Even ‘recreational’ competitive trail rides start early, as Jade learnt the next morning. Rhian and Andy’s mum were still fast asleep when the Samudra truck left the front gate, and the sun was only just beginning to rise over the low tide. It was like the horse shows Jade was accustomed to, in that the animals in the truck had been thoroughly groomed and well fed, but otherwise it seemed quite different: there were no butterflies in Jade’s stomach and no smart clothes to change into. Everyone, crammed into the cab of the truck, was wearing clean but plain jodhpurs, T-shirts and sweaters.

‘So, you know what will happen once we get there?’ Flora prepared Jade.

‘Unload the horses?’

‘After that.’

‘Vet check?’

‘Before that we’ll pick up our numbers and maps. But yes, there’s a vet check. Basil is in tip-top condition, so there’s no need to worry; just do what the vet tells you. Watch whoever is in front of you. It’ll probably be one of us.’

‘Will we all ride together?’ Jade asked hopefully.

‘To begin with, yes. Nell and I are doing the longer course, so you and Andy will finish first.’

‘How long are the courses?’

‘Not long at all — twenty kilometres for you two juniors, and forty for us.’

It sounded like a long course to Jade. Flora saw her grimace. ‘You know that Bas has done 120 kilometres, Jade? This will be a walk in the park for him; literally, actually — part of the course goes through Kowhai Park. Keep an eye out for tui and wood pigeons.’

‘It sounds like a pretty ride.’

‘It is. Very scenic. Honestly nothing at all to worry about. If anything, you may have trouble keeping Bas slow enough. Did you know that you can pass the finish line too soon?’

Jade shook her head and looked worried again.

‘Just try to keep pace with Piper. Pretend you two are on an ordinary ride. Fingers crossed Piper won’t get too worked up with the other horses.’

‘She was good last year,’ Andy said. ‘But if you do get ahead, Jade, just ride with anyone. It doesn’t have to be me. Everyone’s really friendly.’

‘If there’s a minimum time and a maximum time, how does anyone win?’ Jade asked. ‘Everyone must cross the finish line at nearly the same time?’

‘It’s more to do with the horse’s condition. Your time is recorded and compared with the vet-check results — the best combined total wins. But, as I keep saying, it’s really just for fun.’

‘Flora only says that because she wins every year,’ Nellie said. ‘It’s just for fun for you, because no one else stands a chance against Samudra horses.’

‘That’s something I was meaning to tell you, Jade,’ Flora said, slowing the truck and turning up a gravel road. ‘Even if you get the best time and vet result, Bas won’t be able to win: he’s over-qualified. And you won’t technically be able to win either, as you haven’t been training him. I hope you don’t mind too much.’ ‘No, that’s fine!’ Jade was relieved. There really wasn’t any pressure at all.

At the end of the gravel road was a heavy gate. Nellie swore colourfully as she dragged it open. At the top of the hill, the dirt road ran out and was replaced by two tyre tracks in the dried-out grass.

Next to a weatherboard cottage were a few yards and a parking area for trucks like Flora’s, and horse floats. Jade thought it looked like a very small sports day, except with more adult riders than children. Driving closer, Jade recognized Mata and Ngaire amongst the riders clustered at the vet check.

‘Did you guys sleep in?’ Mata asked, riding over to the Samudra truck as Jade and Andy led the horses down the ramp. ‘It’s nearly eight!’ It sounded like a joke, and Flora smiled wryly, but the race was due to start at eight-thirty so there wasn’t actually much time to spare at all.

Slipping the hackamore over Basil’s ears, Jade arranged the parting between his forelock and mane.

‘No time for primping,’ Nellie chided. ‘Get your helmet on and go to the house with Flora.’

Jade could have argued that arranging the mane and forelock wasn’t primping so much as attending to Basil’s comfort; if she were a horse, Jade thought, she wouldn’t want her mane to be caught under the crownpiece of the bridle. But such an argument would not have gone down well at that moment. Jade wondered whether Nellie was missing her cigarettes again.

At the weatherboard cottage, a woman in a sun hat was marking off names on a list and handing out zip-lock bags of back-numbers and maps. Flora tied Jade’s number onto her back, as if this, too, were a new experience with which Jade needed help.

‘I can do it,’ Jade said.

‘It’s quicker if I do it. You look at the map. See the highlighter marks? Those are obstacles, or hazards.’

‘Jumps?’ Jade asked, her eyes lighting up. Basil looked like a jumper.

‘No — don’t you remember that I told you endurance horses don’t jump? We have to keep the heart rate as low as possible. Listen to me when I talk to you, Jade: I know what I’m doing.’

‘I thought maybe there were jumps because this was a “competitive trail ride” not endurance,’ Jade said, then wished she hadn’t. It sounded petty.

‘They are essentially the same discipline. The basic idea is the same.’ Flora sounded stressed. Although everyone had said how relaxed the day would be, it didn’t seem like that to Jade so far. Of the Samudra group, only Andy was still smiling. As she had said she would be, Piper was uncharacteristically docile.

When everyone was wearing a number, the group made their way to the vet. One by one, beginning with Flora, they were asked to dismount and trot their horse out. Nellie had to trot Precious out twice, as the first time the temperamental mare shambled in a way that could have suggested lameness.

‘She just takes a while to warm up,’ Nellie said stiffly, when questioned by the vet.

Next the legs and hooves of each animal were checked and another box ticked. Finally, with his stethoscope, the thorough vet noted each horse’s heart rate.

‘You’re all fine and dandy,’ the vet said, smiling. He clearly knew Flora from previous events. ‘Better make your way to the start line now; it’s right on eight-thirty. Good luck, everyone.’

Jade hadn’t a clue where she was going, but didn’t mind a bit. Map-reading was not a skill of hers, and the hand-drawn map, now scrunched in her pocket, seemed somehow unreliable. Best to just follow the others — they were all going the same way, after all. Compared with the hunt the previous winter, this cross-country ride with a group of horses was far more sedate. It was like the scenic route of the luge in Rotorua compared with the racing track. Jade’s mum had taken her there for a holiday many years ago, and Jade remembered feeling both relieved and disappointed in herself that she had chosen the slow track, full of babies and old people, rather than the speedy lane.

Other than having a fervent dislike of feeling pressure on his reins, Basil was a pleasant and easy ride. Like all of Flora’s horses, he was spoilt in a good way — a way that made him eager to please rather than always taking advantage. Reminding herself not to shorten the reins, a habit she had picked up from pony club, Jade held the rein buckle in one hand as Basil broke into a short, bouncy trot.

‘Is this okay?’ Jade asked, turning in her saddle to see Andy.

‘Yep. Just go with Bas; he knows what he’s doing mostly. If your speed’s wrong, I’ll call out.’

With all the decisions delegated to Andy and Basil, Jade took the opportunity to admire the view. She, and the twenty or so other contestants, were now trotting along the fence line of a hilly paddock, so dry that the grass looked greyish white, with no trace of green. Beyond the hills to the right, Jade could see the sea. The beach would be full of sunbathers, swimmers and cricket games today, Jade reckoned, feeling the sun on her arms. Usually she’d be envious of beach-goers on a summer morning like this, but not today. With farmland to the left, sea to the right, and the promise of bush up ahead, past Basil’s charmingly speckled ears, Jade couldn’t think of any where she would rather be.

As the hill gave way to a downward slope, Jade again resisted the urge to grab at Basil’s reins. Instead she held the pommel of the saddle — an old one of Flora’s — and used her legs to balance Basil over the uneven ground.

‘That’s the way,’ Ngaire said. Jade, having let Basil go at his own pace, had caught up to the other horses and left Andy and Piper behind. ‘You know, the fitter you are, and the more you can use your muscles, the more you help your horse. It’s not such an issue on a short ride like this, but over 120 kilometres, the horse really needs all the help he can get, and he notices when you’re getting tired.’

‘I guess it’s a bit like jumping,’ Jade said. ‘If the rider’s in the wrong position, the horse has less chance of clearing the jump.’

‘A bit,’ Ngaire said. It occurred to Jade that endurance riders seemed, generally, to disapprove of jumping. She decided not to mention it again during the ride.

‘Here’s my favourite part of the trail,’ said Mata, who was riding just ahead. They had reached the beginning of Kowhai Park. Past an open gate, Jade could see a narrow track leading into native bush.

‘This is the last chance for them to drink for the next few k’s,’ Ngaire said, pointing to a trough next to the gate, where all the riders were gathering. When it was Bas’s turn to drink, he sniffed at the clean water but turned away before drinking.

‘As the old saying goes,’ a man behind Jade said to her, ‘you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’

‘I shouldn’t keep trying?’ Jade asked Ngaire. She thought perhaps the man behind her was just in a hurry to water his own horse.

‘Bas knows what’s good for him. He prefers the water from the stream in the park, I think. Just you wait, he’ll hold everyone behind him up when he stops in the middle of the trail and has a long drink.’

Ngaire was right. Fortunately, the two riders stuck behind Jade and Basil — a mother on a stocky standard-bred bay, and her son of about ten on a pretty grey pony that looked part-Welsh, part-Arab — were patient.

‘And do you know what that one is?’ the mother asked her son, pointing to a shrub with leaves that had a pale, furry underside.

‘No.’ He seemed less interested in learning about native species than his mother was in teaching him.

‘That one is called rangiora, or bushman’s toilet paper. Your father and I used it when we went camping for our honeymoon.’

‘Mum!’ The boy sounded both disgusted and amused.

Before Jade could hear more of their conversation, Basil finally raised his head and, still dribbling water from his bitless mouth, splashed across the shallow stream.

It was fortunate that he had had a good drink, as his hydration levels were checked, along with his heart rate and respiration, at the vet check in the next clearing. Although Andy and Piper still weren’t anywhere to be seen, Jade did as she had been told and copied the rider in front of her.

The vet at this stop was less friendly than the first vet. She ticked boxes and examined Basil without talking to Jade.

‘Is everything OK?’ Jade asked, nervous now.

‘Fit as a fiddle. You can carry on straight away if you like.’

Jade was surprised and a little disappointed. Obviously, she was glad that Basil was in good health, but she had hoped to have an excuse to wait for Andy. Still, she wanted Basil to finish with a good time, even though they couldn’t officially be awarded a prize, so she carried on, following a woman in front of her on a skewbald cob.

The day was getting even warmer. It seemed a shame to leave the shade of the bush and return to farmland, but that’s where all the other horses were going, and Jade was determined not to get lost. This time, when offered his turn at the trough, Basil drank greedily.

‘Would you like me to do him, too?’ asked a girl with a wet cloth, who had been mopping her chestnut’s neck.

‘Um …’ Jade looked at Basil’s neck, which was sticky with sweat. ‘Yes, please.’

‘No problem.’ With a few quick strokes, the girl sluiced water from her drink bottle over Basil’s neck, then wiped the water away. ‘You’d better keep going now. Don’t want to lose time.’ The girl smiled, squinting in the sunlight.

‘Thanks,’ Jade said, unsure if this was normal. Whether it was or not, it was kind of the girl to rid Basil of the itchy salt on his neck.

Jade’s legs and bottom were getting sore from the old saddle by the time she reached the third vet check. As she dismounted, her ankles felt weak under the weight of her body.

‘I haven’t got your number on my list, dear,’ the third vet said.

‘What?’ Jade suddenly remembered that it had been ages since she had seen Andy.

‘Is there a chance that you were entered for the short course, but went too far?’

‘Yeah, that must have been what happened.’

‘Don’t look so worried: it’s not the end of the world.’ The vet smiled. ‘If you were on a different horse it might be, but young Basil is still raring to go, I reckon.’

Jade brightened. ‘It doesn’t matter?’

‘I don’t see why. So long as you stick with some other riders, you shouldn’t get lost. You’ll no doubt sleep well tonight, though. Lucky the vet check is just for the horse and not the rider, eh?’

Jade tried to look stronger. ‘I’m not too tired yet.’ The vet laughed. ‘Good for you, dear. Best of luck.’

At the next water trough, Jade recognized two familiar chestnut rumps.

‘Hello,’ she called.

‘Jade?’ Flora said. ‘What happened? Why are you still riding?’

‘I got a bit lost.’ Jade looked sheepish. ‘I thought all the horses were taking the same trail, and that we’d just have an earlier finish line. I didn’t realize I couldn’t follow just anyone.’

Nellie chortled. ‘You’re going to be so sore tomorrow. Your first race and you go forty k’s!’

‘She hasn’t finished it yet,’ Flora said sternly to Nellie, before turning to Jade. ‘It’s not too late to go back if you like. You don’t have to carry on.’

‘I may as well,’ Jade said, ignoring her stiff legs. ‘Basil’s enjoying it.’

Flora grinned. ‘That’s the spirit.’

Having two friends to ride with for the rest of the trail helped the time pass quickly. Jade stopped thinking altogether about when to trot or canter, or even where she was going. She just followed Flora, and Nellie followed her. Eventually, as they turned onto a gravel road, the landscape started looking familiar.

‘Are we nearly finished?’ Jade asked, trying not to sound too relieved.

‘Sure are,’ Nellie said. ‘The finish line is just at the top of the hill. See the cottage and the trucks? We’re back to where we started.’

As soon Basil crossed the finish line, Jade slid, jelly-legged, to the ground. ‘Good boy, Bas! Thank you, boy.’

‘You can make a fuss of him soon. Vet check first,’ Flora ordered.

As they waited in the queue for the vet, a worried Andy joined them. She had returned to the truck nearly two hours earlier.

‘I was worried you’d fallen, or accidentally gone off the track and ridden back to Flaxton,’ Andy scolded.

‘Sorry, Andy,’ Jade said. ‘I didn’t mean to. When I realized what had happened, it was too late to turn back.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Flora corrected. ‘I gave you the chance and you chose to ride the full distance. I knew you had potential in endurance, Jade — I knew it. Can’t wait to see you back here next year with Tani.’

While the vets’ results were tallied up against the stopwatch times, everyone made their horses comfortable. As Jade handed Basil a bucket of hard feed, her own stomach rumbled.

Nellie, who was untacking Precious nearby, heard the rumble and laughed. ‘There’s a lunch at the house soon. The organizers know that the horses aren’t the only ones who get hungry after a long ride. It’s always good, too, because people bring leftovers from Christmas Day.’

Jade tried to be polite, but she was ravenously hungry and rushed towards the table on the veranda which had been laid with cold meat, barbecued meat, bread, leftover salads and Christmas cake.

When all the riders were eating and gossiping, the vet from the first and last check, who was also the event organizer, announced the results.

Nellie had made a good point earlier when she’d said that Flora only said the Boxing Day Race wasn’t competitive because she won it so easily. The bonus for Samudra this year was that Andy won the junior event, too, and Nellie and Precious had the second-best result in the open category.

‘Finally, we have a competitor today who also deserves a mention. One, because it was her first race,’ Jade began to blush as people clapped and cheered, ‘but that’s not all.’ The vet paused and smiled. ‘It was her first race and she did the full forty kilometres. By mistake!’ There was a combination of gasps and laughter.

‘Obviously, if her horse wasn’t ready for the full race we wouldn’t have let her continue, but because she was riding a Samudra animal, we had no reason to stop her. So, I’d like to present Jade Lennox with a little impromptu prize, and Flora, too, for once again demonstrating her skill as a trainer.’

Beaming, Flora stepped forward, dragging a shy Jade by the elbow. A miscellaneous purple ribbon with OCEAN BAY BOXING DAY RACE printed on it was tied around Jade’s arm, and the vet presented her with a bag of chocolate gold coins. Jade wondered whether they had been hastily taken off his Christmas tree.

Flora’s impromptu prize was a bottle of wine. ‘I’ve been acquiring quite a few of these lately,’ she said to Jade. ‘Maybe I’ll have to find a house with a cellar when we move.’

Jade’s heart sank. For the whole day she hadn’t thought once about Kim Bandt. It was sad to be reminded.

There was another, much worse, reminder when they returned to Samudra. An official-looking envelope had been taped to the front gate. Nellie tore it open before the horses had even been unloaded. For the second time that day, she swore colourfully.

‘I don’t want to know,’ Flora groaned.

‘They want to “level” the youngsters’ paddock,’ Nellie read, voice wobbling. ‘The horses, and Casey’s container, have to be gone by the 28th. In two days!’

Flora shook her head and muttered under her breath.

‘What was that?’ Andy asked, nervous.

‘She isn’t getting away with this,’ Flora fumed. ‘Come on, first we have horses to unload.’

As Jade let Basil go in his paddock, her dad appeared at the gate. He was grinning and gave her the thumbs-up.

Jade frowned and shook her head. ‘We’ve had bad news, Dad,’ she said as he approached.

‘What? I just talked to Mata and Ngaire. They said you cleaned up at the race. Good work!’

‘Yeah, that was good,’ Jade agreed. ‘But it’s all forgotten now. Flora got another letter from Kim Bandt today. That paddock,’ Jade pointed to where the youngsters were playing together, ‘is going to get flattened out. The horses have to be gone by the 28th. And Casey’s container, too.’

Jade’s dad’s eyes were still twinkling.

‘Dad, didn’t you hear me?’

‘I have some news, too. Good news this time. Shall I wait until dinner time or tell everyone now?’

Jade ran across the paddock to where Nellie, Flora and Andy were letting the mares go.

‘Come quick — Dad has good news. He can stop Kim Bandt!’

‘She’s the mayor’s ex-wife?’ Nellie repeated, taken aback. ‘What?’

Jade’s dad launched into his story for a third time. Everyone understood it by now, but it was comforting to hear it again. ‘That’s right. Kim Bandt, many years ago, was the wife of Jack McSkimming, mayor of the Flaxton district. I am guessing that this swift re-zoning of the land on which Samudra lies is to do with a divorce settlement. One way or another, it is certainly not legit. And everyone who reads the Flaxton Times is going to know about it by tomorrow!’