‘What happened to her?’ Jasmine asked her equally pretty replacement. ‘Was she not feeling well?’
‘April? No idea. Just said she had to dash off and would I mind taking over. She’s been really upset this week, mind you, because she’s lost her dog – but I don’t know if she’s gone home. God knows how she’s going to get back there, if she has. We all come from Bixford and we had a coach.’
‘Poor thing,’ Jasmine said, immediately full of sympathy for the red-eyed April.
Bixford, though? Why on earth would the waiting staff be bussed-in from Bixford, for goodness’ sake? Unless, of course – she shot a glance across to the Gillespie table – it was something to do with them. A bit of a sweetener. Wasted, in Jasmine’s opinion, because Bixford were going to walk away with the Platinum anyway. Still, you had to admire Martina and Oliver’s style.
‘Where’s Ewan?’ Peg paused in removing gelatine leaves from her petit four. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’
‘He went to the loo,’ Clara waved an inebriated hand. ‘He’s probably got lost in the maze of corridors.’
It was getting closer and closer to midnight. Again, Jasmine knew from one of Sebastian’s letters that Emily Frobisher had planned this evening along the lines of a similar bash put on by the Queen at Sandringham. Not, of course, that Her Majesty was sponsoring a greyhound race, but the premise was much the same: eating, then speeches, then dancing in the attached ballroom to a big band, followed by a disco for the young and sprightly, all culminating in a full English breakfast for those still standing at daybreak.
Jasmine was pretty sure they’d all have passed out long before that.
The other contenders’ tables were getting quite rowdy, as the time for the twelve o’clock announcement approached and the excited tension increased. There was a lot of giggling and speculation round their own. However, apart from wondering whether Brittany would do the deed before or after the witching hour, Jasmine felt very little curiosity. Ampney Crucis, being out in the sticks – and the coastal sticks at that – meant they’d come in a resounding last. She just hoped Brittany would read out the result in reverse order, then at least they’d have the pleasure of being first in something.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Brittany stood up and took the microphone. The room scuffled into a ragged silence. ‘This isn’t going to be a long-drawn-out process. I have no intention of prolonging the agony – or the ecstasy – and once the announcement has been made, I’ll speak to the victorious team alone later, so that you can all enjoy the party.’
There was a lot of foot-stamping and clapping.
‘My parents –’ Brittany indicated Emily and Rod. More foot stamping – ‘my parents, are delighted to see you here this evening, and have obviously been extremely supportive while I’ve worked behind the scenes to make my choice. However, they wish me to stress that it is essentially a traditional New Year’s Eve party and that on the last stroke of midnight, the haggis and whisky will be piped in. There will also be champagne for the toasts – and then if you’d like to make your way through to the ballroom we’ll continue the festivities there.’
The clapping grew louder. There were whistles from the Pullet’s table, and whoops from Bentley’s.
Brittany, shuffling her notes, suddenly smiled across at Sebastian, and Jasmine felt a jag of misery.
‘Ewan’s going to miss the best bit if he’s not careful. Peg seemed to have got a petit four caught in some of her pink netting and Gorf and Waffon were picking it out.
‘Shouldn’t someone go and look for him?’
The Ampney Crucis contingent – including Clara – all stared at the tablecloth. None of them, it seemed, was prepared to miss the ‘best bit’ simply to rescue Ewan from the Frobishers’ lavatory.
‘So, without dragging it out,’ Brittany spoke loudly, ‘I’ve had a lovely time going to the dogs this year.’ She paused for the roar of laughter. ‘And I’ve made some very good friends in the process.’ A quick glance at Sebastian. ‘Choosing four stadiums for the short list was difficult enough, and picking one from those four, almost impossible. However, and it was a very close thing, one stadium just had the edge over the other three. One stadium is able to provide everything that Frobishers require to stage this – the biggest new greyhound trophy race to be introduced for over one hundred years.’ Another pause. The room was silent. The tension now was bow-string taut. ‘We looked for somewhere that would reflect the Frobisher way forward, and at-the same time retain the greyhound-racing traditions. We also wanted a stadium which had the facilities to welcome the crowds that this prestigious event will no doubt attract, without turning it into yet another corporate hospitality bonanza. What we were looking for was somewhere with style.’
Jasmine glanced over at the Gillespie table. Oliver was leaning across the wine glasses and ashtrays, conferring with three of the other portly and polished hit-men types, while Martina was grinning and mentally running through her acceptance speech. Sebastian had his head down. Hah Jasmine thought – can’t look me in the eye now, can he!
So, as I said,’ Brittany continued, ‘one stadium met all these criteria. One stadium had everything I wanted. One stadium will be hosting the Frobisher Platinum Trophy on Valentine’s Day. And that stadium is –’ she swept a teasing glance at all four tables – ‘the Benny Clegg Stadium at Ampney Crucis!’
There were screams from Peg and Clara and Bunny – and possibly from Martina. Jasmine sat completely pole-axed. She wouldn’t get excited because it wasn’t right. Brittany had got it wrong – surely she had? Suddenly the room erupted, and everyone was shouting, pushing towards them, slapping their backs, yelling congratulations.
‘And I’ll meet up with you all later to discuss the finer points.’ Brittany was beaming across at them. ‘But in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the night – and congratulations to you all for putting on such a splendid show.’
Peg and Roger and Allan were dancing round the table. Because Ewan was still missing, Clara was kissing Bunny and Gorf.
‘Jasmine . . .’ Sebastian’s voice filtered through the mayhem, just as the clock and the crowd started the midnight countdown. He was very close to her. ‘Well done. I’m so pleased for you – and you really deserve it. I bet your grandpa is having one heck of a party and – Oh, bugger . . .’
Whatever else he was going to say was drowned out, not only by the gonging of the clock, but also by the loud skirl of the pipes, as a kilted bagpiper wailed in a file of waitresses carrying haggis and whisky and flutes of champagne.
‘Happy New Year!’
The banqueting hall erupted for a second time. Sorrows were being drowned with a vengeance. Now everyone was gulping whisky and champagne and eyeing the haggis with suspicion. There seemed to be a lot of kissing and hugging and dancing going on in a very small space. The noise was unbelievable.
Jasmine stood up and moved tentatively away from the table. The dress didn’t split. Sebastian was even closer to her. She smiled at him. ‘Happy New Year.’
He bent his head towards her, his hands reaching for hers. But the kiss didn’t happen.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Brittany said, grabbing Seb and kissing him thoroughly. She looked over his shoulder at Jasmine. ‘You got the Platinum – I think I deserve the celebratory snog, don’t you?’
Jasmine shrugged. ‘Seems like a bit of a consolation prize to me . . .’
‘Me, too,’ Brittany smiled, and wriggled away from Sebastian, who was looking slightly irritated.
Jasmine laughed. She decided that she liked Brittany. ‘Thanks – for choosing us, and everything. I still can’t quite believe it.’
‘You had everything I needed, and what’s more you did it all yourself,’ Brittany said. ‘Turned the stadium around, making it a going concern, but without taking away its unique atmosphere. I had the easy part, just playing my usual role, but you had to take giant steps. That’s why I so admire you. And believe me, there’s no sentiment in this ga
me. I picked the best stadium for the event. It’s going to be wonderful – and because there’s only six weeks to go, we’ll have to spend a lot of time together on the organisation. Will that be OK – if I keep popping down to Ampney Crucis with my people?’
‘Of course it will.’ Jasmine nodded. ‘You’ll be more than welcome.’
‘And me?’ Sebastian looked from one of them to the other.
‘Sebby,’ Brittany patted his cheek, ‘for once in your life you re the loser here. As far as the Frobisher Platinum goes, that is. But if you’re offering your services, I’m sure Jasmine will find plenty of things to keep you busy in Ampney Crucis.’
Moving away to kiss Peg’s cheek and shake all the other Ampney Crucis hands, Brittany, Jasmine noticed with amusement, gave Martina the widest possible berth.
‘Do you want to discuss the win with Peg and the others?’ Sebastian asked. ‘Or can we dance?’
Jasmine gave her consortium members a rueful glance. ‘I don’t think there’s any point in discussing anything with any of them at the moment. They were plastered before the announcement – they’re totally wrecked now.’ She smiled at him. ‘And the dancing? I can dance, sort of. I don’t know about you. Whether the dress will stand it is anyone’s guess.’
‘I can’t wait to find out . . .’ Seb grabbed her hand, and tugged her through the brightly coloured, noisy throng towards the ballroom.
The corridors went by in a sort of blur. Vaguely Jasmine wondered if Ewan was still staggering about in the warren, looking for a way out.
The ballroom was three times the size of the banqueting hall, and seemed to be hung with battle banners and whole boughs of greenery and even more chandeliers. A forty-piece dance band was on the stage, expertly trumpeting out a selection of Glenn Miller favourites.
Jasmine shook her head. ‘There’s no way the frock will cope with jitterbugging.’
‘Good,’ Sebastian grinned, twirling her round. ‘That s just what I wanted to hear.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
You stupid bastard!’ April grabbed Ewan’s bow tie and pushed him back against the Frobishers’ pantry wall. A lot of tins clattered from the shelves and rolled round their feet. ‘What the hell did you think you were playing at?’
Ewan, making a sort of strangled gulp, tried to remove her hands from his throat. ‘I – um – for Christ’s sake, woman! Let go! I – thought the dog was being ill-treated. You’re bloody choking me! I’d – we’d – had a tip-off.’
‘God!’ April, suddenly realising that she was in serious danger of actually throttling Ewan, reluctantly released her grip on his tie. ‘I’ve been out of my head for the last week! I thought he was dead! I love him so much! I haven’t been able to eat or sleep or think straight – oh God! And now the dancing s started – and I’m supposed to be working until dawn – and I’ll never see him again! Oh, you stupid, stupid sod!’
Ewan took deep breaths. ‘Christ, if the dancing’s started that means it’s New Year’s Day now – and I didn’t kiss Clara at midnight – and, oh, shit – it means they’ve announced the winner.’
‘That’s the least of your worries.’ April glared at Ewan in disgust.
She’d recognised him straight away, as soon as she’d started serving the Ampney Crucis table at the beginning of the evening, and she’d smiled, feeling sad, because he’d been so good to them when Cair Paravel had run his first race all those months before – with the hare and the headscarf and everything. And Ewan had smiled back at her without much recognition in his eyes.
Which, April admitted, had to be a blessing with the Gillespies sitting so close. Then as her visits to the table increased, so did Ewan’s recognition, and her own suspicions. There was something familiar about him, and not just as dishy Ewan Dunstable from Ampney Crucis, especially when she caught him in profile against the candlelight. She’d been serving up the meat course when it had all snapped into place.
Sliding the vegetable tureen on to the table, she’d leaned towards him, pretending to straighten his napkin. ‘You’ve been watching me.’
‘What?’ Ewan had looked startled. ‘No I haven’t. I mean, well, I might have been, you’re very pretty, and I certainly didn’t expect to see you here, but it’s a small world and – ’
‘Not tonight,’ April had muttered under her breath. ‘At home in Bixford. You’ve been hanging around where I live . . .’ She’d looked across him at Clara. ‘I’m sure your girlfriend would be really interested to know what sort of pervert she’s mixed up with.’
The rest of the table, laughing and talking and exclaiming over the food, didn’t seem to have taken any notice of this exchange.
‘You’re mistaken.’ Ewan had shaken his head. ‘I’ve never hung around where you live – I haven’t got a clue where you live – and apart from seeing you at Ampney Crucis for that race – Oh, my God! Did you say Bixford?
She’d straightened up and stared at him. ‘Changed your mind, have you?’
Ewan had turned whiter than the tablecloth. ‘Christ, look, can we talk? Not here – I mean, later, outside somewhere?’
‘Oh, yes. You’d better start talking – but I’ve got no intention of meeting you anywhere. You’re seriously weird.’
‘I’m not. Believe me. Let me tell you . . . I’ve got to explain – ’
April had surveyed him. She didn’t want to be alone with him – he’d terrified her for weeks. And she’d thought he was so nice, as well. It just went to show that you never could tell. Daff always said it was the nice ones . . . But if he was her stalker – and she was sure he was – there had to be some explanation, surely. And she wanted to hear it.
‘Come out to the kitchens. There are about ninety thousand people out there to rescue me if you turn funny. But if the explanation isn’t twenty-four carat, then I’ll be calling the police first, and grabbing that mike from Brittany and informing the whole room, including – ’ April had looked at the huge engagement ring on Clara’s finger ‘– your fiancée, second. OK?’
So Ewan had eventually turned up at the kitchen door, and after getting one of the other Copacabana girls to cover for her on the Ampney Crucis table, April had dragged him away from the crashing, steaming, shouting mayhem of the cooking and dishing area towards the relative privacy of the pantry.
‘I said I was going to the loo,’ Ewan had tried, and failed, to look relaxed. ‘So they shouldn’t miss me for a while. Anyway, this won’t take long.’
‘Too right it won’t. Why have you been stalking me?’
And then, it had all poured out. April, who’d previously only thought that Ewan had been one of the dirty raincoat brigade, suddenly realised the full extent of his felony.
Desolate since discovering the loss of Cair Paravel, having tramped the streets of Bixford, putting up posters, and searching everywhere with Jix and Joel and Rusty and Sofia and Antonio – Noah had said he was far too busy doing sketches for a new series of paintings to become involved – she’d given up all hope of ever finding him alive.
Cairey must have somehow scrabbled over the wall because bloody Noah had locked him out in the yard, and probably run straight out on to the ring road, all laughing face, and lolling tongue, and silly splaying legs and – and she’d shut the rest of it out of her mind.
If he’d been run over she supposed the driver hadn’t stopped. She and Jix had made terrified searches of all the bushes and waste ground round the road and not found a body. April, distraught, knew this meant that Cairey must have crawled away somewhere else to die, alone and in pain . . .
And now her fury was so incandescent that she could hardly breathe – now this bloody stupid man was telling her that he’d stolen him! No – not even that – rescued. Rescued! As if Cairey, the most spoiled canine baby that had ever lived, needed rescuing!
And there was worse to come. Not only had he been ‘rescued’ but he’d also been practically rehomed!
‘I could kill you!’ She hissed at Ewan. ‘I really
could kill you!’
‘I’m so sorry. We had a tip-off – a telephone call – to say that he was being kept in a flat, and not looked after properly, and that he was left howling in a confined yard in all weathers. I followed it up. Everything I saw seemed to confirm it. What was I supposed to do? Ignore it? It’s what my life has been for ages – rescuing dogs in that position.’
‘He didn’t need rescuing!’ April screamed for the hundredth time, wondering again who’d made that phone call. ‘And didn’t you have anything better to do on Christmas Day, for Christ’s sake?’
Ewan looked at her. ‘If you’d seen some of the sights that I have, you wouldn’t ask that.’
‘No, OK,’ April had conceded. ‘But still, Christmas Day – ’
‘I didn’t do the – er – rescue personally. We have a network of people. They know exactly what to do and when to do it.’
‘And that makes it better, does it? Stealing a dog that is perfectly well cared for and much loved and – ’
‘He was shut outside in the dark and in freezing temperatures when my colleagues found him.’
‘But I didn’t know that! That was my – um – boyfriend. Not me.’
Ewan frowned. ‘What? Jinx, or whatever his name was? I thought he seemed like a nice bloke.’
‘Christ! Not Jix! Jix isn’t my boyfriend! Jix wouldn’t do anything like that – he loves Cairey as much as I do. Noah – I live with him – he shut Cair Paravel out without me knowing.’
Ewan shook his head. ‘Look – um – oh, yes, Beatrice-Eugenie – I didn’t mean – ’
‘Who?’ April frowned, then laughed. ‘Oh God, that’s not me. My name’s April. Beatrice-Eugenie is my daughter. We registered Cairey in her name because – oh, well it’s a long story. All I want to know is how do I get him back?’
Ewan looked first confused, and then worried. ‘I know where he is, of course, but as I said, he’s been earmarked for rehoming.’
‘Ah, there! I bet you didn’t check that, did you?’
‘What?’
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