Riding Star

“Hey, Dooley.” Georgie gave the piebald a firm pat on his broad neck. “How’ve you been?”

Georgie stepped aside and watched as the black and white gelding shoved his muzzle deep into the bucket and began snuffling up the chaff and sugarbeet.

“He looks good, doesn’t he?” Lucinda said, joining her in the loose box to admire the horse.

Georgie nodded. “He was always one of my favourites.”

“I’ve got a couple of new horses since you were here last.” Lucinda led Georgie back out into the corridor and passed her another feed bucket. “Shamrock and Jack Sparrow. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

Shamrock turned out to be a rangy chestnut Thoroughbred with bony hindquarters and deep brown eyes, while Jack Sparrow was a small, fleabitten grey pony with a wilful look about him.

“They’re both for the school, but Jack is proving to be a bit of a handful for most of the riders,” Lucinda admitted. “He’s been getting away with murder. He raced off with Davina Pike the other day and deposited her over a fence. Not that I can say that I blame him – there are many times when I’ve wanted to do the same thing myself!”

She smiled at Georgie. “It’s so good to have you back! The horses have missed you terribly. Dooley and Billy could both do with some schooling work if you have time.”

Georgie nodded. “I’m yours for the next two weeks.” “Well I could certainly use your help,” Lucinda said. “It’s been impossible to find good grooms since you’ve been away.” Lucinda put the last feed bin in the loose box and shut the door. “So, is cross-country class going OK? I hope Tara hasn’t been too tough on you this term.”

Tara Kelly, an old school friend of Lucinda’s, was the head of the Blainford eventing department. Renowned for being the toughest teacher at the academy, Tara had been Georgie’s cross-country teacher for the past term.

When Georgie had arrived at the academy she had expected to excel in Tara’s class. After all, at the age of thirteen she was already the best junior cross-country rider in Gloucestershire. But things were different at Blainford. Thrust among elite, hand-picked equestrians from all over the world, she was facing real competition for the first time.

To make things even harder she had been forced to sell her beloved Tyro because she couldn’t afford to take him to America and pay his boarding fees. Georgie was trying to cope with a new horse, Belladonna, a talented but headstrong mare.

Struggling to click with her new mount, Georgie found herself at the bottom of the class rankings, fighting to survive the gruelling end-of-term eliminations. Tara Kelly was known for axing students from her freshman intake if they didn’t measure up to her exacting standards. Which brought Georgie to the big news that she needed to tell Lucinda.

“I’ve been dropped from Tara Kelly’s class.”

The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. Lucinda stared at her in stunned disbelief.

“Georgie! But why? I thought you said that you had Belle going really well?”

“I do… now,” Georgie groaned. “Belle has been brilliant ever since the House Showjumping, but we had lots of trouble earlier in the term and then on finals day she would have been OK except Kennedy forced me off the course on the steeplechase. I had to pull Belle up or she would have got hurt.”

It sounded so lame, like she was making excuses for her bad performance. But she wasn’t. Her expulsion from class was unfair and it had been masterminded by Blainford’s own resident evil – Kennedy Kirkwood.

“Did you tell Tara what happened?” Lucinda asked. “If this Kennedy forced you off the jump then she should be reprimanded…”

“I tried,” Georgie sighed, “but Tara didn’t see it – she had no choice. I’d been at the bottom of the rankings all term and so she eliminated me.”

“Do you want me to talk to Tara?” Lucinda offered. “I could call her and—”

Georgie shook her head. It would only make things worse.

“I know I should just get over it and take another subject, but…” Georgie took a deep breath, “… eventing class is the whole reason I wanted to go to Blainford in the first place. I know it sounds so pathetic, Lucinda, but I just don’t know what I’m going to do…”

“Oh, Georgie! Why didn’t you tell me? You poor thing.” Lucinda put her arms round Georgie once more, hugging her even tighter, as the tears that Georgie had been fighting to hold back finally began to flow.

*

Two weeks in Little Brampton was just what Georgie needed to recover from that last dreadful term at Blainford. Even if not all of her friends were as understanding as Lucinda.

“It sounds awful at your stupid boarding school – getting dumped from cross-country class! I don’t understand why you want to go back!”

Georgie’s best friend Lily had never been one to hide her feelings. She’d been outright miserable when Georgie had decided to leave Little Brampton and now that she saw her chance to convince Georgie to turn her back on Blainford she wasn’t going to leave it alone.

“You always say that cross-country is the most important bit of eventing,” Lily said, “so you might as well chuck the whole business!”

“It’s not that simple,” Georgie insisted. “Lucinda says I shouldn’t give up. I should try to convince Tara to let me back into her class.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Georgie shook her head. “I don’t know yet. And I’ve got to choose a new subject to take in the meantime. I think I’ll do dressage…”

“I don’t understand dressage,” Lily sighed. “I mean, it’s just riding around in circles, isn’t it? It’s like ‘Look, everyone, I’ve got a horse!’”

Georgie groaned. It was impossible trying to explain riding to Lily. She was simply not horsey. Right now she was on her bike, cycling alongside Georgie who was riding Toffee, one of the horses from Lucinda’s stables. Georgie had tried to convince Lily to ride one of the other ponies, but Lily wasn’t having any of it.

“I’ll stick with my bike, thanks – at least it doesn’t bolt off or try to buck,” she said firmly, strapping on her cycle helmet.

The two girls rode through the village, heading towards the shops with five pounds to spend on fish and chips.

“We’ll get loads for a fiver,” Lily said confidently. “Nigel is working today.”

“Look at you! You’ve sold your love to Nigel for a piece of battered cod,” Georgie teased.

Nigel Potts’s parents owned the fish and chip shop, and he was constantly harassing Lily to go out with him. It seemed that his persistence had finally paid off.

“I’m not actually going out with him or anything!” Lily insisted as she cycled on. “It was just the one date. He took me to the cinema and he ponged so badly of fish and chips it was like sitting next to a deep-fat fryer.”

Lily sighed. “It’s hardly glamorous, is it? Not like you and your handsome polo player whisking you off for a romantic weekend in the country.”

“… a romantic weekend in which he dumped me with his hideous sister, and then ran off to snog her best friend!” Georgie clarified.

Her relationship with James Kirkwood had ended super-badly – even if he and Georgie had made peace at the School Formal at the end of term.

“Well, what about Riley?” Lily asked. “You’re going out with him now, right?”

“I don’t know,” Georgie groaned. “He turns up at the School Formal, and everything is great, but then he does a total disappearing act on me.”

That night at the School Formal when Riley had taken Georgie in his arms and assured her that they would find a way to convince Tara to take her back, she had felt so safe, certain that somehow everything would be OK again. Georgie wasn’t going to let Kennedy steal her future. She would fight her way back into the cross-country class.

But that confidence had begun to ebb away. Waking up in the cold light of day the next morning she realised she had no idea how to persuade Tara to reinstate her in the cross-country class. And Riley never called.

“But you’ll see him when you get back to school?” Lily said.

Georgie shook her head. “He doesn’t go to Blainford. He thinks the academy is full of rich snobs.”

“So let me get this straight,” Lily said, peddling harder so that Georgie had to push Toffee into a trot to keep up. “You’ve been dumped by two boys and one teacher and you’re still going back? Geez, Georgie! What’s it going to take to convince you to come home?”