Showjumpers. Stacy Gregg

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СКАЧАТЬ reached out a hand towards the CD player, but Kendal grabbed her wrist to stop her.

      “Ow! Let me go!”

      “Alice! Stop it. I’m trying to drive.” Kendal flicked her long blonde hair back out of her eyes and focused on the road ahead. “I’m warning you. Touch it again and you’re dead.”

      Alice scowled at her big sister, her dark eyes half hidden beneath her jet-black fringe. “You’re lucky you’re an only child!” she said pointedly to Georgie. “It’s awful having a big sister.”

      “Hey!” Kendal shot a sideways look at Alice. “You dragged me out on this crazy rescue mission. How about a bit of gratitude?”

      “Thank you, Kendal,” Georgie said with sincerity.

      “As if you had anything better to do!” Alice mumbled.

      The bickering between the sisters carried on pretty much like this all the way to the Dupree ranch. Georgie marvelled at how the sisters constantly taunted each other without actually meaning anything by it.

      In between arguing, Alice quizzed Georgie, until she had heard the whole story of what had happened with James.

      “I always knew he was toxic,” Alice said. “He’s so vain and arrogant.”

      “He’s not,” Georgie insisted. “Not once you know him.”

      She didn’t know why she was standing up for James or why, despite what he’d done, she still felt a desperate need to see him again. All she knew was that she wasn’t ready to hate James Kirkwood. Not just yet.

      The Dupree house was two-storeyed and painted white with a massive kidney-shaped swimming pool set into the lawn. Kendal swung the wheel of the lorry and eased the vehicle down the tree-lined driveway towards the front of the house. Georgie expected Kendal to pull up and stop, but she kept on driving.

      “Mom and Dad are down at the stables,” Alice explained.

      As they arrived outside the stable block, two enormous American Staffordshire terriers bounded out, followed by a small but yappy Jack Russell.

      “Hey, Spike!” Alice said, swinging open the lorry door and leaping down to pat the brindle-coloured Staffordshire terrier, while the black and white spotted one leapt up to get her attention. “That one is Lulu,” Alice said, “and the Jack Russell is Ralph.”

      Even though Ralph was the smallest, he did all the barking. He’d obviously made enough noise to announce their arrival because the Duprees came out of the stables a moment later to greet them.

      “You must be Georgie,” Mr Dupree said, reaching out his huge bear paw to clasp her hand, a broad smile on his face. “I’m Charlie. Lovely to have you here. Alice has told us so much about you. I hear both of you girls made the House Showjumping team this term!”

      “Hi, hon!” Mrs Dupree had a Maryland accent that was much stronger than Alice and Kendal’s. She was tanned and lean like her husband and wore her black hair back in a ponytail. She had the same bubbly personality as Alice and she didn’t hesitate to give Georgie a vigorous hug.

      “Where’s Cherry?” Alice asked.

      “She’s working the horses out back,” Mrs Dupree said and smiled at Georgie. “Do you need anything to eat, hon? Maybe some lemonade?”

      “No, thanks,” Georgie said, “I’m fine.”

      “Well come out to the arena then,” Mrs Dupree said, “and see what you think of this five-year-old that Cherry convinced us to buy.”

      The Duprees were the sort of family that Georgie’s old instructor Lucinda would have classified as “true-blood horsey". It was so clear that all of them adored horses, and more than that, they understood them too.

      Cherry, the oldest of the Dupree sisters, was a Blainford graduate who was now riding the professional showjumping circuit. Like Alice and Kendal, she was lean and delicately built like a ballerina. The five-year-old in question was a Hanoverian called Doodlebug. He was sixteen-two and had the temperament of a volcano. When Georgie arrived, Cherry was having trouble settling him down and he kept doing little bucks as he went over the jumps. Cherry didn’t look at all perturbed by this, even though she was jumping him bareback!

      “Oh, Cherry doesn’t like to use a saddle on the young ones,” Mrs Dupree told Georgie. “Doodlebug doesn’t have the strength in his back yet – he’s too young, too green.”

      Georgie was stunned. The jumps in the arena were over a metre high and Cherry was taking the horse over all of them. How on earth did she manage to stay on?

      “Cherry jumps Grand Prix without a saddle,” Mrs Dupree said matter-of-factly. “She used to get into no end of trouble at Blainford, always being told off for riding bareback!”

      While Mr Dupree rearranged the jumps with the dogs gambolling along at his heels, the rest of the family watched Cherry from the sidelines.

      “Doodlebug’s on the forehand.” Alice frowned as she watched Cherry collect him up.

      “She needs to sit back,” Kendal pointed out. “That’ll make him put in that extra stride before the jump.”

      Mrs Dupree relayed their observations to Cherry, who acknowledged them with a cheery smile. “Charles,” Mrs Dupree called out to her husband. “Can you put a canter pole in front of the oxer to help Doodlebug take off?”

      “Cherry has six horses that need work at the moment,” Mrs Dupree told the girls. “I’m sure she’ll be glad of an extra hand now that you’re here too, Georgie.”

      Georgie didn’t need to be asked twice. Genuinely happy, she and Alice headed off to the stables to find themselves a horse.

      For the next two days the girls spent nearly all their time down at the arena riding Cherry’s young jumpers. Cherry insisted that they ride bareback, which took some getting used to at first, but eventually Georgie found that she could hold her normal position over the fences, almost as if the saddle was invisible beneath her.

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