True Hearts by Ellie Green

Author:Ellie Green [Green, Ellie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

16

Marnie woke up on Sunday morning to a cloudless sky. Still in an old pair of cotton shorts and an oversized t-shirt she wore to bed, she slipped on her boots at the back door and went to feed and water the horses. By some miracle, Angus was still asleep and Felicia had disappeared outside already.

The heat of the sun shocked her. It was shaping up to be the first hot day in months.

She kept the horse feed in an old shed behind the house. It was run down, and she worried about its structural integrity, especially when a severe storm came through. It was what she had though, and it served its purpose. It held the winter rugs for the horses, the feed and her tack. Not that she had ridden a horse since she was young enough for pony club.

Ned had been a racehorse who had failed in his career. Thirty-two starts and not a single place. His owners were ready to cut their losses and send him to the glue factory. The daughter of one owner had a kind heart and placed a ‘free to a good home’ ad online. It had landed on Marnie’s screen the day after she settled on the farm. The next morning, she had borrowed a truck and a float and collected him.

He was a lanky thing when he first came home, but the soft valley grass and Marnie’s additional feeds of hay, lucerne and chaff had fattened him up well.

Shadow was a stout little pony, who had once given rides to children as part of a travelling circus. The circus had gone broke and they put all the animals up for sale. Shadow was old, fat and limp in her back leg. No one was putting their hand up to take her. So Marnie had.

When she’d picked the pony up, the man she collected her from couldn’t remember the horse’s name.

‘They all look a bit the same, really,’ he’d said. ‘The girl that looked after them got a job in Melbourne and left.’

The pony came home and took an instant liking to Ned, following him around the paddock and resting under the same gum trees. Marnie thought Shadow would be a good name.

‘I’m going to a rodeo today,’ she said to the two horses as she approached the paddock fence. ‘Either of you ever been?’

Both sets of eyes were fixed on the bale of hay she dragged behind her. Marnie laughed. She pulled it apart and threw it over the fences in clumps, so one horse wouldn’t hog the food over the other.

‘I used to love rodeos when I was a kid,’ she added. But both horses were absorbed in their breakfast.

Marnie turned around, heading back towards the house. ‘Better go get dressed then. Can’t turn up to a date in my pyjamas.’

She spent the morning getting all the small jobs done that she had no time for on weekdays. The house was not clean, but it rarely was. Who wanted

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