Big Cats and Kitten Heels

by Claire Peate

  “Nope,” said Cathy, “Henna is. I’m on washing-up duty.” Her phone beeped and gingerly she took it out of her pocket and checked the text. She sighed and put it back.

  “Well, I saw Henna just now,” said Louisa groggily, helping herself to an orange juice from the hugely impressive fridge, “and no way was she in a condition to prepare food.”

  “For the love of God…” Laura strode into the kitchen and double-checked her Schedule & Rota (edition 3). Her well-drawn-up plans were going to ruin.

  I realised, too late, that Louisa and Cathy were suddenly nowhere to be seen. They had disappeared, leaving just Laura and me in the kitchen. Smart girls! And now there was no way I could sneak off. I was exposed.

  “It will just have to be you and me then.” Laura sized me up and began to roll up her sleeves. “Let’s hope last night’s dinner disaster was just a one-off. You get the stuff for the fry up ready and I’ll slice the loaf.”

  “But,” I began, ready to have a full-blown whine. It wasn’t fair! I had the crappiest room and now I had nearly all the chores to do myself. I was a veritable Cinderella.

  “What?” Laura turned squarely to face me. In an instant my courage began to fail me.

  “It’s just … not fair. That’s all,” I faltered. “I mean, I ruined dinner last night and now I’ve got to do breakfast this morning. Just because I didn’t get completely arseholed last night doesn’t mean I should pick up everyone else’s chores.” I scowled. I felt about fourteen years old again.

  “Look.” Laura pulled out a marker pen from her tool belt and went up to the board. “You’ll be excused lunch preparation tomorrow and I’ll put Henna on in your place. Happy now?”

  “Yes,” I said sulkily. What else did she have in that tool belt? I craned my neck to look inside as she repositioned the marker pen back where it came from. I saw a small ruler, two pencils, a pad of paper and a torch. She zipped up the belt.

  “Good! Now get the eggs, Rachel.”

  There was something about Laura that didn’t cow me like it did Henna. I couldn’t really put my finger on it, perhaps it was that if she ever tried nutting me I’d probably retaliate, being at least as tall as she is, probably taller. Maybe it was because I’d seen a vulnerable side to her. I had seen her drunk last night, fawning over Gwyn and trying to seduce him by listing her achievements in field combat. Bless her, it was tragic really.

  I was probably safe though, as she didn’t seem tempted to nut me. She brought the frying pan over and while we cracked eggs and fried bacon she regaled me with stories from her weekends spent bivouacking on “missions”. I quickly realised that the best course of action with Laura would be to follow orders blindly and not question her authority. After all, Louisa had put her in charge and it was Louisa’s weekend, so who were we to question anything?

  Besides, I think Laura quite liked me for being a dependable sort of girl, and not quite as flaky as some of the others that morning; I hadn’t been sick at all. Over the beans she confided in me that I’d “done well” last night, taking charge of the farmer situation, which made me feel all proud, like I’d been congratulated by my boss.

  Henna stumbled into the kitchen just as Laura and I were serving up.

  “Oh. Oh God.” She threw her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, I don’t think I can eat anything. Or cook. I feel so sick.”

  “Well, don’t then,” Laura spat. “I’ve changed you to lunch preparation tomorrow – it’s all on Edition Four of the Schedule & Rota over there. You’ll be sober by then, won’t you?”

  “Edition four?”

  “Yes. I rewrote it while you were throwing up in your en suite bathroom.”

  Henna’s eyes flicked over to me to see if I’d registered the remark about the en suite. I suppressed a smile and stirred the burnt and blackened beans. Shit.

  “Did I sign that off?” Henna grumbled argumentatively. “I thought the rule was that we had to sign off each edition. Otherwise how can we keep track of what you’re making us do?”

  “Next time I’ll visit you mid-puke. Any objections to edition four?”

  Henna glowered. “No.”

  She peered again at the Schedule & Rota and sighed. Overnight Henna had morphed from the little lively flirty person of yesterday evening into some sort of walking-dead. The bruise was now a large pinky purple blotch below her hairline which, along with the grey bags under her eyes and the sallow post-party complexion gave her face a sort of horrific rainbow-look. “I am so going for a facial today,” she wailed, looking at herself in the hall mirror. “There’s no way I can pull any attractive Welsh farmers looking like an extra in a zombie film”.

  “Excuse me but there’s no way you’re going to pull an attractive Welsh farmer at all on my hen do,” said Louisa, breezing back into the kitchen and dropping off her empty glass in the sink. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” Henna scratched her head and winced as she caught the bruise.

  “You can have the vet if you really want…” Louisa offered.

  “Oh cheers for that,” Henna said miserably. “Rachel, I can’t remember – was the vet good looking?”

  “No,” I snorted, “he was old and grey and haggard.”

  “Like really old and grey or just a bit old and grey. Like Richard Gere?”

  “Henna, it is a definite no! He was no Richard Gere. How much did you drink?”

  “I don’t know. Loads. I bet I couldn’t even pull an ugly vet looking like this. Look at me! I’m a mess!”

  “Good job we’re off to the spa day,” I said perkily, skimming off the salvaged beans from the surface of the pan under the close supervision of Laura.

  “Good woman!” She slapped me on the back.

  Henna raised her eyebrows, her lips framing an “oooooh” at me for being in Laura’s good books. I winked at her.

  Laura strode out to the hallway and, grabbing the beater, she banged on the impressive gong that stood in the corner, summoning us all to the dining room.

  Within five minutes everyone had managed to sit down at the table and eat something, although some were a little green around the cheeks. I devoured my fry-up and stared out of the mullioned windows at the sheep in the field below. What did they see last night when they were making that awful noise? Poor things. I craned my neck, trying to spot any blood on the grass but I couldn’t quite see that far from where I was sitting. And besides, I didn’t really want to see – it would put me right off my bacon.

  “You’re rather jolly this morning,” scowled Louisa, slowly spreading marmalade on her toast, as she had been doing for a good five minutes without getting any nearer to actually eating it. “Are you feeling smug that you didn’t drink as much as the rest of us?”

  “Oh no,” I said, still grinning from ear to ear. “I was just thinking about last night. He was pretty nice looking, wasn’t he, that Gwynfor chap?”

  “Do you think the farmer knew we were tipsy?” Henna asked, pushing her sausage around her plate. “You were fairly sober at that point, Rachel. We didn’t make too much of an arse of ourselves, did we?”

  A quick montage of scenes ran through my head from last night: hands wandering and rewandering on Gwyn’s thighs. Henna “accidentally” bumping into him in the hallway and even Cathy’s pissed application of lipstick to her lips and cheeks, right in front of him.

  “I would say,” I started slowly, choosing my words carefully not to offend anyone, “that everyone was a little worse for wear last night and it might have been noticed by him…”

  “Nooooo.” Louisa clapped her hand to her forehead. “What about me? Was I really drunk?”

  “Louisa, you put your hand on his thigh –”

  “No!”

  “Several times actually.” I involuntarily grinned, remembering the expression on his face as he removed her hand each time. It had been a mix of half alarm and half amusement.

  “I didn’t?”

  “You did,” Henna chimed in, “definitely more than once i
f I remember correctly. Which I probably don’t actually…”

  “Oh I can’t believe I was so obvious. Did he look like he minded?”

  “No,” I laughed, “not much. He did look quite glad that the vet arrived though. I think five garrulous girls were a bit too much for one man.”

  “I think you should stop looking so smug anyway, just because you can hold your drink better than the rest of us. On which note,” she said, turning to Laura, “I heard you throwing up in your bathroom this morning.”

  Henna let out a squeal of delight at Laura’s expense before clamping her hand over her mouth.

  “Well, if we’re going to single people out I heard you throwing up all over your bedroom last night,” Laura returned to Louisa, “and Cathy was making a lot of dry heaving noises this morning.”

  “Could you hear that?” Cathy looked stricken. “Oh, I’m so ashamed. I didn’t actually throw up though.”

  “At least you all got to your bedrooms,” Henna said, still pushing her sausage around her plate. “I must have passed out on the landing. I woke up wrapped round the base of a giant vase this morning and my back is killing me. And I look like shit.” She looked pointedly at Laura and tentatively touched her bruise. Laura stared blankly at her and carried on chewing her toast.

  “I wonder how Gwynfor got on with the vet?” mused Louisa, looking dreamily out of the windows to the sheep field. “Do you think it was a big cat out there last night?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I did hear something outside the house later that night. At about four in the morning.” I told them about the snapping of twigs – there had definitely been something out there.

  “Could have been a fox,” said Laura, “or a badger. They’re pretty big.”

  “Could have been the cat,” I said.

  “Do you think we should stop by Gwyn’s farm this morning and ask him what the vet’s verdict was?” Louisa asked lightly.

  “No way!” Laura was firm. “We have to be at the Health Spa in forty minutes and there’s still the breakfast things to clear away and everyone has to pack their stuff. In fact,” she declared rising up from her chair, “we should be getting ready right now,” and with that she bounded up from her chair and took charge of us like unruly squaddies in the field.

  12

  We set off for the health spa at half past nine with Laura energetically pounding the gong to round us up from our bedrooms and marshalling us through to the hall and out towards the cars.

  “Honestly,” mumbled Henna threateningly as she was herded out to the driveway, “who does she think she is? Arnold-bloody-Schwarzenegger?”

  Cathy and I had been assigned as the drivers so Laura took us aside and with the help of a pre-marked-up ordnance survey map briefed us on the route she had devised.

  “Cathy, I’ll go in the passenger seat of your car so, Rachel, you can follow us. If you lose us then you should be able to remember the way. But try your best to keep up. OK?”

  I nodded, not convinced I’d remember the many detailed and complicated directions she’d just taken me through. I’d been staring at a hill called Lord Hereford’s Knob and finding it enormously amusing, rather than paying attention to where I should be going. “I’ll just follow you two,” I said, hopefully.

  “Excellent!” Laura folded up the map expertly. “Come on then, girls, let’s go go go!”

  “As long as you leave the fucking gong alone,” Henna muttered darkly.

  I had Louisa and Henna in the car with me, and once Cathy and Laura had driven off we pulled out of the Hen House driveway and followed them up the road as it wound steeply upwards and curved to the left. I cast quick looks to the left and right to see if there were any animals lying torn in two by the wayside, but there didn’t appear to be anything more than the usual roadkill. Maybe the attack on Gwyn’s sheep last night had just been by a fox or badger?

  Turning a corner, I saw the dirt track leading off to Ty Nant farm, just set back off the road. It was an old stone building with a beaten-up Land Rover parked outside. Gwyn’s beaten-up Land Rover? From the brief glimpse I had, the house looked very picturesque and well cared for. But it didn’t look like there had been a woman’s touch on it. No flowers in hanging baskets by the door; no garden to speak of.

  “Is that his farm, then?” said Henna from the back of the car, seeing me peering down the track.

  “Yes, it must be. I was just wondering what the verdict was on his sheep.”

  “I bet you were!” giggled Henna, perking up after her two coffees.

  The journey was spent talking mainly about big cats and farmers, whether we’d see either of them during the next few days. I didn’t join in much, as Cathy was, surprisingly, a pretty speedy driver and I had trouble keeping up with her on the narrow winding lanes. No doubt she had Laura yelling directions in her ear, making sure she knew there were only twenty-five minutes allotted to the journey. Once, when I got close behind Cathy’s car, I could see Laura quite clearly barking at Cathy and could imagine it was in some sort of rally-style, “Left! Left! Left! Now right ninety! Hard left! Brake! Brake! Dip ahead...” Poor Cathy.

  When I did find a moment to raise my eyes off the road, the scenery was breathtaking. Thick clumps of woodland gave way to enormous vistas of purple-heather hills and rolling pastureland. Every so often there were little whitewashed houses dotted on the roadside, but we didn’t pass anything bigger than a hamlet on our entire journey.

  Laura had been spotless in her timing – or her management of Cathy. Twenty-five minutes after we’d left the Hen House we arrived at the sweeping driveway of Llangorse Manor Spa and Hotel.

  The gravel driveway up to the hotel itself seemed to go on for miles, winding left and right and exposing a golf course on one side, tennis courts on another and then, finally, the house itself, a white stucco Georgian mansion sitting in a dip in the valley and beside an enormous lake.

  “Oh my God, look at the cars!” I gasped as I turned into the car park. The place was chock full of very shiny, very new-looking BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars. I found myself wishing I’d put my car through the car wash before the weekend.

  And traded it in for a Porsche.

  “Wow, there’s a lime green Lamborghini there!” Louisa pointed out.

  “And I can see two red Ferraris parked next to each other. Do you think they came together?” Henna added.

  “Where shall I park?” I wailed, suddenly despising my once-beloved old VW Golf. Now it looked about as classy as arriving in an ice cream van – I might as well have “Mind that child!” painted in pink on the back window and “Twinkle twinkle little star” blaring out of the stereo. The shame of it.

  “Keep driving, keep driving,” Louisa said as we inched our way down the rows of immaculate cars, hoping to find something smaller than a BMW 5 series. “Look – park over there! I can see a Vauxhall Corsa! Cathy’s parking next to it as well.”

  I turned around and headed for the Corsa. “It’s staff parking!” I wailed. “I can’t park there.”

  “Yes, but there’s no way you can park next to these cars here, how shameful would that be? Now come on, let’s run for it!” And before I’d even put the handbrake on Louisa and Henna had dashed out of the car. They slowed down once they got to the main car park and sauntered nonchalantly towards the entrance.

  “Don’t mind me then,” I muttered, locking the car up, “I’ll just make my own way there.”

  I waved at Cathy who was parked beside me. Her Vectra estate was a couple of years older than my Golf so the two cars looked right at home in the staff car park, keeping each other company with their mutual shabbiness.

  Laura had jogged over to join Louisa and Henna while Cathy locked up, so I waited for her so we could walk in together. She was visibly shaking and very, very pale.

  “That was hell.” She sounded close to tears and was finding it hard to fit the key into the lock. “You have Laura on the way back. I can’t go through that again.”


  “What was she doing?”

  “It was awful. Awful.” She finally managed to get the key into the lock and turn it. “She kept shouting at me. She had a stopwatch. Oh God.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder and she took a deep breath. Together we made our way up to the entrance where Laura was checking her watch and looking over at us anxiously.

  Heading into reception didn’t improve our feelings of self-confidence much and we huddled together for safety amid all the opulence surrounding us. It was part stately home and part hotel; there were lots of plush-looking sofas and little side tables around, but unlike the National Trust houses there were no po-faced wardens telling us we couldn’t touch this or sit on that.

  “Oh my God. I wish I’d made an effort when I got dressed this morning,” Louisa moaned as we walked up to the impossibly gorgeous receptionist just visible behind an enormous vase of flowers.

  “Bore da! Welcome to Llangorse Manor Spa Hotel,” she beamed at us, “you must be Louisa Peberdy’s party of five for the day spa?”

  “Absolutely,” Louisa piped up.

  “Come on through to our spa lounge and I’ll run you through your day,” she said smoothly, and taking a pile of pre-prepared folders off the counter she walked us through to the spa lounge.

  “Rachel,” Henna whispered in my ear as we followed the receptionist, ogling her immensely high heels, “what did she say? Borrada?”

  “It’s Welsh,” I hissed back. “Bore da. It means ‘good morning’.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.” She nodded and we took our seats around a large granite-topped table. There were a few people sitting around in towelling robes so thick they looked like fur coats, sipping noxious-looking smoothies and reading the FT and the Telegraph.

  “No copies of The Times I see.” Henna looked around dismissively.

  I wished just then that I were more like Marvellous Marcia. She would have taken this all in her stride and enjoyed it the more for being so relaxed about the whole thing. I was so in awe of it I felt completely uncomfortable. I felt a bit of a fraud, sitting there with my complimentary cup of herbal tea, trying to hide the mud splash on my tired-looking shoes. I felt, in fact, as if a security guard would rush in on us and say, “Rachel Young! You were brought up in the West Midlands! You have to leave the premises now. This Country Club is only for quality clientele from Gloucestershire and Berkshire – people who were brought up in Walsall are not welcome here. And is that your nine-year-old Golf bringing down the tone of the car park? Remove it immediately or I’ll be forced to call the police.”