Finding wonder, p.25
Finding Wonder, page 25
‘Were they confirmed?’ asked Joni.
‘Sadly, yes,’ answered Dale. ‘When Roo was jumping Wonder, Lloyd asked if he could speak to me privately. Apparently, the previous evening, Rhianna had changed her mind about selling Wonder. She’d begged her dad to cancel the sale, not knowing that he secretly owed me nearly £1 million.’
Dale frowned at the memory. ‘Lloyd is a good man underneath. All he wanted was to give his wife and daughter everything they’d ever dreamed of. In order to do that, he had to tell lie upon lie. Not only did he hide his money problems – brought about by unwise business decisions – from his family, he boasted that business was booming. As a result, his wife kept buying ever more luxuries and Rhianna lived like a princess. But I drew the line at paying the decorators working on their mansion. With a huge bill due, Lloyd panicked. He told Rhianna that selling Wonder was a matter of “life and death”.’
Roo was silent, recalling the many times she’d wished she could swap lives with Rhianna.
Frightened into drastic action, Rhianna had confessed to her dad that she’d threaded a hawthorn thorn through Wonder’s brushing boots in the hope of ensuring that he jumped high enough to impress any buyer. She’d thought she’d positioned the thorn so that Wonder would only feel the tiniest pinprick. Enough to remind him to pick his feet up. She was gutted when it really hurt him.
That’s the real reason Rhianna was crying, thought Roo. That’s why she talked about showjumping being a business and love not being enough.
A knife of anguish turned in her chest. She got no satisfaction out of being proved right. She resolved to give Wonder an extra big hug when she next saw him.
‘When Lloyd told me what Rhianna had done, I was speechless with rage – not at Rhianna, but at her dad,’ said Dale. ‘She’d never have been driven to such a desperate act had she not blamed herself and her showjumping career for his financial troubles. It reminded me of how every bad thing started at my old showjumping yard. One wrong decision led to another wrong decision, and it snowballed.’
Roo remembered running up to Dale in Barn A to ask him where Rhianna was. He’d swung around with a thundercloud stare. Now she knew why.
‘I was still fuming when I marched into the barn to check on a couple of horses,’ admitted Dale. ‘That was unforgiveable. It’s never okay to be angry around animals – or humans, for that matter. I immediately bit the head off poor Shelby for trying to tell me about River Spirit’s sore foot.’
‘That’s where we came in,’ said Skylar. ‘Me and Dad.’
Roo could still smell the saddle soap and leather in the tack room that day, as she’d crouched in the shadows, watching the scene between Dale, Vano, and ‘Hoody Boy’ play out.
‘When Dad first visited Starwood, he and Dale got on famously,’ Skylar was saying. ‘What neither of them knew was that Russ Wheeler had been on the lookout for a scapegoat – someone who might be blamed for stealing Wonder Boy. Sickeningly, an innocent Roma scrap metal merchant struck him as the ideal fall guy. Two months later, he called my father, pretending to be Dale, and asked him to come to Starwood to collect some scrap metal.’
When an emotional Skylar got to that part of the story, Roo realised that, to be an ally, it wasn’t enough to stand silently by on the sidelines. Being an ally meant standing up and speaking out against racism and injustice because not everyone had a voice or was able to speak out for themselves.
‘Like an idiot, I fell for Russ’s ploy, hook, line, and sinker,’ admitted Dale. ‘The previous week, he’d told me that there’d been a spate of tack-room robberies at a couple of the yards he visited. He claimed that suspicion had fallen on the scrap metal merchant I’d used in the winter. He asked me if I noticed anything missing after his visit. I hadn’t but I said I’d keep it in mind.’
‘It was a set-up,’ explained Skylar. ‘Russ gambled that if Dad and I turned up out of the blue, seemingly without an appointment, Dale would think it was a trick to get into Starwood.’
‘I’m ashamed to say his plan worked,’ said Dale. ‘Weighed down with worry, I lashed out at you both in the worst possible way, not knowing that Russ’s story was a terrible lie.’
That lie was the beginning of Russ’s undoing, thought Roo.
It was also when Dale did the next right thing. He emailed Skylar’s dad and apologised profusely for his language and behaviour. He told Vano that if there was ever anything he could do to make it up to him or Skylar, he’d do it without question.
‘Unluckily, the email went into Dad’s junk folder and he never saw it,’ said Skylar, picking up the story. ‘Luckily, Mum found it last week when she was looking for a lost invoice. She wrote back and thanked him. That meant that Dale had her number when he needed to find me yesterday. It also meant that Mum was happy to help him.’
Roo knew how the tale unfolded because Joni had relayed some of it to her earlier. When Dale learned that the person arrested for the tack-room robberies was a delivery driver and that Vano had never once visited the yards where it happened, he began to question why Russ would tell such a wicked untruth.
Even then, he didn’t suspect the farrier because as far as he knew Russ had more than enough money to buy all the fancy horses he could wish for. Added to which, Russ had lost all interest in riding or competing.
‘It was only after a chance conversation with a client who mentioned that Happy Petz had a side line in dog cloning that I began to connect the dots,’ Dale told Roo and Joni. ‘Like you, I then spent months going round in circles, trying to find proof.’
‘That’s where the fox comes in?’ asked Roo.
He smiled. ‘Yesterday morning Lloyd and I were behind Barn A having a silly argument over two new wheelbarrows. In the middle of the row, I suddenly thought: The fox sees everything. What did she see the night Wonder disappeared?’
‘The field CCTV!’ Roo said excitedly. ‘It showed the vixen moving her cubs.’
He nodded. ‘For as long as I’ve lived at Starwood, I’ve fed the foxes scraps most nights. Their den is well-concealed under the bushes near Barn A. They’re accustomed to lorries and horses coming and going. It suddenly occurred to me that something alarming must have happened close to the vixen’s den shortly before she moved her cubs.
‘That’s when I remembered the mobile bathroom was parked just metres from Wonder’s stall when he was stolen. I also recalled that Russ had studied engineering at Harvard and could easily have converted it into a horsebox.’
Roo knew the rest of the story off by heart.
Realising that he was going to need help if he was to prove the Wheelers’ involvement, he’d tried to track down Joni and Roo. Rosslyn Cooper had recently let slip that they were investigating Wonder’s disappearance. He also tried to contact Skylar to ask if she knew of any link between Russ and Magician.
Joni didn’t return his call. Skylar’s mum, Elena, did. When she told him that Skylar was working with a million-pound Arabian at a castle in Scotland, and that Joni and Roo were there too, he guessed that Russ was poised to strike again.
Jumping in his SUV, he drove without stopping to the Castle in the Sky. When he arrived after midnight, the place was in chaos. Shamal had been stolen and Roo and Skylar were missing. Joni was in floods of tears.
‘I felt so helpless,’ said Joni. ‘We knew from Skylar’s note and from the Levines that Russ and Violetta had an estate next door and that they were probably holding you and the horses captive. When Dale arrived and he and I compared notes on what we knew, we both wanted to race to rescue you instantly.’
‘I can’t believe that Scotland Yard threatened you with arrest if you came to help us,’ said Roo.
‘They were worried we’d endanger you further,’ Dale told her. ‘At the same time, they couldn’t set foot on the estate without a search warrant. To get one, they needed more proof.’
To Roo, it was poetic and fitting that Joni’s painting of Ghost Flight provided the final, final piece of the jigsaw.
After seeing the picture on the 10 p.m. news the previous night, an ex-employee of Happy Petz was moved to call Scotland Yard.
‘It made me cry,’ she told BBC breakfast news after they reported that Ghost Flight and eighteen other horses had been rescued from a Scottish estate. ‘I’d been scared to tell the police what I knew, but when I saw the painting, I knew I had to try to help. I couldn’t have lived with myself if the light in that special filly was stamped out by darkness and greed.’
Joni smiled at Roo and Skylar. ‘As soon as Dale and I heard that the police finally had their search warrant and were on their way to the Wheelers’ estate, we decided to lend a hand. Only by the time we reached you, you’d rescued yourselves.’
‘If it wasn’t for your painting, the cops might not have got the proof they needed to arrest Russ and Violetta and save the horses,’ Skylar pointed out. ‘And If Dale hadn’t been on the spot to calm Ghost when the helicopter came over the mountain and frightened the life out of her, she might still be running. It was a team effort.’
‘A team effort,’ agreed Roo, after which the four had an awkward, but rather wonderful, bear hug, resulting in even more cake crumbs and bits of stable mud on the Persian carpet.
Roo was fairly sure that Antonia wouldn’t mind.
‘If there’s one thing better than horses and happy endings,’ she’d told Roo and Skylar when she was reunited with her beautiful Arabian, ‘it’s both at the same time.’
51.
Reunion
‘Just so you know, we are on the right road!’ said Joni with a smile, steering Bluebird around a TRACK CLOSED FOR EMERGENCY REPAIRS barrier and driving on.
‘I trust you,’ Roo answered lightly, hoping her aunt wouldn’t notice that she was sitting on her hands to keep them from shaking.
After surviving Wonder Boy’s death-defying leap across the burn three days earlier, Roo had been sure that nothing would ever faze her again, but from the moment her alarm had shocked her awake at 3.30 a.m. in their Edinburgh campsite, she’d been a quivering bundle of nerves.
When the road forked, Joni took the track signposted PRIVATE BEACH. Bluebird’s headlights bounced up a black-shadowed slope and swung on to the open clifftop.
Roo caught her breath.
The sea and sky were silver. It was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Joni switched off the engine and double-checked the handbrake. She turned to Roo. ‘You can do this, honey. I know you can.’
‘Hope so,’ said Roo. ‘I’m looking forward to it. It’s just—’
‘You’re not sure what to expect or how you’ll feel?’ guessed her aunt.
Roo shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. By lunchtime, her dream horse would be on his way home. The question was, which home? Starwood or the Castle in the Sky. Antonia had told Roo that, if she got to keep Wonder Boy, he’d have free board and lodgings at the castle for as long as it took Roo and Joni to find a home of their own.
Joni passed Roo a fleece, gilet, and gloves to put on over her riding tights and boots. It was almost summer in Scotland, but the air had a real bite to it. ‘How do you think you’ll feel when you’re reunited with the horses?’
Roo didn’t hesitate. ‘Over-the-moon happy and full of joy.’
‘Well, then,’ said her aunt. ‘Start with them.’
***
On Leumadair (Gaellic for dolphin) Beach, they sat on the sand, close to the frilly waves, wrapped in rugs, and drinking chai from a flask. Breakfast was fat, buttery croissants still warm from the campsite bakery.
They sat on the sand, close to the frilly waves, wrapped in rugs, and drinking chai from a flask. Breakfast was fat, buttery croissants still warm from the campsite bakery.
A blush of apricot brightened the dawn sky. At length, a blood-orange sun climbed ponderously out of the sea. The clouds and cliffs turned gold.
Joni’s phone lit up and she scanned the new message.
‘The vet wanted to do a last-minute inspection, so they’re running late,’ she reported. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘But not Dale?’ asked Roo.
‘Not Dale. Under the circumstances, he thought it might be best for everyone if he went without saying goodbye. His flight takes off from Edinburgh Airport in a couple of hours. He’ll be in Seville by lunchtime.’
Roo still couldn’t get over the topsy-turviness of the past three days. No one was who they’d first seemed four months ago when she and Joni set out to find Wonder.
If she’d been told on the night of Antonia’s party that, within the week, Rhianna Cooper’s famous coach would have quit his high-powered, highly paid job as director of operations at Starwood Farm and be on his way to Spain to help out on Skylar’s grandmother’s horse farm, and that she, Roo, would be partially responsible, she’d have said there was more chance of Shorty the Shetland winning the Derby.
Yet that’s exactly what Dale Dering was doing.
‘Nana’s still getting over her hip operation,’ Skylar had explained. ‘There were complications and she’s still unable to ride. She needed someone reliable around the place – someone who understood horses and wasn’t afraid of hard work. Dale seemed a good fit.’
Roo looked out to sea. Gilt-edged clouds were billowing above the waves. She sat up in wonder. ‘Joni, this is the beach in my dream, the one in your painting. How did you know that we’d end up here, in this exact place?’
‘I didn’t,’ said her aunt with a smile. ‘You dreamed it and I was inspired by what you saw. Between us, we made it come true.’
Behind them, the headlights of the lorry swung into the clifftop car park. A second car followed it in. Roo leapt to her feet, fizzing with excitement. The horses had arrived.
***
Magician emerged from the lorry first, high-stepping beside Skylar, his crinkly black mane whipped by the sea wind.
Next came Shamal. The castle groom handed her lead rope to Roo, but it was the Arab mare who led Roo to the beach, dancing down the steep path at speed, her red tail held aloft.
As she ran to keep up, Roo felt a rush of affection for her. Their brief but harrowing journey in the horse transporter, when it was just her and Shamal facing an unknown enemy and uncertain fate, had bonded them for life.
In a perfect world, Ghost Flight would have joined them too, but the champion filly had been whisked straight home to Queen’s Reach.
‘Ghost will be nursed, pampered, and rested for as long as it takes,’ Kathryn had told Joni. ‘When she does race again, we’ll send you VIP passes. It’s the least we can do to thank you. Never forget, there’ll always be space for Bluebird at Queen’s Reach.’
Wonder was last to leave the lorry. Roo’s heart skipped a beat when she saw him at the top of the cliff, the morning sun catching his chestnut coat. He came hesitantly down the path and stopped when he reached the beach, nostrils flaring in the briny air.
Staring goggle-eyed at the sea, he pawed at the sand.
Rhianna Cooper, immaculate in a white competition shirt and white breeches, grey show jacket, and shiny black long boots, tugged at his reins. ‘Come on, boy. It’s only water.’
Wonder dug in his heels.
Then he noticed Roo. Forgetting his fears, he rushed towards her, whinnying, almost wrenching the reins from Rhianna’s hands.
Roo was so over-the-moon pleased to see him that she gave him a big cuddle and kissed him on his soft white muzzle.
The expression on Rhianna’s face when she turned made her feel guilty. She felt something else too – something she’d never imagined she’d feel towards Rhianna. Pity. Brick by brick, Rhianna’s glossy world was crumbling.
‘Sorry,’ Roo said quickly. ‘We went through a lot, me and Wonder. I’m just glad he’s okay.’
Rhianna smiled. ‘Don’t be sorry. You saved his life. No wonder he worships you. I’m also grateful. It’s just … I have mixed feelings about what’s happened and the future and, well, everything.’
‘Me too,’ said Roo with a rueful smile.
She glanced over at Skylar and Joni. They were talking to Antonia Levine and the woman from The Times. She was going to photograph Shamal, Magician, and Wonder Boy with their owners for a news story on the rescue of the horses.
Skylar hadn’t wanted to be in any photos, but Antonia had appealed to her to do it for Magician. ‘Great publicity for The Last Messenger!’
Skylar had grudgingly consented on the condition that Roo and Joni came along to the beach for moral support. Roo and Joni had happily agreed, provided that their involvement in the rescue was kept secret. Joni didn’t want her past or Roo’s plastered across the tabloids or social media. Skylar felt the same way.
It didn’t bother the three that Scotland Yard would get the glory. The picture that appeared in The Times would be accompanied by the police version of events – the one in which clever detectives had tracked the cunning Wheelers to their lair in the Scottish Highlands and saved fifteen horses.
‘Might be a while,’ said Roo to Rhianna as the photographer set up her tripod and pointed to various parts of the beach. ‘Would you like some chai?’
‘What’s chai?’
‘Black tea with cashew milk, honey, and spices. My aunt thinks chai fixes everything. It doesn’t, but it helps.’
Rhianna’s eyes shone with tears. ‘Will it help the Olympic selectors change their minds?’ she burst out. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard? I didn’t make the team.’
Roo didn’t know how to respond. ‘It’s their loss,’ she said at last.
‘I’m heartbroken, to be honest, but it’s probably for the best,’ said Rhianna. ‘So much is changing at Starwood, I’d have found it difficult to focus.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Maybe I will have some of that chai.’
Roo poured her a mug from the flask in Joni’s backpack. They sat on the sand. Wonder leaned over them like a gentle sentinel.
