Nearly Almost Somebody by Caroline Batten Page B

walked on, into the ménage, she relaxed. Thank god, Robbie wasn’t waiting already. She’d been twelve minutes by her watch.
    Taking it easy, she walked Shakespeare once around the school, before nudging him into a trot. They glided through twenty metre circles. She needed the slightest leg action, the lightest of hands to control him, but his muscles twitched, ready to explode beneath her. Tallulah had made him look like a school hack, but that eleven year-old girl had to be one hell of a rider.
    Robbie and Tallulah arrived, perching on the high railed fence, but Libby refused to let their scrutiny faze her. She nudged Shakespeare into a canter and took him through two flawless figure-eights before Robbie whistled her over. Libby listened carefully as he explained the simple five jump course. Nothing was over a metre with the first a tiny warm-up cross pole. She stifled a yawn.
    ‘Late night?’ Robbie asked, his face betraying no emotions.
    Libby shook her head. ‘Didn’t sleep well.’
    Unwilling to discuss the matter, she squeezed Shakespeare on. Instantly, he moved into a bouncy trot, looking towards the first jump with his ears pricked. They sailed over the jumps, wiping away Libby’s fatigue and leaving her itching to do the course again, but with the poles raised another twenty centimetres.
    I love this horse.
    Slowing to a trot, she patted Shakespeare’s neck, grinning like a village idiot, but Robbie didn’t appear remotely pleased with her efforts.
    ‘Lulu, get Dolomite,’ he said.
    Tallulah jumped off the fence, but not before Libby clocked her wide-eyed moment of hesitation. Taking slow, steady breaths, Libby walked Shakespeare on a long rein, utterly aware Robbie still watched her. Minutes ticked by and Libby’s apprehension grew until Tallulah led in a beautiful dapple-grey gelding with a near black mane and tail.
    Libby spent a minute saying hello, but Dolomite side-stepped, eyeing her with mistrust from under his forelock as she prepared to mount.
    ‘He’s strong,’ Tallulah said, as she held the offside stirrup. ‘Really strong and he falls out on the left–’
    ‘Lulu,’ Robbie snapped.
    Okay, this was a test. Libby smiled down at her little friend and winked. ‘Thanks.’
    Ten minutes later, Libby’s arms burned and she needed every core muscle she’d ever developed as she fought to keep the bloody grey steam train at a steady trot through ridiculously wonky circles. This wasn’t a riding test. It was riding torture.
    ‘Same course as before,’ Robbie shouted, his eyes squinting against the sun.
    Libby relaxed her hands a touch, letting the gelding move into a canter, but instantly regretted it. He wasn’t on the bit and she wasn’t in control. They careered toward the first jump, a tiny fifty centimetre warm up, but Dolomite ducked out, shying as if she’d set him up for Beecher’s Brook.
    Libby landed on his neck, losing her stirrups and her last shreds of control. Somehow, as Dolomite bolted to the far corner of the school, she stayed on, but more though luck than anything remotely resembling ability. She swore. Okay, so he didn’t have Shakespeare’s natural affinity with jumping. No wonder Tallulah looked so hesitant.
    ‘Okay, baby. You’re okay.’ She placed a gentle hand on his neck but he flinched as if she’d shocked him with two thousand volts. ‘And, God, do I know how that feels. They’re just silly jumps. We can do this.’
    After a little more soothing, he calmed and she walked him on, remembering the nervy eventer she’d ridden under Bridget’s instruction: Don’t fight him. Work with him. You’re a team. Dolomite settled into a trot, and Libby kept up her gentle words, reassuring him while her unrelenting legs and hands kept him going forward.
    ‘You are going over this, mister.’
    Come on Good Luck spell, don’t fail me now .
    Dolomite pulled to the right, trying to duck out again, but she held him. It might’ve been as ungainly as her first