The Auditions Read Free

Brampton High School.
    “They feed you gruel at boarding school, you know,” Lily continued.
    “What’s gruel?” Georgie asked.
    “It’s like porridge only worse; tasteless and runny,” Lily told her. “I read a book about a boarding school where the children all got gruel and were whipped with a birch stick when they were naughty.”
    Georgie groaned, “Maybe if you went to boardingschool two hundred years ago it was like that, Lily. I don’t think anyone gets beaten with a birch stick at Blainford.”
    “I bet they still have the gruel though,” Lily was insistent.
    “The worst bit about yesterday,” Georgie said, changing the subject, “was after I fell off. I was walking back to the horse truck with Tyro, all soaked and grubby and everyone on the sidelines was watching us, and then my dad says really loudly so that everyone can hear, ‘Never mind, Georgina, how about I buy you an ice cream on the way home to cheer you up!’“ Georgie rolled her eyes. “As if I was a four-year-old who’d lost a lollipop–not an eventing rider who’d just taken a fall on the cross-country course!”
    Lily giggled. “Your dad just doesn’t get it, does he?”
    Georgie shook her head. “He doesn’t understand me, full stop. He never has really.”
    “He’s no worse than my dad,” Lily said. “He doesn’t have a clue about me either. At least your dad was willing to let you apply to Blainford, even though the school fees must cost a bomb.”
    “It’s not like it was Dad’s idea. He hates the thought of me going there. Mum was the one who had my name down on the enrolment list from the day I was born.”
    It had been a massive battle for Georgie to convince Dr Parker to let her apply for Blainford. Her dad didn’t understand why she wanted to go. “You already have a pony,” he told her. “Why can’t you stay here and save riding for after school and the weekends? The local high school is perfectly adequate.”
    “No, it’s not,” Georgie had told him. “Not if I want to become a world-class rider. All the best riders in the world have been to Blainford. You get to take your horse with you and you can ride every day, plus there are specialist riding classes and they teach all sorts of horse subjects as well as the regular stuff like English and maths.”
    “I think you’re being swayed by the fact that your mother went to school there,” Dr Parker said. “I’m sure if we look around we could find an equestrian school here in Gloucestershire that is just as good. I believe there are several excellent ones in the county. Why doesit have to be this Blainford–on the other side of the world in America?”
    “Blainford is the best,” Georgie countered. “It’s not just because of Mum, honestly. It has amazing instructors.” Her dad didn’t seem to understand that half the appeal was the fact that it
was
a million miles away. Georgie loved their village but at the same time she was desperate to get away. Ever since her mother’s accident, she’d been so lonely here. Her dad tried hard, but he didn’t know anything about horses, or how it felt to be a thirteen-year-old girl with dreams of horsey super-stardom, stuck in boring old Little Brampton.
    Georgie had nothing in common with her dad. Everyone said she was just like her mum, tall and willowy with a fair complexion and smattering of freckles. Her mum had brown hair, though, and Georgie’s was blonde. “If I were a pony,” Georgie liked to ask her mother, “what colour would I be?”
    “Oh, a palomino, I should think,” Mrs Parker would reply, “with your beautiful flaxen mane. Not a boring brown mare like your mum.”
    Georgie was ten years old when Ginny Parker tookthe fatal fall that ended her life. The accident happened on the cross-country course at the Blenheim three-star. Ginny Parker had been riding two horses that day. The famed chestnut gelding, The Interloper, generally considered her best horse, and the other her