‘No.’ She located Maisy and slotted her in, just as Cora rolled up to get involved. A moment later, Neil Morrissey was loudly hailing Charlie and Tallulah.
‘Who’s that? Not one of Beccy’s awful friends? He sounds terribly Black Country.’
Tash moved away from the television, leaving Cora standing entranced, watching Maisy set out with her friends to feed the farm animals.
‘Beccy doesn’t have awful friends,’ Tash told her sister. ‘She doesn’t have many friends at all any more, I think.’
There was a step outside the room.
Tash looked up as a very pink face appeared around the door, dreadlocks swinging, big pale eyes blinking. Realising that Beccy must have overheard her last comment, she felt herself turn a matching shade of pink. They looked like the cartoon piglets Maisy was feeding on screen.
Waving a silent greeting, Beccy mouthed ‘Everything okay?’
Tash nodded. ‘Just talking to Sophia. She sends her love.’
At the other end of the line Sophia let out a sarcastic little ‘pah!’ From the Moses basket, Amery concurred with a strangely sarcastic-sounding yowl.
‘Do you want me to take him for a bit while you carry on talking?’ Beccy offered.
Tash nodded again, telling Sophia firmly, ‘Beccy’s proving a great help.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re letting her anywhere near the children?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You know she dropped Linus once? He was only six months old. Sally was hysterical.’
‘Most of us make awful blunders like that.’ Tash watched Beccy gather up the waking Amery, so tiny and vulnerable, and carry him out to look at the heraldic tapestries in the galleried hall, which intrigued the little newborn’s semi-focused eyes with their geometric shapes. ‘I accidentally let Cora roll off the sofa at twelve weeks.’
‘Yes, but you weren’t holding her over a stone-flagged floor at the time, shouting that nobody loved you.’
Tash felt a chill scuttle up her back like a huge, frosty insect. ‘What?’
‘Surely you remember? It was very dramatic – at my Boxing Day lunch. Or weren’t you there? Of course, that was the year you and Niall went to Ireland for Christmas. Beccy got blootered on sherry and started screaming that our family had never accepted or loved her and Em like siblings. Then she dropped Linus, threw him down really. Thankfully he landed on one of Bea’s gundogs, which cushioned the blow. Little chap was fine.’
Tash said nothing, too shocked to speak. Her eyes automatically sought out her newborn child, cradled in a warm bosom, listening to soft whispers, enchanted by his aunt’s little tour of ancient arms and pennants.
Was Beccy about to hold Amery up over the antique fire irons and threaten to drop him because Tash had accused her of being ‘selfish and unprofessional’ earlier?
She hardly took in a word as Sophia rattled on. ‘Before you go, we must discuss Hugo’s fortieth. My spring diary really is filling up and I need to know whether you want me to help organise this surprise party or not. I know you were all for it when Ben mooted the idea, but that was a long time ago.’
Tash was still watching Beccy carry Amery around; now quiet and swaddled deeply in her arms, he seemed thoroughly content. She was suddenly groggy with tiredness.
‘Can we talk about this another time? I haven’t got my spring diary to hand.’ It was an attempt at a joke, but it came across rather more sarcastically than she’d intended.
Her sister immediately became defensive, uncannily like their father once again. ‘Very well, I’ll leave it with you to let me know whether you want me to do it, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to spare the time if you wait much longer. Now get off the phone and get some rest, Fangs. You’ve just had a baby, for goodness’s sake.’
As soon as she hung up, the phone began ringing again.
Beyond the door, Beccy and Amery had drifted out of sight. Already bored of Maisy, Cora had started to pull bottles of whisky from the cabinet. Tash picked up the call absent-mindedly as she lumbered across the room to stop the toddler attack.
‘No! Stop it! Cora!’
‘Hello? Is that Tash Beauchamp?’
Tash was barely listening. The line was terrible and there were far too many distractions at hand.
‘This is—’
‘Cora, no!’
Denied her game, the little girl started screaming furiously.
‘This is Di—’
In the hallway, Amery suddenly burst into equally desperate mewls.
‘This is Dillon Rafferty,’ the caller repeated for the third time.
Tash let out a startled squeak and sat down in shock, just as Beccy reappeared with Amery, now bellowing for his feed, and plopped him on her lap.
‘Can you hear me okay?’ Dillon’s voice crackled.
‘Yes! Loud and clear!’ Now acutely aware that she had the nation’s favourite popstar on the phone, Tash hurriedly unhooked her nursing bra and let Amery latch on.
‘Good.’ He sounded as though he was in a tumble drier. ‘You have a horse called The Fox?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I want to buy him.’
Despite the background din, the flippancy in his voice was unmistakeable; as though their once-in-a-lifetime Olympic horse was a copy of
GQ
he wanted to pick up on the way home from work.
Tash balked, totally nonplussed. It wasn’t every day a rock star phoned up wanting to buy your prize possession and greatest lifetime achievement, a horse just welcomed back from glory with such laurels he had even received a bundle of organic carrots sent by courier from Highgrove. She wondered what Hugo would say.
Beside her, Beccy and Cora were loudly identifying Eddie the elephant and Cyril the squirrel on screen. Suckling greedily inside the folds of her top, Amery gazed up at her with limpid eyes, a tiny wrinkled hand reaching up to her face.
‘You still there?’ his voice warbled on the crackling line.
‘He’s not for sale,’ she said eventually, half wondering whether it
was
Hugo she was talking to, and that this was all some sort of elaborate wind-up to test her, but pranks like that weren’t really his style, especially given today’s already exhausting circumstances.
‘Forgive me,’ his words were accompanied by a crescendo like a long drumroll, ‘I was quoted a figure to buy him outright. One—’ The drumroll increased to drown out the voice.
‘How much?’
When he repeated the sum to her she suddenly found she couldn’t breathe.
On her lap, Amery slurped less frantically, his cheeks turning a contented pink.
‘You still there?’ Dillon shouted again above the background din.
‘Sort of.’
There was a loud thudding noise from outside as somebody flew past in a helicopter, very low overhead. A local landowner no doubt; it drove Hugo mad if they piloted themselves back from business meetings while he was trying to school a nervous young horse in the manège. Tash reached for the window to close it so that she could hear better.
‘Can I … and … him?’
‘What?’ With Amery still pressed to her chest she reached to turn down the volume on Maisy, but the helicopter was still close.
‘Can I come and see him?’
‘When did you have in mind?’
‘Now.’
Tash looked across at Beccy in alarm, wondering who they could call upon for extra help. Hugo wasn’t due back for hours and as far as she knew there was nobody at all on the yard right now.
‘Are you nearby then?’ she managed to croak.
‘Yes – I’m directly overhead. Your swimming pool needs cleaning.’
Looking out of the window, Tash realised the helicopter was hovering above Flat Pad, ready to land.
As soon as she hung up she burped Amery and gestured Beccy urgently towards the kitchen as she went in search of some boots that would cover her surgical stockings, so that she could go and greet the visitor. The phone immediately rang again. This time, it was Hugo.
‘At last!’ he barked breathlessly. ‘I was giving up bloody hope. You’ve been engaged for hours.
Woah – steady!
Have you lost your mobile again?
Good lad!
’
Tash realised he was riding. The competition must be still underway. ‘Ages ago.’
‘The number still works. I’ve left a stack of bloody voicemail messages. Hang on.’ Although the sound of the helicopter landing was
still resonating outside, Tash could distinctly hear hooves thundering in the background of Hugo’s call. Then they stopped briefly, as though he was going over a fence, before thundering on again.
‘Are you warming up for the cross-country?’
‘I
am
riding across country. Can’t chat. Tricky combination coming up. Got a man coming to Haydown to see The Fox this afternoon.’
‘Dillon Raffer—’
‘That’s the chap. Can you handle it?
Woah – steady up, lad.
There’s nobody on the yard until four.’
‘Hugo, I’ve just—’
‘Thanks!’ The call ended with a clunk as he saw a stride and kicked for it.
‘—had a baby,’ Tash finished lamely, cradling the receiver to her chin and turning to Beccy, who had followed her through to the kitchen and was settling Amery into his basket by the clothes airer, Cora at her heels chewing on the ear of her fluffy Elmer elephant and asking to be picked up with a series of muffled ‘bup bup bup’ noises.
‘That was Hugo,’ Tash said in a frozen voice.
‘Oh yes?’ Beccy began swinging a giggling Cora around like an aeroplane, the little girl’s cheeks curving towards her sparkling eyes, her hair on end.
Tash felt another great tide of weariness wash over her as she headed towards the back lobby again. Hormones bubbling up and tears threatening, she cursed under her breath as she found one of the terriers’ balls in a boot. What did Dillon Rafferty want with a top event horse, she wondered, having been too preoccupied by multi-tasking months of pregnancy to register the pop star’s recent understated connection with the sport. Wasn’t organic cheese his pastime? She did vaguely recall reading that he was dating a classy Jemima Khan sort who was very horsy. Tash now wished she’d paid more attention to celebrity gossip while waiting for her pregnancy scans; she had worked her way through the antenatal department’s entire supply of six-month-old women’s magazines, but she had always leafed straight past the acres of paparazzi shots to get to the wordsearches, hoping nobody had got there before her.
Hurling the ball angrily over her shoulder she gritted her teeth
and reminded herself how fickle their income was and how hard they needed to chase it. If it flew down from the sky and landed on Flat Pad, she’d be mad not to try to catch it.
‘Could you look after the children for about twenty minutes while I field Dillon Rafferty?’ She turned around to find Beccy beaming at her in a very unexpected fashion, Cora hoist high overhead letting out delighted little shrieks.
‘It’s not
really
him, is it?’
Tash returned the smile cautiously, hormonal irritation dissipating. ‘So it seems.’
‘Ohmygodicantbelievehesactuallyhere!’
Tash stepped forward with alarm as Beccy was momentarily so transported with delight that she looked as though she was going to drop Cora.
But she and Cora swung off quite safely to fly over one of the dog sofas, leaving Tash lurching into thin air, stitches straining.
‘Will you bring him inside?’ Beccy asked excitedly, between vrooming aeroplane noises.
Finally pulling on some matching boots that almost covered her surgical stockings, Tash grimaced at the tip around her, which had been worsened as a result of her recent footwear forage. ‘I hope not.’
Landing her precious, giggling little aeroplane in the high chair, Beccy hid a small snarl as she realised Tash was going to keep Dillon Rafferty all to herself while she, Beccy, was left as unpaid nanny to the children.
‘Well you’d better not let on you’ve just had a baby then,’ she told her.
‘Why ever not?’
‘It would be selfish and unprofessional,’ she said pettily. ‘You’ve got to think of the business, and Hugo.’
‘God, I suppose you’re right,’ Tash looked at her anxiously.
‘I could go if you like?’ Beccy volunteered.
‘No, no, I’ll go. I bred the horse. But you’re right, I’ll play down the baby thing. He’ll never know.’
The house phone was ringing once more with its insistent, echoing clang.
‘Oh, not again!’ Tash grumbled as she looked around for something to cover her bulging post-partum midriff which was hanging out of her T-shirt above the unbuttoned fly of her softest old shorts.
She eventually pulled on one of Hugo’s filthy old night-check sweaters – his graveyard for unwanted Christmas presents.
The phone rang on.
‘Could you get that, Beccy?’ she demanded as she waddled outside into the sunshine, cramming one of their veterinary supply sponsor’s baseball caps on her head.
Beccy flicked two fingers at the door.
‘Can you get that, Beccy?’ she parroted with a sneer, stooping to make farty raspberries on Cora’s sweet-smelling head to make her laugh again.
It was exactly a quarter past two in the afternoon, Beccy noted from a quick glance at the old Smith clock on the wall. Her mother usually rang at this time for a progress report, immediately after the Archers repeat that she listened to while clearing away her and James’s lunch of cold meats and freshly baked petits pain. Beccy hoped that her mother had spoken to her stepfather about increasing her allowance, however reluctantly.
She braced herself to repeat her daily statement that all was well and that no drugs, prison cells, strange men or cult religions had featured in everyday life in rural West Berkshire. It was temptingly easy to wind up her mother. Today Beccy could casually mention that she had taken her car into Marlbury and watched a matinee of the latest Johnny Depp movie in the multiplex, sitting alone with a few saddos in the near-empty auditorium with a vast carton of popcorn on her knee, and that Tash hadn’t even
noticed
she was gone. But she didn’t want to push her luck. James was getting very twitchy about money, and she needed to appear to be earning her keep rather than bunking off to navel-gaze.
Ring … ring … ring …
Sighing, Beccy turned to fetch the phone from the wall, looking down at the Bitches of Eastwick who had lazily remained inside on the dog sofa when Tash went out, all crammed into one patch of sunlight spilling from the window at the far end.