Nor was he in the lorry park, although she found his phone in the horsebox. Shame-faced, she checked the many unread good luck and commiseration messages cluttering the inbox. Two stuck out horribly, both listed as from Shadowfax. She recognised the name with a jolt.
Sent five minutes before his start time:
Pride comes before a fall.
Then, sent just a minute after his crash into the water:
Told you so.
Heart slamming, she held the phone like an unexploded bomb when a message suddenly came through from V.
Where r u? Thought we said meet in the Allen Grove at one? Can’t be spotted by you-know-who! Xxx
A lime pit of corrosive, angry indignation stripped her skin. How dare he! How
dare
he march around full of aggrandised hurt when he was the one being unfaithful. He had been unfaithful with V for months and months. Jealousy pulled the artery from her throat and starved her mind of oxygen as she hurled the phone at the wall.
She looked at her watch. Five past one.
Bursting out of the horsebox, she crashed straight into Lough.
‘Is Hugo around?’ He looked furious. ‘People are saying I sabotaged his ride. This has gone far enough.’
Angry tears were suddenly falling from her eyes. She knew she
looked half-mad. Sitting outside a nearby horsebox on folding chairs eating their lunch in the sunshine, several riders and their teams were watching with interest. One discreetly reached for a mobile phone and turned on the camera.
‘What is it?’ Lough took her hands in his, like ropes tethering her rocking ship to a harbour wall.
‘I can’t – I must –’ She fought the tears but they were coming hard and fast now.
‘What, Tash?’
‘It’s such a mess. Such a bloody mess. I can’t take it any more,’ she sobbed.
His eyes lifted to her face, full of hope.
She tried to pull away from him, but the harbour ropes were harnessing her now.
She felt his body against hers, hard and solid and still hot from riding across country.
‘You don’t have to take it, Tash.’
‘Tell that to Hugo!’ she raged through the tears.
‘You have no idea how much pleasure that would give me.’ He laughed suddenly, that rare laugh that she’d grown so fond of, despite its rarity, like a nightjar’s call.
Tash leant back and stared up at him, taking several frantic heartbeats to take in what he was saying.
And she knew that it was unmistakeably there, a gong struck in her chest, an inability to catch her breath, focus or see past him without the urge to fall into his arms. She wanted to throw herself against his heat and love, to blot out what was happening.
But she shook her head violently. ‘Please let me go. I don’t want that.’
He dropped his hands, his eyes so lost in hers that it was a while before she realised she was free to leave.
Then she ran as fast as she could.
In the Beauchamps’ lorry a beeping from Hugo’s phone announced a new photo-message.
Allen Grove was a wood at the far end of the estate’s park, just beyond the limit of the cross-country course, and out of bounds to the public, although those who remembered the long-format competition, which had involved miles of roads and tracks plus a
steeplechase before horses set out on the cross-country, knew it well. Tash ran all the way there.
Chest burning, legs heavy with lactic acid, she climbed over the first gate she could find and ran blindly on into the woods. But it was a huge, dense area. All she could hear were birds calling overhead, her steps crunching, her breath gasping and the distant Tannoy.
She would never find them here. It was a perfect adulterer’s lair.
She sagged back against a tree trunk and closed her eyes, grateful for the cool and privacy of the woods. But a moment’s silence gave her a hundred intense flashbacks to Lough touching her, holding her, to her excitement and shame and now, far more dangerous, her competitive streak.
It was better to keep running.
She could hear the commentary about Rory now and felt a cramp of disgrace that she had neglected him, as had they all. She turned to leave the woods the way she’d come in. Then she realised that a couple were having sex up against a tree, just a few metres away.
The woman was facing Tash, and she recognised her with immediate horror. Lucy Field, minxy blonde eventer notorious for trotting up her horses in the shortest of skirts and highest of heels at every veterinary inspection, for appearing in every nude horsy charity calendar and for sleeping her away round most of the horseboxes in the lorry park before she settled down with nice-but-dim Jamie Stanton, middle son of a great eventing dynasty.
It was Lucy, she realised, feeling faint. Hugo was screwing Lucy.
But even as she thought it she heard the man grunting and groaning out of sight and she realised he wasn’t Hugo. And when he started to speak, she knew exactly who he was.
‘Yes! Don’t stop. Bloody Jesus. Don’t stop!’
That voice had shouted at her a hundred times and more.
It was Gus. Eventing’s lovely vintage teddy bear who’d lost his stuffing. Penny’s Gus. Lime Tree’s Gus. Everybody’s Gus.
‘OHMYGOD! We’ve been seen!’ Lucy shouted suddenly.
But Tash hardly registered it. Her mind was bubbling over now, totally incapable of finding its balance. If Gus was at it and Hugo was at it, was everybody at it? Rory was forever at it … the Cole Porter song sprang into her head, rattling ludicrously with
its cheery suggestion that
birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it
…
She shook her head violently to make the song disappear.
Keep running she reminded herself. Keep moving.
Turning away as Gus and Lucy dived for cover, she sprinted back towards the safety of the horsebox, but found her stepsister had beaten her to it and was sitting on the ramp, tears streaming down her face.
‘What on earth is it, Beccy?’
‘I’m having the w-w-worse time of m-my
life
here!’ she announced theatrically, snuffling madly. ‘And now I c-can’t get in the h-h-horsebox because it’s l-locked.’
‘Is this about Lem?’ Tash had noticed they were keeping well apart.
Beccy nodded, then shook her head, then burst into tears again. Tash hugged her tightly and waited for the tears to ebb, fishing the horsebox keys from her pocket and holding them up. ‘Now you can get in and get whatever it is you need.’
Beccy shrugged and shuddered with abating tears. ‘I was going to lock myself in the loo.’
‘Ah. So was I, but we won’t both fit in there so we’ll have to take turns and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ Tash steered her to the front of the big Oakley.
Beccy rubbed her eyes and studied Tash closely. ‘Are you going to leave Hugo for Lough?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Christ, where did you get that from?’
‘Everybody’s saying it. They say that’s what the grudge match between them is all about.’
‘Well everybody’s wrong.’
Beccy sat at the table in the horsebox and began fiddling with the mobile phone that had been abandoned there. She turned to Tash. ‘So why is there a photo-message on here of you and Lough in a clinch?’
It was only after Beccy had eaten half a packet of biscuits and told Tash the gritty details of her split from Lemon that she remembered she was supposed to be grooming for Rory.
Faith hadn’t forgotten Rory, and made up for Beccy’s last-minute absence, watching him on the big screen in the arena as he flew
around, trusting The Fox who had been round clear the previous year and knew what it was all about. Less headstrong than his brother, who Hugo would ride later, he was nevertheless so agile and fleet of foot that he devoured the track. And he clearly revelled in Rory’s light, skilful handling, the partnership having cemented itself more and more with each outing.
She welcomed them home as heroes. She was so proud that she even forgave MC for swooping in at the finish again and claiming Rory. ‘
Formidable!
I must introduce you to some very interested owners,
chéri
.’
Faith scowled, but Rory’s departing look lifted her heart a little as his eyes sparkled into hers and he blew her a kiss.
She knew MC’s powerful contacts could be a lifeline for Rory, who had so few real supporters, especially now she had probably scuppered his future with Dillon by being over-demanding. Her chest compressed uncomfortably at the thought.
Once Fox’s heart rate and temperature had stabilised she led him back to his stable to wash him, rug him up and and apply leg-cooling clay before dashing across the old stable yard to check on Gus’s ride, By Dickens, who had been round earlier, glancing off the corner in Huntman’s Close to scupper their chances in an otherwise foot-perfect performance.
‘Rory went clear,’ she told Penny breathlessly. ‘He was quite brilliant given the ground is so churned up now. His fuel tank started to empty after the Quarry. Rory nursed him home with just a couple of time faults. Have you seen Lem? He borrowed my penknife and I need it back for the corkscrew.’ She held up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
‘Rory’s on the wagon,’ Penny reminded her, emerging from By Dickens’s stall where she’d been wrapping his legs in her own customised injury-avoider of chilled supermarket cool bags cut down and encased in bandaging.
‘It’s not for Rory. It’s for us.’ Faith waggled it at her.
‘You are fabulous! So like your father.’ Penny laughed, not noticing Faith’s shocked face because she’d spotted Tash arriving with a tearstained Beccy.
‘Did you see my man go, Tash?’ she called out, her berry eyes alight. ‘Bloody brilliant. He’ll be back in a minute, he’s just gone to change. You’ve got ages before Hugo goes. Have a glass of wine.’
Certain that an image of Gus and Lucy Field in the woods was flashing up on her eyeballs like a cinema trailer, Tash looked hastily away. ‘Where is Hugo?’ Their area was deserted apart from Sir Galahad pulling at a haynet and looking very chilled out despite his earlier dunking. ‘I thought he’d be here.’
‘Taken Cub out in the park.’
He was probably in Allen Grove, meeting V, she realised wretchedly.
Then she saw Lough step from Rangitoto’s stable and, grabbing Beccy, went violently in reverse.
To cheer Beccy up, Tash took her to the retail village and bought her the eventing must-have, a pair of Dubarry boots, which she knew her stepsister had always lusted after. Just as she was paying for them, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘Good to see you, Tash. Hope you’re well – your little fellow must be almost one now?’ A tall, thin figure with iron grey hair pecked at her cheeks like a blackbird plucking a worm before leaning closer and whispering through a fixed smile, ‘Make a fool of Hugo and the whole eventing world will turn against you.’
‘Who was that?’ Beccy asked as the woman stalked away.
‘Gin Seaton,’ Tash said in a frozen voice. ‘Used to have a horse with us until her husband pulled the plug, saying it was too expensive.’
She had to battle to stop herself running after lovely, kindhearted, upright Gin and scream, ‘He’s having an affair. It’s not me, it’s
him
!’ But the trade-stand assistant was holding out a keypad and asking for her pin number. As she paid for Beccy’s boots she decided to make a determined effort to be a good wife, however difficult Hugo was trying to make things.
She had never felt so wretched about her marriage and so certain that it was on the rocks.
They headed to the arena to watch Hugo set off, reuniting with the au pairs and the children who were in roaring sprits. But when she tried to get close to Hugo in the collecting ring, Tash was almost mown down by a rival’s horse and he snapped that she should rejoin the children beyond the fence and stop distracting him. Already standing well back, Jenny gave Tash a sympathetic look. Then her eyes flashed with warning and Tash saw Lough riding in from the
warm-up area, followed by Lemon who was carrying buckets full of equipment and spares, his Mohawk dyed black in a gesture of Kiwi patriotism. She fled behind the barriers before Hugo could start picking fights.
As soon as Tash had sweet-talked the officials into letting her little posse watch Hugo’s round in the competitors’ tent, Alicia lurched up to join them, positively flying after a very merry lunch with her cronies.
‘Just heard you’ve taken that lovely Kiwi boy as a lover,’ she slurred in a stage whisper as she claimed the chair beside Tash. ‘Bravo! The first time I got Henry to sit up and take notice again after the boys were born was when Dickie Bingley-Bowers and I were caught in flagrante. Told you the secret is to get them to see you as a desirable woman again. Got a light? Is that Hugo?’
Tash wasn’t listening as Hugo streaked off through the start to the usual whoops of applause, The Cub battling for his head, giraffing up his neck in front of the first fence, chestnut ears pricked.
From the very beginning it was a round marked with the stroke of brilliance that wins Badminton. The horse was fresh and bravely over-jumping, despite all the work Jenny and Hugo had put in to take the edge off him before the start, yet Hugo stayed with him, worked with him and settled him into rhythm without ever fighting him. Like his father Snob, the only horse in history to have won Badminton three times in a row, Cub was fearless, clever and very, very bold. He was just Hugo’s sort, rider and horse ideally matched in mercurial brilliance.
Then they got to the spine of the course, the testing Vicarage Fields run where big fence after big fence, coming in quick succession, required horse and rider to cross and re-cross the huge, gaping ditch. The television camera mounted on a quad bike loomed up alongside Hugo.
From the first leap at the Countryside Turn, crossing the ditch and banking up to an angled brush, it was obvious something had gone wrong. The Cub pecked on landing and Hugo’s weight seemed to shift sideways, throwing him out of balance so that he reached forwards to grab at the chestnut neck and right himself, looking down.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tash yelped, covering her mouth in terror.
Such was his ability, Hugo turned without hesitating for the accuracy
demanding hexagons that spanned the ditch once more and kicked on. The horse committed to the stride and flew over the first. Again Hugo jolted sideways on landing, but recovered and turned to ride for the second element with equal flair. It was only when he came closer to the bike camera once more that Tash – and the rest of the tent – realised what had happened.