‘France.’
‘Has he taken the horses?’ ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Shit. And the kids?’
‘They’re with me. Can I just check, is this—’
‘I haven’t forgotten a word you said,’ he interrupted urgently. ‘I’ll be with you by Christmas, that’s a promise.’ There was a beat’s pause then, his voice dropping, ‘I wish you were sharing my bed tonight too. I’ve got to go.’ He hung up.
Tash scratched her head and tried Hugo’s mobile number again. This time he picked up the call, predictably bad-tempered.
‘Hang on … go outside … no blood … reception …’
‘I think I’ve just heard from Lough. It sounds like he’s in hospital or something.’
‘Hope … broken his neck. Save … from wringing it. All okay there?’ The bad line made him sound even more distant than ever.
‘Yes. You?’
‘So so. Rory ballsed up his dressage this afternoon. Rio freaked out at the stadium, and by the time he settled him Rory was so wired he forgot his test.’
‘At least he posted top-ten with Fox yesterday,’ she placated, ‘and you’ve got Cub in contention.’
‘Think I should go for it tomorrow?’
They’d already agreed tactics for the young horse, but she could tell Hugo was dying to be competitive.
‘Take it steady and give him confidence,’ she urged. ‘He’s still green.’
‘Hmmph. Need to get … owners … next season … decent four-star horse …’ He disappeared into crackling interference again.
‘There’s plenty of time,’ she reminded him.
But the line was breaking up badly now and he was talking across her:
‘… been thinking … drive the kids and … in the Loire … next Monday … bring Verucca, yes?’
‘Don’t call her that,’ she said automatically. ‘And I can’t come. I’ve got an important lunch next week.’ It was the perfect opportunity to remind him that she was meeting Sylva Frost and to sound him out about which horse they should try to sell her. She could be just the new owner he needed.
He’d moved to get better reception again, his voice suddenly a crystal-clear bark. ‘Cancel it. You’re coming to France. MC’s dying to see you.’
Tash knew Marie-Clair of old, and doubted she’d notice if Tash was in the room doing a tap dance on the table.
‘So you’re definitely planning to stay on there?’ she asked in a small voice, realising he was truly taking a stand.
‘She’s invited Rory too.’
‘Oh yes?’ Hardly a reliable chaperone, she felt. The three would be drunkenly debauched from day one.
‘Come and join us, Tash.’
She wanted to say ‘we need you here’ but her throat was too choked to speak the words. It was all she could manage to croak ‘No.’
He hung up without a goodbye.
Tash clambered wearily into her boots and pulled on a coat to do night-check with the baby monitor in her pocket, walking outside just in time to see Beccy’s sporty little car driving far too fast into the first courtyard and parking at an angle in front of the door to the stable’s flat. Then she practically carried Lemon from the passenger seat and through the door.
The lights were glowing above the archway and the sound of the television indicated that the Czechs were still up, wrapped up in one another and their cloak of shared language.
Tash went around each stable, making sure that the automatic drinkers were working, that hay racks were topped up and rugs correct.
Afterwards she stood for a long time staring up at the dark sky, wishing that she was going to France. She missed Hugo so much it
hurt. They were both so stupidly stubborn at times. But if she thought about Marie-Clair’s lifestyle and her forceful sexuality and ribald humour, the late night meals, early hours drinking sessions, wild pranks and desire to spend all day in the saddle she knew that there would be no place for her and the children there. She was appalled that Hugo couldn’t see it too.
The following morning, somewhat jaded from a long night with the extremely demanding MC, Rory thought any chances of victory were blown when The Fox overreached badly just three fences into the cross-country and pulled up lame, forcing them to retire. As usual he couldn’t get hold of his owner to report the bad news, Dillon currently being somewhere in Japan with his mobile switched off.
Yet that afternoon he climbed no less than twenty-three places on the leader board after a blistering ride across country in appalling weather on the brave but inexperienced Rio.
By equal contrast, this horse’s owner sent a text almost before Rory had dismounted.
Saw it all online. Bloody amazing. Love my horse! Big it up for the boys. UCnDoMgc. F x
Rory felt uneasy under such Big Brother scrutiny. And since when had Faith started saying ‘Big it up’ or whatever gobbledegook UCnDoMgc meant? It must be one of her Essex affectations, along with silicone and stilettos. Nevertheless, he saved the message to his phone memory, alongside the
Bonne chance
MC has sent him just before he set out. Then, stifling a yawn, he handed Rio to Jenny and went to study the scoreboard.
Earlier in the day, Hugo had posted a safe and solid round on the equally inexperienced The Cub, racking up some time penalties but still securing the top slot. But now Rory had bolted home so fast he’d climbed two points above his trainer the night before show-jumping. On another occasion Hugo would have been praised for his caution, for putting the horse first and thinking more long-term for once. But such was the cruelty of contrast that critics immediately chorused that he had lost his edge and that younger men like Rory were riding more boldly and bravely in the traditional spirit of the sport. In the post-competition interviews one journalist accused him of selling out and losing his nerve. It seemed he couldn’t win their approval either way.
Hugo: ‘I CAN’T WIN!’
shouted the
Horse & Hound
report on Pau CCI
****
, which featured a thumbnail of him looking very grumpy as he and Cub sailed over the Fontaine Jump. The large photograph of Rory clearing the last show-jump on the flashy stallion Rio was much more flattering, and was captioned
‘Pau
…
sers!
’ The commentary pointed out that the Midwinter string looked likely to take all next year, and would bring the recently failing fortunes of the Beauchamps’ yard a much-needed boost, particularly as Lough Strachan had apparently changed his mind about coming to the UK.
Tash scanned the rest of the report as she waited for Sylva, who insisted on collecting her and the kids for their lunch date, but was now over an hour late. It didn’t make great reading. Hugo came across as a terrible loser, with his quote taken quite out of context. She only hoped that she could cheer him up by bagging Sylva as a new owner by the time he returned from France.
‘Rory did good, yeah.’
Tash jumped, realising that Lem had wandered into the house and was standing right behind her, reading over her shoulder. She wished he would knock first. It never bothered her when Beccy or Jenny came in unannounced, but something about Lem made her edgy, especially with Hugo and Rory away. He was become increasingly proprietorial.
‘My girls want to know what to ride after lunch,’ he said now.
‘It’s written on the office board,’ Tash told him, disliking the way he used ‘my girls’ for Beccy and Faith. The three had formed a little clique that she privately thought brought out the worst in them all, particularly Beccy, who was ever more distant.
‘Do you know anything about this?’ Tash pointed to the reference to Lough in the report. ‘I had a very strange call from him the other night, but he definitely said he was still coming.’
‘He’s had a spot of bother with his passport,’ Lemon said airily, before changing the subject. ‘You look great, Mrs B. Going somewhere nice?’
‘Lunch with a prospective owner.’
Stressed out from a morning spent battling the yard’s broken-down tractor, and then embarking on a rescue mission to collect the
Czech au pairs who had got stranded in Marlbury’s multi-story with the Beauchamps’ decrepit Volvo that they used as a runaround (‘a total death trap’ to quote the AA man), she wasn’t feeling as serene and ladies-who-lunch-tastic as she might have hoped. She couldn’t get the black crescents of oil and grease from beneath her stubby nails despite minutes of scrubbing with a nailbrush – but at least they matched the dark crescents beneath her eyes.
‘La-di-da. I’d better get back below stairs, m’lady.’ Lemon doffed an imaginary cap and headed towards the back lobby, poking his tongue out at Cora as he passed to make her laugh, but the little girl burst into tears instead.
‘So Lough definitely is coming?’ Tash checked as she gathered Cora into a hug.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He stalled at the door. ‘Don’t panic. He’s half Maori, remember. They see time differently.’
‘Well perhaps the non-Maori half could get his arse in gear,’ Tash snapped, realising too late that she sounded just like Hugo.
Lem stopped and looked back at her over his shoulder.
No longer crying, Cora was ramming her Elmer Elephant down her mother’s top and giggling furiously as she pointed out ‘Mummy’s boobies!’
‘Lough’s risking everything to come here.’ Lem’s voice had lost all its jokey edge. ‘You’d do well to remember that as you sit here in your big house with your rich husband, playing happy families.’
‘Hang on a—’
‘Lough and Hugo have a deal. I know you upper class Brits think life’s all one big game, but Lough plays hardball, yeah?’ It sounded like a threat.
Clutching Cora tighter, Tash glanced nervously out of the window and was relieved to spot a vast four-by-four with blacked-out windows rolling up outside followed by a huge, shiny Hummer.
‘Well if he doesn’t get here soon any deal is off,’ she told Lem curtly, gathering her children and ushering him out of the house.
‘He can’t leave New Zealand yet.’ Lem stood in the doorway.
‘And I can’t leave this house until you step aside.’
He turned away angrily, hissing to himself. ‘From what I hear, Lough’s the least of your worries.’
Tash wanted to run after him demanding an explanation. But she had a child under each arm, and cars waiting.
Sylva, who was on the phone, blew kisses and smiled.
Immediately separated from her children who were whisked into the back of the Hummer along with their car seats and encased behind its blackened glass with a small army of Eastern European nannies, Tash found herself sliding about on a vast expanse of leather beside Sylva in the back of the four-by-four. She was still giving whoever was on the end of the line a very hard time. ‘I will fire you if this happens again, you understand? This is not the sort of publicity I need right now. You should have handled it completely differently. You are an idiot, and you’re on borrowed time …’
Still trying to calm down from her conversation with Lem, Tash gazed straight ahead at the back of their driver’s head. He had no perceivable neck, and his arm muscles were as big as pit-bull torsos, she noticed. The radio was blaring Dillon Rafferty’s new single.
Sylva came off the phone at last and barked something in Slovakian at Pit-Bull Arms, who turned off the radio and switched on the sat nav.
‘The driver is my cousin Olaf,’ she explained to Tash. ‘He has no sense of direction, which is why we are late. I won’t introduce you because he speaks no English and he is nasty.’
Tash caught two eyes studying her in the rear view mirror and smiled awkwardly before turning to Sylva. ‘Are you okay? That sounded a tricky call.’
‘It’s all good. No publicity is bad publicity, after all – but they didn’t have to know that.’ She flashed her gorgeous smile. ‘I have been looking forward to today so much. This has been a horrible week. You must cheer me up with talk of horses, Tash.’
Then before Tash could get a word in Sylva started listing her grievances. As the sat nav guided them with soothing Slovakian tones through West Berkshire and over the border to the Oxfordshire Chilterns, she complained non-stop about her disloyal friends who all talked to the press, her cold-blooded documentary team, her lazy agents (she had several), a swimwear launch she’d just starred in, her useless PAs, her horrible Cotswold weekend retreat, the illustrator for her latest children’s book and – most of all – her mother, who had wanted to come along that day.
‘I say no. Mama, I am allowed to haff friends of my own. I tell her you would not like her, Tash, because you are posh and she is trash.’
Tash found her alarmingly outspoken. She craned around to
check that the Hummer carrying the children was still behind them and realised in a panic that it had gone.
‘It’s okay.’ Sylva rested a warm hand on her arm. ‘My nannies are taking them to a lovely play area while we have lunch. They will look after them.’
‘Are they all family too?’
‘Yes. We are a close family. My sister Hana is bringing my niece Zuzi to live with us too. She will be my Cotswolds housekeeper.’
‘Your niece?’
‘No, she is just a child. Pretty child. Very like her mother.’
‘She and Hana must be stunning if they’re anything like you.’
‘Hana is very plain,’ she said confusingly, then made Tash jump by reaching up to pull out the clip that she had crammed into her wild hair to keep it off her face. ‘But you are very beautiful, I think. There! Much better.’
Tash’s hair spilled over her eyes and she blew an embarrassed raspberry to stop it tickling her nose. ‘Well at least it hides my face, I guess.’
With a few quick flicks, Sylva’s expert fingers styled the wayward bed-head to one side so that it just fell over one eye, then she leaned back to admire her handiwork. ‘It’s a very sexy face. I like sexy friends.’
Tash pondered this for a moment while Sylva whipped out a compact and checked her immaculate make-up. Feeling she should keep her end up, Tash fished around in her bag but found that all she had were a couple of old hairbands, a cherry lipsalve and a broken comb with what appeared to be a boiled sweet impaled on its teeth. She settled for applying some lipsalve and admiring Sylva’s brightly knitted mohair peplum jacket over a black and white striped catsuit and red boots with heels as long and narrow as Visconti fountain pens.