Kiss and Tell (50 page)

A week later, left alone at Haydown again, Tash cheered herself up by indulging in a shopping spree. Spending several late nights on the laptop monitoring Hugo’s progress in the Southern Hemisphere’s only four-star three day event, she honed her online retail skills buying uplift and control undies from online stores in between checking the Adelaide scoreboard. How anybody could spend so much on kinky, corrective and seductive underwear in one week appalled her afterwards, but Tash was soon all too familiar with the hazards of the click-and-buy culture. By the time she knew the final score in Oz, she had plundered La Senza, Agent Provocateur and Victoria’s Secret.

But her late-night vigils weren’t in vain. Hugo rewarded her nocturnal support with his best four-star result of the year, winning the Adelaide trials on Oil Tanker, a wiry little young thoroughbred borrowed from Australian rider Sandy Hunter.

In another time zone, Hugo was also discovering the delight of impulse purchases. He liked the little bay horse he had ridden to victory so much that he’d struck a deal with Sandy then and there, certain he could secure an owner back in the UK.

Tash phoned him on his mobile shortly after the awards ceremony.

‘You stayed up!’ he laughed.

‘I have a great surprise for you when you get home,’ she promised him after demanding a blow-by-blow account of the competition, fighting not to let her yawns be heard.

‘I’m bringing a surprise back with me too.’

‘I just want
you
back.’

‘When you ride, think of me,’ he spoke into the phone in a hair-tingling whisper.

While Hugo was away, Tash tried and failed to summon the nerve to get on a horse again, using the excuse that most of the horses were having their annual holiday and she still had commissions to
finish – besides which, Rory was more than capable of taking up the slack now so many horses were turned away on their winter breaks. Back on the wagon and getting early nights, he was riding the newly backed babies brilliantly.

When she was working on the yard, Tash was too preoccupied by her own worries to pick up much on the atmosphere there, not noticing the unholy trinity of Beccy, Lemon and Faith sniping in one corner while Rory and Jenny were trying to ignore them in another. As Rory’s dislike of Lemon intensified, so the little Kiwi increasingly froze him out and sought to get Faith on side with nights out at the Olive Branch or the Marlbury metroplex.

Still struggling daily with the tractor, Tash found herself relying on Rory.

He drove the ancient, cantankerous Massey Ferguson with indecent speed and unfair skill, whipping huge haylage bales, straw bales and pallets of feed in and out of the courtyards with balletic grace. Tash and Vasilly couldn’t even get it started.

‘Tractors, horses, women – I ride them all brilliantly,’ Rory boasted.

Tash appreciated his company in the evenings, which stemmed her loneliness and somewhat limited her increasing addiction to Banter and internet shopping. Rory was great company and, underneath the bravura, far less big-headed than at first impression.

‘Hugo says that if I don’t stay sober he won’t take me to the States in the New Year.’

‘The States?’

‘For winter training with MC and the Swede … Jensen Stefansen?’

‘Stefan Johanssen. He’s won Kentucky three times. Married to Kirsty.’

‘Yeah. Them. They’re coached by Janet Madsen. She’s a legend – you know how hard it is to get a session with her?’

‘I’ve trained with her out there.’

‘Of course. But Hugo says you won’t be going this year, so I get to play in MC’s barn instead.’

‘Good for you.’ Tash nodded encouragingly, although her heart was hollow at the thought of Hugo being away for most of January and all of February. ‘I have the kids to think about, and this end to run.’

‘Exactly.’ Rory hugged her gratefully. ‘You have no idea how much this means to me. I just pray that I don’t goof up.’

‘Why should you? You ride brilliantly.’

‘Got to prove myself.’

‘I think Hugo realises how good you are.’

‘Not just Hugo, everyone. My family, the selectors, Dillon,

Faith.’ ‘Faith?’

Rory’s cheeks striped red and he changed the subject, asking how Hugo was getting on in Australia.

‘Good. He’s off to New Zealand tomorrow.’

‘Bet you wish you were competing out there, too.’

She shrugged.

‘We talked a lot about you in France. MC reckons you’ll never come back to competitive riding. Says you’re not at all like those steel-thighed old four-star mothers that take two nags round Badminton three months after dropping a sprog. You’re more of an earth mother, a home-maker. I see you baking Victoria sponges and leading toddlers around Haydown on Shetlands. You’re so solid, Tash. You’re great.’

Staying up late to track Hugo’s progress at Puhinui, Tash threw herself into her painting, and occasionally sought solace on the internet as she waited for the online scoreboards to update. Her ‘click to buy’ shopping habit was getting out of hand.

Addiction planted, she decided to find out whether it was possible to buy a tractor online. It was. So she did.

Fascinated, she looked for a replacement car for the au pairs. One was secured and paid for via secure server in less than half an hour.

‘Jesus! Thank God you can’t buy horses this way,’ she gasped, terrified and exhilarated by what she had just done.

Then …

She had to force herself to take a break before she added two Shetlands for the children, plus a safe cob for herself, to her virtual shopping basket.

‘Please don’t tell me you’ve bought this one as well?’ she asked Hugo when he woke her with a call at six the following morning to announce that he’d come second in Puhinui. There was talking and laughter in the background; he was obviously celebrating with connections.

Yet his response was muted. ‘I’ve just found out why Lough hasn’t come to England.’

‘Is he there, then?’

‘Of course not. Nobody’s seen him for weeks, although I gather he was in custody for quite a while.’

‘Custody?’ Tash sat bolt upright. ‘Are you saying he’s been arrested? What for?’

‘Nobody seems to know, but it’s not exactly news to anybody over here. He’s so far on the wrong side of the tracks he has his own branch line.’

In her room overlooking the courtyard, Beccy was awake in the early hours, as she often was these days, panicking about everything and anything, though she knew that these worries would disappear with daylight and common sense. Padding around restlessly, she went to make herself a cup of tea and was surprised to find that the kettle had only just boiled. She cocked her head to listen for sounds of life from Lemon’s room, but all was silent until the water began to bubble. She took her tea and a big bowl of cereal back to her room and picked up her mobile phone to look at her old texts from Lough. They no longer gave her joy, instead curdling the panic in her belly. She’d been such a childish, hot-headed idiot creating her own fantasy world, unable to conceive that it would threaten to impact so horrendously on real life. But that was how she’d always approached life, and was probably why she was where she was now, rattling towards thirty with nothing to show for it except a pact that she’d finally start copulating.

Faith and Lemon seemed so much more self-assured than Beccy felt, for all her world travels. They also made her feel left out, their upfront attitudes and angry energy such a direct match, whereas she was secretive and vacillating, taking refuge in her daydreams. Every time she thought about the Libido-ration pact, she was riven with shame and fear. That wasn’t in her romantic game-plan. But then, she reminded herself, just look where her romantic game-plan had got her.

She composed another text to Lough:
Please send Lemon and the horses back to New Zealand. Do not come here. You are not welcome any more.

But she couldn’t send it, frightened of what it might kick off. She preferred to bury her head in the sand, or beneath her pillow, if only she could sleep.

Yet, quite incapable of leaving the itch alone now that she’d let it twitch against her nerve endings, she sent a different message that simply read
How are you? Where are you?
She wanted to know how much imminent danger she was in.

Beccy paced around her little room some more, chewing her nails until, unable to bear being alone with her thoughts a moment longer, she got dressed and went outside.

When Lemon appeared on the yard at six-thirty to start putting out morning feeds, he realised that the lights were on in the indoor school.

Beccy was riding one of the youngsters, both so absorbed in their work that they didn’t see him come in. The horse was going well – really well. Last time Lemon had seen him, he’d been tripping around with his nose in the air like a real baby; now he was carrying himself properly, his body a curved bow of growing strength. Beccy had a real talent with the novices, showing a quiet courage and steely determination at odds with her usual vague manner.

But the illusion was shattered when Tash burst in to the school, still in her pyjamas, a groggy child in each arm.

‘Lem! There you are!’

At that moment Beccy’s horse shied and stormed up to the far end of the arena, fly-bucking with alarm and despatching its rider into the sand.

By the time Beccy had caught the horse and led him back to the mounting block, Tash had dashed out again.

‘What was that all about?’

‘I just had to convince her it’s all cool with Lough, yeah.’

‘Why? What’s going on?’ Beccy panicked that it had something to do with her text.

‘He’s been in serious trouble. He was detained trying to fly out of Auckland and his passport taken away. But he can leave the country now.’

‘Detained for what?’ Beccy demanded, her skin icy.

‘I don’t know.’ He looked shifty.

‘He hasn’t done anything seriously wrong?’

‘I guess not.’ Lemon shrugged. ‘After all, they can’t find a body.’

‘A
body
?’

Chapter 32

‘I am
not
spending Christmas with your ex-wife!’ Nell screamed at Dillon. ‘Not, not, not, NOT!’

‘I think that’s clear.’

‘Just what does the bitch think we have going on here? A fucking kibbutz?’

‘It’s the first time I’ll have my daughters in the UK over Christmas. Fawn has come a long way.’

‘Well she can fuck a long way off if she thinks she’ll be getting a turkey leg and a chipolata off my family.’

‘We’re not spending Christmas day with your family.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me.’

‘But everyone will be there!’

‘Everyone? Joseph, Mary and Barack Obama? Angelina Jolie and Oprah? Madonna and her orphans?’

‘Trudy will be there.’ She sounded pleading. ‘You love Trudy.’

‘And I have children with Fawn,’ he pacified. ‘I owe it to her – and them – to break bread at Christmas. We’ll all be here at West Oddford. I want you to be a part of that, Nell.’

With that the last word on the matter, he wandered off to have a meeting with his farm manager.

But Nell couldn’t let it rest. She secretly hated Fawn. In truth, she even struggled with Pom and Blueberry, who were sweet little minimes of Fawn, with their mother’s East Coast accent and prim smartness.

She hadn’t seen Dillon for almost a week while he was yet again spending time with his children and taking advantage of the Johnston’s Malibu guest lodge, and now she faced the prospect of Christmas with his family
including
the ex in-laws.

Taking Giselle for a play-date with young Garfield Belling, Nell had a heart-to-heart with her friend Ellen in her cosy Oddlode cottage, which smelled of the pine, holly and ivy that decorated its heavy beams. Carols were playing on the radio and there were freshly baked mince pies cooling on a rack in the kitchen.

‘He’s so bloody pig-headed.’ Nell stomped through to the sitting
room to claim the best sofa before raking scatter cushions on to her lap to hug for comfort.

Ellen, heavily pregnant, waddled after her bearing mugs of tea, with Postman Pat puzzles and Thomas the Tank Engine books clutched beneath her arms for distraction purposes. ‘He’s a rock star that wants to be a farmer.’ She handed the books and puzzles down to toddlers Garfield and Gigi.

‘So?’

‘I married an ex fraudster playboy who always wanted to be a cartoonist.’ She sank gratefully into a chair. ‘And I get the speech bubbles, not the crime thrillers.’

‘Spurs is divine.’

‘We’re a boring married couple these days. You have to decide if you want to be a farmer’s wife.’

‘I want to be Dillon Rafferty’s wife.’

‘You think he’s going to propose?’

‘I think he was close to it in South Africa: really gentle and sweet, wanting to be alone together. But the PR team there were amazing and there were
so
many parties it just didn’t happen for us.’

Ellen gathered Gigi into a giggling hug of butterfly kisses and raspberries. ‘You have to ask yourself whether it’s Dillon you really want?’ She knew Nell well and loved her dearly, and wasn’t alone among those many friends worrying that this relationship was very damaging for her.

‘Of course I want him!’

‘And what about Milo?’

‘He’s married.’ Nell glared at the Christmas lights shaped like little angels that were draped from the big stone mantel.

‘Doesn’t mean that you have to be married to compete.’

‘Yes I do. He always has the upper hand.’

‘The upper hand in marriage,’ Ellen sighed. ‘Do you love Dillon more than Milo?’

‘Differently.’

Ellen rested Gigi on her lap and pressed her chin to the little girl’s head, staring fixedly at her friend. ‘I want you to think very, very hard about this, Nell.’

Nell thought very hard for a nanosecond.

‘If it weren’t for the cheese, he’d be so totally, totally perfect,’ she sighed.

‘A farmer’s wife must like his cheese.’

Nell let out a sceptical snort. ‘He makes one called “I love Ewe” that’s shaped like a heart. It’s flavoured with cranberries. Horribly tart.’