‘Must go – just cut myself badly with my tongue again. Need to call for a nurse. See you some time.’
In truth, Beccy felt she didn’t deserve Lough’s attention any more than she did Tash’s forgiveness. She’d never been as terrified as she was right now. The thought of travelling to France to face her stepsister felt more intimidating than stepping off the side of a cliff.
That evening, accompanied by her mother and Pascal, Beccy was taken by private ambulance to Biggin Hill where she was carefully loaded on to a chartered plane bound for France.
As a treat, her mother had bought her a great doorstep of newspapers and magazines. Beccy picked up a tabloid from the top of the pile. Suddenly she shrieked, causing Henrietta to almost knock herself out on an overhead shelf in her haste to check what was wrong.
‘That’s Faith!’ Beccy pointed to the strawberry blonde photographed on the front page, leaving a private Caribbean island by speed boat.
Very late that night, in his quiet corner of County Mayo, horse dealer Fearghal Moore answered the persistent knocking on the front door of his tatty farmhouse to find a stunning sun-tanned girl standing there, her hair the colour of rose gold.
Blinking sleep from his eyes, he took in her tanned face, white smile and strangely familiar features in silent astonishment.
‘I’m Faith,’ she announced nervously. ‘Your daughter. Mum said it was okay to come. I might need somewhere to hide for a bit, if that’s all right …’
‘Sure, child. We’ve been expecting you.’ He held the door wide open. ‘By God, you look just like your mother.’
En route to Le Manoir, Beccy entertained visions of speaking with Tash in a gentle,
La Dame aux camélias
fashion, in an antique bed, a slender hand to her furrowed brow, consumptive cough ever-ready and pity all around her. The little room she was put in when she arrived was perfect. It was called the Salle Bienvenue because it was in a circular turret right at the front of the magical old house, overlooking the formal carriage drive nobody ever used, with narrow, arched windows and its own small balcony. Beccy had been put in there because it was the only bedroom that had no steps to it, making it possible to wheel her chair in and out along the narrow passageway that ran from the rear courtyard. It was after midnight by the time she arrived, and Tash was already in bed by then so she had plenty of time to perfect her pose and work through the scene in her head.
But her apology was never enacted in the Salle Bienvenue. Instead, she was pushed on to a sunny terrace in a very obstinate hired wheelchair the following morning and left there batting away wasps while Pascal whisked Henrietta off for a tour of the garden.
Tash eventually appeared, clearly prodded by some unseen hand –
the same hand that was looking after the children in the house.
She looked terrible, Beccy realised. The pink-cheeked, baby-fattened stepsister she had moved in with a year earlier was now gaunt and wasted, the suntan a thin patina that barely distracted from the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the veins of tension running up and down her long neck.
‘It wasn’t Hugo!’ she blurted without preamble. ‘It was another Hugo, a teenage one. I had no idea, Tash, really no idea.’
Those big, mismatched eyes blinked, not quite daring to believe her.
Beccy looked away, too ashamed to face the very real emotional wreckage she had caused for a moment longer.
Ahead of her, the valley smouldered in a heat haze, the distant poplars like little flames licking up into a scorching blue sky.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever forgive me,’ she whispered.
‘Oh Beccy, of course I do.’ A warm hand enveloped hers as Tash crouched down beside her. ‘But will Hugo ever forgive me for not believing him?’
Beccy’s moods and their extremes might be up for professional consideration, but her sense of right and wrong was still fully functioning.
‘He didn’t believe
you
either!’ she wailed indignantly. ‘He still doesn’t.’
‘Maybe he’s right not to.’ Tash stared out at the valley.
Beccy turned pale. ‘So you did have an affair with Lough?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘We kissed once – that was it. But I fancied him.’ She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks. ‘I really fancied him.’
‘Oh, that’s just normal,’ Beccy assured her, sounding terribly relieved. ‘You’d have to be mad not to fancy Lough. He’s just
so
sexy. In fact,’ she smiled, ‘mad people probably fancy Lough, too. Everybody fancies him!’
Tash turned to look at her stepsister in surprise. Beccy’s face was lit up like the landscape around them. So that was where her affection now lay.
‘He’s a difficult character,’ she warned, suddenly anxious about Beccy’s fragility.
‘So am I,’ she pointed out. Then, turning pink, added, ‘So was he a good kisser?’
*
After an even longer lunch than usual, with Pascal, Alexandra and Henrietta in rip-roaring form, Tash could wait no longer to tackle another difficult character, the one she loved with all her bruised heart. Quickly plonking the children, wide awake, in their travel cots for an afternoon nap and thrusting the squawking monitor apologetically at Henrietta, who appeared to be the only other adult awake in the house, she hid herself in Pascal’s study and used the phone there, dialling Hugo’s mobile.
‘It’s me,’ she said breathlessly when he answered, blood rushing loudly in her ears.
‘Yes?’ He was typically curt.
She told him the truth as she had just heard it, simply and without embellishment; that Beccy had been mistaken, that it had been someone else.
‘Fine. So when are you coming home?’
There was the sound of a Tannoy in the background. He was at a competition, she realised.
‘Soon – tomorrow or Thursday.’
‘Fine.’
There was a long pause and the lump in Tash’s throat grew so big, she felt like a snake that had swallowed a whole egg.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
She could barely breathe for unhappiness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Thanks.’ He hung up.
He hadn’t even asked after the children. Tomorrow was Amery’s birthday.
Tash rubbed her face, anger flaring.
She pressed redial.
‘Okay – here’s how it is,’ she raged as soon as he picked up. ‘I fancied Lough. I was lonely and you were away and he made no secret of his attraction for me and I fancied him. That’s all! Nothing happened beyond flirtation and one kiss. There was no affair. I fancied him, but I have always fancied you more and loved only you. Is that such a CRIME?’
‘Tash, poppet, this is Rory. Hugo’s just ridden in for the prize-giving and I’m holding his phone.’
‘Oh, right,’ she gulped, mortified.
‘He won his intermediate section,’ he informed her jollily.
‘Great.’ She could hear clapping in the background.
‘Have you seen the papers today?’ Rory asked, sounding less bright.
‘I’m in France.’
‘Of course. Faith’s in all the tabloids. She’s been named as Dillon’s Caribbean Queen.’
‘His what?’ Tash was nonplussed.
‘Hang on – Hugo’s coming out. Oh, he’s ridden straight past.’ He dropped his voice, ‘He’s unspeakable right now, Tash. He obviously mishes you like hell. You must come back.’
‘I will,’ she promised.
‘It wasn’t him with Beccy at all, you know – it was Gus’s nephew.’
‘Mmm, yes.’ Tash cleared her throat awkwardly, wondering how on earth Rory knew. Was the hayloft doppelgänger an open secret on the eventing circuit now, too?
But before she could ask, he blurted: ‘D’you think Faith and Dillon will lasht?’ His voice was slurring again because he was upset.
‘I – I have no idea.’ She found it very hard to get her head around the idea, or really focus on it, and so said, without thinking, ‘I was always under the impression that Faith was far too madly in love with you to look at anyone else.’
‘Really?’ he gulped.
‘Really.’
‘Thanks, Tash! God, I’ve bloody got to win the Grand Slam. You’d better not beat me at Burghley. Your horse is looking far too fit and well for my liking.’
‘She is?’ Tash hadn’t sat on River in over a week.
‘Hugo rides her first every day, before everything else. Shall I go and see if I can find him for you?’
‘No, don’t worry.’ Her anger had totally vanished now, and she just felt weary and sad. She had to check the children were asleep, not terrorising Henrietta who had enough on her plate looking after Beccy. Pascal would be up and cooking again soon. The rhythm of life at Le Manoir never altered, whereas at home it was a constant game of pinball.
‘Any message?’ Rory asked awkwardly, clearly hoping that he didn’t have to relay the bit about her fancying Lough.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘No message.’
*
Faith found meeting and spending time with her birth father a revelation, making sense of so much in her life.
Unlike her cool, self-controlled, magnanimous mother, Faith has always had a wild temper and a passionately fierce partisan streak. Fearghal was just the same, with his shock of frizzy red hair, his furious temper, glorious sense of humour and single-minded passion for horses.
Anke had always told Faith that she would like Fearghal, and reluctant as she always was to concur with her mother, she now knew that she had been absolutely right.
He was outspoken, bloody minded, zealous and dedicated. He was also wholly eccentric and suffered no fools gladly, but forgave friends and family willingly. To Faith’s delighted relief his fierce loyalty extended to all his children, legitimate or not.
Married and widowed once, divorced twice (‘Never unfaithful, though – you came between marriages, darling girl’), Fearghal was as lapsed as a Catholic can get and wholly unrepentant. His current wife, Roisin, was half his age and twice his girth and had borne him four more children to make his brood up to twelve, including Faith. All of them rode. All of them had reddish-blonde hair. And all welcomed her with open arms.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to know me.’ She was astonished by such overwhelming warmth.
‘I’ve always wanted to know you. We all have,’ Fearghal told her. ‘But you needed to find your way here in your own time.’
‘My friend Dillon talked me into it, really,’ she admitted, having been more-or-less nannied on to the Dublin flight by the Golden Hind staff as directed by her pop-star lover who had then stealthily hopped a private flight to LA to vanish behind his ex-wife’s entourage. Since the press had discovered Faith’s identity the story had been splashed over every paper and magazine and the race was on to pinpoint her whereabouts and secure an interview. But they had no idea to look for her in Ireland.
Dillon had been right, Faith realised; she needed the space to recover from her crash-course in lust and lovemaking while the media furore died down. Their brief seduction had been among the most fun she could remember; her ribs still ached from laughing so much and her throat from talking too much on that stolen day in the Caribbean. But as they’d both agreed when their lost week of sun
and sin came to an end, staying friends was far more important than making love.
‘This would be the Dillon who makes the popular records that all you girls get silly about?’ Fearghal had been briefed by his wise children on the furore surrounding Faith, even if he’d not bothered to look at a paper, his only regular reading being the
Irish Field
, partaken in the loo.
‘Yes.’
‘Well if he told you to come here he can’t be all bad, although his music’s terrible, so it is. Tell me, are you in love with him?’
‘No.’ She blushed, thinking about all the things that she had learned during her week away and praying that Rory might one day benefit from them.
‘That’s a relief,’ her father told her. ‘It never does to lose your heart too young.’
‘Oh, but I
am
in love,’ she told him certainly.
He tutted. ‘Are you now?’
‘He’s a brilliant event rider.’
‘That’s something, at least. You were born in the saddle like me, so you’ll need to live and love in it too.’
When he saw Faith on a horse Fearghal wept with joy.
‘Sure, you have your father’s hands and your mother’s body,’ he wiped his eyes. ‘Did you not say you had a horse qualified for Burghley?’
‘Only on paper,’ Faith laughed, cantering around on one of his young sales horses, amazed at the power and quality beneath her. ‘We’re nowhere near good enough.’
But, once an idea took told, Fearghal would not be dissuaded and he insisted that she must take her chance on White Lies, faxing her entry through from his kitchen three minutes before the deadline. Faith was certain it was far beyond her – and that she would be balloted out even if her qualifications made the grade – but such was the force of Fearghal’s personality he made anything seem possible.
‘Child of mine, he’ll notice you far more if you win Burghley than if you swan about with rock stars,’ he laughed.
‘Who are you talking about?’ She coloured.
‘This man you say you love.’ Her father gave her a sage wink. ‘If I know anything about event riders, and I’ve known a few well now,
mark my words, you could be lying underneath Bono, Brian Kennedy, Chris de Burgh
and
little Ronan Keating and your man there wouldn’t bat an eye, but get a fast clear at Punchestown and he’s yours for ever.’
She laughed, but her heart stayed circumspect. ‘You think I should try to beat him then?’
‘Ah now there’s a thing. Men have terrible fragile egos, so they do, so perhaps not beat exactly … just
impress
.’
‘I haven’t a hope of beating him anyway. His horses are far better, and I wouldn’t dream of getting in the way of his Grand Slam dreams. That’s when I’m going to tell him I love him.’
Fearghal’s fierce little eyes softened beneath their bushy red brows as they studied her closely. ‘Child, are you saying this man still has no idea that you do
love
him?’
‘Of course he knows – it’s patently obvious.’