the gate.

‘Nothing like! Since when did sitting on a horse take it out of you?’

‘That’s what they all say. But you won’t need to be fit on Agnes. You really will just sit there. This one’s more of a ride.’

‘But he is heavenly, Dad.’ I leaned forward and stroked his neck.

‘Oh, he is,’ he agreed cheerfully.

Once again he’d done his bit: exercised the note of caution by proffering the Datsun, but secretly hoping I’d go for the Ferrari, which, naturally, I did.

‘You don’t want to try her, then?’

‘Not sure I’ve got the energy.’