Dare to Dream, page 1
Dare to Dream
by Kate Lattey
3rd Edition
Copyright 2013 © by Kate Lattey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Extract from DREAM ON
About the Author
* * *
Inspired by a remarkable true story.
* * *
* * *
“Life is, amongst other things, an accumulation of losses.”
Author unknown
* * *
Chapter 1
This can’t be happening, Marley thought as she ran across the gravel in front of her house, trying to suppress her panic. It isn’t real, it can’t be. Not now. Not like this…
She leapt onto the front step, jumped over the pile of muddy boots in the doorway and ran on down the cluttered hall without pausing, her bare feet drumming against the dusty floorboards. Bursting into the kitchen, she startled her eldest sister into spilling coffee across pages of accounts spread over the table.
“Dammit Marley!” Kristen swore, leaping to her feet and trying frantically to mop up the mess.
“Nimble got caught in the fence,” Marley gasped, out of breath after her headlong dash from the paddock. “We cut him out but he’s gushing blood all down his leg and you’ve gotta call the vet.”
“Oh hell!” Kris groaned. “That’s all we need.”
She grabbed the phone and hit the vet’s number on speed dial. Satisfied that her message had been delivered, Marley shot out the back door, leaving it wide open behind her. Kris watched through the window as her youngest sister sprinted across the back lawn with their exuberant terrier bounding at her heels.
Kris listened to the phone ringing down the line, biting her nails nervously. She was slim like her sister, but a sense of fragility clung to her, the injury that had damaged her back so badly leaving her slightly wasted. She’d been as fit and strong as her sisters once, before she had the fall that ended her riding career. It was over two years now since she had come crashing off a young horse onto a stony riverbank, fracturing her spine. Stupid of her, riding such a green youngster alone, but her sisters had been at school, and the horses had needed to be exercised. She’d eventually managed to drag herself to her feet and lead the horse home, but her back had never been the same since. The pain was no longer constant, but it came in pangs and twitches that startled her, sometimes sending beads of cold sweat down her back and making her wince. Kris did her best to put on a brave face, but sometimes wondered whether anyone was deceived.
The vet finally picked up his phone, and promised to come as soon as possible. Kris let the phone fall onto the table and dropped her head into her hands. Dottie, an aged spaniel lying on a rug in the corner of the room, lifted her head and whimpered softly.
Kris peered at her from between her fingers. “Why did it have to be Nimble?” she asked the dog. “We have a dozen horses on this farm eating their heads off and earning us nothing, and the one decent pony that Marley’s managed to produce goes and writes himself off just as he was starting to earn his keep.”
She got to her feet slowly and went out the back door, closing it behind her as Dottie sank her head back down onto her forepaws and drifted back to sleep, her doggy mind untroubled by this cataclysmic turn of events.
There’s so much blood. Marley felt queasy as she stood at her pony’s side, watching her sister Vanessa tend to his wounds.
“Is he going to be okay?”
Van shrugged. “Too soon to tell. Mike will be here soon,” she reassured her sister. “He’ll know. In the meantime, I’m doing my best to staunch the bleeding.”
Marley stepped into Nimble’s yard. “Let me do it.” She reached out and took hold of the towel that Van was holding against Nimble’s foreleg.
“Just keep the pressure on it,” Van said, wiping her blood-smeared hands on her jeans. “Hell, it’s soaked through already. Hang on, and I’ll go see if I can find another clean one.”
As Van ran back up to the house, Marley crouched down next to her pony and gently stroked him with her other hand. He was already trembling and looking miserable, and she prayed fervently that he would pull through this, that he would get better and go back to being the superstar that he’d only just become.
Marley had been riding ever since she could remember, and there had always been a steady stream of ponies coming through her life. Tall ponies, chunky ponies, blacks and bays and greys and roans, each one remembered in detail. Her first pony, shaggy and warm, teaching her from her earliest days that she had nothing to fear and instilling a bone deep trust and understanding that had carried her through the years, allowing her to reciprocate that trust in the most unwilling, difficult mounts. Her ponies had never come easy, or ready-made. They had always been the scrap heap and dog tucker ponies, the ones that nobody else had wanted, and had passed on for free to a family with no money but all the patience in the world. Marley and her sisters had loved and gentled and trained them, reshaping them into happy and successful, if rarely exceptional, ponies.
But some of them have been exceptional, she thought, and none more so than Nimble. She’d known from the start that he was special, and he’d definitely proven himself to her last year when he’d beaten all comers at Nationals to take out the Speed Pony Championship. And this season he’d started jumping in the Grand Prix classes, with Marley’s sights set firmly on winning Pony of the Year. She’d been well on her way to achieving that goal, before today, when everything had suddenly and unexpectedly fallen apart.
It really is the worst possible timing, Van reflected unhappily as she watched the vet stitch up Nimble’s leg. Mike’s hands were steady as he calmly pulled the flaps of skin across the wound, but it was not looking pretty.
“He’s made a real mess of this,” Mike muttered. “Barbed wire and horses don’t mix.”
Van frowned. As if they didn’t know that. As if they hadn’t wanted to take it all down and put up proper fencing years ago. But there had always been something more urgent to do, or something more vital to buy with what little money they had. And so the barbed wire had stayed, and they’d just crossed their fingers and stayed lucky. Until now.
“Trust me, it’s on my to-do list,” Van told Mike, and he smiled understandingly at her, knowing just how impossibly long that list was. Nimble flinched and Marley raised a hand to his neck, gently reassuring him, and the pony lowered his head into her touch.
Mike stood up and stretched as Marley surveyed his handiwork with a critical eye.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” she asked worriedly.
“Too soon to tell,” the vet replied. “I don’t know exactly what damage he’s done beneath the surface, but if he’s torn the muscles or damaged the ligaments, it will be a long time before he’s sound.” If ever, he thought to himself, but he didn’t say it out loud. “Sorry. I know what high hopes you had for him this season.”
Marley shrugged. “I just want him to feel better.” She unclipped Nimble’s leadrope, but he didn’t move at all, except to lower his sleepy head towards the grass.
“Leave him in this yard for a while,” Mike told them. “Keep the wound as clean as possible. I’ll come back tomorrow to check on him. Oh, and I’ll get you those antibiotics.”
Van followed Mike towards his dusty ute. She admired the way he’d stitched up the pony so neatly and efficiently. There were a lot of things that Van admired about Mike - his broad shoulders, his ready smile, his easy relaxed manner. The way he made her stomach churn when he smiled at her.
Stop it, she told herself. He’s got a girlfriend, and even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t look twice at a girl like you. Van’s thick legs and square shoulders set her apart from her sisters, who’d inherited their mother’s slender, graceful physique. Van took after their dad, who had once teasingly described them both as pine trees growing amongst willows. He’d meant it as a joke, but this unflattering image of herself had stuck with Van for years. She knew that her solid strength made it easier for her to stack hay bales and hang gates and dig in water pipes, but she also knew that she would never look right in a cocktail dress. Not like the beautiful and glamorous Caroline. Van had only met Mike’s girlfriend once, but it had been enough for her to know that she could never measure up.
“Here you go.”
Van took the antibiotics with a smile, trying to clear her mind. “You want to stay for a cuppa?” she offered. “Marley made a carrot cake, and it’s actually not half bad.”
“Sounds good, but I’ve got another call. Next time,” Mike promised. The door of his ute creaked as he pulled it shut behind him, and the engine growled into life. Van lifted a hand to wave, and he tooted the horn in reply as he drove out.
Tapping the bottle of medicine idly against her hand, Van headed toward the house to put it safely away, casting her eyes over the farm as she walked. Others might look across their land and see picturesque beauty in the rolling green hills, shady trees and bubbling creek, but Van’s eyes could only see the weeds that needed spraying, the paddocks that needed resting, the trees that needed trimming and the barbed wire that so desperately needed replacing. With a heavy sigh, she entered the house and found Marley sitting in the kitchen with her head in her hands.
“Chin up,” Van told her. “Worse things have happened.”
“Easy for you to say,” Marley muttered. “How would you feel if it was Normandy?”
Van nodded. “Fair point. But there’s nothing you can do about it right now.” She stretched, and Marley pulled a face.
“I can smell you from here.”
“Well I’ve been working all morning, unlike some people,” Van told her, then sniffed. “But you’re not wrong. Maybe I’ll take Covergirl for a swim.” She put Nimble’s medicine in the fridge and headed for the door, then looked back at Marley. “Wanna come?”
Marley hesitated for a moment.
“Come on,” Van urged her. “Sitting here moping isn’t going to make you feel any better.”
Her little sister nodded slowly, and got to her feet. “Okay. I’ll get Pluto in. Don’t leave without me.”
“Don’t drag your feet,” Van replied, and Marley pushed past her and ran out of the back door, her bare feet flashing across the scrubby back yard.
Van returned to the yards to find Kris staring sadly at Nimble. Her sister looked worn-down, and a lot older than her twenty-one years.
“Poor Nimble,” Kris sighed. “Why did it have to be him?”
“Let’s not all burst into tears just yet,” Van said. “He might still recover.”
“Maybe. Right now I’m more worried about what it’s going to cost to try and fix him.”
“As little as Mike can reasonably charge us,” Van replied. “He knows we don’t have any money.”
“I think everyone knows that,” Kris grumbled.
“We’ll work something out,” Van reassured her. “There must be something around here we can sell if we get really desperate. And there’s always Covergirl. Or Normandy.” There was hesitation in her voice as she mentioned her own show jumpers, her potential superstars.
Kris sighed heavily. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I really hope it doesn’t.”
Van patted her sister’s shoulder and walked off to the house paddock, where Covergirl was grazing with Miles, the big grey hunter. Elderly and retired now, Miles was a steady and calming influence on any wild youngsters that came onto the farm. As Van bridled her pretty little chestnut, she watched Miles graze and remembered the days when she, Kris and Marley all used to climb up onto his broad back together. Kris up front, controlling the big horse with ease. Van behind her, refusing to hold on with anything but her legs, even at a gallop, and tiny Marley at the back, her skinny little arms wrapped tightly around Van’s waist.
Miles had been their father’s horse. His solid grey bulk was a reminder of another time, before the accident three years ago that had changed their lives forever. Van still remembered that night as clearly as if it had been yesterday. Driving along the dark road, the radio playing softly in the car’s dim interior. She’d almost been asleep, dozing in the front seat next to her father as he drove her home from a friend’s birthday party. She’d been supposed to stay the night, but she wasn’t enjoying herself, feeling like a fish out of water as the other girls gave each other makeovers and gossiped endlessly about the boys in their class. So she’d told everyone that she felt sick, and called her dad, asking him to pick her up. And he’d said yes, because he had always said yes to her.
They were almost home when the drunk driver came around the blind corner on the wrong side of the road. Dad had swerved, and the oncoming car collided with the driver’s side door. Had her father turned it in that direction on purpose, to protect her? Van didn’t know. She’d walked away with a broken collarbone and a few bumps and bruises, but Dad hadn’t survived the night. She still had nightmares about it, still woke up in a cold sweat some nights to the sound of squealing tyres and crunching metal, and the acrid stench of burning rubber lingering in the air.
They’d been lucky, in a way, that Kris had already turned eighteen and could assume legal guardianship of her and Marley. Well-meaning relatives had offered to help out, had suggested that they sell the farm and move to a more manageable property, but the girls had steadfastly refused. There was no place like home, after all. And Dad had loved this place so much. He’d bought it when he married their mother, and they’d moved here when Kris was still a baby. A few scrubby acres with a shabby old house, so rundown that their mother had cried when she’d first seen it. Van didn’t recall her mother very clearly. She had, after all, only been three years old when she’d died giving birth to Marley. Van only had a few photos and a vague recollection of a picnic by the lake, yet the strangest details would sometimes bring it back to her in glimpses. A floppy straw hat. Itchy wool against her bare legs. The smell of strawberries in the sun. Like recollections of a dream, disappearing into thin air whenever she grasped after them.
But Dad was always with her, and his touch was everywhere around the farm. He had built this place for his family, and the barn and yards and arena were all a testament to his devotion to his three horse-crazy daughters. Van would never leave this place, not if she could help it. But every year the money that Dad had left them disappeared more quickly, and recently it seemed like their creditors were descending like vultures onto what little they had left. Sometimes she wondered if these last few years were just a bad dream, and that at any moment she would wake up and find herself back in that front seat next to her father, driving safely through the night. Only this time they would make it home, and life would go on as it should have done.
Van was brought back to earth by the sound of hoof beats approaching, and she led Covergirl out of the paddock and vaulted up onto her back as Marley came trotting around the corner on her Roman-nosed Appaloosa. Their mounts looked incongruous together, Covergirl’s refined beauty clashing with Pluto’s thickset plainness. But despite their outward differences, they were both clever show jumpers, and that was what mattered to the girls. The sisters set off down the track at a jog trot, heading for the swimming hole in the creek that ran along the boundary of their farm.
They rode together across the paddocks, until the track narrowed and Pluto pushed ahead of Covergirl. The chestnut mare cantered on the spot, fretting about being left behind, but Van sat quietly on her back, watching her sister as she rode ahead. To all outward appearances, Marley was just another fifteen year old girl, gangly and awkward, but she carried within herself a sense of vitality and purpose that made her stand out in a crowd. Most girls her age could only see their individual imperfections, and were blind to the easy beauty that is the sum of all parts. Not that Marley spends a lot of time worrying about how she looks, Van thought to herself with a grin. Her sister’s long brown legs were covered in scrapes and bruises, her fingernails were ragged, and her hand-me-down clothes were faded and torn. Van couldn’t help herself.
“Mar, how come you always look like you’ve been run over by a truck?”
Marley turned and looked over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. “You’re the one who needs a bath,” she reminded her.
“I don’t think a bar of soap would hurt either of us right now,” Van conceded , and Marley stuck her tongue out at her. Her little sister was smiling, but behind those wide green eyes lay a stubborn streak that rivalled Van’s own. So far, mostly through necessity of circumstance, they’d managed to work as a team, but Van knew the day would come when they would be at loggerheads, and she couldn’t help wondering who would eventually come out on top.
