‘Dad.’ Billy was the last person Lottie expected to see here. But he was, his curly hair looking more askew than ever, the balding spot in the middle seldom on view and making him look, to his daughter, surprisingly vulnerable. Suddenly Lottie felt an indescribable urge to hug him. So she did.
He wrapped his arm firmly around her shoulders. ‘I need to talk to you, Stanthorpe.’ His normal gruff tone rougher than ever, but with an edge that made her want to cry. ‘But first I’m going to talk to my daughter. And then I’m coming back for you, and you can explain what you’ve been plotting with Amanda bloody James. I’d come up with something bloody good, because if you think I’m taking it lying down, you’ve got another bloody thing coming.’
This left Dom looking slightly shocked, Elizabeth fighting a grin and Lottie unable to block the vision of a particularly striking picture of her father lying down, a well-known ex-model turned dressage-rider astride him, which had hit the headlines several years previously.
Chapter 19
‘I’ll come with you.’
Lottie dropped the stirrup iron that she was scrubbing with the type of dedication which suggested she expected a genie to materialise, and got an undeserved eyeful of soapsuds. ‘Shit, bugger.’ Rubbing it was obviously a mistake. ‘Damn.’ Not only was her eye now stinging like hell from the soap, she also seemed to have dislodged her contact lens, which meant that even if she could open her eye, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond the end of her nose. ‘Bugger.’ She rubbed a bit more tentatively and was pretty sure the lens was back in place, even if she was as red-eyed as Rory when he’d been out partying until 4a.m.
‘Having fun over there?’
‘Not really.’ She tried a squint, which didn’t hurt too much. ‘What did you just say?’
‘Having fun?’
‘Ha, very funny, the bit before that.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘Sorry, where?’ For one daft moment she’d been under the illusion that Rory was offering to go to see her dad with her to hear the big explanation.
After leaving Tipping House, Billy had realised he had a potential buyer due to arrive within the half hour to look at one of his young horses, and Lottie had realised that a gin and tonic with her gran had gone to her head and any excuse to put off something that could change her life forever was a good one. Agreeing to go and see him after evening stables had seemed like a goodish idea, until she’d driven home and decided she felt sick.
So she’d moped around the stables feeling that she had a vague idea, obviously it was not exactly the same, of how a prisoner on death row felt. At the same time she felt wrung out and pathetic in a way that she couldn’t remember since clambering out of a particularly stinky lake that a horse has unceremoniously dumped her in during a three-day event from hell on her twenty-first birthday.
‘I can come with you to see Billy.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘Thought you might like some company.’ Then nipped with sharp teeth so that she almost emptied the bucket of water in her own lap. ‘I don’t like it when you’re a mardy bum.’
‘He might not—’
‘He won’t mind.’
‘How do you know?’ She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, torn between the need to have Rory with her and the idea of a cosy and confidential father-and-daughter chat.
‘He said so.’
‘Oh.’ So much for father-and-daughter confidences. Maybe it was something so bad that he just couldn’t face her on his own.
‘I rang him up after you’d put Rio back in the wrong stable and left the gate of the field open twice.’ Rory pulled her with him over to a chair, omitting to say that after remarking on it to Mick, the other man had said if he didn’t find out what the hell was up with Lottie then he’d do it for him. Along with a few other things.
‘Ah.’
‘He said it was up to you, but he didn’t mind.’ The strong thumb running up and down her inner thigh, well particularly the up bit, was beginning to distract her from thoughts of doom and gloom. And if Billy didn’t mind an audience then maybe it wasn’t that bad after all.
‘You probably shouldn’t be squeezing those bits, I am practically a lady, you know.’
‘But you like your bit of rough, don’t you?’ He kissed his way along her collarbone. ‘Fancy being a Lady Chatterley and I’ll explore all your passages?’
‘You’re being rude now, aren’t you?’
‘Trying. But you’ll always be a lady to me, darling.’
‘Even when I’m throwing stuff onto your muck heap?’
‘Even when you’re tipped over my knee with your knickers down.’
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘This weather makes me randy. Shall we have a quick poke before we head out? We could call it stress-relief.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I haven’t got a clue, darling.’
‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’
‘I just don’t know, let’s wait and see shall we? But no,’ he kissed the tip of her nose, ‘it can’t be that bad. It is old Billy we’re talking about here.’
***
Lottie was slightly surprised to find Tiggy in the big farmhouse kitchen, and no sign of Billy. For a horrible moment she thought that either something terrible had happened, or Billy had just forgotten she was going, until he appeared, beer bottle in hand, looking liked he’d spent the past hour pacing around the house. Which he had.
He motioned for them to collect beers if they wanted, then headed through to the snug and, the second they were in, launched into what had to be a prepared speech.
‘Dom was there when it happened. When Alex died, and we both knew it was my fault.’
‘It wasn’t—’
‘You don’t know, Vicky.’ It took a moment even for Tiggy to realise Billy was talking to her. Nobody called her Victoria these days. Except the Inland Revenue. ‘You weren’t there, it was just me, Dom and Alex. And I killed her.’
Lottie had never heard her mother called Alex; it was always Alexa or Alexandra, but then her father had never spoken much about her anyway. And when he did, it was always ‘your mum’, she supposed.
‘Do you want us to go?’ Rory was looking from Tiggy to Billy and back.
‘No, it’s time people knew, lad. Keeping secrets is a mistake.’ Billy sat down heavily. ‘A big mistake. And if Lottie hates me,’ he was studying her intently, like he was studying the final round of the competitor that stood between him and the trophy, ‘at least you’re here to look after her.’
It was a bit, Lottie thought, like a family crisis meeting. Except they weren’t really family. And she wasn’t entirely sure why Billy assumed that Rory would want to look after her, or why he was so convinced she’d hate him. Except the bit that worried her was that Tiggy had said much the same.
‘I did love her, you know.’ He stared at Lottie, and for the first time she noticed that his clenched hands were trembling. Until Tiggy put one hand on top, steadying, hiding.
Lottie just nodded.
‘We’d been at the hunt ball, it was up at Tipping House in the grounds and so we were there right to the very end. It was a beautiful night, too good to end the party, so we headed down to the stables to check out the horses. There was a full moon, or as near as damn it, lighting the whole bloody yard up and there was Dom’s newest buy sticking its red head over the door and kicking away like he wanted to join the party.’ For a moment Billy covered his face with his hands, then he took a breath, ran his fingers through the thinning curls of hair. ‘He’d bought it for a song because it was bloody brilliant, but it was mad as a hatter. Totally fucking beautiful and unpredictable, just like Alex. She loved that horse, had been begging for the ride and Dom kept saying no. He didn’t know, but she’d been on it before and wanted to compete it; it wasn’t even getting to the top that she was interested it, she just said it was meant for her. She sneaked in when he was away competing.’ A small smile played over
Billy’s drawn features, even now just the thought of her impish grin as she did what she shouldn’t brought back the best bits of the short time they’d had together. ‘That night I dared her. We were mucking about and it was as much about shocking Dom as anything. She wanted to stick two fingers up at his serious attitude, show him she could master the animal. But I dared her.’ Billy looked across the room, but he wasn’t seeing the faces of Lottie, Rory or Tiggy. All he could see was Alex, dancing around the fountain in the centre of the cobbled yard.
The moonlight bounced off her dark hair, shimmying over the ball dress. She kicked off her high heels, danced her way along the top of the stone surround of the fountain basin, laughing with a vivacity that should never be dampened. And then she’d leaped, knowing he’d catch her, wrapped her long legs around his waist as he swung her round until they were both dizzy. Alexa should have lived forever.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Billy.’ Tiggy gently nudged him back to the present. ‘It was how she was, nobody will say it, but it was just how she was.’ Tiggy knew, like everybody else did, that Alexa always had her own way, always wanted to be centre-stage, but no one dared say it now she was dead.
He sighed, didn’t look up. ‘Tig, she shouldn’t have been on the frigging horse, half-pissed, in a cobbled yard in the early hours of the morning. I let her, worse than that, I bloody dared her. It was fine at first, then it slipped, panicked as it lost its footing.’ He looked up then, straight at his daughter, but what he saw was the panic in the horse’s face, knew that Alex never saw the danger until it was too late. ‘It kicked out as she fell. We waited on that yard for hours for the ambulance, but it was too fucking late by the time they got there. She never even said goodbye. I held her and never even said goodbye properly. I thought it would just be concussion. And that,’ he stood up abruptly, went to stare out of the window, ‘is why Dom hates my guts. He said that night, as we waited, he couldn’t forgive me, that I was a stupid useless bastard who didn’t deserve her. He said I was supposed to look after her not make her worse. We never spoke about it again. And then,’ a bitter note she’d not heard in his voice before crept over the flat tone, ‘he decided to take you away from me, and when that didn’t work he bided his time, pretended to call a truce. Until now. Now he’s decided to take the one other thing that means something to me. This place is all I’ve got left of your mother. We were happy here, and he didn’t understand that either.’
‘It was a freak accident, Billy.’ Tiggy’s voice was soft, her fingers warm against his clenched cold fist.
‘It was my fault. She wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t egged her on.’
‘Maybe he blames himself.’ For the first time, Rory spoke, filled the awkward silence as Lottie felt the words spin round in her head.
‘Bollocks. Now what the fuck are they doing here?’
***
They, it turned out, were David Simcock and his entourage, which consisted of the smiling Sam (resplendent in low-cut top and strikingly high red shoes), a grey-haired, slightly shorter and slimmer version of David, and the dog, who was wagging his tail like he was hoping he could detach it from the rest of his body. And they were standing by the gate trying to decide if the ‘danger keep out’ sign was for real or not.
Sam caught sight of them staring through the window and waved frantically, her ample bosom moving in time and successfully obliterating the rumours of a boob job, which caused the dog to start a hyperactive pogo.
‘What the fuck do they want? I’m going to blow the smiles off their faces.’ Billy started to open drawers in the bureau as the happy bunch headed up the path, oblivious to the threat inside. ‘Waltzing in here thinking they can buy the bloody place. I bet that twat has set this up.’ The first press of the doorbell increased his agitated drawer-opening.
‘What are you doing?’ Tiggy had switched from supportive to worried.
‘Getting the key to the gun cabinet. I told Dom I wasn’t going to let him do this. Screw him.’
‘Not literally, I hope.’ Rory looked bemused.
‘Gun cabinet? Gun? You haven’t got a shotgun, have you?’ Tiggy, who was taking the threat much more seriously, looked alarmed and was bouncing about like a demented Tigger between him and the door.
‘Of course I have, woman, what else would I shoot the bloody rabbits with?’
Sam, who had got fed up with pressing the doorbell, was now peering through the window and alternating between waving wildly at Lottie and making exaggerated gestures towards the front door. Lottie did her best to smile back. She was glad that her father had been stirred from his depressed reverie but slightly worried about the effect it might have had on his mental state. She had never, in her whole life, seen him this agitated and animated.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Dad.’
He stopped rifling through the drawers for the key, as though someone had pressed an off-switch, and turned to look at her.
‘It’s like when I went to Australia.’
There was silence.
‘Rory couldn’t have stopped me, and you couldn’t have stopped Mum. She did it because being bored and safe wasn’t how she wanted to live, and that’s why she loved you. You let her be herself, Dad. And,’ Lottie didn’t really like the way everyone was hanging on every word, because she was well aware that she often rambled on, talking nonsense, but now she’d started it seemed daft to stop, ‘she probably wanted you to notice her too.’
‘You left me and went to Barcelona because you didn’t want to be bored?’ Rory was staring at her.
‘I left you because you don’t even notice if I’m there, or what I’m saying. And I didn’t go to Barcelona, I went to Australia. See, you don’t even know where I went.’
‘I do listen to you.’
‘Well you do now, but you didn’t yesterday.’
‘That’s not—’
‘Dad, why did you fall in love with Mum?’
‘She took a part of me and I didn’t want it back.’ Billy sat down in the swivel chair by the desk. ‘I wasn’t whole if she wasn’t there; Alex made me into something I couldn’t be on my own. When we had you she was so happy, she said it was her way of capturing all the bits of me she wanted to hang on to forever but was frightened she might lose. She was wild and impulsive, but she still needed me, she relied on me. Dom was right, I could have stopped her.’
‘No, Dad. Uncle Dom could have, but you couldn’t. You wouldn’t have been the man she loved if you had. She relied on you not to stop her. It was an accident. Tiggy is right.’
‘I’m not so sure a judge and jury would agree, love.’
‘But it isn’t a trial, is it?’
‘If I’d loved her, I’d have—’
‘You did love her, and that’s why you let her do it.’
‘I love you too, Lottie. Your mum would be proud.’ He went suddenly gruff and embarrassed. ‘Be a good girl and tell those twats to stop banging on the door will you, or I will get that bloody shotgun out.’
But Tiggy had already gone to do the deed and returned, minutes later, looking relieved that there was still no sign of any firearms. ‘They’re on the way to see Amanda and just wanted to say hi, that dog is a cutie isn’t he? I told them we were a bit busy and they were fine about it. And that man with them is David’s father; he was so charming, lovely chap. He did a great job on doing up their house, apparently. Some kind of developer.’ She beamed, completely unaware of the effect her words had had on the rest of the room’s occupants. ‘Anyone fancy a nice cup of tea?’
Chapter 20
Amanda James had given herself a severe talking to, but even she wasn’t convinced that she wanted to be here with a horse and a pregnant Lottie for a riding lesson.
Arranging it in the first place had been a bit impulsive. It was a bit, she decided, like cutting your flowing locks off when you split up with a boyfriend. To signal a new start, shed the old, prove you could do whatever you wanted.
Except she hadn’t split; she
hadn’t had the chance to do that. Plus she actually liked her hair just like it was. And she was concentrating on nonsense to stop herself thinking about the fact that she had to clamber up onto a dangerous animal that could cart her off at high speed, then send her flying through the air at a velocity that was guaranteed to result in broken bones or, at the best, the type of bruises you saw on medical dramas.
She’d spent an exorbitant amount of money on the full ensemble, hoping it would a) make her feel like she had no choice but to get on a horse, because she’d look incredibly stupid if she didn’t, and b) give her the confidence that she could do it, after all, looking the part was half the battle, wasn’t it?
Unfortunately, standing in front of Lottie, she now felt a little bit overdressed. Her new friend, who, judging from the account from Pip, who didn’t offer faint praise, and the array of rosettes in the tack room, knew exactly what she was doing around horses, was dressed in moss green breeches that barely covered her calves, short boots, with some alarming purple socks bridging the gap, and a polo shirt with a generous slurp of green horse slobber down the front. She was also looking what could only be termed incredulous.
‘You really have never, ever been on a horse before?’
Amanda shook her head with a force that made her new, marginally too-large riding hat tip forward slightly until she had to peer under the peak to see Lottie and the enormous horse. Which had returned to its role of rubbing its great hairy head up and down Lottie’s bust.
She pushed him away and grinned. ‘Oh well, never mind. It’s easy. I mean, if Rory can do it then anyone can. Loving the gear, by the way, where did you get it?’
Which Amanda translated as, you definitely didn’t get anything like that from around here.
‘Online, I just went off pictures, really. I think I went overboard a bit, didn’t I?’
‘A bit. You look ready to go and pick the gold medal up from the podium.’
The joke wasn’t helping distract her, even though she guessed that was Lottie’s purpose.
The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights Page 120