‘Point and shoot,’ Hugo remarked ungenerously, knowing the horse was a four-star prospect and had been expected to win hands down with Tash on board.
Beccy gritted her teeth.
She’d always lacked the finesse of her stepsister, but she rode across country with absolute determination and her adrenalin so high that she knew no fear. The fierce, competitive streak that she’d believed she had cast off during her travels was back with vengeance. Working alongside top riders had given her great insight into the drive and skills required to win, and she focused completely on the challenge. The horse didn’t put a foot wrong, and neither did Beccy. They would have came a creditable sixth in their section had they not competed
hors concours
.
Tash was over the moon. She seemed far more pleased with Beccy’s modest placing than the three wins she and Hugo clocked up between them, although Beccy was convinced that she was being condescending.
Nonetheless, Hugo was impressed enough to support her inclusion in the Haydown competition team.
‘Okay, you’ve got the gig.’ He fixed Beccy with that direct stare that turned her belly to molten lava. ‘You’d better not let us down.’
‘I won’t.’ She turned predictably red. ‘I’ll ride for my life.’
Hugo had just been through a week he never wanted to repeat and was permanently in a foul mood as a result, but for the first time in days he laughed. ‘Spoken like a true eventer. Welcome to the squad.’ He stooped to give her a congratulatory kiss on the cheek
and when he straightened up Beccy thought she might lift up like a balloon attached to his lips by static.
As the Haddenhill trials were local, they got home early for once, coming back just before the children’s bedtime. Tash rushed into the house to take over, leaving Hugo and Beccy to unload the lorry.
All Lough’s horses had gone, Beccy realised sadly. It made her feel horribly hollow. The thought of going up to the empty stables flat without Lemon there was equally daunting. They hadn’t spoken for over a week and she guessed life would get better with him gone, but she’d got used to knowing there was somebody else close by. She took a long time to rug up the horses, putting off the moment she’d have to go up.
‘Come and have supper with us.’ Hugo leant over the stable door. ‘We can plan the next few weeks.’
Looking up, Beccy couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him smile like that, his eyes creasing deliciously. Now the New Zealanders had gone, it was as though tens of tiny splinters had been removed from his face, allowing it to animate again.
Beccy beamed back at him, realising she was being invited in from the cold at last. She’d won her first stripe and it was time to start earning respect, just as she’d promised Lough she would. Riding and winning was everything now.
Twenty minutes later, standing in the kitchen and staring blankly into the fridge, Tash wished Hugo had offered to fetch a takeaway, but he’d taken a second scotch up to the bath and the local Indian didn’t deliver so far away from civilisation. She was shattered and they only had a few eggs, Cora’s processed cheese strings and some ancient salami. She hadn’t had time to go food shopping since before Badminton.
She heard his step behind her.
‘What do you want to eat?’
‘You.’
He kissed the back of her neck. It felt delicious. She could smell the soap on his skin. The next moment, his hand was undoing the buttons on the front of her shirt.
‘We mustn’t! Beccy’s coming to supper.’
‘I told her to give us an hour.’ He reached into her bra and teased out an eager nipple.
Still mud-splattered and sweat-stained from her day in the saddle, compared to Hugo’s freshly-showered cleanliness, Tash experienced a strange role reversal from the many times last season that she’d spruced up to welcome him back from a competition still wearing grass-stained breeches. He stripped her bare, laid her back on the kitchen table and tasted every piece of delicious, dirty, aching skin until it quivered and jumped with desire.
‘Beccy will be here any minute!’ She tried to wriggle away, shame-faced.
‘I’ve locked the back door.’ He held her down until she came with such a delicious burst of pleasure that she swept a huge pile of paperwork to the floor and kicked over a chair.
‘You’re mine’ – he looked down at her now – ‘and don’t forget it. Now go and change while I cook.’
In their bathroom a few minutes later, she looked at her reflection in the mirror above the basin, uncertain if she’d been forgiven or indeed if there was anything to forgive. Was temptation as much of a betrayal as true infidelity?
When Beccy wandered into the main house to find Hugo cooking a vast omelette her heart flipped over in sympathy with the sizzling contents of his pan.
‘Tash is just upstairs – open a bottle of wine and we’ll get planning.’
It was suddenly like her daydreams in the early days. Beccy allowed herself a quick fantasy that she was Haydown’s top rider, and that this was their usual debrief after competitions.
‘You look lovely,’ Tash said when she appeared, having managed just a quick flannel wash before changing into jeans, the hot water in the house having been used up by the children’s baths and then by Hugo.
Beccy flushed happily. She’d scrubbed from head to toe, anointed herself with scented oil and dressed in her favourite tie-dye dress. She now had a stake in the yard’s future, and was determined to impress.
‘Right, let’s get started.’ Hugo dished up great wedges of omelette on to cold plates. ‘I’ll just open a window – smells like a fire in a joss stick factory in here.’
‘It’s the burnt food,’ Tash told Beccy quickly, seeing her crushed
face. The pong of patchouli oil was admittedly rather overpowering, but Tash preferred it to her own horsy reek.
She worried that Beccy would be as flaky as ever, but instead she seemed shot through with a positive energy that infected them all.
Like a depleted but undefeated army, the new Haydown competition squad discussed their strategy late into the evening, consulting the big year planner and event schedules and agreeing that, with Lough gone and no Rory in play for the coming weeks, Tash would need to ride alongside Hugo at some of the bigger events as well as orchestrating the young horses at the smaller competitions with Beccy as her co-pilot.
‘Now you’ll be riding full time, I’ve asked Franny to put the word out among her cronies to bring in more hands on the yard,’ Hugo told Beccy. ‘But you’ll still act as travelling groom at the big trials and I’ll need you to groom for me in Germany.’ He consulted the planner, which had a line through most of June that indicated he would be away.
‘Of course,’ Beccy agreed, although she kept herself firmly in check. Not long ago the prospect three weeks on the road with Hugo would have had her dreaming night and day, imagining the nights they would share living in the horse box, fantasising that they’d find what they’d lost at New Year, this time with no hurry and nobody to interrupt. She knew she mustn’t risk blowing an opportunity to experience the excitement of the big European events by letting her crush run riot.
But Hugo was eyeing the planner more closely now, spotting all the events still pencilled in it for Lough during the Germany run. ‘On second thoughts, Tash should come instead.’
Both women looked at him in horror.
‘I’m needed here,’ Tash protested. ‘I’ll fly out for Jenny’s wedding and stay on to support you at Aachen if you’re selected. That’s what we always agreed.’
‘Someone needs to compete the horses here,’ Beccy pointed out.
‘You can do that. Franny will be in charge. We’ve plenty of time to get you up to speed before we go.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Tash shook her head, clearly thinking he’d gone mad. ‘Beccy can’t ride above novice, for a start, and—’
‘We’ll give the higher-level horses a break.’
‘In the middle of the season?’
‘Why not?’
‘What will the owners think?’
‘I don’t give a fuck. You’re coming with me to Germany.’
‘I am not!’
Beccy was mortified to be witnessing the Beauchampions at one another’s throats, the thin veneer on their marriage cracking. Lough had charged between them like a cavalryman.
‘I’m not leaving you here with that bloody Kiwi nearby,’ Hugo raged.
‘For Christ’s sake, Hugo. We’ve been through this!’
Beccy observed the exchange with mounting panic. It seemed only a matter of time before Tash and Hugo blew apart, just as her own life was finally starting to make sense. She couldn’t let it happen.
Hugo’s face gave nothing away, but his voice was infused with the acid of suspicion. ‘He’ll be over here as soon as my back is turned.’
‘Of course he won’t!’
‘Please stop this!’ Beccy interrupted with a shriek. ‘I’ll do whatever you tell me to.’ She demanded their attention, knowing her face was turned up to maximum red yet again, but not caring. ‘Just tell me what to do.’
They stopped arguing and turned to stare at her as though they’d forgotten she was there.
Hugo spoke first. ‘Go and get some rest: it’s been a long day. I think you should go to bed.’ Clearing his throat, he stood up and chivalrously walked her to the door, his voice softening. ‘Take no notice of us, darling. We’ll sort this out. Well ridden today.’
Nodding mutely, Beccy retreated to the stables flat to replay the day in her head, one of the best she could ever remember despite the row and the final brush-off. She hadn’t let herself down. She’d shown she could compete against the best in her class. She’d felt a part of the team and the family. And then Hugo had sent her to bed, sounding just like her late father. But he had only wanted to protect her; they both did. All was forgiven.
Climbing into bed, she lay awake, reliving every second of her cross-country round, determined to make them proud of her.
As the Beauchamps got ready for bed the argument rattled on, Radio Four droning unheeded in the bathroom while Tash finally ran her longed-for bath.
‘I just don’t see how we’ll get any time with the children,’ she pointed out. She’d studied the planner again before going upstairs, taking in the punishing schedule ahead, its dawn starts, dusk homecomings and nights spent away from home.
‘You won’t.’ Hugo marched in from the bedroom to clean his teeth. ‘My mother and Verucca can look after them.’
‘Or perhaps we can bring them along?’ she suggested, appalled at the idea of seeing them so little.
‘Impossible on this schedule. We’re hardy going to see each other as it is.’ He plunged his toothbrush into his mouth and gave her an angry look in the mirror, marking an end to the debate.
Tash understood why Hugo was being so controlling. All of Lough’s target events were still written on the year planner they’d pored over, mapped out long before everything changed, and the new schedule was carefully structured to avoid Lough and Tash competing at the same trials unless Hugo was present. The only exception was while Hugo was away in Germany. He didn’t trust her.
Leaving the taps running and heading into the bedroom to fetch a towel, she spotted his mobile phone lying on the bed and felt a snagged nail of resentment scratching at her.
She had no idea whether Hugo could be trusted either, camped out in the lorry parks two or three nights a week with carousing event riders, then heading to mainland Europe for almost a month with just Beccy as abstracted chaperone. What if V joined him there?
She paused and picked up the phone. Given a window of opportunity to check the evidence at last, and by now such a whiz with technology, she was scrolling his messages in seconds. Everything from V had been deleted.
The phone suddenly leapt to life in her hands, playing Mozart’s Horn Concerto Number Four, the ringtone assigned to British chef d’equipe Brian Sedgewick. He must be calling with the news of the shortlist for the European Championships team, straight after that evening’s selectors’ meeting.
Tash panicked as she realised Hugo would be out of the bathroom in seconds. Thrusting the phone hastily into his jeans pocket she sprang away from the bed.
At the same moment, he appeared through the door in just his boxer shorts.
‘Where is the bloody thing? I left it right here.’ The phone stopped ringing. He started rooting through his clothes.
‘I’ll just jump in that bath while it’s still hot!’ Tash belted off, face flaming.
Two minutes later she let out a yelp of alarm as Hugo lifted her clean out of the water. The look on his face told her that he definitely wasn’t about to accuse her of snooping at his texts.
‘I take it you’re on the shortlist?’ She laughed breathlessly.
‘Am I?’ He kissed from her throat to the rise of her breasts. ‘It’s gone clean out of my mind. I’ll have to call Brian back to check.’
Shortlisted for the British team, Hugo’s riding and sex drive immediately lifted a few notches, as it always did when he was presented with an opportunity to defend national honour.
Two days later at the Chatsworth trials, baking in the ongoing heatwave, they celebrated top-ten dressage scores with a moonlight flit from the lorry park to the centre of the famous maze, where Hugo drenched her in champagne and drank from every hollow before they rode one another home with breathtaking speed. Mistrust still raged between them and they couldn’t yet get close to opening their hearts, but their bodies were another matter.
Tash understood that he was laying claim to her in the only way he knew how. She longed to talk through it more, to share the sense of it, but while the sensation was so good she didn’t dare break the spell.
First out on the course and galloping into the dazzling morning sunlight the following day, Hugo saw a long stride at a new fence to the competition that year, a suspended tree trunk over a fast-running stream. Backing off, unable to see exactly what he was being asked to jump, Oil Tanker put in a half stride that left his front legs on the wrong side of the big log. His body rolled sideways over it and crashed down on to Hugo as they were both pitched into the stream.
Moments later, the horse trotted away unscathed. Hugo didn’t get up.