Kicking The Tyres

‘Damn!’
He hurled the phone hard, aiming at the biggest rock on the far side of the river and scoring a direct hit. It bounced off the jagged, grey lump with a satisfying crunch and shattered, the screen and keyboard slithering into the river with a soft plop. They sank instantly, leaving just a few splinters of plastic which floated slowly downstream, bobbing on the spreading ripples and breaking the moon’s reflection into white, dancing crescents. Zac watched, remembering belatedly that the phone was brand new.

“The next one, or never! Harry.”

It was a lot of money for one message.
‘Shit.’
His horse, bored of standing still, shifted uncomfortably and tossed her head. She’d heard him shout and felt him stiffen in the saddle. And she was cold too.
The ripples died away and the moon reformed on the surface of the water, a single, solid shape, unchanged and unmoved as though the phone and its crushing text had never existed.

Zac picked up his reins, shortening them carefully through his fingers until he felt the contact in her mouth again. Then he looked ahead, away from the river and told her, with the slightest tensing of his calf muscles, that it was time to go home. Rusty leapt forward, delighted to be moving once more and trotting barely two paces before breaking into canter. Zac kept her head up, pushed her on just faintly more with his leg and then rose in the stirrups, crouching forward to give her an easy time over the uneven ground. He let her go fast, fury dulling reason on the dark ribbon of pasture and felt her respond, the old horse running for home with the huge, exuberant strides of a sixteen hand thoroughbred. Zac listened to the regular four time of her full-blown gallop, felt the wind sting his cheeks to crimson and closed his mind, temporarily at least, to the impossibility ahead.

Please click here for the rest of the first chapter or here to find out about me and how I came to write "Kicking the Tyres".

Mike