It was difficult enough riding in such close proximity by day. Whenever he and Toto fell into step alongside her and River in the arena, she suddenly found sitting trot impossible because the seat of the saddle seemed to have built up a static charge. She avoided hacking altogether, her head filled with far too many involuntary images of frolicking naked with Lough among the wild hyacinths in the beech wood. Instead, she threw herself into work and hosted big kitchen suppers.
She pulled out all the culinary stops with tastebud-soaking roasts and her range of killer puddings. Lemon readily accepted the invitation, dragging Beccy in his wake.
‘We could see all this in the stables flat,’ Beccy grumbled, not liking any control her stepsister exerted over her life – and Lemon’s – these days. ‘My laptop’s higher spec than this.’
‘Yeah, but your cooking’s not a patch, and there’s a dishwasher here,’ Lemon pointed out as he tucked into a vast plate of mouthwatering food.
Beccy took consolation in the fact that Lemon liked winding Tash up so much, teasing her that Hugo and Rory must be up partying each night with all those slim-thighed all-American eventing girls. Tash pretended to make light of it, but Beccy could see it made her agitated, because she’d distractedly add grated cheese to the buttered carrots, or put out horseradish sauce with the puddings instead of cream. But despite the odd gaffe, the food was undeniably good.
On Wednesday both horses sailed through the initial vet check, and Tash’s supper guests went online to look up photographs of Rory and later Hugo running alongside their horses in what the Americans called ‘the jog’ while she cooked and updated them with the latest news from Hugo.
‘They schooled in the stadium this afternoon. You can get lost in there. It’s bigger than a cricket field. Tanker was fine, but Rio was all over the place – they couldn’t get him in. Hugo thinks Stefan’s got the horse too pumped. They’ve galloped the legs off him now to try to settle him, but they only get that hour in the stadium to school and that’s gone, so tomorrow is do or die.’ She added vats of cream and butter to celeriac and sweet potato mash.
Watching her, Lough said nothing. Covertly observing him from the far end of the table, Beccy found her heart going out to him, understanding that as much as it hurt him to be there, he couldn’t keep away. She felt much the same as she tried to blot out the noise of Lemon eating, making appreciative humming noises as he gobbled down the softest, sweetest roast pork. The way Lough’s eyes almost devoured their hostess when she wasn’t looking upset Beccy deeply. She knew nobody ever stared at her like that, not even Lemon. Increasingly, she found her own eyes drawn to the Devil on Horseback, so incongruous to her in a domestic setting. His hair had grown quite long now. He clearly hadn’t had a cut since he’d arrived in the UK and it swept around his head in dramatic Beethoven fashion – not sleek and floppy like Hugo’s, but a great sea crest of turbulent waves and tumbling black surf. It was far too untamed and disturbing.
‘You need a haircut,’ she told him.
He looked at her in surprise.
‘I’d steer clear of Bed Hedz in Marlbury,’ she recommended kindly.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m pretty good at cutting hair, aren’t I Lem?’
‘So so.’ Lemon spoke with his mouth full, already reloading his fork.
Beccy shot him a hurt look. ‘I cut yours.’
‘You run the clippers around my Mohawk, yeah.’ He reached up to touch his yellow fin, winking at Tash. ‘Great chow, Mrs B.’
Beccy flushed, her indignation rising. Lemon was deliberately winding her up. She might not have mastered cooking, but she liked to think her hairdressing skills at least were drawing level with those of her stepsister these days. ‘I’ll cut your hair,’ she offered Lough now.
‘If you like.’ He looked uncomfortable.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Sure.’
She looked at Lemon victoriously. He gave her a ‘your funeral’ look and turned to Tash again. ‘So tell me, who’s the hot redhead with Hugo in all the vet inspection photos?’ He nodded to the laptop, open at the end of the table. The screensaver had kicked in and the Windows logo was floating around the screen. Lemon gave the mouse a nudge with his elbow and a photograph flashed up of Hugo and a pretty woman leaning their heads together as Rio trotted past.
‘Oh, that’s Stefan’s wife Kirsty. She was a work rider at Lime Tree Farm years ago.’ Tash carefully didn’t add that she was also Hugo’s girlfriend at the time. She eyed the photograph closely. They did look alarmingly intimate. She’d been too busy cooking to study it properly.
‘Luscious-looking bird.’ Lemon sighed, earning hurt looks from both Tash and Beccy. ‘They’re obviously
great
mates.’
‘We’re all close.’ Tash cleared her throat and glanced at Lough, then looked hurriedly away. His eyes were so easy to fall into.
As soon as pudding spoons were settling back into bowls with hearty congratulations, and Beccy and Lemon made leaving noises, she announced loudly that she had to call Hugo to see how the course had walked and so they must all go, and could they do night-check for her?
Lough’s eyes didn’t meet hers as he thanked her for supper and wished her goodnight.
Hugo wasn’t answering his phone so Tash went upstairs for a shower and an early night, forcing herself to read three more chapters of a very stolid racing biography before yawns finally raked her jaws and she fell asleep to dream that she was buried up to her neck in the sand arena with Dillon Rafferty’s helicopter about to land on her head while Hugo and Kirsty ran naked around the Haydown cross-country course.
On the Thursday of Kentucky, Lough and Tash competed four horses at a small novice trials in Hampshire. With nobody on the ground to help them, it was a difficult juggle. Tash’s heart-skipping jumpiness around Lough wasn’t improved by having to change at high speed and in such close quarters between phases that she got regular eyefuls of his muscles and tattoos and he walked in twice to find her flashing her sports bra. Hopelessly distracted, Tash set off across country on one of Hugo’s insane ex-racehorses with the wrong bit in his mouth and consequently had no brakes whatsoever. Perhaps inevitably, the increasing speed with which he was pelting into fences took its toll and they caught a leg at a big set of rails, propelling her out of the saddle and practically into the lap of the fence judge. Eliminated and muddied but otherwise unscathed, she took the horse back to the horsebox park, relieved at least that it was her last ride of the day.
Taking the wheel of the lorry because he said it was unsafe for her to drive after a fall, Lough insisted on navigating their way home, getting thoroughly lost somewhere the wrong side of Salisbury. The old hunting horsebox, patched up after its accident with new, improved brakes, didn’t have such luxuries as sat nav, and Tash had left the printed directions somewhere at the event.
‘I told you we should have brought my horsebox,’ Lough griped.
‘It costs twice as much in diesel,’ Tash pointed out, misdirecting him into a business park.
They stopped in a layby on a busy bypass to consult the road atlas, but it was ten years old and appeared to pre-date the bypass itself. Traffic was building up around them as rush hour started.
‘Oh crap and bugger!’ Tash howled as she tried to make sense of the map, anxious to get back for the online Kentucky coverage.
Soon Rory would be embarking on the most demanding dressage test if his life, starting with the challenge of persuading Rio into the stadium in the first place.
‘I’m fucking sorry, okay?’ Lough snarled.
‘It’s not your fault we’re lost,’ she snapped back, although she knew it was.
He glared out of the windscreen and then slumped back in the driver’s seat, the air and pent-up anger seeming to sigh right out of him.
‘That’s not why I’m sorry, Tash. You know why I’m sorry.’
She watched the traffic flying by and listened to the horses stamping in the back, only too aware that he wasn’t referring to the fact that they were lost. But was he just referring to her apparent attempts to flash him every few days and the growing spark between them, or was he referring to something more sinister, involving threats and rumours?
‘We have to talk,’ he said eventually.
It was like Hugo in reverse, she realised with mounting panic. When she tackled Hugo, saying they needed to talk, he clammed up – now she felt exactly the same. She just wanted to get home.
‘Sorry I’ve been a bit – weird,’ she managed to mumble.
His eyes swivelled in her direction and the brows shot up.
‘I get tense when Hugo’s away competing,’ she went on.
‘Sure.’
‘And I like lots of company.’
‘So I gathered.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘You trust Hugo when he’s away?’
‘Of course,’ she said, untruthfully, now embarrassed that she’d confided her fears to him about Hugo playing away. She tried to make light of it. ‘On eventing’s moral scale, he’s a saint.’
Lough’s eyes scoured her face. ‘I’ve not even got a ranking.’
‘Well, your track record’s not great,’ she agreed.
‘Yeah.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I know: horse-doping, money laundering, stealing other men’s wives.’
His final words hung in the air.
‘But all that’s changed now?’ she asked in a strangled voice.
He turned to look out of the driver’s door at commuter traffic crawling past as rush hour intensified. ‘My mother always wrote a
New Year’s resolutions list then used it as a bookmark in the romantic novels she borrowed from the library each month. It was always the same, with Find a New Man at the top. Every year, my father would blast his way back through her life, wrecking her relationships, leaving her in a mess. None of her boyfriends was ever strong enough to stand up to him.’
‘But you did.’
‘I handled it all wrong.’ He watched the high sides of a supermarket lorry slide past, its slogan boasting fresh value. ‘Bullies like him just make me see red.’
In the back of the lorry, the horses were stamping impatiently.
Suddenly, a flash of anger sparked in Tash as she took offense at the insinuation that Hugo was a bully when she felt there were far worse culprits at Haydown. ‘You should do something about Lemon, then.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how badly he treats Beccy?’
His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. ‘Let’s leave her out of this.’
‘Out of what?’
‘This.’
Tash could feel his eyes on her face again, but she didn’t dare look at him. Another juggernaut drove past them, making the old box sway and groan like a boat in a storm. She suddenly wanted a lifejacket for protection, acutely aware of every movement of Lough’s body beside hers in the cab. When he shifted forwards she was absolutely convinced that he was about to touch her.
But he just picked up the road map again to study it. ‘Right, let’s get going.’
Almost faint with relief, Tash realised their talk was at an end. Within seconds, her nervous reflex kicked in and she started to gabble: ‘I’m sure Beccy will sort things out with Lem. She hates me interfering or worrying, and always insists she’s tougher than she looks.’
Saying nothing, Lough found first gear and indicated to rejoin the bypass, sweeping aside a stormy black wave of hair to squint at a road sign ahead.
‘She’s right about your hair needing cutting.’
Without looking at her, he pulled back onto the dual carriageway. ‘Tonight’s the night, then.’
‘I bet it’ll feel great after waiting so long,’ Tash said inanely, hoping Beccy was up to the job; she’d hardly done her own hair any favours before the dreadlocks came off.
His eyes didn’t leave the road. ‘It’ll feel amazing. Trust me.’
It was several minutes before it occurred to Tash that they might not be talking about quite the same thing.
As soon as she came downstairs from showering and then kissing her sleeping children who had already been in bed when she got home, Tash opened a bottle of wine and set up the laptop to check the Kentucky action. Rory’s test was still over an hour away.
There was no sign of the others yet, but she guessed Beccy was wielding her scissors on Lough in the stables flat, which at least gave her some time to relax. Lemon in particular made her feel horribly tense, and she didn’t even want to think about Lough, although she hoped things might get easier now they’d cleared the air. She drank her first glass of wine rather too quickly and then poured herself another before getting out a big corn-fed chicken from the fridge, cramming it with garlic and onions, slapping it with butter, draping foil on top and slamming it in the Aga. She decided she’d cheat with the roast potatoes and use the frozen ones from the posh farm shop in West Fosbourne.
Washing her buttery hands then drying them on a tea towel, she picked up her BlackBerry and tried to fathom out how to send Rory a text to wish him good luck. Calling him this close to the test wouldn’t be fair, but she wanted him to know that everybody at home was thinking about him. They’d become his unofficial family now. His own clan certainly didn’t seem to be very supportive.
By the time she had typed out the message, she’d drunk the second glass of wine. She poured a third and realised that there was a new message in her inbox. It was from Beccy.
Going to Olive Branch for romantic meal. Tell Lough sorry about haircut. Please text Rory’s dressage score. Bxx
She heard a step and looked up. Lough had come straight from the shower, hair still dripping water on to his shirt, making the cotton cling to his wide shoulders.
‘Beccy can’t come now.’
‘I know.’ He stooped to pat Beetroot, who had sidled up to lean
against his leg and squint up at him, tail whisking the flagstones. ‘I told Lem to take her out.’
‘Why?’
‘You said he was mean to her, so he’s treating her to a candlelit meal. I thought you’d be pleased.’
Tash gasped in horror. That’s not what she’d meant at all.
‘According to Lem, Beccy’s just the apprentice. You’re the real stylist, so you can cut my hair tonight.’
Tash wanted to tell him that she couldn’t possibly do it, but it seemed an embarrassing overreaction, as though admitting that one touch of his head could make her foam at the mouth and start pulling his clothes off.