The Pony Question Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgements

  Essie pulled the blankets away from her face, watching her breath rise away in the cold air. “Steam,” she said, pulling the blankets up. “Condensation,” she mumbled, then frowned slightly as she searched for another word. Not satisfied with her choice, she whispered “mist” into the wool.

  Outside the little square window at the foot of the bed, grey silhouettes of swooping swallows darted backwards and forwards, disturbed by the sensor light that had come on as Essie’s mum brought firewood in from the carport. Enough light leaked into her narrow room for Essie to make out the time on her watch: 5.35 am. It was the time she used to get up for dressage competitions – once she’d have been heading off to plait up her pony Chet. She allowed herself a sigh. At least she knew he was being well cared for by his new owners.

  Rolling onto her side, Essie listened to her mum moving around the house; she could tell where her mum was and what she was doing from sounds travelling through the old walls. The high-pitched whine of the screen door hinges and the clang of the wood-heater door meant the fire was going, and it would be warm in the little kitchen.

  Rumbles sounded in the roof, as hot water travelled through the cold pipes, making them expand. At least the water hadn’t frozen overnight. Essie appreciated the familiar sounds – it was good to be back in her own bed. She’d just spent four days with her dad, Steven and his new wife, who Essie called Cardboard Caroline because she was so stiff and straight – though not to her face, of course. At least she wouldn’t have to do that for another six months. Her dad was going – leaving, deserting, abandoning, Essie thought – to work in Germany on some big deal for a pharmaceutical company. It was a great opportunity for him, apparently.

  She heard the familiar shooshing sound of her mum’s Indian moccasins scuffing down the hallway. Essie watched the doorknob turn, her mum’s face appearing in the crack of light that spilled into her room.

  “Morning Essie, did you hear the mopoke? It’s a good sign,” she said as she looped her thick dark hair into a wobbly knot at the back of her head, her dark eyes were bright.

  “No,” said Essie, sitting up and straining to hear the night-bird’s call. Her mum believed in “signs” – especially birds.

  With an apologetic face, her mum said, “It’s gone, I spooked it when I got the wood. I thought you might have heard it earlier, and sorry but it’s time to get up, another grand adventure, expedition, exploration awaits. Come and get dressed in the kitchen; it’s toasty in there.” She turned, making her way back up the hall, singing out behind her, “And I think adventure, expedition, exploration deserves a triple word score. Just saying.” She sounded pleased with herself.

  “Maybe, but I’m not even awake yet!” called Essie as she swung her legs out of bed, sucking in her breath and mumbling “chilling, freezing, arctic”.

  “You sound awake to me Essie, Esperance, Hope,” her mum called back, using not only the long Spanish version of her name but her dad’s nickname for her too.

  “All right then,” said Essie, grabbing her clothes and scuttling up the hallway, “but I’m not giving you Essie, Hope and Esperance – names don’t count and no one calls me Hope except Dad and Cardboard Caroline.”

  “Conceded,” said her mum with a smile. “And maybe just call her Caroline.”

  “I will when they call me Essie,” she grinned back.She wasn’t interested in knowing or talking about Caroline, and she was sure the feeling was mutual.

  Essie’s mum, Francesca, had made up the “three for one” word game two years ago, on the long drive to Essie’s dad’s place. It was the first time she and her mum had been apart since her parents separated, and Essie had left the little cottage they shared – in “that backwater” as her dad called it – to stay in his modern apartment in the city. Trying to distract Essie from her nerves on the drive, her mum had challenged her to find three words for one thing. The first three Essie had been able to think of were “carsick, nauseous, vomit”, shortly before doing just that, as their van wound its way over the Blue Mountains towards the coast. Despite its unfortunate beginnings, the game had stuck.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed early,” said her mum, as she poked the fire, sending a fizz of sparks bouncing up into the air. Feeling the heat on her face, Essie offered a muffled “It’s okay” as she pulled a bulky brown woollen jumper over her head.

  She had found the jumper in a second-hand shop on their way back from Sydney. It had cream horse shapes around the hem. Essie loved it, even though it had taken three washes to get rid of the smell of mothballs and made her question her decision to only buy clothes from op shops. Her dad thought the “no shopping” thing was to irritate him, given his love of new shiny things with big logos, but it wasn’t that, at least not completely. Essie ran her finger around the hem of the jumper, remembering the documentary she’d watched about all the clothing waste the world generated. It had given her nightmares for a week.

  Pulling her belt through the loops on her jeans, Essie smiled cynically, thinking of her dad’s latest offer. While she’d been staying at his house he’d tried to convince her to board at private school. He was certain that Francesca was ruining Essie’s life by taking her away to the country, away from what he considered a “great education”.

  Essie could see right through him. Sending his daughter to boarding school would be another sign of success. How must it look that Shiny Steve’s daughter went to a public school in a country town, and all his co-workers’ kids were enrolled at some posh private school. The latest bribe to get Essie to agree was the offer of an equestrian boarding school, and buying her a new horse. Their almost brand-new float, he reminded her, was still in storage. She hadn’t even bothered to tell her mum about it.

  Her dad thought winning was everything. Essie shuddered at the memory of how he’d been at some of her dressage competitions, blunt to organisers and rude to riders. All Essie had wanted to do was compete with her pony. Essie liked to win as much as anyone, but she was just as happy when they went well or learned something new. Shiny Steve had never understood that. He’d never noticed how willingly Chet had gone, or understood that just being there having fun, feeling her hard work paying off, had been enough. To Steven, anything less than a ribbon meant the day was a waste of time.

  Then came the Pony Club Dressage Championships. Three days before the competition Chet had been slightly lame – not bad, just not right. He’d pulled a muscle in the paddock. The vet said to give him a week off and see how he was. Essie had been disappointed, but it wasn’t the end of the world. After all, Chet was going to be okay. But Steven had gone on and on about how Essie wouldn’t make the state team now, not that Essie had been under any illusions that she would anyway. It was as if Steven was the rider.

  But then, after just two days, Chet had come good. Essie was stoked. What she didn’t know was that Steven had been giving Chet painkillers left over from another injury. Essie would never have known, if they hadn’t been picked for a random drug test at championships. Chet’s test came back positive, and Essie was
banned from competing for twelve months. Social media had gone mad. Even now, Essie shuddered at the memory of the things that were said about her: that she was a cheat, that she only cared about winning, not about her horse. The worst part was that lots of the nasty comments were made by people she had thought of as friends.

  Essie hadn’t ridden since then. When Steven had suggested they sell Chet and think about a bigger horse, Essie had agreed, resolving that she would make sure she never found another horse. Her dad’s actions had ruined riding for her; she couldn’t stand to go back and have people talking about her. And now everything was different.

  “How are you feeling today?” her mum asked, pulling her back to the present.

  “I feel okay, I think,” Essie said. “No aches at least.” She turned her beanie around in her hands before pulling it on, letting her long straight tawny hair hang out to cover her ears.

  Essie was getting over glandular fever. The initial virus had cleared up in about three weeks, but the tiredness continued to drag on. The doctor had said no school for another month. Essie studied when she could, and the rest of the time she slept a lot, but today, so far, she felt fine.

  “We could do a Grand Adventure, hot chocolate and brekkie stop?” Her mum smiled, placing their travel mugs on the bench.

  “Absolutely, definitely, totally,” said Essie, smiling at her.

  Essie knew that calling it a Grand Adventure was her mum’s way of trying to make their morning sound fun. But she needn’t have worried; Essie really didn’t mind.

  They were off to a farm clearing sale. Francesca bought second-hand furniture at auctions and farm sales and fixed it up, restoring each piece in her own flamboyant, artistic way. Spanish ancestors, she would tell people who asked where her inspiration came from. Essie wasn’t sure there were any Spanish ancestors in their family, but people liked the story. Sometimes the furniture was a bit too wild if you asked Essie, but people loved the crazy chairs and brightly coloured sofas, buying them from shops in the city they had left behind.

  Essie thought the furniture was the perfect metaphor for how much their lives had changed in the past two years.

  Only two years ago they’d been living in Sydney, where everything in their lives seemed light, bright and shiny. They lived close to the beach in a white house with white furniture and pale wood everywhere. Everything was tidy and organised. Uptight, Essie realised when she thought about it now.

  Her dad had a high-flying job as a negotiator for companies, doing big deals and was often away on business trips, liking everything just so with them and the house when he came home, spending his spare weekends with Essie going to dressage competitions or lessons. The horses were never Francesca’s thing; they were between Essie and her dad.

  Then one day he came back from a business trip without his luggage.

  He’d come home, he said, to tell them he wasn’t coming home. He was leaving them, moving out. Essie clearly remembered the blinding Sydney sunshine blasting him into silhouette as he walked out that front door for the last time. And then, just like that, he vanished from their lives for six months, his only contact coming in the form of lawyers’ letters and awkward phone calls to Essie. Even now Essie dreaded those calls, and she was pretty sure he felt the same. She wondered if they would ever talk like they used to on those early morning drives to competitions, towing the float, just the two of them. Still, she thought, if he didn’t miss it neither did she.

  “Got everything you need, Ess?” Francesca called as she grabbed her phone and laptop, looping a bright scarf around her neck. She wore a fake fur headband, which should have looked ridiculous, but with her olive skin and dark hair she looked artistic and stylish, the perfect creator of their colourful, slightly chaotic house, which was filled with furniture Francesca couldn’t part with, or tired pieces waiting their turn to be loved back to beautiful. That was how Essie thought of herself and her mum sometimes, like pieces of furniture Steve had abandoned and Francesca had loved back to life.

  With a shake of her head Essie called back to her mum, “Yeah, I’m good to go.”

  As Essie walked to the front door, Francesca bustled up behind her and, with a quick, one-arm squeeze of her waist, flung the door open and said, “Well, what are we waiting for? Grand safari, adventure, expedition, here we come!”

  “More like once was grand sofa, lounge, couch, here we come,” said Essie. “You know I’m just coming along for the hot chocolate, right?” she added, going slowly on the two slippery wooden front steps, but she smiled at her mum’s back. You had to give it to her for enthusiasm: it was freezing, and the sun was so far from up that the moon was still out. As Essie walked over to open the gate, she heard the mopoke call from the trees behind the house, and suppressed a little shiver at the lonely sound.

  Essie swung the icy gate open for Francesca to drive their maroon van through, then shook her hands, casting off the little shards of frost that stuck to her gloves before they could melt and leave her with wet fingers. Blue exhaust smoke curled into the air, turning purple in the red glow thrown by the tail-lights. Swinging the gate shut behind them, Essie wondered why they bothered when it didn’t have a fence on either side, it just sat alone across the driveway, like a football player missing the rest of their team. There were no signs to say there had ever been a fence.

  Francesca was wiping a gloved hand over the dashboard of the old furniture van, removing dust only she could see. She had christened the van Van-essa, loving the badly coloured vehicle from the minute she sat behind the wheel, and it had quickly become the third member of their expedition party. Van-essa carried them safely to their new life in the village of Pippin, staying faithful and reliable while Francesca travelled the countryside searching for furniture, building her business, carting home the old items that would ultimately pay their way. Francesca talked to Van-essa like an old friend.

  As Essie settled into the warmth, putting her seatbelt on, her mum slowly turned Van-essa out onto their little street.

  Essie ran her eye around the cul-de-sac. No lights were on in the tidy cream house with its green roof that sat next door, home to stocky Connie with her puffed white hair and her husband Percy with his arthritic hands, caused he said from years picking apples in the orchard that used to be in the now empty paddock beside their house. A lazy line of smoke rose from the chimney against the dark sky, their wood stove burning low.

  Next came Pete and Doddsy, baby Josh and Essie’s best friend Aiden’s place. Washing hung limply on a yellow line under the verandah that surrounded the pale blue timber cottage. Pete’s practical work clothes in shades of khaki and navy, hung alongside their toddler Joshua’s bright jumpsuits and Aiden’s uniform of jeans and grey T-shirts. Yellow light spilled from the kitchen windows and Essie briefly caught sight of Doddsy at the sink in her pink fluffy dressing-gown.

  Tilting her head, Essie craned to see past the trees to a second-storey window, where soft light glowed in Aiden’s bedroom. As Essie watched, the light flicked on and off and she smiled, knowing he was signalling that he’d heard the van pull out. No surprise there, Aiden didn’t sleep much.

  Francesca nagged him, when he sat in their kitchen, curly black hair flopping all over the place, long lanky limbs hanging off the kitchen stool, that he should get rid of the TV in his room, and then he’d sleep just fine.

  Aiden just said “Yes, Francesca,” not bothering to explain that he wasn’t watching TV; he was online researching photography and cameras. Aiden wanted to be a photographer. He was the only person Essie knew her age who knew exactly what he wanted to do.

  Last, as they slowed at the end of the street, was the entrance to Grace Park, which bordered their block on the short side. Aiden and Essie took its winding path to the back gate as a shortcut to school. Essie had never seen another person in there, except the council workers who mowed it.

  “Can you turn on Tom?” Francesca asked, nodding to the navigation in the dashboard.

  “T
urn left,” came the electronic voice, directing them away from their small village and onto the country road that would take them west, to a farm about two hours away, where the auction was being held. “Thank you, Tom,” said Francesca, obediently turning the wheel.

  Cocooned in the warmth of the van, Essie looked across at her mum’s bright, eager face, her gloved hands firm on the wheel, and couldn’t help a small smile. Francesca was so different now to the way she had been in the days after Dad had left, leaving them directionless and in a state of shock.

  While they tried to figure out what to do next, Francesca had worked with her dad, Essie’s grandpa, in the little shed at the back of his 1950s yellow-brick suburban house, helping him restore old furniture like she used to before she got married. The work had restored her mum as well as the furniture.

  One chilly Saturday morning, inspired by a small article in the newspaper about a village named Pippin being a hidden gem, a place to see the colours of the autumn trees, they’d headed off for a weekend and come back to the city with a new plan and purpose. Pippin, full of little cosy houses with smoking brick chimneys, was like a different planet compared to the white light of the beach life they’d lost. It was as if the autumn colours had reawakened Francesca’s artistic heart, offering them a brand-new start. Francesca Furniture had been born that day, and had grown steadily ever since.

  As the dark kilometres rolled by outside the window, the occasional farmhouse or dairy shed breaking the darkness, Essie dozed, lulled by the rolling of the van. She woke as they slowed and pulled into a country town.

  “Where are we?” Essie asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Boondaloo,” said Francesca, pointing to the name across the old pub. “I don’t know about you but I’m so ready for a hot chocolate and a muffin,” she added, swinging Van-essa into a parking spot in the almost-empty street.

  While Essie had dozed, the day had arrived and now the sun was a shimmering spot behind low grey cloud. Climbing out of the van, she shivered. There was no warmth in the sun.