But she soon irritated him again: ‘I found some old footage of Whitey competing on YouTube. He looked great. I think you should bring him out of retirement.’
‘No way.’
‘He could still teach you a thing or two.’
‘I taught
him
everything he knows!’
‘You rode better then.’
‘Remind me, when are you leaving?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Not a moment too soon.’
‘You’ll miss me.’
‘No I won’t.’
They both jumped as a clatter of thunder as loud as a bomb detonated overhead. The rain battering the wooden roof sounded like gunfire.
‘It’ll help you grow up, being away from here.’ He raised his voice to be heard.
‘I’m exceptionally mature for my age.’
‘Could have fooled me.’
‘You’re the immature one.’
‘I don’t deny that. I come from a long line of childish men.’
‘What was your Dad like?’
‘Very childish indeed. It drove my mother mad. He had no sense of responsibility.’
‘Neither does your mother.’
He laughed. ‘True. Darling Truffle is quite the most capricious, wayward bird I know. You can’t help but love her for it.’
The youngest and most attractive of the three Constantine sisters who had once been the toast of the debutante scene, curvaceous Truffle Dacre-Hopkison was still a formidably glamorous local figure, racketing around the Oddlode valley in a Mini Moke, Hermès headscarves flying and champagne picnic rattling.
Faith could picture Truffle alongside Honor Blackman and Sophia Loren. ‘They say all men are secretly looking to marry their mothers.’
‘Who says?’
‘Psychologists.’
‘Well, they’re wrong.’
‘So who are you looking to marry?’
‘I have no desire to get married yet, thanks.’
‘I mean, who is your dream date?’
He tapped the metal head of his riding crop against his smiling lips. ‘Right now, I’m pretty excited about meeting Sylva Frost.’
‘Do you mind that her boobs are fake?’
‘What?’ he looked at her askance.
‘They
are
fake,’ she spelled out clearly. ‘They were done by Farouk Ali Khan and she has them insured for millions.’
‘Well I hope he’s recommended a bloody good sports bra. I don’t want to get sued if she knocks herself out doing sitting trot.’ He pondered this for a moment and then laughed. ‘Actually, maybe it would be worth running the risk.’
Faith sulked, listening to the storm raging, thunderclaps ripping the air. She inevitably hurt herself when she asked Rory these questions; it was like self-flagellation.
Whitey and the mare remained surprisingly unbothered by the weather, having heard it hammering around their own stables in recent days. Happy to take a rest out of the rain they jangled their bits and rubbed their noses on their knees.
‘There’s a lot to be said for playing the field,’ Rory sighed.
‘Not when the rest of your team are in the dressing room sharing a bath and victory champagne. You’ve played the field so much it looks like the Somme.’
‘Hardly. I’m not yet thirty, remember? Besides, it’s better to have loved and lost and all that. You should take a leaf out of my book now you’re practically grown up. Live a little. Break some hearts.’
‘No thanks.’
‘So, tell me …’ Rory was pondering psychology with difficulty. ‘… if all men secretly want to marry their mothers, do all women want to marry their fathers?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Puts you in an awkward position.’
She glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you could understandably become fixated on gay boys.’
‘Hardly!’
‘Lots of horsy girls do.’
‘Not me.’
‘So you like a macho man, like Graham?’
‘Ugh! Get real!’
‘What’s your real dad like?’
Faith examined her gloves. ‘Dunno. Mum wants me to meet him, but I’m not interested.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he never wanted to know me. Why should he start now?’
‘Might help your love life.’
‘How come?’
‘You’ll know what you’re looking for in a man.’
‘A boozy, crooked Irish horse trader? I think not. Besides, I already know what I’m looking for in a man.’
‘What’s that then?’
The rain had started to abate, the thunder rolling further away.
Faith stared at the gloomy woods ahead of them, the darkest emerald grotto dripping with crystal light from the rain. Locals
believed the woods were enchanted, that they turned enemies into lovers and married souls. Some were too frightened to walk there.
She could say it now. She could admit her feelings. On the eve of her departure, perfect timing to leave him in the shocked realisation that his little sidekick loved him and not his horses all along.
But she knew she didn’t have the nerve to admit the true depth of her feelings, couldn’t face his amused rejection. She secretly suspected that they both chose to ignore it. Better say nothing until she had transformed into a butterfly and returned to claim him.
‘I want somebody reliable, who remembers my birthday,’ she muttered instead, pulling down the stirrups on Whitey’s saddle ready to mount. ‘And is a good kisser.’
‘Sounds fair enough.’
They rode back in silence, Faith castigating herself all the while for being so cowardly and letting the opportunity slip past. She was about to go away for months and months without telling him the truth.
At the yard Rory, as usual, left her washing off the horses and disappeared into his office. She could hear him banging around in there for ages, presumably looking for scotch.
But when he re-emerged, he was holding a beautiful bronze of an event horse.
‘Happy birthday.’ He thrust it towards her. ‘And good luck with Kurt and Graeme. They’ll teach you a lot more than I can.’
Faith cradled the horse in disbelief, feeling its smooth weight in her hands.
‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been given. Thank you!’
Before Rory knew what was happening, she had planted a thank-you kiss on him; not the usual shy peck on the cheek but something far fuller and firmer that landed on his lips with a sweet but assertive juiciness which surprised him so much that a great whoosh of blood rushed unexpectedly from his head to his groin.
After she had left Rory put the kiss to the back of his mind and instead wondered whatever had possessed him to give Faith the trophy he had just won for being the top British rider at Bloneigh Castle. He had to hand it back to the event committee after eleven months. But eleven months was a long time, he reminded himself cheerfully as he licked his lips and headed back to his office for the
bottle of Famous Grouse he had spotted while ransacking trunks for the trophy.
Anke was delighted when, the evening before her departure to Essex, Faith suddenly asked more about her biological father. ‘What was he like? As a person, I mean.’
‘Very funny, charming and easy to like.’ Anke thought back, choosing her words carefully. ‘He could be a little arrogant and irresponsible at times, but he has such wit and charisma that everyone forgives him. And as for riding, he is just so gifted. They called him fearless Fearghal on the hunting field because he was so brave and skilful across country.’
‘Why did he never compete?’
‘I doubt he could afford to – he had a big family to keep, a business to run, then he was a widower. And I think he was rather too fond of the liquor in the early days.’
‘Did he like big boobs?’
‘What?’
‘Big boobs. I know you haven’t got any, but would you describe him as a boob man, generally speaking?’
Perturbed by her daughter’s new-found breast fixation, Anke regarded her suspiciously. ‘Faith, where is this leading?’
‘Nowhere. But I definitely don’t want to meet Fearghal,’ she said firmly. ‘I already know all I need to know, thanks.’
She marched up to her room and, unpacking several sets of thermal underwear that her mother had crammed into a corner of one suitcase, replaced them with a bronze horse as heavy as her heart.
If she closed her eyes she could taste Rory’s lips, their salty sweetness, the plump yield of silken lip and the scuff of stubble, the scent of horse, leather and field on his skin, the warm breath from his nostrils. She could remember the instinctive way his hand had risen up to her cheek, warm and protective, and the surprised intake of breath.
Her core shuddered with the pleasure of it, cut so short, taken from her by her own stubbornness and fear. The thought of leaving him physically hurt.
She traced her fingers along the hard, flat bronze and then up to her flat, bony chest.
She was right to go, she told herself. It was time for the caterpillar to disappear into its chrysalis.
For three days, Beccy leaped on her iPhone every time it rang, but it was never her sexy Kiwi. She knew it was silly to imagine that he would call again, especially given that he had mistaken her for Tash in the first place. What man in their right mind would make secret calls from half way across the world to a married woman with a toddler and a newborn?
Yet in her Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxanne fantasy world, she’d already conducted endless conversations with him to the point of his frenzied confessions of love amid her tearful revelations of her true identity.
Then, out of the blue, he texted.
Flights booked.
There followed a list of flight times and numbers, transporter details and bedding and feed requirements. No flirtation. No confessions. Not even an
x
at the end.
Beccy had a dilemma. If she gave Tash and Hugo the information they would inevitably want to know why he had texted her and not called or emailed them. Hugo was irascible enough about it as it was. She supposed she could make up a fairly plausible excuse – she had taken his call in the first place, after all – but the more she stalled the more indecisive she became and, in her customary fashion, she ended up saying nothing at all. Instead, that evening, she texted back.
Hurry.
It seemed suitably ambiguous yet hinted at longing.
It took him almost a day to come up with:
Things bad there?
Unspeakable
.
More excruciatingly long hours passed before:
Hang in there.
Satisfied that she had told no lies, Beccy allowed herself some more Cyrano de Bergerac fantasies before suddenly panicking that she might have put him off coming and so hurriedly banged out
another message.
UK riders are quaking in their boots knowing you are coming here at last.
Another agonising wait proceeded before she eventually read:
And you?
Quacking with anticipation.
It was only after she’d pressed send that Beccy realised her mistake. He’d think of her as some demented duck now. She burned with mortification.
But this time his reply was almost instant:
That makes us birds of a feather.
Beccy kissed the little glowing phone screen, wishing him good-night – her time – with a hasty
I’m tucking my head under my wing now
before taking a victory waddle and quack around her room, then lying wide awake in bed thinking about him.
Sweet dreams
arrived moments later.
Racked by insomnia and delight, Beccy could only daydream – his time – imagining him checking his phone as he dismounted after a gallop through his lush New Zealand pastures.
Sleeplessness has never felt so sweet
, she told him truthfully.
Late at night and in the early hours, exchanging these intermittent, intimate bon mots that felt so bad yet so irresistibly thrilling, Beccy refused to succumb to guilt. The way she saw it, Lough’s arrival could only benefit Haydown, where it was all work and no play. If he was as bad tempered and horrible as was commonly rumoured, she was happy to let him think he’d been texting Tash and to stand back to watch the storm break. That might even give Beccy a clear route to Hugo at last. And if Lough Strachan was, as she was starting to think, a misunderstood, passionate hero, then she might just be tempted to reveal her true colours. Either way, she couldn’t lose.
He bowled some curveballs, however, like his next text:
How did you know that I’d know?
Beccy had no idea what he meant and it took her ages to decide upon a reply, anxious that she was missing something and that texting back
Know what?
would expose her as an imposter. Then, listening to the radio late that night, she heard the answer sung out:
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Thank heavens for John Lennon.
His comeback was excitingly double-edged:
AllYou Need Is Love?
Love is all you need
, she picked the letters carefully across the number keys.
This time Lough’s response kicked her after-hours daydreams back into check.
You don’t know me, Tash.
Beccy took her phone under the duvet, texting blindly
You don’t know me either.
The irony sat so heavily in her chest that she lay awake that night, feeling weighed down with stones.
Seconds before her alarm clock rang out, her phone beeped, vibrated and lit up.
Quack.
Quack
, she echoed back, SMS flying half way around the world in less time than it took her to brush her teeth, her reflection pink-faced with joy, knowing she was already late for morning feeds and that Hugo would shout at her, and for once not caring.
From that moment on the ice broke between Lough and Beccy as they ducked and dived eagerly, quacking across a hemisphere of oceans and ponds. Every time Beccy’s phone chirruped she felt her heart thrum. She lay awake staring at her phone on the bedside table, waiting for it to light up like a firefly. She asked him endless questions, longing to know more about the dark-eyed rebel who rode like Xenophon. Most of the things she quizzed him on were embarrassingly juvenile – his favourite films, music, literature – but his answers still provided her with pieces that she could put together to make a picture of a bright loner, a man hewn from two clashing cultures with a rich imagination and a great desire to educate himself and to understand the world around him. His taste in movies ranged from old classics to art house films she’d never heard of; when asked if he liked
The Piano
he replied dryly that it was okay, but he preferred guitar music. As well as The Beatles, he loved Jeff Buckley and a band called Straitjacket Fits that Beccy had to Google. He read
mostly horse stuff, but I studied French literature as a kid and love Camus, so my bookcase scares visitors. You?