‘You are
not
,’ she ordered. ‘What’s the point of having you here if we can’t share cocktail hour?’
Hugo’s reaction to his rider’s change of plans was even more caustic, even though Rory laid it on thick that his mother was very lonely.
‘Why not take all your horses with you to keep her company over Christmas? That’ll save me, Tash and Beccy having half a dozen more to muck out.’
‘Lemon can do mine,’ Rory told him, figuring the little Kiwi owed him a big favour right now.
‘He won’t be here. He’s spending Christmas with Faith’s family,’ Hugo pointed out sourly.
When Faith arrived at Haydown later that day, tarted up to the nines and her chicken fillets out of the glove box and back in her
Wonderbra, the car sprayed liberally with perfume and a range of specially selected Rory-friendly driving music ready loaded in her iPod, she was dismayed to find him throwing his overnight bag on to the back seat of his old banger.
‘You’re getting a lift with me.’
‘Sorry, I’ll need my car with me.’ He glanced up as Lemon minced out of the stables flat and laid claim to the passenger seat of Faith’s Volkswagen, complaining loudly about his hangover.
Faith’s face fell. ‘What about that drink I owe you?’
‘I’ll call,’ Rory promised, walking with her to her car. ‘I’m not sure what my plans are after Christmas lunch. My mother’s got friends to see. I’ll call,’ he repeated vaguely, holding open her door.
‘Here, you might as well have this now.’ She reached into the car for a little gift bag, which she thrust at him embarrassedly. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Christ. Thanks, Faith. I wasn’t expecting—’
‘Don’t mention it. It’s only little.’ She turned to get into the car.
‘Wait a minute.’ He caught her arm and turned her back to kiss her cheek, ‘Merry Christmas.’
She was wearing so much perfume his eyes smarted. Yet when his lips touched her warm skin they wanted to rest there, breathing in her positive energy.
Just then, Bach’s
Christmas Oratorio
started blasting out as Lem fiddled with the iPod dock.
‘I love this!’ Rory stepped back in surprise, almost changing his mind about going with them, but Lemon cut the music as abruptly as it started. ‘Christ, Faith! Is it all this shit?’
Just for a moment her eye caught his and Rory thought he saw his old friend there, but then she turned to Lemon and laughed. ‘Yeah – it’s all heavy crap on the ’Pod. Let’s listen to Kerrang!’
As her little Volkswagen joined the A34, Faith’s cheek was still buzzing as though she’d left her electric toothbrush stuck in there.
Lemon had finally stopped complaining about the content of her iPod and was staring at her grumpily. ‘Rory’s a lost cause, yeah? He’s like Lough: the sport will always come first. Give up on him, mate.’
It wasn’t the message of Christmas cheer Faith wanted to hear.
‘I
am
over him,’ she said hotly. ‘We’re just mates now.’
‘Good. You’ve got Lemon Aid here. And I’m so looking forward to meeting the in-laws.’
Faith chewed her lip awkwardly. ‘Before we arrive, Mum’s asked me to explain to you that my little brother Chad has a new girlfriend at school, who’s called Pansy.’
‘So?’
‘He’s so in love, he’s taken to writing her name all over his arms with felt-tip pens like a tattoo. Quite sweet really, but Mum doesn’t want you to get the wrong idea.’
‘Why? What have you told her about me?’ Lemon looked shocked.
‘Just that you’re my mate.’
‘Like Rory’s your mate, yeah?’
‘Sort of.’
When Rory unwrapped the tissue paper around Faith’s present, he found a tiny antique bronze of a Jack Russell terrier, barely bigger than his thumb but cast in exquisite detail. It looked just like Twitch. He adored it.
He knew he must give Faith something in return, and he’d already decided exactly what it should be. The porcelain horse he’d picked up in a Cotswolds antique shop years ago that reminded him of Whitey, which he’d gone ahead and bought even though he’d misread the ticket and found it was ten times as much as he first thought. It was one of his very few material possessions that he hadn’t been given or inherited. It was still at his cottage with Jules, but he could go up to Overlodes and fetch it while he was staying with his mother. It would also give him a chance to check how his yard was doing.
When he called her mobile, however, Jules was in Malta, and happily reported that she was holidaying with friends for the whole festive season.
‘I’ve left the yard with two of my regular guests,’ she told him.
‘Guests?’
‘The Stable Yard Ashram – it’s really taken off. We’re turning over a mint as Londoners will pay a fortune to come and muck out horses for a week. Gary and Phil booked Christmas weeks ago so they can detox before their New Year in the Maldives.’ When she told him how much the couple were paying, he wanted to weep.
‘Do you let them stay in my house?’
‘No, that’s the best bit: guests stay in the old static caravan. It’s all part of the rustic, farm-worker atmosphere they’re buying into.’
Rory couldn’t wait to find Hugo and tell him the bizarre success story, but he wasn’t remotely impressed with it as a solution to Haydown staff shortages. ‘I already have one flaky hippy here and she’s next to useless. I don’t want any more.’
Wheeling a barrow out of a stable behind him as he said this, Beccy hid her flaming face behind her dreadlocks and rushed to the muck heap. Abandoning the barrow there, she fled to her room. Lemon had deserted her; Hugo despised her. Their kiss had clearly meant nothing. She was dreading Christmas.
Where are you?
she texted Lough tearfully.
I need you here. I need you so badly.
The reply came within the hour.
This time nothing will stop me.
By late afternoon on Christmas Eve, Tash had a ten-kilogram monster goose lying, fat and naked, in the meat safe, along with sausages, forcemeat stuffing and mountains of earthy vegetables. There was an un-iced cake in the larder, an eighteen-foot Norwegian Spruce lying on its side in the hall, the study was full of presents from eBay waiting to be wrapped, none of the spare beds had been made up and piles of unwashed laundry waited in skips by the machine.
Listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio, and singing along to ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ as she frantically crammed wet sheets into the tumble dryer, she was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead.
It was her first full Christmas as host to so many of the family, previous years being traditionally alternated between Sophia and Henrietta – her father, sister, brother, stepsisters and their families were all staying at Haydown, with Alicia and the Czechs joining them for lunch to round up the numbers to an even twenty, plus assorted children. She hadn’t for a moment anticipated how much work was involved, especially with almost all of the yard staff away.
Hugo was flat out looking after the horses, with only Beccy to help him, while the Czechs had two days off.
She had no choice but to rope in her family and house guests to help, and so as soon as the various factions arrived, anticipating mulled wine and carols, they were allotted tasks.
The sight of her sister-in-law Sally cheered Tash enormously. Ever-smiling and easy-going, Sally was the best foil for the more prickly elements of Tash’s family, and her eighteen years as wife and production assistant to uptight documentary producer Matty had lent her tremendous resilience, along with a warm common sense born of bringing up their three children. Pink-cheeked and upbeat, she immediately helped dish out orders and Bucks Fizz, deflecting protests all round.
Sophia was furious to find herself, her daughter Lotty and stepmother Henrietta making up beds, while James was equally perturbed that his welcome scotch was forfeited in favour of decorating the tree with Em and his youngest grandchildren.
‘At least you were deemed too senior to help out on the yard,’ Sally pointed out brightly as she whisked past with a pile of freshly tumbled sheets. ‘Matty, Tom and the other chaps are all mucking out. Oh, they got that tree up. I wouldn’t hang anything to the left, though, it looks jolly lopsided.’
Sally loved huge family occasions like this, all the more so for Tash’s lack of organisation. Christmas with Sophia at Holdham Hall was always so well organised and staunchly patrician that it felt like being on the upper decks of the
Queen Mary
; Henrietta’s Christmases at Benedict House were similarly regimented. Sally loathed hosting, and was happy to use the modest size of her house and lack of parking as an excuse to avoid it.
Aside from spending Christmas with Alexandra and Pascal in France – a treat that hadn’t happened for many years now – Christmas with Tash was shaping up to be quite the closest and best substitute. Like her mother, Tash was scatty, muddled, a great cook and warmly welcoming. It also helped that she was married to Hugo, a man who poured massive drinks at fabulously regular intervals, just as Pascal did.
Henrietta and Lotty were industriously making up the bunk beds in the old nursery for all the boys. Sally tracked Sophia down to a twin room along the corridor, where Lotty and her cousin Tor
would sleep; she was perching on a window seat and studying Sylva Frost’s huge Christmas photoshoot in
Cheers!
‘There you are!’
‘Shhh – shut the door. Listen to this: “Sylva is a keen horsewoman and has recently developed an interest in three day eventing thanks to her close friend Natasha Beauchamp, wife of gold medallist and horsy pin-up, Hugo. ‘I am buying a horse this year to compete,’ says Sylva, who once represented Slovakia in the sport of modern pentathlon. ‘If I can, I would like to compete at the next Olympics.’ Sylva, who is a devoted mum to Koloman and Hain, says that she is not worried by the dangers involved in this high-risk sport that has claimed several lives in recent years, pointing out that the Beauchamps are the best in the world and will look after her.”’
‘So she’s Tash’s new best friend?’
‘She’s coming to the Boxing Day shoot, apparently.’
‘Typical! We have to be at my parents’ house by mid-morning. I always miss out on all the fun.’
Sophia was flipping back through the glossy photographs of Sylva and her children dressed as pantomime characters and posing in a fairytale Scottish castle. ‘She’s had
so
much surgery already and she’s not even thirty.’
‘Looks good, though. I like the platinum blonde.’ Sally perched beside her and automatically reached for her mousey blonde hair, which was now liberally scattered with grey.
‘Very unforgiving for older skin. And you need a strong complexion. Look at the colour of her fake tan; she’s like a satsuma.’
‘Very festive. You remember when we were little and got satsumas in the feet of our Christmas stockings? So old-fashioned and quaint.’
‘I still do that.’ Sophia looked affronted.
‘Yours still have stockings?’
‘Of course. And Ben. Don’t yours?’
‘Tom has a cheque, Tor wanted a donation to Greenpeace and Linus has asked for a horribly violent DS game, but don’t tell his father, who thinks he’s getting Advanced Brain Training.’
‘Tash will be pleased. That means you’ll have lots of free time to help her wrap. Beccy promised to do it, but she’s skedaddled as usual.’
‘Beccy?’ Sally suddenly registered the absence with a flash of guilt. ‘I haven’t even seen her yet.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ Sophia whispered, eyeing the door, aware that Henrietta was just along the landing.
‘Meaning?’ Sally was agog.
‘
Very
unstable still,’ Sophia said in a breathy undertone. ‘Strictly
entre nous
, Hugo told Ben she brought two men back with her the other night.’
‘Well, that’s just greedy.’
The last cut before Christmas to be performed by Traycee at Marlbury’s ultra-trendy Bed Hedz salon looked set to take her all afternoon, and the stylist wanted to close up for the festive break. But her client was very exacting in her requirement.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Traycee asked her again. ‘It’s a very unforgiving cut.’
‘It’s what I want.’
‘Well I suppose anything’s better than what you came in with,’ Traycee commented bitchily, painting bleach on to short layers before folding them into foil. ‘Asked for anything nice from Santa this year?’
‘My brother-in-law.’
‘That’s nice.’ Traycee glanced up at the clock and slapped colour on bigger sections of hair to hurry things along.
In the Haydown study, Tash pulled out several tubes of garish metallic lime green paper scattered with glittery holly sprigs and white snow that were already covering everything in a sparkling dandruff. ‘Fifty pence a roll on eBay. Amazing value.’
‘One man’s rubbish …’ Sally muttered as curious objects started appearing at an alarming rate from jiffy bags to be encased in the shedding glitter wrap.
Soon the room was swirling with a sparkling mist and Tash and Sally had so much glitter in their hair, on their skin and on their clothes that they looked like they were about to take part in a
Dancing on Ice
Christmas special.
Sophia popped her head around the door. ‘Hugo’s taken all the chaps to the village pub and I can’t find what’s intended for supper. Why are you all glittery?’
‘We’ve been glitter-eBayed.’ Sally stood up. ‘I’ll mix more drinks.’
Tash rolled out another length of paper. ‘There’s salmon and
olive pie in two enormous baking dishes in the gun room because there was no room in the fridges or meat safe. The key’s on the ring hanging by the kitchen phone. Just bung them in the Aga for forty mins.’
Sally was back a minute later. ‘Would that be the gun room with the door wide open and three fat Labradors looking rather pleased with themselves?’
‘Oh hell, not again! I locked the door!’
But when Tash investigated she was more alarmed by the fact that a gun was missing than the theft of the salmon pies. ‘It’s the Webley, not one of the expensive ones – the twelve gauge Hugo uses for rough shooting.’