Phantom: One Last Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

heartbreaking neigh, so she rode over to find out what was happening. She spoke to the man, a breeder called Tim Leech,who said he was taking the mare to the knacker’s yard because she was dangerous and useless. Caitlin agreed to buy her for peanuts and led her away there and then. She called me, and I came out to meet her with the horsebox.”
    The girls were silent, stunned by Fran’s story.
    “We got Fable back here, but she arrived ready to give up on life. She was skin and bone, listless, with no interest in anything. It was like she didn’t know we were there, she was so far lost within herself. But there was something so… so hauntingly special about her. She’d been something, we could tell. Caitlin was determined to find out Fable’s history – she wouldn’t give up, said it could be the key to turning her around and making her live again.”
    A kitten scrabbled up onto Alice’s lap as she listened, transfixed.
    “So Caitlin drove back to Tim Leech’s yard,” Fran continued. “He hadn’t really wanted to talk, but he did say that Fable had just bred a foal,only the little scrap had died at just four months old. Tim wouldn’t say any more, and got quite rude about all the questions Caitlin was asking. He told her to leave, but Caitlin wouldn’t give up. So she asked about Tim in the local village.
    “A shopkeeper who also had horses filled Caitlin in on what Tim had said about Fable’s past. She’d started out life on the racetrack, but had been injured and was sold to be retrained. She proved to be talented – could jump anything you faced her with, apparently – but she had a delicate temperament and you had to know how to handle her. She wouldn’t perform for just anyone. None of her owners took the time to understand her, they wanted a jumping machine. But instead they got a fractious mare who learned to use her teeth and her hooves to keep everyone at bay. She quickly got a reputation for being dangerous and the scared little mare got passed from owner to owner.”
    Mia shook her head. “That’s so horrible.”
    “I know,” Fran sighed, wiping her nose witha huge hankie. “And that’s how she finally ended up with the shady breeder, Tim Leech. Apparently he’d bragged about buying a top-class mare for a rock-bottom price – he hadn’t cared about her having a bad reputation, as long as she could breed valuable foals. But she was so tricky to handle by then that he could hardly get near her. He used broom handles and whips. Once the foal – a colt – was born, Fable was fiercely protective of him. Tim had mentioned to the shopkeeper that it was making the foal as mad as the mare. So Tim weaned him early and took him away from Fable. The next time Tim came into the village, the shopkeeper asked after the foal. Tim said that he’d died and that the mare was bad luck.”
    “Losing her first foal devastated Fable. What we brought back to Hope Farm that spring day six years ago was a shell of a horse and not much more. But Fable changed – that photo you found was taken after she’d been here a few months.If we go next door, I’ll dig out some more.”
    The girls followed Fran into the hallway, taking their drinks with them. They stepped over a threadbare mat and an ancient, sleepy one-eyed pointer dog called Jasper, whose tail thumped lazily as they walked past him, and into a room with box files scattered everywhere. Dusty photographs and rainbows of faded rosettes covered every inch of wall space, some of the photos as much as twenty years old, showing Fran when she first started Hope Farm with only two donkeys and a retired racehorse.
    “Six years ago… let’s see, should be over here,” Fran muttered, clambering over to the corner of the room, where there was a desk stacked high with big boxes with dates scribbled on the front. “Ah, here it is on top – that’s handy.”
    She pulled off the lid and started to shuffle through the big A4 exercise book inside. “We