When Sophie Met Darcy Day. Helen Yeadon

to recover. Her legs healed, her coat improved and she started to take an interest in life. Every Saturday Sophie would groom her until she was gleaming, and when I took her out for a walk around the yard, Sophie would come along, walking proudly by her side. She obviously felt possessive because whenever she could, she would slip into Darcy’s stable and sit on a bank of straw, just watching. Tish would stride around grumpily and I often heard her laughing at him. It was a pretty laugh, and it made me curious to hear her speaking voice.

      There were a couple of occasions when I could feel that Sophie wanted to say something to me. Once I dropped Darcy’s bundle of hay on one side of the barn and Sophie made a noise that sounded like mild protest.

      ‘What is it?’ I asked.

      She looked at me for a moment then rose, picked up the hay and moved it to the other side, and I remembered that that was where Darcy seemed to prefer it. It’s hard to remember every single horse’s individual preferences when you are feeding twenty of them every day, but Sophie knew exactly what Darcy liked.

      ‘I think she wants to talk,’ I told Michael later, ‘but I’m not sure if she can. Maybe there’s a physical problem?’

      ‘Her parents told me they’d explored every avenue,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure that’s true. I can sympathise with her, but I can also imagine her parents’ frustration as the weeks and months went by without her saying a word. They must want to grab her and shout “For goodness’ sake, will you just speak?”’

      On a few other occasions, I heard Sophie make sounds that were like speech when she wanted to tell me something about Darcy, but they never came out as fully formed words. We got used to her muteness. It’s just the way she was. We were delighted to see her looking happier and more relaxed than when she first came to us, and we didn’t ask for anything more. When her parents’ car drew into the yard, she’d leap out, wave gaily at us and rush straight to Darcy’s barn to say hello. She’d smile and laugh, and enter into any fun going on in the yard, such as when the kids were splashing each other with water. She was a changed girl in many ways.

      Towards the end of the summer, the volunteers were in the kitchen having their drinks while waiting for their parents. Michael and I were having a cup of tea and chatting to each other. Sophie was just round the corner from where we were standing. Suddenly Michael put his finger to his lips, then pointed to his ear, indicating that I should listen to something.

      A girl’s voice was speaking. ‘I was just walking across the yard,’ it said, ‘which is a long way from the stable, but Darcy knew straight away I was there and she started to whinny. She always knows when I’m coming.’

      I frowned and mouthed the word ‘Sophie?’ to Michael, and he nodded. We were both amazed. Her voice was childish-sounding but perfectly clear. I couldn’t work out who she was speaking to, so I wandered out casually, picking up an empty glass from the table, and glanced round at her to see she had her mobile phone to her ear.

      I walked back to Michael and whispered, ‘She’s phoning someone.’

      Soon after that, her parents’ car pulled up outside. As she ran out to it, I called from the doorway, ‘Bye, Sophie. See you next week!’ and to my astonishment she called back, ‘Bye!’

      Her mother phoned me during the week. ‘What on earth did you do?’ she asked. ‘She’s talking again completely normally, as if she had never stopped.’

      ‘We didn’t do anything …’

      When Michael and I discussed it later, he said, ‘It’s about confidence. Something must have happened to Sophie two years ago that made her lose her confidence. Through her relationship with Darcy, she got it back again. Horses are powerful therapy.’

      Secretly, I wondered if she had been talking to one or two friends all along and it was just with adults that she was silent? I never found out.

      By the end of summer, Darcy was healthy enough to go out into a field with the other horses. First of all we tentatively let her out into a field with Tish, then as she got stronger, we introduced her to the other mares, and all went well. It meant that her close one-to-one relationship with Sophie changed, but she still cantered over to the fence whenever she saw Sophie nearby. Her eyes were bright and shiny, her coat glossy and there was no remaining sign of the poorly creature who had arrived in a trailer just a few weeks earlier.

      Once she had started talking, Sophie never stopped. She chattered all day long about the horses, and became quite bossy with other children who hadn’t been coming to the farm as long as she had.

      ‘You don’t hold the brush like that,’ I overheard her saying as she supervised the grooming one day. ‘Do this.’ She demonstrated with perfect technique.

      I never asked her why she hadn’t spoken for so long, never commented on the fact that she had started speaking again. I felt it wasn’t my business. I was just glad if coming to Greatwood had been the catalyst for her to get back to being a normal teenager again.

      It gave Michael an idea, though. We knew of a couple of organisations that used horses to help adults with mental health issues. It seemed that they found fresh ways to look at life through their communication with animals, and many people turned the corner as a result. We didn’t have any experience of working with people with mental health issues, but we wondered if we could offer the same kind of experience that Sophie had on the farm. Children with problems could come along, get involved and see what they made of it.