Chapter 31
Mike McKeever’s plane touched down at Heathrow the next day after an uneventful six and a half hour flight. As he and his fellow passengers on board the airbus sat waiting for the seatbelt lights to go off he thought about the last few weeks. It had been a good trip and the programme editor had been pleased with Mike’s reports from the front line. He had a natural empathy with both the British soldiers and the local people, which always came across in his pieces. He loved being in the thick of the action and told friends he had the best job in the world. Yet recently he found he was missing Caroline and the children more and more and was beginning to wonder if a desk job back in London might be better for the whole family.
Leaving them for this trip, so soon after the move to Riverdale, had been a real wrench. Charlie was his father’s son and took his dad’s work trips in his stride but Caroline, normally so cheerful, had seemed unhappy when he’d left. And there was Poppy. With her pale, heart-shaped face and green eyes she looked so much like Isobel that sometimes it took Mike’s breath away. She was skinny, shy and awkward but Mike knew that one day she would be as beautiful as her mother.
From the moment Mike and Isobel had met during a lecture in their first year at university they’d been inseparable and were married within three years of graduating.
They’d had their lives mapped out. They’d both wanted careers – Mike at the BBC and Isobel as a primary school teacher - a family home, four children and a golden retriever. Within a few years they’d had the jobs, the Victorian terrace in Twickenham and, most importantly, Poppy. Mike felt the luckiest man alive. Then life dealt him its worst possible hand.
His grief after Isobel’s death had threatened to consume him, but somehow he’d managed to hold everything together for Poppy’s sake. Overnight she’d morphed from a confident and carefree four-year-old to a withdrawn, clingy and painfully shy shadow of her former self. Father and daughter had clung to each other like the battered and bruised survivors of a shipwreck.
Slowly the pain had lessened. Mike still missed Isobel acutely but he began to enjoy work again, and sometimes hours went by when she didn’t fill his thoughts. Then Caroline had started working in Mike’s department and the two had become friends. They were both gregarious and shared the same quirky sense of humour. To the delight of their friends and families they’d fallen in love. The arrival of Charlie was the icing on the cake.
Mike felt so grateful he’d been given a second chance. He wished Poppy felt the same. But no matter how hard Caroline tried Poppy refused to let down her defences. Caroline never complained about Poppy’s remoteness and Mike was away so often it was easy to pretend everything was OK. Deep down he knew it was anything but.
The seatbelt light finally went out. Mike stood up, stretched his legs and reached for his hand luggage in the overhead locker. He knew that once he was home he would have to sit down and talk to Poppy about Caroline. Mike had once found an old shoebox filled with photographs of a pony, schedules from long-forgotten gymkhanas and dog-eared rosettes at the bottom of Caroline’s wardrobe. His wife had been as pony mad as Poppy was at her age. They had so much in common, if only Poppy was prepared to look.
His taxi driver was a taciturn type so Mike was spared the effort of making small talk on the long drive back to Riverdale. Instead he spent the journey deep in thought, wondering how he could bridge the gap between his wife and daughter.
As they neared Tavistock the traffic slowed to a crawl and Mike realised they were stuck behind several livestock lorries all heading in the same direction. The taxi driver drummed the steering wheel with his fingers and let out the occasional deep sigh.
“It’s like Piccadilly bleedin’ Circus around here today,” muttered the driver, throwing Mike an accusatory look through the rear view mirror, as if he was personally responsible for the traffic jam. Mike smiled inwardly while trying to look sympathetic. They trundled on for another couple of miles. When they reached the outskirts of the town he saw a sign with the words ‘Horse Sale, first left’ on the side of the road.
It must be the auction where the Dartmoor ponies were sold, Mike thought. Caroline had mentioned the annual event in an email. Apparently it was quite a spectacle. His mind was racing. He remembered Poppy, white with disappointment when she’d realised there was no pony waiting for her at their new home the day they’d moved to Riverdale. He thought about the emails she’d sent him since, brimming with news about Chester, her new friend Scarlett’s two ponies and little else. He pictured Caroline’s scruffy shoebox, buried at the bottom of her wardrobe, filled with memories of her own pony-filled childhood.
Mike made a split decision. He tapped the driver on the shoulder, dazzled him with his practised television news smile and, with just the right mix of persuasion and authority, said, “Actually, could you just take a left here? There’s somewhere I need to go.”