Hide and Seek (3 page)

It was squashy in the back seat of the Alfa. It also smelt musty in the wet weather, and with the constant threat that the car might break down Shelby was irritable. She had to sit in the middle between her brothers' car seats. Connor was complaining that he was too big for his booster seat, and Blake was restless and whiney just because he was four.

Their mother tried to distract them. 'I spy with my little –'

'Is it a truck?' Shelby interrupted.

'Well, yes. OK, your turn.'

'I spy with my little eye, something . . .' Shelby started.

'Road sign!' Blake yelled.

'. . . starting with D,' finished Dad.

'Dad!' Blake called out.

'Nope!'

'Dashboard,' said Connor with a yawn.

Shelby and her mum groaned.

'How much longer?' Blake asked.

'Not long, sugar.'

'Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,' Shelby sang.

'No!' the others chorused.

They lapsed into silence again. Shelby wished that she'd borrowed Erin's MP3 player. At least she would have something to do. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, resting her chin on the heels of her hands, keeping an eye out for floats or horse transport trucks.

The car droned low as it headed up the hill from the Brooklyn Bridge through the dramatic rock cuttings. Shelby's mother kept the car in the far left-hand lane behind a semitrailer.

'Come on, baby, you can do it!' Shelby's father stroked the glove box.

Shelby watched the shoulder of the road as they putted along, thinking how boring it would be if the car stopped and wouldn't start again. Worst of all, there was no food in the car and she was hungry.

When the Alfa reached the top of the hill everyone exhaled.

'See? Made it!' Dad crowed.

As they drove across Mount White Shelby saw a convoy of trucks heading the other way. Some were semitrailers, but three were horse trucks. She could see ears through the small windows at the top. Each truck was splashed in bright colours, and sign-written in scrolled font,
Equus Caballus
. Shelby recognised the name from her numerous horse books as the Latin name for the horse, as
canis lupus familiaris
is to dog, and
felis silvestris catus
is to the common house cat.

'A horse circus!' she whispered.

Her eyes followed the trucks until they rounded the bend, then Shelby sat back, linked her fingers behind her head and stared at the roof.

Over the last month or so she had started having lessons with Miss Anita on Friday mornings before school. She'd had the first lesson on Blue, but after that Miss Anita had put her on one of the school ponies, Penelope, who was better educated and more Shelby's size. Miss Anita said it was easier when she wasn't trying to school the horse and the rider at the same time.

For so long she'd perched on the fence watching the other girls have their lessons, and suddenly she was the one in the arena. She'd learnt so much already, and was amazed to find that her arms and legs hurt after her lessons, even though she rode for hours almost every day.

Miss Anita said that she had a naturally strong core balance, but her technique was sloppy. Since she had been having lessons she had started concentrating on keeping her shoulders back and looking where she was going instead of down at the horse's neck – even when she was out on trails.

She also enjoyed quizzing Miss Anita at the end of each lesson. She would ask about different styles of riding, competition, and how to train horses. Miss Anita always gave her long answers and sometimes took the time to show her examples as well. Miss Anita had some pretty strong opinions about things, Shelby was discovering. Sometimes she got an answer, other times a lecture, but it was all good.

Now Shelby wasn't sure what she wanted to do. For years her dream had been hacking. She'd always loved the neat little show ponies in the magazines, and the smart outfits that the girls wore, but from what she was learning from the Crooks she wasn't sure if she wanted to do that any more.

She'd been to a few shows with the Crooks leading up to the Royal. Sometimes in a class it was obvious which horse should win, but other times she had been surprised by the choice the judge made. She didn't know how she could ever succeed in a discipline where the method of judging was so arbitrary and vague, and where there was no opportunity for feedback.

How could you improve when you had no idea what they were looking for? Even the Crooks, with all the money, time and professional help they threw at it, weren't guaranteed success. Besides, it was never a field in which Blue was going to succeed, and since she could only have one horse it seemed a hopeless case.

Now Shelby was at a crossroads. She was going to ask Miss Anita for jumping lessons on Blue. He was good at that, and seemed to enjoy it. Shelby wasn't as brave as he was, especially approaching the bigger jumps. She could also try sporting. Blue was nifty. He'd probably do well at that too. Except then she'd miss out on the dressing-up part. It was hard to know what to do.

'Maybe I should join the circus,' she muttered.

'How much longer now?' Blake asked.

'Nearly there.'

Soon they were turning off the freeway and heading east towards the coast, where Aunty Jenny had a little cottage on the top of a hill.

When they pulled into the drive, even her father sighed with relief that the Alfa had actually made it. The three children tumbled out of the car.

'Aunty Jenny!' the boys called out, running up the steps.

Shelby's great-aunt opened the door and Shelby gasped. 'What have you done with your hair?'

The older lady smiled and flicked at her auburncoloured hair self-consciously.

'Oh, trying to stave off death for another year by thinking young thoughts.'

'Well, it looks fabulous,' said Shelby's father, kissing her on the cheek.

'Maybe we should get ours done while we're here. What do you think, Shel?' her mother said.

'Yes, we can go and see my friend tomorrow,' Aunt Jenny added.

'Yeah, maybe,' Shelby replied. She hugged her aunt warmly. 'It's great to see you, Aunty Jenny. Your hair looks ace.'

Inside the house her aunt made coffee for the grown-ups and served hot cross buns fresh from the oven with melted butter. The two boys tucked into them with gusto and Shelby was embarrassed to see Blake wiping his buttery fingers on the edge of the cushion he was sitting on. She expected Aunty Jenny to rouse on him but she didn't seem to notice.

Shelby stood at the window and looked out into Aunt Jenny's front garden, which was mostly native reeds and grasses. Shelby could see that Aunty Jenny had laid patterns of pebbles in different colours along the paths and the beds were deep with mulch.

Beyond the garden the wide bay stretched out in an arc. A wharf jutted into the water and Shelby could make out fishermen casting lines, with their buckets and eskies behind them. Shelby could imagine the scene being a picture in one of those gardening magazines that her father subscribed to.

'I'm going on a tour,' Aunty Jenny announced, once they were all fed and settled.

'Where are you going?' Dad asked.

'I'm starting in South Africa and then heading up to Kenya, Morocco, then Spain. I have to see Prague, of course, then Paris and London. I'll pop over to New York, San Francisco, down to Mexico City, then . . . Let me see, Rio, I think, then Buenos Aires, across to Auckland and then home.'

'That's all?' Shelby's dad asked. 'No Russia? You do realise you're skipping Asia altogether?'

'Next time,' Aunt Jenny smiled.

'Well, that sounds like quite a trip!' said Shelby's mum, helping herself to another hot cross bun.

'I've put it off for so long.' Aunty Jenny shook her head. 'I don't know what I've been waiting for.' She smiled briefly. 'It seems silly now, so I thought I'd do it all at once. I'll be gone for some time.'

'Sounds like it!' Dad said. He was smiling, but Shelby could tell that underneath it he was worried. When Shelby was younger they had really only seen Aunty Jenny at Christmas time when she came to stay with them, but Shelby had noticed recently that her father was arranging to see her more often, and phoning Aunty Jenny 'just to say hi'. He joked and laughed, but underneath that was the same concerned expression that he was wearing now. Aunty Jenny was the only one left on Shelby's father's side of the family, and she was becoming more frail. Shelby's dad worried about Aunty Jenny living by herself.

'Anyway,' her aunt continued, 'I've been doing some thinking. I'll be in London in December and I was hoping that you could all come and join me there. Just for a few weeks. We could have a white Christmas.'

Shelby's parents exchanged a glance. 'Oh, we'd love to, but –'

'This is where the thinking part comes in,' Aunty Jenny interrupted. 'I'm going to be gone for eighteen months. That's a long time for a house to be empty. At first I thought I could rent my house out, but then I had a better idea. If you moved in here then you could rent
your
house out, and with the money you could come and visit me – all of you.'

'Move here?' said Dad.

'For eighteen months?' asked Shelby.

Aunty Jenny nodded. 'Yes. This house is certainly big enough and there is plenty of room in the garage to store extra furniture.' She sighed. 'I could just rent out my house and give you the money, but I didn't think you would accept it.'

Shelby's dad shook his head. 'We try to make our own way in the world, Jenny.'

'I have to confess to another more selfish motive. You have such a magnificent green thumb. I've invested so much time in my garden, and it's exactly the way I want it now. I would hate to come back and find it in ruins.' She smiled. 'What do you think?'

Shelby's parents beamed at each other. Shelby watched with growing horror as they talked over the top of each other in excitement.

'The kids have school, but London!' said Dad.

'We've always wanted to travel,' replied Shelby's mother.

'There are good schools up here too, and it's a long block of time. I'm sure they would settle in. It would be different if Shel was in year twelve.'

'Yes, much different. London!'

'I could commute from here. Or I could ask for a transfer. Buckingham Palace! The Tate!'

'Harrods!' laughed her mother. She clapped her hands together and held them up to her chin. Her eyes glistened with tears. She looked younger. Aunty Jenny leaned back in her chair smiling with pleasure. Everyone looked happy – everyone except Shelby.

'Harry Potter lives in London,' Connor told Blake.

'Harry Potter isn't real,' Shelby snapped.

Connor shrugged. 'Winnie the Pooh, then.'

'The Wombles,' added her father.

'The who?' asked Blake.

'And The Who!' her father replied. Shelby's mother and Aunty Jenny laughed.

'There's one member of the family that you all seem to be forgetting about,' Shelby said, folding her arms.

Her parents looked at Blake.

'Blue!' Shelby shouted.

'There are agistment places up here. I checked,' Aunty Jenny assured her. 'The girls ride out over the sand dunes and along the beach. One place had camels too.'

Shelby glared at her aunt for a moment and then turned to her parents. 'You can't be serious!'

Her mother leaned forward. 'Honey, you said the girls at school were teasing you anyway! This could be a fresh start.'

'A fresh start?' Shelby stood up pushing back from the table. 'You expect me to give up all my friends for some stupid camel club?'

She ran down the corridor, feeling her way because tears blurred her eyes.

'Shelby, you come back here and apologise!' her father shouted after her.

'Let her go,' Shelby heard her aunt say. 'You're forgetting how frightening change can be.'

Shelby raced down the steps and along the street. She wasn't sure where she was going – just away from where her parents were deciding her future without even consulting her. The footpath beneath her feet was crooked and she turned her ankle. Shelby hopped for a few steps and kept running past one neat garden after another. Bees hummed over daisy bushes and birds sipped nectar from native flowers. Everything on Aunty Jenny's street on this grey day was calm and organised, like old people, and not horsey in the slightest.

At the bottom of the hill there was a strip of shops. She slowed to a walk, keeping her head down so that strangers wouldn't see her crying. She crossed the road and headed for the beach.

From the scrubby lawn at the edge of the car park a set of wooden stairs led down and disappeared into the sand. Shelby perched on the middle step. She pulled the hood over her head, tucked her hands inside her sleeves and frowned into the salty breeze.

It was cold and spitting rain, so there weren't any swimmers. The only other people on the beach were three boys with a football about fifty metres further along. She watched them punching the ball to each other, or kicking it high into the air, then scrambling and wrestling with each other to catch it.

All her parents worried about was school. They didn't understand that she didn't care about her studies. One school was probably just as good as another. Her life was at the stables and she wasn't likely to find a place like that again.

The truth was that she had never made friends easily. She'd always been a bit weird and shy. At school the gap between her and the other kids seemed to be stretching wider all the time. Not only that, but she wasn't smart – just somewhere in the middle. The only thing she could talk about with confidence was horses, and sometimes when she got started she could tell other people were bored.

Now, for the first time in her life, she was part of a group of friends. She'd finally found people with whom she could talk about horses all day long. She couldn't imagine not seeing Erin and Lindsey every day.

Shelby remembered that it was only a month or so ago that Hayley Crook – the girl with the flashiest horses, the nicest house and the most 'in' mum at Pony Club – had asked if she could hang out with Shelby. She had laughed about it, because it had seemed so bizarre.

If Shelby's family moved, all of that would be ruined. She could go back to the stables in eighteen months, but it wouldn't be the same. Too much day-to-day stuff would have happened. There would be too many in-jokes that she wouldn't understand.

The footy boys ran along the beach towards the steps and Shelby shuffled over so that they could pass. She didn't even look up as their legs scissored by.

'Shelby?'

She slipped the hood from her head and turned around.

The boy with the football was familiar, but she couldn't place him. He had caramel-coloured skin and dark eyes.

'It's me, Chad,' he grinned at her.

'Chad?' Then she remembered she'd run across him on his trail bike a few times in the Gully. 'I didn't recognise you without your helmet.' She smiled back.

'What are you doing here?' he asked.

'My aunty lives up that hill.' She pointed. 'What about you?'

'My brother lives down that way.' He tilted his head and tossed the football from hand to hand. 'I usually come up here and stay for a while during school holidays. I thought I'd seen you before. I mean, before the bike day. Must have been here.'

Shelby had a vivid recollection of riding pillion on Chad's bike all those months ago when she had been lost in the Gully. They stared at each other.

'Are you OK?' he asked, a frown crossing his brow for a second.

She wiped a hand across her eyes, wondering if they were all red and puffy from crying.

'Hurry up, will ya?' said one of the older boys.

'We're going up to the shops for hot chips. Do you want to come?' Chad asked.

Shelby blushed. 'Oh. Um, no, I better be getting back.'

He nodded. 'Maybe tomorrow then? We're going fishing in the morning, but we usually hang out on the beach in the afternoon.'

'Maybe.' She smiled.

'Okies, see you tomorrow then.'

Shelby watched as Chad ran to catch up with the others. All the other times she had seen him he had been wearing protective gear for trail bike riding. She hadn't noticed that he had quite broad shoulders and muscly legs. Perhaps he was a little taller than she remembered as well.

Shelby wondered if she could talk her parents into giving her some money for hot chips tomorrow without it becoming a whole family outing. She would have to be careful what she said. If she told them she was meeting a boy her dad was sure to make a big deal out of it. Maybe if she told them he was a 'friend' without specifying gender she would get away with it?

Shelby hummed as she headed back up the hill towards the house.