Kiss and Tell (80 page)

‘Ah, young love.’ Penny sighed. ‘If Gus goes overseas I change the locks and get out the Ben & Jerrys.’

Lough rode up hurriedly, having just come out of the dressage arena. ‘Tash! They’re calling your number. You have two minutes or you’ll be disqualified.’

‘Oh God.’ The nerves seized her, along with blind panic because she must have misread the start times and the horse wasn’t worked in properly.

She rode so defensively that both her horses failed to get close to the placings, although she was just grateful that she hadn’t fallen off.

‘You’ll do better next time,’ Lough told her as she drove them home. He was in a black mood despite winning prize money on his rides.

‘I’m sorry I let you down.’ She chewed her lip guiltily, knowing that he’d sacrificed a great deal of time to work with her and her horses in recent weeks, and so far all her competition results had been dismal. Hugo was bound to be disappointed.

When they returned to Haydown at dusk with aching muscles, Beccy and Lemon helped them unload in a high state of animation.

‘Nell Cottrell’s done a kiss and tell on Dillon Rafferty in the papers!’ Beccy waved the
Mail on Sunday
in front of Tash as she was unloading batty Lauren Bacall, making the horse pull back and almost wrench her arm from its socket. ‘She says that Sylva Frost
will basically shag anything that moves, including … wait for it … Rory! His photo’s in here.
And
you and Hugo get a mention.’

‘Oh Christ, he’ll go mad.’ Tash took the paper, but their names were merely listed as part of the eventing elite with whom Dillon and Sylva now socialised, and had contributed to their love affair.

She tried to visualise this inner circle, but if she and Sylva were to be depicted in a Venn diagram these days, they’d occupy two separate circles. Sylva had quite lost interest in her since New Year, despite a few tentative phone messages from Tash, including a request for her cabbage soup recipe. She felt quite hurt, but consoled herself with the notion that Sylva was the sort of friend who called ten times a day when she was bored and never at all if she was busy, as she clearly was now.

Once the horses were settled, Beccy and Lemon mucked out the lorry while she and Lough cleaned their competition bridles in the huge tack room, the wood-burner glowing away in the corner.

‘Lem and Beccy make an odd couple don’t you think?’ she asked idly.

‘Not for me to say.’

‘But they’re lovers now, don’t you think?’

‘No fucking idea,’ he said brusquely, uncomfortable with the topic.

‘I always assumed he was gay.’

She looked at him questioningly, but Lough didn’t reply, making Tash jumpy given all the bad things she already knew about Lemon. If Lough wouldn’t be drawn on the subject, it didn’t bode well. She was worried about Beccy.

‘Surely you two talk sometimes?’

‘Only about the horses. Don’t you talk to your sister?’

‘Not a lot,’ she admitted. ‘She’s a complicated character.’ She dropped her voice in case Beccy came in and realised she was being talked about. ‘She’s had a tough time in the past few years.’

Lough watched Tash clean a saddle, turning it this way and that to cover each curving surface with a damp, soapy cloth.

‘Beccy’s grown a lot calmer since she’s been here,’ Tash went on. ‘I think this place is good for her.’

Lough said nothing, watching silently as Tash gripped the saddle between her thighs like a cello and rubbed saddle soap into the panels, long neck bent as her head lowered in concentration, hair
falling into her eyes. It was so unintentionally erotic, he was spellbound.

‘Lem had better look after her,’ she said, looking up.

‘It’s her life,’ he muttered.

‘Hugo will disapprove.’

He looked away.

‘He hates relationships on the yard. He says they get in the way of horsemanship.’

‘You two should divorce then.’

‘Not
us
.’ She dropped her sponge back in the soap tub and glanced at her watch. ‘I must take over the children’s bath time.’ She stood up to leave. ‘Do you want supper later?’

Lough looked up in surprise. ‘Cabbage soup?’

It was over a week since they’d eaten together because Tash had been on her crash diet. She looked sensational, her cheekbones heightened in her face, her waist more defined in that long, languid body, but Lough preferred sharing her table to admiring her from a distance any day. His spirits lifted like hot ash at the thought of one last meal together.

But then she ruined it. ‘I’m trying out a sea bass recipe I want to cook for Hugo the night he gets home. I thought I’d invite Beccy and Lemon too. We can see if I’m right about them.’

‘I said I’d meet Faith for a drink at the Olive Branch.’

Tash nodded, surprised to find herself feeling jealous. She’d wanted to make amends for letting him down today, and for being such lousy company recently. She had used the excuse of her cabbage soup diet to keep him away all week, but she knew a lot of it was fear. Lough’s intensity frightened her, along with the life he had left behind in New Zealand. She badly wanted to talk to Hugo about it. Now that he was almost home, she felt more confident that Lough would fit in and prosper at Haydown, and she told herself that she mustn’t resent him having his own social life.

‘Faith is lovely,’ she said encouragingly, heading for the door. ‘Enjoy your date.’

He said nothing.

That evening, blown out not only by Lough, but also by Beccy and Lemon who had gone to the Basingford multiplex together, Tash put the sea bass in the freezer and decided to give the diet another
day. Feeling virtuously slim, she tried on clothes to select something to welcome Hugo home in, starting with the most important layer.

But all the sexily supportive, figure enhancing underwear that she had bought before Christmas no longer fitted, her figure so altered by increased fitness and decreased comfort eating that she looked silly in the vast lacy pants and bras that bagged around her now-modest boobs like tropical butterfly nets capturing two humble cabbage whites. No longer breastfeeding, her belly almost completely flat and her buttock cheeks as hard as bowling balls from so many hours in the saddle, she had no need of control lingerie. Yet her laundry-faded pre-pregnancy Sloggi knickers and sports bras were far less appealing.

She stood naked in front of the mirror, trying to remember what she had done with the basque and suspender set that she’d worn beneath her wedding dress. Hugo had loved it, but she hadn’t worn it since.

‘Seven years,’ she said out loud, brought up short by the realisation that so much time had passed.

The months and years had seemed to accelerate once the children had arrived, propelling her through life almost too fast to keep count. Amery was six months old now, yet it seemed a moment ago that she was carrying the floppy, toasty little newborn around on her collarbone like a fat little brooch.

She stared at her naked reflection, amazed her body had recovered from so much trauma, although she had her scar and a few tell-tale stretch marks just above her hips, already fading from red to silver.

She still recalled pointing out her mother’s stretch marks for the first time, on holiday at the age of about ten and asking her what they were, to which Alexandra had barely lifted her head from her sunlounger to say: ‘They’re baby brushstrokes, painted there to remind me how lucky I am to have my three beautiful children.’

Suddenly Tash hit upon an idea. She could add to the baby brushstrokes. Hugo would love it, and it was far more personal than badly fitting underwear or elaborate sea bass. She could practise tonight.

Lough only stayed for one drink in the Olive Branch, though Faith was at least a brooding, malcontent ally.

He felt bad that he’d done so little to follow up his promise to Rory to look out for her, although he always got the impression that she was the ultimate self-preservationist.

She was muttering furiously about Nell Cottrell’s
Mail
exposé: ‘Rory and Sylva were hardly secret lovers; Sylva used him for sex. He gets that a lot: women exploit him’. She also grumbled about Lemon and Beccy: ‘They’re so horribly loved up, have you noticed? He calls her Limey. “Lemon and Limey”, I ask you! Ugh!’

So Tash had been right. He hadn’t even noticed. He wished that he was eating with her now in the vast, messy Haydown kitchen. But he knew he had to immunise himself against Hugo returning to take over, a plague that would sweep through the yard and take control, wiping him out if he wasn’t prepared.

Faith was talking about her plans for the season. The Moncrieffs obviously worked her far harder than she had at Haydown, but gave her more direction and guidance to compensate, with daily lessons, lots of outings and a competition plan for White Lies.

‘He’s a bit of a crock and he’s been off the circuit for a few years, but he was four-star in his heyday so Gus thinks he’ll enjoy it. Whitey’s nothing to Rio’s raw talent, of course, but he’s safe and steady.’

‘Tell me, why d’you let Rory ride that stallion of yours while you struggle with his cast-offs?’ Lough asked.

She looked at him levelly. ‘Unrequited love. Go figure. It’s the pits.’

He watched her closely, but she then reached out and dug him jovially in the ribs.

‘I do it because Rory rides better than me,’ she laughed. ‘And he’s got Hugo’s Mogo sponsorship deal covering him, which picks up the biggest tabs.’

Lough thought Rory was unbelievably spoiled, his silver spoon still poking out of his mouth. If he was dreading Hugo coming back, the added weight of Rory reappearing – and sharing his little safe house once more – demoralised him utterly.

But Faith was clearly as excited as Tash about the Haydown duo’s imminent return, still chattering about Rory’s talent as she stomped outside with him to say goodbye, pulling a woolly hat over her head and pausing to admire the old Yamaha Bandit he’d picked up cheap at auction.

‘Gus has just bought himself a motorbike too,’ she told him. ‘Bright green thing. He says it’s his mid-life crisis, but Penny says he had one of those years ago and she calls the bike AWH. Gus thought that was really cool until she explained it stood for Accident Waiting to Happen. They are funny. Thanks for the drink.’ She clambered on to her modest bicycle and pedalled back to Lime Tree Farm.

Lough sliced through the lanes, wishing he had some of Faith Brakespear’s self belief.

When Lough came in through Haydown’s electric gates, the Roadies snarled and snapped at his tyres as usual, thinking he was planning to make off with all the tack and red diesel.

All the downstairs lights in the main house glowed welcomingly, and his stomach let out a longing rumble.

It wasn’t yet nine. He could just put his head round the door and pass on the Lemon and Limey comment, which wasn’t his style at all, but was the only reason he could come up with for seeing Tash.

The kitchen was deserted, the Bitches of Eastwick crowded on the sofa as usual, the Rat Pack clawing and grinning at his legs.

Lough wandered along the back lobby, stooping to stroke Beetroot who walked into him lovingly from the direction of the study, where Tash camped out at all times when she was in the house and the children were asleep, painting and doing paperwork, checking online scoreboards if Hugo was competing abroad.

He pushed the door.

She was totally naked, her back to him, focused upon her reflection in an old gilt-framed mirror propped up on a chair. She was painting with such absorption that she didn’t realise he was there. It was the most amazing canvas he’d ever seen.

Her torso was covered with intricate swirls, flowers, horses and wildlife, painted with incredible lightness and delicacy. They reminded him of the most beautiful Maori t
moko work.

For a long time he risked detection, unable to drag his guilty eyes away, so torn apart by love and longing that his heart felt ready to rip itself out of his chest.

The radio was on – a digital channel playing some sort of back-to-back bluesy folk. He recognised the song but not the artist. ‘Fields of Gold’. The voice was smoky and rich, laced with life and love and regret.

Lough backed reluctantly away, stealing through the house and out into the night where yet another spring frost lit by a full moon was turning the gardens, parkland and home paddocks into fields of silver.

Chapter 52

While Jenny was dispatched in the horsebox to Heathrow Animal Centre to collect the horses that had just flown back from the States, Beccy was allotted the task of meeting the passenger flight later that evening.

‘You’d think Tash would go herself,’ she grumbled to Faith, who had hacked up from Lime Tree Farm to see if they were back yet, only to find Beccy bad-temperedly clearing out the tiny boot of her car. ‘I’d be desperate to see Hugo after all those weeks apart.’ She hid her blushes in frantic tidying.

Faith was light-headed with anticipation, knowing that however much she kept reminding herself she must play it cool and not crowd Rory, fate had intervened. She couldn’t let Beccy be sent as a taxi service to Hugo after the New Year’s Eve encounter. It would be cruel.