past season she had taken Morgan on the road with her, touring the country with her string of showjumping horses.
“Pretty cool,” Morgan said, “but you have to work really hard. I was doing loads of grooming for the other riders and I hardly ever got to do any riding myself.”
“At least you didn’t have to go to school! I would kill for three whole months without school work,” Stella said.
Morgan shook her head, “I wish! I still had to do the work—Mum home-schooled me. And you know how tough she can be about horse riding? Well, she’s even worse with maths!”
The girls nodded knowingly at this. When Issie first met Morgan she had been envious of her having such a famous horse-riding mum. But when Araminta put too much pressure on her daughter to compete Morgan started acting strangely—even sabotaging the other riders’ equipment at the pony club! Issie had found out what was going on and confronted Morgan and Araminta with the truth. Since then, things had been much better between them. Even so, Issie could tell that Morgan still struggled to live up to the high expectations of her competitive mother.
“Why don’t you guys come and sit with us?” Morgan said to Issie. “We’ve saved you seats.”
Issie looked across the clubroom and spotted Araminta in a seat in the front row next to Tom Avery. Two other riders, Dan Halliday and Ben MacIntosh, were sitting next to them.
Dan smiled and waved when he saw the girls. Issie grinned and waved back. It was hard to believe that there had been so much drama with Dan just a few months ago. He used to have a crush on Issie and there had been a stand-off between him and Aidan at the Horse of the Year Show as they fought for her attention. But that was all over now. Dan and Issie were back to being just the way they were before—really good friends.
“Hey, Issie!” Dan called down the row to her as the four girls took their seats. “What’s this I hear about you having a new horse? What’s he like?”
“Don’t ask!” Issie groaned. Everyone had taken their seats now and the meeting was about to begin. Issie glanced anxiously over her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.
“Natasha Tucker’s not here,” Issie said. She scanned the room again to be sure, but there was no sign of the sour-faced girl with the stiff blonde plaits. Issie couldn’t help but feel relieved.
“You want to know my theory about Stuck-up Tucker?” Stella said to Issie. “I think she has a love-hate relationship with you.”
“You’re wrong,” Issie sighed. “There’s definitely no love. She can’t stand me.”
Any hope that Issie had of ever being friends with Natasha had disappeared forever after the Horse of the Year Show. Bratty Natasha had been training on her horse Fabergé with her expensive private trainer Ginty McLintoch and she totally expected to win. No wonder then that she was furious when Issie and Comet beat her in the big competition that day.
It made matters even worse, when Natasha and Ginty McLintoch offered to buy Comet after the show, and Issie refused to sell him to them. Ever since then, it had officially been war between the two riders.
The meeting had been scheduled for 8 p.m. and at ten past, Mrs Tarrant stepped up to the podium. She tapped the microphone to make sure it was working and then began to read from the stack of papers in front of her.
“As your departing club president, I am going to take you through the minutes of our last meeting…”
“Ohmygod,” Stella hissed to Issie. “I’m bored already!”
Issie couldn’t help giggling, but she quickly pulled herself together again as Avery shot the girls a stern glance.
Stella was right though; it was hard not to fidget as Mrs Tarrant went on about club fees and equipment rosters. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she plonked her stack of papers back down on the podium in front of her. “That takes care of all our business from last season.”
“Crikey! About time!” Stella muttered. The girls tried hard to suppress their giggles again.
“As you know, we’ve already voted in the new committee for the year and tonight I’ll be ‘handing over the reins’!” Mrs Tarrant grinned at her own joke, which she thought was very funny since this was a pony club, but no one else seemed to get it.
“Anyway, at this stage in the evening, I was hoping to hand you over to our new club president, Oliver Tucker…but I don’t think he’s arrived yet…”
At that exact moment, as if on cue, the front door of the clubroom swung open.
“Ahhh, Mr Tucker,” Mrs Tarrant said. “I had just about given up on you.”
“That’s our new club president.” Dan leant across to Issie. “Natasha Tucker’s dad.”
“Really?” Issie said, staring at the tall, blond man in the suit who now had everyone in the room turning around to look at him. “I’ve never, ever seen him here before.”
It wasn’t surprising that Issie had never seen Oliver Tucker before because, despite the fact that he had spent a fortune on Natasha’s ponies, until tonight he had never set foot on the grounds of the Chevalier Point Pony Club. He was a big-shot businessman, far too busy with corporate takeovers and property deals to make time for his daughter’s little hobbies.
Oliver Tucker wore a designer suit that stretched taut over his pot belly, well-padded from extravagant company lunches. My friends call me Ollie, he would often say by way of introduction. But this was untrue. No one called him “Ollie” because Oliver Tucker had no friends. He didn’t care—money was much more important and he had loads of that. This was just as well because he’d spent a fair chunk of it on horses to keep his daughter happy.
“I can’t believe he’s the new pony-club president,” whispered Issie.
“Mum says he won the ballot because no one else dared to stand against him,” Dan shrugged.
“Ohhh, scary!” Stella said. “So if that’s Natasha’s dad, then where is Natasha?”
Stella’s question was answered by a grunting noise on the stairs right behind Mr Tucker. “Hey, Dad! Urghh!…Can I get a little help here?”
Natasha Tucker appeared in the doorway behind her dad. She wore her trademark scowl and seemed to be struggling to carry something enormous in her arms.
“Hurry up, Dad!” Natasha squealed. “Take an end. I’m going to drop it!”
There was a definite flicker of impatience on Mr Tucker’s face as he came to his daughter’s aid and took one end of the object, helping to ease it in through the door.
The mystery object, shrouded in a velvet curtain, was about a metre wide and almost as tall as Natasha. Whatever it was, clearly it was very heavy as it took both Natasha and Mr Tucker to carry it through the clubroom towards the podium.
“Careful, Natasha, careful!” Mr Tucker instructed as they manoeuvred their way between the rows of chairs to the front of the room. “Hang on to it! OK, now take a step to the left…no! My left, Natasha! Not yours! For Pete’s sake,
