Rory took almost two days to recover enough to venture out of the lodge cottage. Faith appeared sporadically to check in on him, bringing fresh supplies of fruit, biscuits and bottled water. He told her he had flu. She seemed to believe him, and told him his horses would be fine in her care until he recovered. He could remember almost nothing of Boxing Day. He had no idea whatsoever how he’d got back to Haydown.
But when he finally emerged, feeling very weak and shaky, Faith wasn’t there. She was working at Lime Tree Farm all day, Beccy told him when he headed on to the yard.
‘I’ve had flu,’ he explained. ‘My new housemate probably brought something bubonic over from the colonies.’
Beccy flashed a wary smile, very jumpy on the subject of Lough.
‘I like the hair. Suits you.’
‘Thanks.’ Beccy blushed, deciding he was getting nicer these days. She felt rather sorry for him, being ill. He looked truly terrible. ‘Hugo and Lough are riding in the indoor school if you want to see them.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll pass.’ He’d gone very grey and had to lean against a wall for support.
Lemon led out a horse behind him, tacked up ready for Lough to swap rides.
‘You’re still alive then.’ He looked disappointed. ‘Food poisoning, wasn’t it?’
‘Flu,’ Rory corrected, deciding he really needed to go back to bed.
‘No wonder you got a chill, driving into a snow drift like that.’ Lemon eyed him resentfully.
Rory had no idea what he was talking about, but that might start to explain the voicemail message he’d received from his brother-inlaw Amos, asking if he wanted his car removed from Broken Back Woods before the police impounded it.
‘Mate,’ said Lemon as he stepped closer, voice dropping to an accusing hiss. ‘Faith could have died saving you back there. I think you deserved to freeze, frankly.’
Before Rory could ask him what he was talking about, there was a clatter of hooves as he led the horse away.
‘Take no notice of him.’ Beccy reappeared from a stable with a barrow. ‘He’s in a foul mood because the big bad boss has finally arrived to make him the whipping boy again. He shouts at Lem all the time. He must be tricky to live with.’
‘What?’ Rory was finding fragments of Boxing Day floating through his conscience at last.
‘Lough?’
‘I’ve barely spoken to him. Been too ill.’
Beccy wheeled away, relieved.
Over the coming days Rory’s mind gradually started filling in the blanks. Oblivious to the cross currents swirling around the yard like the hay strands blowing in the ever-changing wind, he spent an uncharacteristic amount of time on his own, riding Rio who couldn’t enjoy a long holiday in the fields like the others because his stallion’s wanderlust meant he would only tolerate being turned out for a few hours at a time.
He barely noticed Hugo legging a very reluctant Tash up onto her old grey, Mickey Rourke, and making her ride in the school, her face so frozen with fear and her body so stiff that she looked like a mannequin taped to the saddle. Nor did he spot Lough watching them in his silent, black-eyed way. He avoided Lemon, who was spoiling for a fight, and Beccy did her disappearing act most days. But he made time for Faith, the flu lie sitting awkwardly between them.
He didn’t know what to say to her or how to thank her. His humiliation was total; he’d been completely self-pitying and out of control and now he was so deeply ashamed he longed to wake up again and find it was all a dream. But he didn’t.
He rode over to Fosbourne Ducis on New Year’s Eve, a bright, blue-skied afternoon, the snow now pushed back to the verges in grubby piles like royal icing peeled back from its marzipan and fruit mix, but it was still uniform Christmas-cake white across the fields. Lime Tree Farm was in disarray as the Moncrieffs prepared for their annual party.
‘Bloody Faith’s sloped off to Marlbury without saying when she’ll be back!’ Penny told Rory as she rushed past with a case of wine. ‘Put that horse in a stable and help me out while you wait for her.’
Rory did as he was told, not thinking to ask why Penny knew that he had come to see Faith in particular.
‘Here – take this.’ She thrust a box at him when he reappeared. ‘You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?’
Rory found himself swaying under the weight of six bottles of cheap scotch, his personal poison.
‘I can’t make it,’ he apologised, carrying the case into the house like a ticking bomb. ‘Something’s come up.’ Just the clank of the bottles made him break out in a cold sweat.
He was forced to head back to Haydown when the light started fading.
‘I’ll tell Faith she missed you.’ Penny waved him away distractedly. ‘Happy New Year. Got any resolutions?’
‘Sobriety,’ he said with feeling.
When Faith got back to Lime Tree Farm to find that Rory had been there looking for her, she called him straight away.
‘You saved my life,’ he answered without preamble.
Faith listened to him breathing as he walked. She guessed he was still with his horses on the yard.
‘Hey, it was nothing,’ she said eventually.
‘It was everything to me. I wanted to thank you in person. You’re amazing. Amazing.’
Her chest tightened with fear and pleasure. ‘No worries.’
She could hear him clanking through a door. Terrified that he was going to ring off at any moment, she blurted: ‘Why were you at Broken Back Woods in the first place?’
He coughed and clattered about some more. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it, or didn’t remember enough to be able to. Faith could hear him scooping out feeds in the background, the rattle of pasture mix falling into buckets.
‘I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry I put you through that. I’m sorry. I owe you big time. Anything. Name it.’
Oh, the temptation. Faith ran through her options, all the time knowing there was only one. Immediacy. ‘Come to the party tonight.’
For Rory, it was the one chamber with the bullet in it. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
He said nothing for a long time, and Faith tortured herself with all manner of hot encounters he might have lined up.
‘Hugo’s just told me he wants Lough to go to the States instead of me.’
Faith caught her lip beneath her teeth. She knew it was a devastating blow to him. But to her it was salvation. If he didn’t go to America with Hugo she’d have him close by. She couldn’t keep the elation from her voice. ‘Let’s just all celebrate New Year first.’
‘I’m not quite ready to party again yet,’ he apologised.
Tash prized Gok, Trinny and Susannah over her festive curves before reaching for the red suede dress that Sophia had given her for Christmas, assuring her it was by a designer who was ‘brilliant at hiding post-natal bumps’. But not crotches, it seemed. She tugged the very short skirt down towards her knees and studied her reflection in the long mirror. It was years since she’d worn something this revealing. Yet her sister had been quite right about the figure-hugging creation. A leggy, wasp-waisted vamp stared back. She pouted and threw a model pose, then squeaked in delight. This would surely cheer up Hugo.
In the adjacent bathroom, he was out of the shower and complaining loudly about Lough as he towelled his hair dry.
‘He’s so bloody-minded. He won’t last five minutes in the States if he behaves like this.’
In the past week Lough had spent his days avoiding his hosts, ignoring the yard rules and working horses at the opposite end of the indoor arena to everyone else like a rival warming up for a jump-off, all of which drove Hugo mad. They’d barely exchanged a word for days, so the prospect of taking the New Zealander out to a New Year’s Eve party needled at Hugo’s usual generosity. He’d already torn a strip off Tash for offering Lough and the rest of the Haydown contingent a lift to the Moncrieff’s farm.
‘I think he’s terribly shy,’ she told him now, striking a few more poses as she added distractedly, ‘please try to be nice to him tonight. It could be just the ice-breaker you two need.’
‘Plenty of ice around here, so every chance of a serious breakage.’ Hugo appeared at the door, the towel falling from his head as he took in her scarlet harlot dress.
‘What d’you think?’ Tash asked, eager for approval.
There was a telling pause before he answered in a terse voice. ‘Very smart. Where’s the skirt to go with it?’
‘It’s a dress.’ Tash wilted, Gok’s sterling support digging into her deflated ribs. She really must be mutton dressed as lamb, she realised. In her fantasises Hugo had scooped her up and thrown her on the bed, saying the party could wait. In reality, he just turned back to the bathroom to clean his teeth.
She painted her lips red with shaking hands then she looked at her reflection again, tugging down the hem. She could hear a text message coming through on Hugo’s phone, which was lying on the chair in the bathroom. A moment later the door was pushed closed.
Tash tried and failed to persuade herself it was perfectly innocent and had nothing to do with V.
To take her mind off it, she added another layer of kohl around her eyes, masking her fear a little more.
In the bathroom, Hugo angrily replied to MC’s text, telling her that Lough
was
better suited to the American lecture–demo circuit than Rory, and if she didn’t like it she could fuck off.
Then he cleaned his teeth so angrily that he loosened a front crown dating back to the day he’d knocked a tooth out falling off Snob at their first World Championships.
He spat out toothpaste and glared up at his reflection, knowing that he should tell Tash how beautiful she looked tonight. She took his breath away. Yet jealousy had punched the words from his mouth. He could hardly bear to look at her, certain that every day which passed was counting down their marriage. He wished she was wearing a baggy sweater and leggings as usual, or had lost a front tooth too.
Unable to resist, he reached up and tested the loose tooth, and to his horror it fell out into the basin beneath with a clatter, leaving his
gap-toothed reflection glaring back at him like a medieval village idiot.
Hastily retrieving it before it disappeared down the plughole, Hugo wedged the crown back as best he could, grateful he’d soon be in the States where he could get it fixed by the best in the business. It was one reason for still going, at least.
When he came out of the bathroom Tash looked even more beddable, hair teased out, red lips moist with anticipation, positively quivering as she weaved up to him to kiss him.
Afraid that his tooth would fall out again, Hugo kept his lips tight shut.
Abashed, she quickly turned away and picked up her handbag from the bed.
The New Year’s Eve party was well underway at Lime Tree Farm by the time the Maccombe contingent arrived, reversing along the village lane to find a space on the thawing verge because the farm’s driveways and arrivals yard had long since filled up with cars.
In the back of the Beauchamps’ four-by-four, Beccy fought car-sickness and nerves, aware of every millimetre of her body that was brushing against Lough’s as she sat crammed between him and Lemon. She was equally aware of the back of Hugo’s neck ahead of her, the neatly trimmed hair at its nape, the crisp cotton collar of his shirt and the familiar scent of lime-sharp aftershave rising from it.
Increasingly on edge, Hugo insisted that his Christmas gift from Ben be played on the car stereo at full blast for the short drive, Mask’s
Best Ever Best of The Best
CD, thus they arrived to Pete Rafferty’s legendary gravelly voice rasping the track ‘Infidelity’. The famous anthem, which claimed that all lovers would cheat if they could, was cut off in its prime as Tash turned off the engine. The song still ringing in all their ears, they spilled from the car and picked their way around the potholes and remaining snowy islands.
Feeling wretched, Beccy trailed along in the rear with a subdued Lemon, her heart thump-thump-thumping at such closeness to Lough. She was accustomed to it with Hugo, but she was still adjusting to it with Lough. All week, her blood pressure had been leaping and dropping crazily in his presence, with the usual Hugo-triggered hyperventilation to boot. Her body couldn’t take much more.
Dressed in an early sales bargain that she had thought wildly sexy
until she’d seen Tash looking like something out of a fashion spread, she was suddenly aware of her big, raw shoulders that would be exposed by the strapless bodice of her dress as soon as she took off her long coat, and her chilblains grating and boiling beneath the Spanx pants that she’d prized on to neaten her butt. Worst of all, her newly short hair that Tash had re-dyed at Christmas now appeared to have turned a strange shade of khaki; every time she washed it, it looked more green. She wanted to go home.
‘Tonight’s the night,’ Lemon suddenly reminded her.
‘For what?’
‘Bye bye cherries,
chérie
.’ He looked up at her, pale eyes suddenly luminous in the security lights. ‘We get laid.’
Faith hung back when the Haydown mob walked in, her eyes scanning the group for Rory. He wasn’t there and her heart ripped wider. Hugo and Tash, looking amazing, were predictably hailed from all sides, along with Lough, who knew many guests from international championships and was also pulled straight into the mêlée.
Faith had barely spoken to Lemon since their Boxing Day argument. But he was refreshingly upfront, marching straight up to her with Beccy in his wake, Mohawk at its sharpest and tight leather trousers making him mince whether he wanted to or not.
‘You look fantastic, Eff. Great dress. Sexy.’ He kissed her on both cheeks, smelling deliciously of Hugo Boss aftershave and strawberry–lime gum.
Faith smiled abstractedly. She’d been a bit uncertain about the strapless dress she’d picked up hurriedly in a Marlbury chain store sale that morning – it was a clingy, garish mix of black, white, green and orange, but it had been less than twenty pounds, fitted and suited her figure absurdly well. Without Rory there, it hardly seemed to matter.
Loitering behind Lemon, her face as red as her hair was green and her expression oddly crestfallen, Beccy eyed the dress in horror.