by Siân Shipley
I remember it like it was yesterday. 1993. Down past the shopping precinct, the cricket pitch, the playing fields and back again. My schoolfriend Becky, sat on her chestnut pony Pepe outside the bakery, holding the reins of big bay Jolly whilst her Mam queued for sausage rolls. The surgery, the play-ground, and its band of woodland beyond. Even now, over 30 years later, I sometimes load up Google Maps and retrace my steps. As if I’d catch sight of myself, or my Dad, or my brother; of Becky, or Pepe, or Jolly, or Auntie Ju.
I was six, and in love with horses. Regular riding lessons (£8 per half hour, to be booked in eye-wateringly expensive six-week blocks) were out of the question, and would be for a while longer yet. For over a year, I’d had to make do with being thrown up onto the ponies at Coney Beach in Porthcawl for a pound a go on our days at the seaside, or sporadic hacks at a trekking centre further up the valleys, and I spent more time than I would like to admit traipsing our neat suburban streets in the hope of watching Becky trot by.
My family weren’t horsey. Father Christmas Was Not Listening, and my pleas for a Pepe of my own went unheeded… “It’s not the buying. It’s the keeping” became an oft-repeated phrase which I hated with every atom of my tiny, outraged being. Our garage? Occupied by the Granada. Our garden? A hotbed of poisonous plants – privet, hydrangeas and evergreens. There was only one thing to do, I told myself, as the summer holidays rolled around. If I could not ride (as much as I liked), if I could not own – I must read!
The library
And so I found myself, just off the main road into Church Village, in the squat grey library beside the parish hall, perusing the shelves whilst my Dad hunted out Tom Clancys a few aisles over, and my 2-year-old brother, strapped into his pushchair, gummed at his gingerbread man down by the reception desk. I didn’t know where to look first. There were a handful of Saddle Clubs (Bryant, B), an abridged Black Beauty (Sewell, A) … Midnight Dancer in a pristine plastic jacket, not a single date stamp inside its cover (Lindsay, E, newly published). Darkling (Peyton, KM).
Jinny
And there, all by itself, the white horsehoe edition of A Devil To Ride (Leitch, P). The vivid, red-orange banner – JINNY – the vital, burning Arab stepping through the gorse … I was consumed by something I couldn’t name before I even as much as opened it. Six was probably a touch young to be reading Jinny (the librarian took Darkling off me very gently when I tried to check it out), but I read, read, and re-read Devil again and again and AGAIN that summer.
After a while, following many pleading phone calls to other libraries from the incredible librarians, came Night of the Red Horse, Gallop to the Hills, Horse in a Million, The Magic Pony, Ride Like the Wind, Chestnut Gold, and Horse of Fire. I devoured them all.
There were other authors, and although I read and enjoyed them, it was always Jinny I came back to. I loved her even when I didn’t like her (and believe me, there were times when I didn’t – the ospreys, leaping Shantih over the wall in the dark, etc). She was realer to me than anything. Jinny was there for me when I began to get bullied at school. When things were suddenly scary at home. When Dad was ill, and everything was changing. I drew pictures of the Red Horse and willed them to come to life… to fix things… or to at least bear me away from them, and I suppose it did, in a way, since I’m still here.
Despite endless, fruitless, frustrating hunts through charity shops over the years, I only ever managed to finish the series as an adult, treating myself to a mismatched set on eBay post-dissertation in 2008. For Love of a Horse, The Summer Riders, Jump for the Moon, and Running Wild in my hands at last… each of them as wonderful as I’d imagined.
Social media was still mostly in its infancy at the time. It hadn’t occurred to me to search for, or join any kind of fan-club. I was just so thrilled to finally know the whole of Jinny’s story that I spent a few years re-reading them obsessively, and wondering why the series had ended so abruptly when it had seemed as though there was so much more to come. I eventually found my way to a Jinny and Shantih FB group, and discovered that there were people who loved her the way I loved her.
Finding Patricia
She probably doesn’t remember, but it was about then that I emailed Jane Badger for the first time, after seeing her interview with Patricia, and reading Susanna Forrest’s If Wishes Were Horses, enquiring as to whether Patricia would be in a position to receive letters from her readers. Jane assured me that she would, and that others had written to her previously. At that point, I panicked at the enormity of the idea, and racketed around the FB group for a bit, swapping theories and ideas with people, sharing pieces I’d written, and in some cases, making unflattering remarks about other pony book authors (Note: I was a dickhead then, and whilst I remain a dickhead now, a decade later, I’m trying to be better about it.)
I didn’t get around to writing to Patricia until 2011. Pregnancy complications had kept me confined to the house, and hormonal, with nothing to do but drink tea, cross my legs, and hope for the best, my mind was free to wander back across the moors. I decided it was now or never. Jinny. Shantih. Ken. Bramble. Easter. The Red Horse. Kat. Lightning. Tam. Keziah. Sara. I had to thank her for all of them. Balancing a jotter on my bump, I poured out my gratitude. My love.
I told her I used to imagine the Red Horse thundering down the streets at night when I couldn’t sleep. I told her that I lived a stone’s throw away from Anglesey, where she’d lived once herself. I told her that because of her books, I was still here. That any time I was lonely, or frightened, or unhappy, even as an adult (sometimes, ESPECIALLY as an adult) all I’d ever had to do was pick one up, and the world went away for a little while. I included the pieces I’d written, thinking that she might like to see them, then I sent it to one of the group members, who kindly forwarded it to her for me. “Don’t expect a reply,” I told myself. “Don’t. Let the writing of it be enough…” and went back to crossing my legs and waiting.
The Letter
About a fortnight later – now the size of a small planet, and with my own gravitational field to boot – I waddled laboriously to the front door and took a lumpy package off our postie. I hadn’t ordered anything, but assumed it was one of the hand-knitted cardigans that were now trickling in from aunts, great aunts, nans and great nans like a woolly, multi-tributaried river from different parts of the country. Narrowly missing one of the cats, I made my way over to the sofa, and began to open it.
Inside were four brightly-coloured paperback books, each with a chestnut Arab emblazoned on the cover – the recent (at the time) Catnip reprints of For Love of a Horse, A Devil To Ride, The Summer Riders, and Night of the Red Horse. But I hardly saw them. All I could think about was reaching into the bottom of the jiffy bag and pulling out the single sheet of paper that still lay inside.
The effort it must have cost her to have written it… the depth of spirit she had… the kindness… was evident in every line.
I’m so thankful to have known her, even in so small a way as this. We exchanged a further few letters. I was able to tell her that my child arrived safely. That I’d named him Jim. She replied that Jim had been her father’s name. I sent her photos of Isleem – my chesnut Arab, decades in the wishing, and of the mountains around my home.
This year it’s ten years since her death, but not a day goes by where I don’t think about her, or feel grateful for her. A light in the darkness, which is no darkness… all light.
***
Siân has written the thirteenth episode in the Jinny story: Dream of the Dance. It’s a brilliant imagining of what Jinny did next, and you can pre-order it now on my website. The book is released on 11 September 2025, and you can also pre-order it on Kobo and Amazon (it’s out the next week there). The paperback should be available on or around 11 September on my website; a week or so later everywhere else.
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