Whispering Back by Adam Goodfellow Read Free Book Online

Cambridge, where there was a tiny riding manège, fenced off in the middle of the field. She was not very well co-ordinated and found it difficult going around it, even in trot, as it was so small. One afternoon, Nicole arrived to find that Sensi had let herself in by limbo-dancing under the cross-rail, and was practising the work they’d been doing the day before! By making everything they did together so positive, and always ending on a good note before Sensi got bored or tired, Nicole had brought out the best in her, preserving her enthusiasm and the essence of her character.
    We left Cambridge in 1991, with honours degrees in Social and Political Science, and were therefore unemployable. Nicole had switched from Engineering after one year, and I had left English after the second year, but I suspect it wouldn’t have made much difference what our degree subjects had been. It was the height of the biggest recession since the 1930s, with unemployment amongst university graduates standing at 90 per cent. This was just as well, since neither of us really wanted a job. Nicole had already achieved her life’s ambition, and mine – that of being the next Jimi Hendrix – was unlikely to be served by getting a conventional job. We signed on and moved to Milton Keynes, staying with Nicole’s parents, who had by then moved back to England from Canada. It was now clear that living with Nicole was going to involve horses. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ was the only option, I felt. I tried to sell myself for a price, though, and eventually we came to a reasonable compromise. I would learn to ride; she would learn the guitar. She mastered a few chords, even a song or two (probably ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘Wild Horses’), but her enthusiasm petered out after about a month. Perhaps things would have been different if there were more popular songs about horses.
    Even at this early stage, however, it was already clear that I had a close affinity to horses – at least, they seemed to like me. A year after we had graduated, I went to a house party in Norwich, leaving Nicole to look after Sensi. The day after the party, my friends and I went to a pub for lunch and were walking back through a field, home to three huge Shire horses. One came over and wanted some attention, probably used to being offered treats by people using the public footpath through his paddock. He was so big that I practically had to stand on my toes to scratch his wither. He loved it, sticking his nose into the air and wibbling the end of it around, showing clear evidence of the evolution of the elephant as he stretched his lip out in ecstasy, mutually grooming the space in front of him and turning to nuzzle me, asking me to scratch harder. My friends had moved off, but as they turned to tell me to come on, they all burst out laughing at the sight of this huge animal as he contorted his face comically. Or so I thought. His belly was so big, it filled my line of sight and it was not until I had walked a few metres away that I could see just why they were all laughing. My new friend liked me so much he had let down his undercarriage and was standing on what appeared to be five legs, wistfully looking at me as I left.
    But it was on a trip to Wales the autumn after we had graduated that I came to realise the full extent of Nicole’s single-minded focus. Taking only mild interest in the castles and hill forts I had thought we were planning to visit, she came up with ‘a much better idea’. Looking up from a sea of books and maps spread out on the table, she said, ‘Did you know, Lucy Rees lives somewhere in North Wales. Perhaps we could go and find her on the way to one of your castles?’
    From photos, diagrams and descriptions in two of Lucy’s books, Nicole had narrowed down the location of her house to somewhere in the vicinity of a mountain called Cnicht, in the heart of Snowdonia.
    In those days, our options for holiday destinations were severely