Free Pony Passion by Harriet Castor

door a few hours later I could tell she hadn’t had the same problem. She was wearing a pair of smart pink trousers I hadn’t seen before, and a pink spangly top. I was dreading her saying something disapproving about my jeans, but she just grinned and ushered me inside, saying, “Wait tillyou hear, Lyndz! I’ve had the fabbest idea!”
    In the sitting room I found Gwen Stefani going full blast on the CD player. Kenny was wailing along, doing all the actions from the new video, while Rosie and Frankie fell about laughing.
    “What’s your idea, then?” I shouted at Fliss above the din.
    “Hang on.” She went and turned the music down, to howls of protest from Kenny. Then, while the rest of us flopped on the floor, she grabbed a glossy magazine from the coffee table and flicked through it. The magazine was called Perfect Homes, Perfect Lives – the sort of thing that tells you how to decorate your home, as long as your home is an enormous mansion and you have pots of money.
    Fliss found the right page and spread it open on the carpet.
    “Look!” she said, pointing to a big advert that took up a whole page. “The Wentworth Equestrian Show.”
    “What’s ‘equestrian’, when it’s at home?” askedKenny, peering at the picture, which showed a man on a horse sailing over a big jump.
    “It means to do with horse-riding,” I said.
    Fliss tapped the page. “It’s this coming Friday,” she said. “And I reckon we should all go. Club outing. To help you get your confidence back.”
    I looked round at the others. Fliss must’ve told them about it before I arrived, because they were all grinning at me expectantly. “Er… that’s a really kind thought, Fliss,” I said. “But you’d hate it, you know. There’d be horses everywhere.”
    “I realise that,” said Fliss primly. Then she smiled. “I think it’ll be a laugh. And Mum has said she can take us. Callum’s going to stay with a friend. It’s all arranged.”
    “Wow.” I didn’t really know what to say. “Are you sure, guys? I’ll feel so guilty if you’re just going for me.”
    “Are you kidding?” Kenny pointed at the magazine picture. “Fliss is going for those Zac Efrons on horseback, I guarantee it.”
    “Don’t be stupid!” said Fliss. But she turnedpink as she said it, which gave the rest of us a major fit of the giggles.
    The Wentworth Equestrian Show was being held in the Wentworth Arena, a big indoor sports stadium near Birmingham. Nikki, Fliss’s mum, drove us there in her new car, which was big enough to get the whole Sleepover Club in. It was dead swanky.
    “It’s not going to be posh, this show, is it?” said Rosie, as we pulled into a service station for some petrol. “You don’t think we should’ve dressed up?” We were all wearing jeans and trainers.
    “It’s horse racing people dress up for,” said Fliss. “Like Ascot and stuff. Isn’t that right, Lyndz?”
    “I think so,” I said. “No one looks smart at our stables, anyhow. It’s far too muddy.”
    The Arena turned out to be massive, with lots of different entrances and exits, and it took us ages to find the door that was marked on our tickets.
    “Hey, they do pop concerts here!” said Frankie, looking at some posters as we queued to get in. “We should come and see Will Young sometime!”
    “Nooo, Justin Timberlake!” chorused Fliss and Rosie.
    “Not so loud, you’ll give me a headache,” said Nikki, frowning. “And keep together, girls. I don’t want to lose anyone.”
    When we finally got to our seats we found we were quite high up, so we had a really good view. The programme said there was going to be a junior ‘show’ class and a junior jumping competition, and then later on there’d be adult show jumping.
    “I want to see someone go splosh in the water,” said Kenny, reading the programme over my shoulder. “I remember seeing it on the telly once: the horse stopped in front of the jump and just tipped its rider in. It was so