Foxy: Rivalry at Summer Camp (3 page)

“Maybe she’s star-struck?” Charlie said as the friends rushed into the Hall through the huge back door.

The welcome cool of the stone-clad building hit them as they wiped their feet on the mat. They entered a large, echoey hallway, hung with big oil paintings in heavy, gilt frames. Signs pointed them to the dining room, which had two long wooden tables with benches on either side. Along one wall of the room a buffet was laid out, with jugs of juice, piles of sandwiches, cakes and fruit. Melissa stood with the other instructors at one end of the tables, smiling at everyone coming in.

Holly, carrying a book on pony care and
covered in Skylark’s white hairs, crept in just as Melissa was about to start. She stole a glance at Amber, then sat down on her own near the other end of the bench.

“Okay, listen up everyone,” Melissa called out, clapping her hands. “Before you start the buffet, I want to welcome you all to Pony Camp. I’ll pin a timetable up for the week, over by the juices. As a general rule, you’ll be expected to feed at seven thirty and be ready for your tack and turnout inspection by ten. Then there’ll be a morning lesson in your teams. Lunch will be at twelve thirty, followed by a stable management demo and an afternoon lesson or fun ride at three. We’ve got a pool here, so in the evenings you can go swimming, and there’ll be other fun stuff to get involved in, too. Oh, and there’s one strict ground rule – no one is to leave the camp without permission. Okay?”

Everyone nodded, and murmured a “yes”.

“Now, there’ll also be team and individual competitions running throughout the week,” Melissa continued.

Alice turned to look at Rosie, feeling nerves mixing with her excitement.

“Each day you’ll be awarded marks out of ten from your instructor for your turnout, and then again for your riding. These points will accumulate throughout the week. I’ll put the points up on a score sheet each morning at breakfast time. There’ll be further points awarded in the cross-country event on Friday.”

Next Melissa ran through which team had which instructor. She would be instructing the red team, Beth was taking the blues and Lara the green team. That left the purple team with Freddie. Rosie made a face, making Alice giggle.

“We’ll go out all together for our welcome hack around the village as soon as lunch is over,” Melissa announced, “so once the plates are cleared, make your way to the yard and I’ll
meet you, all tacked up and mounted, at two thirty sharp. I hope you all enjoy the week. Now, tuck in!”

Everyone rushed to the food. Then the whole camp crammed themselves as close to Amber as they could get. They talked over each other, asking endless questions – what was Lily
really
like? What was her favourite colour? Her favourite rider? Her star sign? Her favourite chocolate? Was she as pretty in real life as her pictures? Could they come and visit her at Chestnut Grove?

Amber sat there, hardly able to eat with answering all the questions. Suddenly her phone burst into life with a loud neigh. Amber’s face lit up as she saw the screen. Everyone around her paused for a second. “You can ask Lily your questions yourselves if you want,” she grinned. “This is her now.”

The whole hall fell silent as Amber put Lily onto speakerphone.

“Hey, Lil, how’s it going? Did you get to Burghley okay?”

Everyone tried not to giggle, and Watty clapped her hand over her own mouth.

“Amber, listen, I’ve just spoken to Aunt Becca,” a voice rang out clearly. “She’s crazy with worry – she can’t find Foxy. He’s disappeared from Chestnut Grove.”

A
MBER
froze as Lily carried on speaking, her panicked voice flooding out into the stunned hall.

“I’d forgotten to tell Aunt Becca about the supplement for Foxy’s feed,” Lily continued without waiting for a reply from her sister, “so I called her today about it. I said Foxy would be easy to pick out amongst the other horses and ponies. But then she phoned me back in a panic. She said she’d looked all over and there definitely wasn’t a pony there with—”

Amber broke from her daze and quickly switched off the speakerphone, her fingers shaking. She pressed the phone to her ear, listened intently for a few moments, then spoke.

“So Foxy really
is
missing,” Amber said in a small voice. Suddenly aware of everyone listening in, Amber hurried towards the door. “You can’t come home because of this – you’ve
got
to stay and compete! I’ll go home and help Aunt Becca look for him.”

As she rushed out of the room, Watty started to flap, worried that their camp celebrity was about to make a dramatic exit before they’d even had a chance to see her ride. The murmuring in the hall grew as everyone speculated on what had happened. Everyone but Holly, Alice noticed, whose nose was buried in her book on pony care.

Mia turned to Charlie, Alice and Rosie. Her own excitement was reflected in her three friends’ faces.

“If Foxy’s missing,” she whispered, “the Pony Detectives could help Lily and Amber look for him! From what Watty said earlier, the Simpsons don’t live very far away.”

“It could be our first celebrity case!” Rosie said, her eyes widening.

The past mysteries the Pony Detectives had solved included working out who stole a top showjumping pony, Moonlight. Then, when Alice faced losing her beloved Scout, they’d investigated a way to stop him being sold, securing his future with Alice for ever. Then they’d found the owners of a runaway pony
and
saved Phantom after his difficult behaviour nearly saw him sold once more. They were getting quite good at being detectives.

Amber walked back into the dining hall, her porcelain skin looking even paler than before. She sat down heavily next to the Pony Detectives, a deep frown etched into her forehead.

“What are you going to do?” Mia asked.

The rest of the camp crowded round, straining to hear.

“Lily doesn’t know if Foxy’s escaped, or… or if he’s been taken deliberately,” Amber said,
sounding perplexed. Alice noticed Holly look up sharply from her book. She caught Alice’s eye, flushed, then quickly glanced back at the page again. “She’s called the police and the local rescue yards. She wanted to know if I saw anything out of the ordinary this morning, but I didn’t.”

“Was Foxy there when you left?” Alice asked.

Amber’s cheeks reddened slightly.

“I… I don’t know,” she confessed. “I was in a bit of a rush, so I didn’t get to check all the fields. He could have gone missing last night…”

“He might have just escaped from your yard,” Charlie said, trying to make Amber feel better.

“That’s true,” Rosie agreed. “Firestorm’s gone to Burghley, Copper’s come here – maybe he tried to follow you? He could be wandering around somewhere nearby.”

“Maybe,” Amber said slowly. “I said I’d go home to help Aunt Becca look for him,
but Mum and Lily won’t hear of it. Lily’s still thinking of coming back, but either way they’re determined that this shouldn’t spoil my week at camp.”

It looked to Alice like the news about Foxy had already done that. “We’ve got our welcome hack this afternoon,” Alice suggested. “Why don’t we use it to ride round and search for Foxy then?”

Amber chewed her lip, looking uncertain.

“We can’t lose anything by trying,” Mia said, secretly wishing she’d come up with the idea. “If we split off into our teams, rather than hacking out together, we could cover lots of ground. Let’s go and ask the instructors now.”

The other Pony Detectives agreed and got up to leave, looking determined. Alice noticed that Amber hadn’t moved. “Coming?” Alice asked.

Amber forced a smile and nodded, scraping back the bench as she stood up.

Melissa was chatting with the other instructors in the lounge when the Pony Detectives raced in. When Mia explained in a rush about Foxy going missing, Melissa looked confused.

“Slow down a second,” Melissa said. “Who’s Foxy? That’s not one of the ponies here, is it?”

“No,” Freddie chipped in. “It’s Lily’s retired competition pony.”

“That’s the one,” Mia said, looking across at Freddie. “He’s gone missing from Chestnut Grove.”

“Well, Chestnut Grove isn’t far from here,” Freddie pointed out. “Foxy could have wandered onto the Dovecote estate.”

“We should definitely use the welcome hack to help with the search,” Melissa said. “One of the teams should cover the grounds here, while the rest of us head out and search the local area.”

Freddie grabbed a set of keys from the table.

“I can cover the grounds,” he offered quickly. “I’ll take the Land Rover and do it in no time.”

“Okay, see you back here at four thirty, then,” Melissa agreed, “ready to help everyone settle their ponies back into the stables.”

They followed Freddie outside. As he roared off in his Land Rover, Melissa arranged for everyone to meet in the lorry park, then disappeared to get her own horse tacked up.

When the ponies were ready, everyone began to mount. Phantom pawed the ground, impatient to be off and Charlie had to keep him walking round slightly away from the ponies. Amber brought Copper out last and quietly jumped into the saddle. Alice noticed everyone craning their necks to get their first glimpse of the partnership in action.

As Melissa called for everyone to divide into their groups, Alice asked Amber for a description of Foxy.

“On the phone earlier,” Mia added, “Lily mentioned that Foxy was easy to find among the rest of your ponies and horses at Chestnut Grove. Is he really distinctive?”

“No, not really,” Amber said, as everyone fell silent to listen. “It’s just that he’s the only pony at the yard that Lily doesn’t bother keeping neat, because he doesn’t do much. She doesn’t pull his mane or trim his tail any more, so they’re quite bushy and his ears are a bit fluffy. He looks a bit roughed off . Um, apart from that, he’s a fourteen-hand chestnut gelding.”

Equipped with the description, the green team set off with Lara, closely followed by the blues, with Beth. Everyone could hear Watty giggling and shrieking on her way out of the drive.

“I bet she doesn’t take this seriously at all,” Mia tutted.

“Right, red team, you’re with me,” Melissa called out to the remaining riders. “And purple
team, you’re doubling up with us because Freddie doesn’t ride.”

As the red and purple teams started to move, Phantom snaked his head, his ears flattening. The next second Copper appeared at his shoulder and marched alongside him, tugging at the bit. Charlie glanced across at his anxious rider.

“Sorry,” Amber said, shortening her reins, “he hates not being at the front.”

They headed through the dappled shade of Dovecote Hall’s tree-lined drive, and Melissa explained to those who knew the village which area they’d be covering.

“We’ve got Chestnut Grove on our patch,” Charlie said, looking over at Amber. “Do you think we should start our search there?”

Amber shook her head. “There’s no point. If he was near there, Aunt Becca would have found him by now. I think we should check out some of the less obvious places. The only
trouble is I haven’t lived around here long, and I don’t know the area that well yet.”

“I do,” Holly called out gingerly from the back. She flushed pink as everyone turned to look at her. “I know pretty much every path around Chestnut Grove, and where they come out in the village.”

It turned out that Holly knew even more hidden tracks than Melissa, who then directed the big group alongside the estate wall, onto a tangle of bridleways and lanes. They rode past plenty of ponies grazing in fields but none of them matched Foxy’s description, and there wasn’t a lost-looking pony, wandering riderless, anywhere to be seen. They managed to fit in a few trots along some shaded wooded paths, and a canter up a long grassy slope. Phantom easily led, but Copper got competitive, matching him
stride for stride and fighting against Amber for his head. Charlie noticed that Amber’s face was stony and her knuckles were white as she gripped the reins. It seemed like Copper had picked up on Amber’s anxious mood.

After an hour and a half of searching they’d drawn a blank and Melissa decided to call it a day. With hope failing, they began to head back to camp. They bumped into the green team as they turned onto a wide, rutted track, which ran through a sea of shimmering barley heads, swaying gently in the summer breeze.

“Did you see anything?” Mia asked the green team.

They shook their heads. “Nothing,” one of them said. “You?”

“Not a single, roughed-off chestnut pony in sight,” Rosie sighed.

“Well, at least we tried,” Destiny from the red team said, leaning forward to pat her bay pony, Topaz.

At the end of the barley field they turned back onto a lane, and in another minute the estate walls came back into view.

As everyone gathered in the lorry park, Melissa thanked them all for looking, and asked them to get their ponies untacked, groomed and settled.

“Then it’ll be time for their evening feed,” she called out. “And while your dinner’s cooking, feel free to have a dip in the pool.”

The stables were bustling with everyone heading out to the tack room, grabbing skips to pick up droppings, grooming their ponies and refilling water buckets. Alice worked slowly, constantly distracted by Scout’s little nudges or his big eyes following her round the stable. Scout lowered his head, blinking softly, and she kissed his eyebrow. By the time she’d sorted him out, the noise level from the stables had dropped in the stables and risen from the pool, and she could hear distant shrieks and splashes.

“Sounds like everyone’s forgotten about Foxy already,” Rosie said quietly, as she joined Alice, Mia and Charlie in Scout’s stable.

“Not quite everyone,” Mia pointed out, nodding further up the stables. Amber was leaning against Copper’s half door, looking dejected as she fiddled with her phone. Suddenly a text message came through with a loud neigh, making the others jump. Amber quickly checked it and let out a long breath, as if she was relieved.

“Any news on Foxy?” Mia asked.

“No, but that was Lily,” Amber explained. “She says she’s really touched by everyone going out to look today. She’s decided to stay and compete after all, rather than come back. She said that she’s doing everything she can from where she is to find Foxy. She told me to at least try to relax and enjoy camp.”

“Maybe a dip in the pool would help,” Rosie suggested. Her hair was damp and stuck to
her head after being squished into her hot hat. She couldn’t wait to dive into the cool water.

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” Amber smiled.

“Are you coming, too?” Alice called over to Holly, who was fiddling about with Skylark’s haynet.

“I’ve just got to get this up,” Holly said, looking pink and frustrated as Skylark kept yanking great mouthfuls as she tried to tie the knot. As the others got to the stable, Holly finally managed it.