Mrs Winterbottom Takes a Gap Year by Joanna Nell

Author:Joanna Nell [Nell, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399705950
Google: WV4F0AEACAAJ
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2023-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

18

Not waving but drowning

Keen to get down to the serious business of self-discovery, Heather booked three tours. Unable to decide between horse-riding, water-skiing and wine-tasting, she signed herself up for all of them, to the undisguised delight of the woman in the tour office next to the hotel. The only advice had been to wear flat shoes and bring her own water. Heather had thought this strange for a water-sport activity until she realised the woman was referring to the horse-riding.

The following morning, an air-conditioned minibus picked her up from her hotel. Inside, Heather joined American honeymooners, and an intense, athletic-looking family of four from Germany. Whether it was the contrast from the pleasantly cool interior of the minibus, or the fact that the stables was located away from the cooling breeze on the seafront, Heather wasn’t sure, but when she climbed out, the heat rose from the parched soil beneath her feet and engulfed her in the first hot flush she’d had in more than a decade. The mother-of-the-bride hat she’d bought on impulse before she left proved a very effective fan, and she was grateful for her cropped hair until the stable’s owner greeted the party and plonked what looked – and felt – like a padded cannonball on her head.

Felipe was in his seventies, she guessed, and judging by his genu varum, born with a horse between his legs. Heather congratulated her retired brain for remembering the Latin for bow legs. Unfortunately, when it came to putting her foot in the stirrup to mount her steed, her retired brain found discerning her sinister from her dextra more problematic, and had it not been for Felipe’s timely intervention, she would have ended up facing backwards in the saddle.

‘Here, I help you,’ he said, gathering the reins into her left hand, holding the stirrup iron steady for her left foot, and offering her right buttock gentle guidance from his free hand. To be fair, his helping hand, uninvited as it was, saw her shoot up onto the horse’s back Cossack style.

Felipe winked at Heather, and when he introduced all his horses, each named after a Greek god or goddess, it came as no surprise that he would be riding a horny-looking stallion called Zeus. Heather’s mount was Persephone, a dappled grey mare who the stable staff had nicknamed Hippo. She assumed it was on account of her colour and because she was as wide as she was high, leaving Heather feeling as if she were sitting astride a table.

When they were all mounted, Felipe ran through the basics. Keep the reins short, the heels down, and look straight ahead. Heather already knew the fundamentals, having ridden her cousin’s tiny Shetland pony as a child, but her early experience hadn’t prepared her to handle a flirty mare that was at least sixteen hands high. And wide. Meanwhile the Germans looked ready to represent their country at the next Olympics.

It all started well, with the horses clearly accustomed to carrying novices

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