No Fun at Rosevale

ALL through her first morning at secondary school, Lucy wondered who the other horsey girls in her class were. Now, in form class, when they were all meant to Get to Know Each Other, she was going to find out.

'Think of your very favourite thing,' Miss Connor called, 'and find other people who love it too. Make a group. Talk!' She clapped her hands and beamed.

Thirty brand-new first years milled round muttering. Rugby players and Irish dancers and Justin Bieber fans searched for kindred spirits.

'Ponies!' Lucy shouted. 'Over here! Ponies!' She waved her arms around.

A girl with a banner of blond hair ran up, followed by some others. There was a lot of screaming and jumping up and down.

Lucy looked round the room. Most people were in a group, though some of the groups were just pairs. Aidan Kelly stood on his own by the door.

'Aidan!' Lucy called him over. 'Ponies! Over here.'

The room went quiet. Aidan didn't move.

'Aidan!' Lucy called again. 'Come on – you love ponies!'

'We don't want boys in our group,' the blond girl said.

'His dad owns the yard where I keep my pony,' Lucy said. 'He should definitely be in this group.'

'Come on – no stragglers!' Miss Connor called. 'Everybody must be interested in something.'

'Ooh, Aidan, you love ponies!' somebody from the rugby group said in a put-on squeaky voice.

The blond girl giggled. 'That's my twin,' she said.

Lucy saw the furious look Aidan gave her, but she didn't see which group he ended up in.

'Now,' said Miss Connor, 'let's see which group can find out most about each other. Off you go. Lots of questions.'

'Each person say the name of their pony and what colour it is and what it can do,' bossed the blond girl. She pointed to a small red-haired girl whose name, Lucy knew, was Erin. 'You first.'

'Oh, I haven't got a pony,' Erin said.

The blond girl widened her eyes as if Erin had said something outrageous like, I haven't got a head.

'So where do you ride?'

'Nowhere. We could never afford lessons.' Erin said this with, Lucy thought, a slight challenge in her voice. 'But my granda says he's going to get me –'

The blond girl turned away. 'Oh well,' she said. 'I'll tell you about my pony. He's called Cody, and he –'

The bell blared and everybody went off to lunch. Lucy was going to wait for Aidan – he was pretty much her next-door neighbour and the only other person she knew from her primary school – but he shrugged her off with another of those angry looks. The blond girl was right, Lucy decided. They wouldn't bother with boys. Or with people who claimed to like ponies but couldn't even ride.

After lunch Lucy sat with the two other pony owners on a wall in the corner of the quad – she'd have to remember not to call it the playground – and went on talking about horses. The other two kept their ponies at the same yard and had been friends for ever. Jade's twin Josh didn't like ponies. Of course not. Like most boys, he thought ponies were stupid. 'There's no boys at our yard,' she said.

Lucy told them all about Puzzle. How he could jump a metre, easy. How when you gave him a treat, he held it in his lips and wouldn't eat it until you went away. How when you groomed his soft white belly he nipped you unless you remembered to dodge.

'And what are his colours?' Miranda, the other girl, asked.

Lucy stared at her. What a funny way of talking. Why not just What colour is he? And Lucy had already told them Puzzle was a piebald – that was how he'd got his name, because the patches of black and white were like jigsaw pieces.

'He's piebald,' she said again. 'Black and white,' she added, in case Miranda was a bit slow.

Jade rolled her dark blue eyes and Miranda giggled. 'His colours. Like, Sparkle's are pink and silver,' she explained. 'And Jade's just got new everything for her birthday for Cody, and it's all purple.' She ticked things off on her plump fingers. 'Purple numnah, purple travel rug, purple brushes, purple head-collar – I bought her that.'

Because I'm Jade's friend, not you, her eyes said.

'Ah.' Lucy understood now. She thought of her stable at Rosevale, with all her bits and pieces piled up outside, sometimes tidy, the way Declan, the owner, insisted on, but quite often not. Occasionally she couldn't even find her own stuff, but Aidan and his little sister Kitty never minded lending. And nobody cared what colour things were. They were too busy looking after the horses, ponies and donkeys. 'Too many ponies,' Declan kept saying. As if there could be such a thing as too many ponies.

'I have all different colours. Just whatever I can find.' Her voice trailed off a bit.

The other girls looked at her in disbelief.

'Oh, I don't think I'd like that,' Jade said.

'And purple really suits Cody,' Miranda said. 'Show Lucy that picture of him with everything on.'

They got out their phones and showed her pictures of their yard until the bell went for the end of lunch. None of the other ponies was a patch on Puzzle, of course, but they did look smarter. There was one photo of Miranda and Jade and a crowd of other girls on their ponies, all wearing matching jodhs and jackets. Not matching each other; matching their ponies' colours.

'And their yard sounds way more fun than Rosevale,' Lucy explained to her mum later when she picked her up from the school bus at the crossroads. Aidan had been on the bus too. She'd wanted to ask him why he'd pretended not to like ponies, but he'd been reading. 'They go to shows all the time. And Susie – that's who owns their yard – it's called Sunnyside Farm, isn't that a brilliant name? Anyway, Susie organises jumping competitions for them at the yard too, so they've all got heaps more rosettes than I have, and' – she paused dramatically to let the full weight of this sink in – 'Susie let them paint their stable doors to match their ponies' colours. Like Jade's pony has everything purple, so his door is purple. And Miranda's pony has everything pink and silver, so –'

Lucy's mum shuddered. 'It sounds revolting.'

'Oh, Mu-um. You don't understand. They're all friends. They get to do everything together. There's loads of nice girls there. Susie doesn't let just anyone in. It's like a club. And their mums take them everywhere,' she added.

'In co-ordinating designer country casuals, no doubt,' Lucy's mum said, indicating right to turn into their road.

'Probably.'

'That reminds me – someone's bought Greenlands...