Zoe and Swift , livre ebook

Capstone Global Library - Jessie Williams

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

70 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Zoe was the fastest runner in her school... until an accident crushed her hopes for the Olympics. Can a friendship with a retired racehorse at City Farm help her find a new dream?

Informations

Publié par	Capstone Global Library
Date de parution	14 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782020271
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published in 2013 by Curious Fox, an imprint of Capstone Global Library Limited, 7 Pilgrim Street, London, EC4V 6LB Registered company number: 6695582
www.curious-fox.com
Text © Hothouse Fiction Ltd 2013
Series created by Hothouse Fiction www.hothousefiction.com
The author’s moral rights are hereby asserted.
Cover Illustration by Ksenia Topaz Illustrations by Dewi@kja-artists
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978 1 78202 027 1
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner.
ebook created by Hothouse Fiction Ltd

Prologue

Zoe stared at the white ceiling. She had pulled the curtains round her bed, shutting out the busy ward with the nurses bustling about, the parents talking, the little kids playing. With the curtains closed, she felt like she was in her own little world. She wished she could stay there. She didn’t feel like ever going outside again.
Catching sight of the plaster cast that covered her right leg from her knee to her toes, she shut her eyes. Her mind filled with pictures of the last race she’d run. She remembered the feeling of speed, passing the other runners, crossing the finishing line. Afterwards her coach had come up to her and told her that if she kept running like that she’d be in the Olympics one day. It had been one of the happiest days of Zoe’s life. She’d been daydreaming about the Olympics in the car on the way home – and then someone had driven into Mum’s car.
The doctors had explained that her leg had been so badly broken that she would have to wear a cast for several months. She would then have to have physiotherapy and would probably walk with a limp for the rest of her life. It would be a long time before she raced again, if ever.
Lying there, Zoe felt empty. Like everything inside her had been ripped away, leaving an empty, hollow space. Tears started to creep down her cheeks. She scrubbed them angrily away.
‘Hi, sweetheart.’
The curtains pushed aside and Mum looked in. She looked like an older version of Zoe, tall and skinny with dark skin and long braided hair. She was smiling, but Zoe could see the strain in the lines around her eyes.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Zoe managed, having to force the words past the lump in her throat.
‘Well, today’s the big day. It’s time to come home.’ Mum smiled brightly.
Zoe bit her lip as she thought about going back to her house. She was looking forward to going home, but she felt funny about it too. It would be like nothing had changed, when everything had.
Her mum must have seen the misery on her face. ‘Oh, Zoe,’ she said softly, crossing to the top of the bed and fiddling with Zoe’s braids. ‘I know it’s really hard for you but you’ll feel better when you get back home. I promise you will. We’ve made the study downstairs into your bedroom now so you won’t have to go up the stairs and you’ll soon feel like your usual, cheerful self. Things will start getting back to normal.’
‘Normal?’ Zoe said bleakly.
‘Yes, normal.’
Zoe turned her head away. Her mum was trying to be nice, she knew that, but she had no idea. Absolutely no idea at all. Normal? No. One thing was for sure. Her life was never going to be normal again...

Chapter One

Jack ran into the farmyard at City Farm, dodging the clucking chickens that were pecking happily at the weeds and scratching at the ground. He raced past the stone barn, which doubled up as an office and café. The sheep and goats bleated hopefully at him from their pens but he didn’t stop – not even to take a quick look at Curly the sheep and her lamb, Lizzie. Jack usually loved going round all the animals when he first arrived, saying hello to each and every one of them, but that day he wanted to get to the stable block as quickly as possible. A new horse was coming to the farm and there would be lots to do to get ready for it.
As he splashed straight through a puddle in his old green wellies, happiness bubbled up inside him. It was the weekend. No school for two days. No reading or writing to get muddled up with. Just helping with the animals and seeing his friends.
The farm was right in the middle of the city. Surrounded by houses and concrete tower blocks, hemmed in by the railway lines and roads, it was a little oasis. The farm was open to the public and lots of people came to visit the animals and sit in the café eating the delicious home-made cakes that the volunteers cooked. But City Farm wasn’t just for day visitors. It was also the home of the Harvest Hope project – a scheme set up for kids like him who were having problems either at home or school, or kids like his friend Asha, who was recovering from being ill.
The main stable block was at the far end of the farmyard. It had four stables in it and was made of stone with a slate roof. It was old and a section of the roof over the two stalls at the end had fallen away and was patched up with a green tarpaulin. The doors had ancient black bolts and the old white paint on them was chipped and scratched. The top halves of the doors were open. Stanley, a black and white pony, was looking out of one of the stables, dropping stalks of hay as he munched. He whinnied when he saw Jack.
Jack ran over and rubbed Stanley’s shaggy neck. ‘Hey, boy. How are you today?’ The pony nuzzled Jack’s sandy hair with his lips. Jack grinned and ducked away. ‘Oi! My hair’s not hay!’
Hearing his voice, Dusty, the farm donkey, looked out of the stable next to Stanley and brayed noisily. Jack went over to say hello to him too, just as a girl looked out of the tumbledown stable at the end. She had a broom in one hand and was wearing a blue hat. ‘Jack!’ she said, her face lighting up.
‘Hi, Asha!’
Asha was very thin but her brown eyes were bright and sparkling. She was recovering from having leukaemia, and she was getting better every day.
‘So you finally decided to get here, did you?’ she teased. ‘I set my alarm clock for seven o’clock so I’ve been here ages! I’ve been cleaning out the stable we’re going to use for the new horse.’ The words bubbled out of her. Sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgeways because she spoke so much! ‘Come and see!’ she urged.
Jack followed her and looked into the stable. ‘You’ve done loads!’
Asha beamed with pride. There were four stalls in the old stable block – the ones that Dusty and Stanley lived in, one that was used as a storeroom and one that was empty because the roof leaked. Only yesterday the stall Asha was cleaning out had been piled high with junk – old rugs and bits of tack, gardening tools and ancient buckets. Now it was empty apart from a dusty feed manger in one corner and a bucket and broom.
‘Everything that was in here has gone into the stable next door,’ Asha explained. ‘That’s going to be the main storeroom now. Rory has put up some tarpaulin to try and mend the leak so that everything doesn’t get wet. And’ – she added excitedly – ‘I found some bunting in here when I was clearing up.’ She pulled a string of red and blue bunting from the manger. ‘I thought we could put it up to welcome the new horse. First, though, we’ve got to get rid of all the dust and cobwebs. After that, Rory says we need to disinfect the floor.’
‘Did someone mention my name?’ boomed a voice.
Rory came striding towards the stable, a bucket of water in one of his giant hands and a metal tin of disinfectant in the other. Rory Trent was the City Farm manager. He was in his sixties with bushy white hair and a face that was tanned and weathered from his years spent outdoors. ‘Morning, Jack. Good to see you, lad. You looking forward to meeting our new resident, then?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Jack. Apart from Stanley, he hadn’t seen any horses since he had come to live in the city. ‘So what’s the horse like?’ he asked Rory, as he started sweeping up the cobwebs and dust from the stable floor.
‘He’s an ex-racehorse called Swift,’ Rory replied. ‘He’s too old to race now and so his owners have decided they don’t want him any more.’
‘Just because he can’t race?’ Asha said, sneezing as Jack swept up a cloud of dust. ‘That’s mean.’
Rory sighed. ‘Ay, I’m with you on that, Asha. They retrained him so that he could give rides, but he didn’t make enough money doing that, so they decided he had to leave. To some people animals are just a business. Anyway, I said we’d make room for him here. It’ll be good for Stanley to have some more horse company. Horses are happier when they have friends.’
‘Like people!’ Asha grinned at Jack.
Jack smiled back at her. ‘I can’t wait to see him,’ he said.
‘It may take him a bit of time to settle in,’ said Rory. Swift has lived all his life on a busy racing yard. It’s going to be a very different life for him here. We’d better give him lots of TLC.’
‘TLC?’ said Asha, frowning. ‘What’s that?’
‘Tender Loving Care,’ translated Jack with a grin. His grandad had often used the same expression.
‘Well, we can definitely give him heaps of that!’ Asha declared.
‘Who’s going to give heaps of what to who?’ said a bright voice. Kerry Barker came into the stable. Kerry was the Harvest Hope co-ordinator. She looked as different from Rory as it was possible to be, with her bright red padded jacket that matched her lipstick, and tiger-print wellies. That day her long black braids were trimmed with red and gold beads that jangled as she walked.
‘We were just saying Swift’s going to get lots of love from us,’