Tash hugged herself with relief, wooden spoon still in hand and dripping sauce everywhere as she swayed in front of the Aga.
‘You’re in my soul, you’re in my head, you’re stitched through me like needle and thread …’ Dillon sang, his fantastic, heartfelt voice making the lyrics so romantic and sexy, despite their ambiguity. ‘You rip my heart with every smile, but I cannot leave while … I … am …’
‘Addicted to you!’ she sang along to the chorus with feeling, holding her spoon up like a lighter at a concert. ‘I am a love junkie, addicted to—’
She stopped abruptly, spoon aloft, as it occurred to her that if Venetia wasn’t ‘V’ then somebody else was. At the same moment as this unpleasant thought struck home, she realised she wasn’t alone and swung around to find Lough standing at the kitchen table watching her.
‘What is it?’ she asked ungraciously, feeling foolish.
‘I brought Beetroot back.’ He nodded towards the dog, who was looking very pleased with herself. ‘She followed us back to the cottage.’
Having gone over her bowl in forensic detail, Haydown’s senior
dog trotted across the flagstones to the dog sofa, ready to take on the Bitches of Eastwick.
‘Thanks.’ Tash bolted back to the Aga to stir her burning sauce. ‘She has a crush on Twitch.’
‘It’s mutual.’ Lough’s voice was now so familiar, especially in this kitchen, yet since Hugo’s return it felt like an alien invasion. Tash found herself letting loose a nervous laugh that sounded equally foreign, an escaped budgie shrieking in a quiet hedgerow as she sensed a sparrow hawk close by.
Scraping at the black crust on the base of the pan, she was aware of him coming closer. Typically, Dillon Rafferty chose this moment to stop singing about destructive love addiction and ‘Two Souls’ made its mesmerising way into the room.
‘Are you okay?’ Lough spoke quietly at her shoulder.
‘Fine!’ the budgie puffed up defensively. ‘Sorry about earlier. Crazy of me to think Hugo’s having an affair.’
‘Why crazy?’
‘You hear such rubbish.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, tittle-tattle …’ she fudged, pulling the pan off the Aga and closing the lid. ‘Anyway, he’ll be back soon and we can have a laugh about it.’
‘Of course.’ He turned to leave. ‘I’ll see you both in the morning.’
Tash gripped the Aga rail, unable to stop her beak opening. ‘Lough, is there something you know about Hugo that you haven’t told me?’
He stalled. ‘Ask me anything.’
Gripping the rail tighter, Tash was suddenly uncertain as to whether she wanted to know the truth.
After a long pause, Lough came to stand alongside her, his broad hands taking the warm steel rail so that they were like two teenagers riding a rollercoaster. His voice was deep and apologetic. ‘You deserve better than this, Tash.’ But whether he was talking about her marriage or himself was not clear.
Still she said nothing, acutely aware of his hand next to hers and the range heating her face and chest.
There was a step behind them.
‘I see my childish superglue-on-the-Aga-rail prank has worked at long last,’ said a dry voice.
They both turned to find Hugo behind them, a huge graze on his head and dew in his hair.
Tash was too relieved to have him home at last to check herself, surging forwards happily. ‘Thank goodness you’re safe.’ She wrapped her arms around him. ‘We didn’t hear a car.’
‘Evidently.’ His sarcasm was lost on her. ‘I walked back. That’s why I’m so late – and ravenous. This smells delicious.’ He breathed in the cooking smells, eyes drifting to the man still leaning against his Aga. ‘Do I take it you’re joining us, Lough? I’ll lay the long-handled spoons.’
Saying nothing, Lough nodded farewell to Tash and headed for the rear lobby.
‘Stay for a drink at least,’ she found herself bleating, desperate to break the tension. But Lough was already through the back door.
‘What did he want?’ Hugo turned to her the moment he was gone, eyes like bullets.
Wearily, Tash told him about Beetroot while she put the pasta on. ‘She’s on heat.’
‘Isn’t she past all that?’
‘The mind’s still willing,’ she yawned, suddenly feeling beaten up with tiredness.
Hugo gave her a rueful look and suddenly she laughed, putting her arms around him again as they shared a long, heart-lifting kiss that made both their minds very willing indeed. When they finally broke apart Tash ran her fingers through his hair. ‘The accident sounds awful. I can’t believe the brakes went like that. The box was only serviced last month.’
‘Old lorries like that suffer if they’re parked up all the time; they need taking out regularly.’ Hugo wasn’t really interested in post mortems, as his hands had slipped beneath the waistband of her leggings and discovered an enticing whisper of lace not quite covering her exfoliated, moisturised bottom. ‘Like wives.’ His hand ran up her spine to find the back of her lacy new bra.
Biting back the retort that being compared to an old lorry wasn’t wildly flattering, Tash quivered with anticipation, feeling her supermarket undies heat up.
But by the time they had eaten supper and she was ready to show them off at last, Amery was in full cry again. It took her almost an hour to settle him this time and Hugo was long asleep.
*
The next day, Hugo bought a new mobile that the manufacturers boasted was even more indestructible than the last one, and completely waterproof. To prove his point, he took it with him as he schooled several horses around the Haydown cross-country course in the driving rain, and it even survived being trodden upon by Sir Galahad when it fell out of his pocket during a disagreement about a drop fence.
‘Amazing bit of kit,’ he enthused afterwards.
Finding it abandoned among his discarded clothes on the bathroom floor after his evening shower, Tash couldn’t resist taking a detailed examination of the new device to make sure she knew how to check for V texts. She hastily locked the bathroom door and turned on the taps loudly to cover the sound of her beeping her way to his inbox.
To her mortification, she discovered that V had already been busy sending Hugo messages that day, asking after ‘my hero’ and saying that they had to keep ‘our little secret’. Her eyes and chest burned as she read them.
‘Is my phone in there?’ he yelled through the door, making her jump so much that it shot out of her hands and cannoned into the bath oils lined up by the bath, which went flying like skittles.
‘Why’s it so slimy and wet?’ he complained when she thrust it out at him.
‘I was just checking if the manufacturer’s boasts were true,’ she said vaguely, examining his face around the door. Ask it, she told herself. Ask who V is. Ask him.
He wandered away, looking at the screen. ‘Have you been fiddling with this?’
Her heart hammered. She felt guilty for spying, despite what she’d found. Tell him you saw, Tash. Ask for an explanation.
‘Haven’t touched it!’ She bolted back into the bathroom, feeling like a naughty child who had fiddled and fiddled with a musical box to get at the mechanism and broken it, only to find it didn’t play its sweet music any more. Now she wanted to slide it back on the shelf and pretend nothing had happened, waiting for the adults to come back in the room to mend it.
Clusters of daisies now carpeted the Haydown lawns and hedgerows like harnessed clouds, along with little fire-lick flames of buttercups and dandelions, promising spring was ready to roll in with its lengthening days, bulbs, blossom and cheering optimism. Despite this, the accident with the horsebox spelled the beginning of a run of misfortune for the Beauchamps. Hugo’s start to the competitive season, already delayed by his prolonged working trip to America, was blighted by bad luck: several horses came down with a mystery virus before the important trials at Aldon and had to be withdrawn; one of his terriers disappeared; the tyres of his newly fixed car were slashed when it was parked outside the Olive Branch. And his marriage wasn’t in the greatest shape.
Tash already suspected a surprise party at the end of the month was the last thing Hugo would want for his fortieth birthday. He seemed to have returned from the States determined to exercise his authority, both on the yard and within his family. Having been given sole responsibility for running the yard in his absence, she found this unsettling. She longed for some romantic time out, but attempts were hamstrung as home life took a back seat to competitions.
Within a week of his return, Hugo and Tash were rarely at home together for longer than a few hours at a time as they travelled around the country competing two or three times a week. The Beauchamps had traditionally always travelled and competed together, but now they were seldom even at the same event, Tash running youngsters in a mixture of shows and one day events with Beccy acting as support and the children occasionally in tow, while Hugo, Rory and Lough took the top horses to the big trials backed up by Jenny and Lemon, often staying away for several nights.
Tash felt increasingly guilty that Cora and Amery saw so little of their parents, and Hugo clearly resented the fact that this guilt didn’t seem to extend to him in the same way. Tash, however, was determined to hold out for a big set-piece seduction to show him once and for all that she was still all woman and all his. She’d planned it for too long to give up now, even if, on the few occasions they did have an evening together, there never seemed to be time to kick-start anything romantic. Either Amery was up all night teething, Hugo
was stuck on the yard with a sick or lame horse, an owner popped in to catch up on the news from America or some other distraction cropped up. Their days started punishingly early and ended late. Her underwear went on and came off again faster than a stripper working back-to-back shifts, without Hugo getting to admire the show.
Out on the eventing circuit, the lorry-park gossips were relishing a winter of new material to chew over as term started in earnest again. Talk was all of those who had hatched, matched or dispatched divorce papers during the long break, along with inevitable rumours. Last season’s quest to identify Lucy Field’s married lover remained a favourite topic, along with great excitement that the Devil on Horseback was now in the UK and already kicking up dust at Haydown. Gus Moncrieff was already on the case with first-hand knowledge and eye-witness accounts, although his loyalty meant that he warned Hugo where talk was going early on.
‘Lough up your daughter’s, eh?’ he joked as they stood in front of the CCTV in the riders’ tent, watching the New Zealander scorch around the Bicton cross-country, a gaggle of admiring female riders and grooms gasping behind them. ‘You must feel like King Arthur.’
‘Meaning?’
Gus lit a cigarette, ignoring the complaints around him. ‘The quiet ones are always the worst. He was a nightmare to get out of his shell while you and Percival were away warring. Talk about a square peg at the Round Table. Tash has the patience of a saint with him. And Penny adores him, of course, but she’s always fancied herself as the Lady of the Lake.’
‘What exactly are you saying?’ Hugo asked coolly, his eyes not leaving the screen.
‘Keep a close eye on Lancelot, Hugo.’
Hugo said nothing of this to Tash, but it hadn’t escaped his attention that his wife had been behaving increasingly strangely, changing her clothes all the time, doing furtive things in the bathroom and endlessly checking his whereabouts as though she was afraid he would suddenly appear around a corner and catch her out. He didn’t like it.
She was at least forced to overcome her Luddite urges and accept the BlackBerry that he bought her to enable them to stay in touch while on the road. Struggling to master it, she kept sending Hugo
blank texts and emails which infuriated him because he was so quick-witted and natural with technology that he couldn’t understand why she found it so hard. When not sending blank texts, she was having suspicious, whispered conversations on the thing that were cut short whenever Hugo came within earshot. With Gus’s warning still ringing in his ears, he felt very jumpy indeed.
On the surface, Lough gave him no reason for suspicion. He kept his own counsel and seemed utterly focused on his horses. Apart from the evening Hugo had found him in his kitchen, he never ventured in the house and barely spoke on the yard, apart from monosyllables to Lemon about the horses’ routines. He had his own transport and stayed away from socialising at competitions. He was, as everyone so often described him, a machine, and certainly gave no indication that he had any interest in Hugo’s wife.
By contrast, Rory was always flirting playfully with Tash and any other female who crossed his path, partly because he was instinctively charming, and also because he was now embroiled with MC, who blew hot and cold faster than a faulty hairdryer and left most of her conquests in need of an ego boost. He snuggled towards Tash like a toddler in search of a comfort blanket, knowing she was soft and warm. But Hugo trusted Rory implicitly after their time away together, knowing he was a chip off the old mounting block of his legendary uncle, a war hero who had ridden round Badminton three times in one day. The chip on Lough’s shoulder was four gigabytes of well-stored resentment, and Hugo watched him like a hawk.
But Lough didn’t make a wrong move. It was Rory who inadvertently turned traitor.
‘I’ve changed my mind about Lough,’ he told Hugo as they loaded horses for a one day event near Salisbury. ‘I like him a lot. He’s a dark horse, but they say never judge a horse by its colour, don’t they? And he’s one hell of a gambler.’
Hugo looked at him in surprise. ‘Don’t tell me the Trappist monk’s tipping winners?’
Rory shook his head, a big, easy smile breaking across his face. ‘We were up until three this morning playing Bezique.’
‘Cards?’ Hugo was familiar with the game that his father-in-law considered as compulsory as sun-cream during holidays in the Loire.
‘I was within one hand of winning the lot, and he turned it around and beat me. It’s no wonder he’s such a great competitor. The man has nerves of steel. He’s a gambler that never gives in.’ Rory started to haul up the lorry ramp. ‘That’s
seriously
cool.’