I find this book the most difficult in the Jinny at Finmory series to read but because of that it is also one of my favourites.

I mentioned the maturity of themes in these books my last post however this one surpasses itself. It was not my favourite in the series when I read it as a child but reading it as an adult some of the nuances in it chilled me to the bone.

In this book, Jinny is pushed to make friends with Kat Dalton who owns a black thoroughbred called Lightning and she wants someone to accompany her for training over cross country courses. Kat seems overly mature and snobbish despite being the same age as Jinny, yet she is not all she seems. She actually seems a bit terrified of riding despite putting on a front.

Further clouding Jinny’s judgment of Kat is the fact that the Daltons have offered to buy Finmory and what with the Manders’ struggling financially and a job offer for a potential return to being a probation officer in Stopton for Tom Manders, a move back to Stopton is becoming too much of a reality for Jinny.

Jinny and Kat get the opportunity to ride in a cross country competition at a nearby country club. Jinny and Shantih ride the course really well but it’s a windy day and Kat’s horse, and Lightning is freaked out by the wind and acts up, Kat is too nervous to ride her properly and gets thrown off before the first jump. Kat’s stepdad Paul Dalton then gets nasty with her and openly makes fun of her, making Jinny and their instructor Miss Tuke feel very uncomfortable.

Jinny returns home to hear from her family that her dad has phoned from Stopton and he got the job so they’re definitely moving back. Utterly devastated she goes to Shantih and decides to ride her to the beach. When they get to the beach, Kat’s horse Lightning gallops past loose and Jinny has the realisation that Kat has tried to climb the chimney, a dangerous rock at the far end of Finmory bay and without Lightning she has no chance of getting back as the tide is fast coming in. Jinny knows that the only way that Kat can be rescued is if she rides Shantih to her and picks her up. She does so and they nearly get swept away in a dangerous current but they somehow manage to escape and safely reach shore.

Over dry clothes, soup and the Aga back at Finmory, Kat tells her story;

“Helen’s not my mother either, my own mother left when I was about five. I can just remember her. She came back from shopping. She put down her basket, it was a wicker basket, on the table and bent over to kiss me, and went. I can remember the smell of her hair. I guess my father was stuck with me. When I was eight, Helen came. She lived with us, looked after me. It was all right. Then my father got tired of her, went off with someone else. This time it was Helen who was stuck with me. We hate each other, but she can’t help feeling responsible for me. When she hooked up with Paul, she tagged me along too. I was even their bridesmaid. Suited Paul. He likes his victims to be good looking.”

This last sentence utterly chills me to the bone, we’ve already seen emotional abuse that Paul gives Kat but does it go further?

We never find out as Kat doesn’t appear in any other books, Tom Manders returns from Stopton having decided not to take the job after all so the Daltons leave after finding out that Finmory is no longer for sale.

A nice footnote though, a few months later, Kat sends Jinny a picture of Shantih that Jinny had previously sold to her in a nice frame.