As inspiration, she’d bought Faith a copy of the most recent unauthorised Sylva Frost biography,
No Sylva Spoons
, but Faith showed no inclination to read it, so Carly was recounting the life story of one of her all-time heroines like a Jackanory narrator.
‘It says here that Sylva Frost has had no less than twenty cosmetic procedures.’
‘Maybe I’ll phone Rory in a minute.’ Faith went to hang up the bridle.
‘D’you know, Sylva was a huge pop star in the Baltic – bigger than Kylie is over here?’ Carly told her, silently elbowing Faith’s Samsung into the tack-cleaning bucket while her friend’s back was turned. ‘Before that, she was shortlisted for the Olympic modern pentathlon squad.’
‘So she’s quite a good rider then?’ Faith showed a spark of jealous interest, which Carly pounced on.
‘At nineteen she threw in all that fame to get on a bucket flight to Stansted with her mother, and then queue for eight hours to audition for
Star Factor
,’ she sighed in awe. ‘Being secretly shacked up with one of the judges by the time she reached the final ten was inspired. I still rate her cover version of “Like a Virgin” as better than the original. And she only ever took her top off
after
she was famous here, not before. That’s seriously cool.’
Still replaying what Rory had said the night before, Faith wasn’t listening. What if Mr Ali Khan made a mistake and her new boobs started to leak or, worse still, they set as hard as hooves?
‘She’s such a role model,’ Carly enthused. ‘She went from nothing to marrying Strawberry.’
‘Who?’ Faith lent half an ear at the silly name.
‘Strawberry – duh! Faith you are
so
out of the loop. He’s just the Premier League’s top Slovak striker, Alojz Strieborny, six foot three of muscle and tufty blond hair signed to Chelsea for record-breaking transfer fees. Our girl bagged him after they met in a Chinawhite VIP room and their wedding was in
Cheers!
over four weeks – I bought them all. It was held at this fabulous spa hotel. She was lowered to the aisle on a gold trapeze entwined with roses, wearing a dress embroidered with over three hundred thousand baby blue Swarovski crystals. They hired in white tigers in cages and fire-eaters.’
‘Traditional, then.’
Carly ignored her. ‘Then he broke his leg in a foul and lost his place on the bench and she started doing glamour modelling to keep the Chelsea roof garden over their heads, but she had to stop to have their baby boy.
Then
it turned out Strawberry had blown all his millions on fast cars and call girls, and she stuck by him through the bad press while their baby was being born and everything. Six weeks after the birth she was already out at work again, doing a semi-nude photospread in a ladmag.’
‘What an achievement.’ Faith was searching around for her phone. ‘Strawberry must have been proud.’
‘No. Get this. When Sylva started earning back their lost fortune by posing for the ladmags and
Playboy
looking a million dollars (with the fake tits that
he
had bought her as a wedding present) our sweet Strawberry announces that the marriage is over in a
Mirror
exclusive.’
‘The celebrity equivalent to Relate these days.’ Faith rooted through her coat pockets.
Carly sighed, thinking of Grant’s betrayal. ‘He was such a hypocrite, saying that he was a good Slovak boy who couldn’t bear to be married to a woman who showed her body to any man on the street, and that he was divorcing her to be with his childhood girlfriend from Bratislava. Then he demanded the DNA test for their son, claiming Sylva had slept around throughout the marriage.’
‘Not quite a fairytale ending, then.’ Faith started searching the surfaces.
‘But it’s a plot twist to the fairytale, get it? That’s why every little
girl wants to be her. She has already been a sporting superstar, a famous singer, a
Star Factor
finalist, a WAG and a model, right? After that, she became an entrepreneur who would make Deborah Meaden look like an underachiever, with her own lingerie and homeware range, ghosted children’s books and bonkbusters, and two autobiographies by the age of twenty-five – at one point she had a third of the
Sunday Times
bestseller lists sewn up – plus a perfume and a swimwear range. You name it, she does it. The woman can merchandise.’ Carly held up the biography open at the photo section, where there was a publicity shot of Sylva sitting on a pile of her own books as high as a juggernaut.
This, at least, paused Faith’s search for her phone as she looked grudgingly impressed. ‘She must work bloody hard.’ Then her eye caught the facing page and she yelped with alarm. ‘What’s Rory doing in there?’
‘That’s not Rory!’ Carly snorted with laughter. ‘That’s the actor Jonte Frost. Sylva married him two years ago.’ She held up a photograph of the couple looking very chic and retro on the steps of Chelsea Registry Office.
‘He looks like Rory.’
‘No he doesn’t,’ Carly said huffily. ‘Jonte used to be the face of Burberry. Anyway, they divorced when he shagged a co-star on location while Sylva was pregnant. He’s notoriously shabby. You can tell, really, can’t you?’ She studied the photo. ‘It’s in the face. That type of man. They have that untrustworthy look about them.’
Faith gave up looking for her phone for a moment to snatch up the book and take a closer look. ‘I think he’s quite dishy.’
‘
Definitely
a boob man.’ Carly played it to her advantage. ‘They call him “Plus Two” in Hollywood.’
‘Why?’ Faith looked up blankly. ‘Does he shoot?’
‘Like,
duh
.’ Carly pulled a face at her friend’s ignorance. ‘Over there, Plus Two is a man who’ll only invite a date to be his ‘plus one’ at a party if she’s got two big assets.’
‘Is a double date a Plus Four, then?’
With Faith’s trusty little Samsung drying out on her gayfather’s Aga, she and Carly set out for London on Saturday morning, telling everyone they were spending the day shopping. Walking into Mr Ali Khan’s consulting room with her boob scrapbook tucked under her
arm, Faith focused hard on the thought of metamorphosing from tomboy to glamour girl like Sandra Bullock in
Miss Congeniality
.
She turned to the esteemed surgeon. ‘Is it true you did Sylva Frost’s breasts? One set, at least?’
‘I am not at liberty to say.’ He looked away, admiring the fingers that had created such masterpieces.
Her ‘procedures’ were booked for ten days’ time, immediately after having her pearly white veneers fitted in a nearby dental clinic, but Faith kept quiet about those because Carly was worried that Mr Ali Khan would object to her having so much work in one day. ‘They’re just ultra-cautious about anaesthetic and stuff. You’ll be fine.’
‘He says I shouldn’t muck or ride out for a week after the op,’ Faith said worriedly as they drove back.
‘I’ll help you out. All we have to figure out is how to get you away for forty-eight hours without Kurt and Graeme smelling a rat.’
As Double-D Day approached, Faith became more and more uneasy. Having missed the live television coverage, she leapt on
Horse & Hound
when it arrived in the Thursday post and read the Burghley report, scouring it a dozen times before she was finally convinced that she wasn’t mistaken. Rory had not been there.
Her phone had finally dried out enough to work again, but its screen was irreparably water damaged, too white to read or write texts.
She called him with shaking hands.
After what felt like for ever, a voice answered.
‘Yes?’ A female purr, distinctly foreign.
‘Is Rory there?’
‘He is in the shower. You want to leave a message, darlink?’
‘Tell him Faith says it’s all going tits up,’ she said in a strangled voice, hanging up.
‘Who was that calling?’ Rory walked into the bedroom of his cottage, towelling his wet hair as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
A moment later he was beyond caring as Sylva lifted her shapely
leg, swung it across the firm, muscular expanse in front of her and mounted his half-mast cock with a delighted squeal. It expanded eagerly into her.
‘Wow! Oh wowowowowowowowow!’ Rory gasped, rendered inarticulate by the frankly amazing things she could do with her vaginal muscles. He hadn’t been sure he could go again so soon, but she was always guaranteed an encore, it seemed.
He’d had a great many lovers for such a relatively young stud, yet none had been as skilful as Sylva Frost and her pornographic proficiency. He was frankly very intimidated – rather like riding Heart in front of the Beauchamps – but while it felt this good he was more than grateful for the distraction.
That afternoon Upper Springlode was swathed in a grumpy grey mist that wiped out the stunning view and permeated everything with its vile, clammy wetness. It was far too cold and damp to ride, so Rory and Sylva had discovered a very fun alternative.
Rory didn’t care that he was just a passing fancy to her: he was wholly content to be her temporary plaything. He was grateful that that she was bored and lonely in her Cotswold weekend house, that it was damp and old-fashioned and that nobody in the area apart from a few village hoodies, a bunch of paparazzi and Rory seemed remotely interested in her.
The locals were being killingly snobbish about the new celebrity arrival, clearly thinking that Sylva’s WAG-turned-glamour model status was outclassed by Kates Winslet and Moss, Raffertys junior and senior, Liz Hurley and even the Llewelyn-Bowens. Her recent move to the Cotswolds might have been splashed all over the red-tops and women’s weeklies all month but, as she lamented to Rory whenever he coached her on horseback, filmed by her television crew and snapped by the paps throughout the session, none of her new neighbours read that sort of publication or watched her hit show on the Celebrity Channel. Most of them didn’t even have a satellite dish because it contravened their Grade II listings. Sylva was definitely not feeling at home in the area and, as always when she was low, she sought male attention. Rory was more than gratified to be her warm welcome and country pursuit on a cold, damp autumn afternoon.
He needed cheering up after forfeiting Burghley and losing Heart as a result. Nell had sent a transporter to collect Cœur d’Or while
the Beauchamps were away in Lincolnshire. Hugo was livid, and blamed Rory for handling her badly.
Now Rory was desperate to post a good result on one of Dillon’s horses to prove his worth. He was pinning his hopes on the final three day event on the UK calendar, the three-star trials at Blenheim, immediately after which he would relocate to Berkshire. But Humpty was still not quite one hundred per cent, and his preparation was being plagued with setbacks, not least the appalling weather. He was struggling more than ever to get all the work done around the yard. His casual helpers were no match for Faith’s efficiency and inexhaustible energy, and he was now spending stupid amounts of time on the phone going through checklists with Jules, Dillon’s caretaker-manager who seemed to know alarmingly little about running a yard. She was taking over at the beginning of next week – another interruption to his Blenheim schedule.
His sex life was also getting in the way of competition preparations, but he didn’t resent that.
‘WOWOWOWOwowowoWOW – oh – WOW – WOW –
WOW
!’
He came with a delicious explosion that firecrackered his body with shuddering aftershocks. Then he slumped back into the pillows, face high with colour, grinning up at Sylva. ‘You are ama
zing
!’
She had hardly broken a sweat, her cascade of hair perfectly in place, make-up immaculate, her pink frilly bra still holding her magnificent breasts against her deliciously curvy body.
Rory marvelled at her sexy, sanguine serenity. It was the same when she rode, never seeming to exert herself, yet showing true ability. At first he’d started her off on Magpie, the resident safe hairy cob, but was now happy to let her ride anything on his yard day or night, most especially himself. She was as consummate in the saddle as she was in bed.
Dismounting neatly, she half-passed to the dressing table to reach in her Kelly bag and extract a tissue. Three previous lovemaking sessions with Rory had taught her to bring her own supply – he couldn’t be relied upon to have anything absorbent in the house. Toilet paper and kitchen roll were rarities, along with fluffy towels, fresh food, soap and bath plugs. But what he lacked in home comforts, he more than made up for in sex appeal, enthusiasm and charm.
‘God, your arse is peachy.’ Rory, lolling half off the bed and
watching her upside down with his hair on end, let out a wolf whistle.
She wiggled it for him as she piaffed into her pink g-string.
In fact, her arse was veering dangerously towards what the magazines in which she featured on a weekly basis liked to dub ‘Sylva’s Beefy Backside’, ‘Sylva’s Cellulite Horror’ and ‘Sylva Weight Gain Shock!’
They had already salaciously reported her flit from the Chilterns to the Cotswolds: ‘Heart-broken Sylva Hides Away to dry her Tears after Hollywood Lover Outed!’
Last week the media had also duly taken her bait when she’d appeared at a celebrity film premiere wearing a too-tight Hervé Léger rainbow dress. She now featured on the front cover of almost every showbiz publication. Teeth freshly bleached, forehead botoxed, hair extensions reweaved and body clay wrapped to taut splendour, she looked good and had the bills to show for it, but she also looked every inch of her size-ten dress label. Printing the most unflattering pictures of the occasion that they could buy, the weekly rags were unable to resist speculating the cause of Sylva’s ‘rocketing weight gain’, her ‘secret junk food binges’, her endless ‘misery eating’ and her ‘piled-on pounds’. With the help of those ubiquitous ‘insider sources’, they blamed everything from the end of her relationship with the Brit actor to her children having health scares, and all of them claimed to have the ‘exclusive’ answer, but none of them knew the real truth – she had gained weight to get column inches.