Poppy was up before six, woken by the butterflies in her stomach. She could hear Caroline singing along softly to a song on the radio in the kitchen below. She dressed quickly and went downstairs. Caroline smiled as she came in and flicked the kettle on.
“Hello, sweetheart. You’re up early. I couldn’t sleep either. I’ve been awake since five. There’s only toast, I’m afraid. Everything else is packed and ready to go.”
“Toast is fine,” said Poppy, brushing her long fringe out of her eyes. “Where’s Dad?”
“In the shower. And Charlie’s still asleep. I’m making the most of the peace and quiet to get the last few jobs done.”
Caroline busied herself making toast, her back to Poppy. “How are you feeling about the move? I know it’ll be hard to say goodbye to the house but you’ll love Riverdale, I promise.” How did Caroline know what she would love and what she wouldn’t, Poppy thought, aggrieved. She said nothing. Misinterpreting her silence for sadness, Caroline continued, “And I know you’ll miss your friends, especially Hannah, but you can keep in touch by email and phone and she can come to stay in the holidays if her mum agrees.”
“Maybe,” Poppy muttered, through a mouthful of toast. She knew Caroline was making an effort to talk and she was being monosyllabic in return, but she couldn’t help herself. It was the way it had always been. There was a time when Poppy had been chatty, carefree and confident in the knowledge that she was at the centre of her parents’ world. Not any more. Her mum had been gone for almost seven years and these days she had both Caroline and Charlie competing for her dad’s attention. No matter how hard Caroline tried to include Poppy she felt like she’d been sidelined, left forgotten on a lonely railway siding like one of Charlie’s wooden trains. She finished her breakfast, took her plate over to the sink and dashed upstairs to clean her teeth before Caroline could say any more.
Six hours later the McKeevers were stuck in crawling traffic on the A303, in the wake of their lumbering removal lorry. Poppy had lost count of the number of times Charlie had asked if they were nearly there. She stared out of the window, daydreaming about cantering along grassy tracks and soaring over huge cross country fences, a set of pricked grey ears in front of her. Her dad and Caroline were arguing about his next assignment - an eight week posting to the Middle East. Her dad was a war correspondent for the BBC. A familiar face on the news, he reported from the frontline of the world’s most dangerous trouble spots, from Iraq to Syria. Wearing his trademark beige flak jacket and often over the sound of distant shell-fire, Mike McKeever brought the horrors of war into people’s front rooms from Land’s End to John O’Groats. He was due to leave Riverdale the following afternoon.
“Why do you have to go so soon? Couldn’t you have at least arranged to have a week off to help with the move? I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it all on my own.” Caroline’s usually calm voice rose as she turned to face her husband.
“I know, I’m sorry. You’ll be fine. I’ll be back before you’ve even realised I’ve gone.”
“By which time it’ll all be sorted. As usual,” she grumbled.
Poppy was proud of her dad but she missed him desperately when he was away. She’d much rather he was a postman, or a mechanic, or worked in a bank. Anything really, as long as it meant he’d be safe and home for tea every night.
Fields gave way to houses as they approached Plymouth. They followed the removal lorry as it turned off the A38 onto the Tavistock road, the final leg of the journey. Riverdale was a thirty minute drive from the market town and by 3pm they were nearing their destination, the village of Waterby.
“We need to take the second right after the church,” reminded Caroline. They drove straight on for a mile and a half and then turned left down a track just past a postbox. “Look, kids - there it is!”
Poppy’s first impression of Riverdale was of a slate-roofed stone building with an almost melancholy air, which stood in the shadow of a small tor. The car had barely crunched to a halt on the gravel drive before she had undone her seatbelt, itching to be the first out. As she slammed her door shut behind her she heard Charlie’s gleeful tone, “Mum! Magpie’s just been sick all over his basket. Yuck, that’s so gross!”
“You’ve found us then! I was beginning to think you’d got lost.” Poppy spun round at the sound of a disembodied voice that appeared to be coming from the wooden porch at the front of the house. “I’m Tory Wickens. Welcome to Riverdale!”
A white-haired woman whose face was hatched with a lifetime of wrinkles stepped slowly out of the porch with the aid of two sticks. “I wanted to be here to welcome you to Riverdale. Couldn’t say goodbye to the old place without seeing who was taking it on. And you must be Poppy. You’ll no doubt be wanting to meet Chester. I need to show you how he likes things done.”
Her dad had parked the car and he and Caroline came up and shook the woman’s hand. They started chatting about the journey while Charlie struggled to pull Magpie’s basket out of the car and Poppy paced impatiently from foot to foot.
“Can we please go and see the pony now?” she asked, after what seemed like a lifetime of pointless talk about whether the A303 was quicker than the motorway.
“Pony? Oh, you must mean Chester. Of course, silly me,” said Tory. She beckoned Poppy through the open front door.
The photos of Riverdale hadn’t done the house justice, Poppy realised as she followed Tory along the hallway. There were doors leading off the hall to a lounge and a dining room. Both rooms were empty but light streamed in through tall windows and Poppy could see dust motes whirling in the shafts of sunlight. Floral sprigged wallpaper was peeling in places and there were darker rectangles where Tory’s pictures must have once hung. But the rooms were large and felt homely despite the faded decor. Tory continued her slow progress through the hall to the kitchen. There was a pillar box red range in the chimney breast and dark oak units lined the walls. The back door was straight ahead and Poppy felt her pulse quicken as they stepped through it to the outbuildings at the back of the house. Like the house, the buildings were built of stone and tiled with slate.
“There are two stables and a small barn where you can store hay and straw. There’s enough in there to tide you over for a month or two. That door between the two stables leads to the tack and feed room. It’s only small but it’s plenty big enough for Chester’s things,” Tory said.
She saw the barely suppressed excitement on Poppy’s face, smiled and pointed to the stable on the left. “That’s Chester’s stable. I’ve just given him some hay. Why don’t you go and say hello.”
Poppy walked the few steps to the stable door. The upper section was wide open and a horseshoe had been tacked to the wooden beam above it. A leather headcollar hung on a hook to the right of the door. The sun felt warm on Poppy’s back as she leant over the closed bottom half of the door and peered into the gloom beyond. Straw was banked up around the walls of the stable and she could make out a metal rack on the wall that was half-filled with hay. It took a few seconds for Poppy’s eyes to totally adjust to the darkness and when they did she thought she must be imagining things. She looked into the shadows again. Inside the stable, munching on the hay, was not a dappled grey 14.2hh pony but a small, hairy, long-eared donkey.
“But where’s Chester?” Poppy asked Tory.
“That’s him, pet. That’s my Chester. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?” the old woman replied proudly. At the sound of their voices the donkey turned around, saw Poppy’s silhouette over the stable door, curled his top lip and gave an almighty hee-haw.