by Karen Swan
‘Fuck off, Hunter,’ she said turning away from him.
‘Just trying to be a friend,’ he said.
‘We are not friends,’ she spat back.
He sighed. ‘You’re quite right of course. We’re not even business partners. Not in the legitimate sense, anyway.’
‘Oh, you want to talk about being legit? That’s rich!’ she laughed bitterly. ‘And anyway, has it really been so bad being signed to me? Has your career nose-dived? Are you in the doldrums? Have the sales bombed? The screenplay talks died? No! I’ve delivered everything I said I would. Everything I promised you. I’ve been good to my word.’
‘Technically, yes,’ he said coolly, almost bored. ‘But I suppose it just comes down to the stigma of being signed to a nobody. I mean, everybody laughs at you. They call you the Blog Dog – did you know that? Without me, you are nothing. Without me, you have no company. If I go, you go bust.’
‘If you go, you go straight to jail, mate,’ she hissed. ‘And don’t be so sure Sapphire relies on you. I’m about to sign someone who’ll blow you into obscurity. You’ll be lucky to get your name in the Yellow Pages once they’re out. And let me tell you, then you’ll need to worry.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘You’d better start thinking about what comes after you’re disposable. Because you are, Harry! And then what do you think I should do with the information I’ve got, once you’re no longer printing money for me, hmmm?’
Cress stood there, shaking violently, as red in the face as Harry was white. She had said too much, gone too far, threatened him outright.
Harry twitched and shook out a hand which was being burned by the cigarette he’d left smouldering between his fingers. His eyes seared into her.
‘Hallo, Hunter!’
Peter Temple, the chap whose family owned Carliffey, the estate in which they were playing, ran up. ‘There you are. I’ve been looking all over.’
He took in the stand-off.
‘Ah – sticky wicket?’
Harry turned and looked at him, slapping him on the back.
‘Sticky something, if you get my meaning. But keep it to yourself, mate, she’s married – doesn’t want it getting out.’
Cress flinched. What the hell was he doing?
Peter smiled reassuringly at them both. Same old Harry.
‘Of course. Well, the photographer’s here. He’s asking after you. Wants a shot of the captain in all his glory.’
‘And who can blame him?’ Harry smiled expansively. He turned to Cress. ‘Come on, darling, I’ll give you a lift. Your little legs must be tired out.’ And before she could so much as gasp, he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her in a fireman’s lift out of the woods and all the way back to the clubhouse, smacking her bottom as they neared and eliciting uproarious cheers from the crowd.
‘Tatler’s readers will love that,’ he whispered to her as he put her down, right in front of the photographer, and kissed her passionately on the mouth.
Cress, who moments earlier had felt hot with the humiliation, grew cold as she realized his game. She looked over to her friends, who were still sitting in the deckchairs, staring open-mouthed in disbelief. She thought she’d never seen them – Tor, James, Monty, Kate, particularly Kate – look so angry.
James stayed at the crease for ten overs, eventually being run out for seventy-six. He waved his bat in salute to the crowd cheering him as he strode off, and kept his eyes dead ahead as he passed Harry gambolling on.
‘Good innings, Dad,’ Max said, falling into step with his father.
‘Didn’t embarrass you too much then?’ James asked, smiling, stopping at the deckchairs and untying the pads from his thighs.
‘Nah. It was all good,’ Max said, bouncing the cricket ball from one hand to the other. ‘D’you fancy a swim? Mum says we can’t go in without an adult.’
James paused, weighing it up.
‘I guess we could . . . Oh no!’ he shrugged. ‘I haven’t brought any trunks.’
‘I packed your Norfolk ones for you,’ Anna said quietly. ‘They’re in with Max’s.’
Tor flicked her eyes quietly between the former couple, unduly irritated by this act of marital consideration.
‘Oh go on, Uncle Jamie. Please!’ Billy begged.
James laughed.
‘Come on then. Monty – d’you fancy it?’
Monty looked at Kate questioningly.
‘Yes, I packed yours,’ she said wearily. ‘They’re in the room. And put some sun cream on.’
‘Great. I’ll see you up there,’ Monty said, striding off towards the Lodge.
‘Ladies?’ James asked, looking at the girls, who were fanning themselves with glossy magazines.
Kate and Lily looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Yes, why not?’
Tor could think of plenty of reasons why not – cellulite, jiggly thighs, no pedicure and two weeks from a wax, for starters.
‘Come on,’ Kate said, taking her by the wrist. ‘And you, Anna. You’re looking a bit pale. You could do with topping up that tan.’
Anna laughed, resignedly.
They all hopped into two golf carts, with Billy and Max bagging the wheel in each. James jumped in next to Tor, his arm draped around the back of the leather bench. He smiled easily at her.
‘Right. Let’s go,’ he shouted, slapping the back of the front seat, and the two boys revved the carts, racing each other back to the Lodge at a grand speed of 6 m.p.h.
Max won, although it was irrelevant. James had got what he wanted, which was to sit next to Tor and feel her hair tickle his neck as they bumped along the lane.
They all discharged into the Lodge with threats that the last one in the pool was a squashed banana, and Tor shrieked as Billy, Max and James chased her up the stairs and down the corridor.
James caught her, laying his hands on her narrow waist just as she got to her door.
‘Turlington,’ he read, one arm propped on the door frame. ‘So this is where you are,’ he said.
‘Where are you?’ she asked casually, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, and not strictly because of the fifty-yard sprint.
‘Evesham, two doors down,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ She took a deep breath. ‘Is Amelia coming down later?’ she asked lightly.
James frowned slightly.
‘Amelia? Er, no. She’s in Cairo. Do you want to speak to her about . . . ?’
‘No, no. I was just wondering. I’d, er, better change then,’ she smiled.
‘See you in a bit,’ he smiled, taking his arm away and standing up straight.
She slid into the room, suppressing a teenage urge to shriek again, and turned around to face the bed. Cress had come back to the room for a rest after Harry’s ‘high jinks’, as she’d called them, but Tor didn’t buy it. She knew Cress better than to think she’d cheated on Mark, but she was intrigued to press her on what had really happened.
Cress wasn’t there. Tor walked through to the bathroom – it was empty.
‘Cress?’ Tor asked, with her hands on her hips.
There was a letter on the mantelpiece, written on Carliffey Estate paper and addressed to her. Tor knew even before she’d read it what it would say.
Darling T,
Can’t be arsed to stay here a second longer. Missing the family. Sorry to leave you in the lurch. Send my apologies to all except Hunter. Give him the bird from me and tell him he’s a wanker.
Kisses
C.
Tor sighed and folded the letter back into the envelope. Whatever happened, it must have been bad to send Cress back to the bosom of her family. Not much made her run.
She grabbed a red and white polka-dot bikini from the bag and climbed into it, slipping a chiffon kaftan over the top, eminently grateful she’d only had a liquid lunch. Anna, Lily and Kate were gathered in the hall waiting for her when she came out.
‘Cress has gone home,’ Tor said before anyone could ask. ‘Missing the family.’
‘What a shame,’ Anna said.<
br />
‘How sweet,’ Lily said at the same time.
Kate shot Tor a quizzical look. She knew Cress better than that.
They walked barefoot over the camomile grass, up the lawns in the direction of the main house, and as they rounded a densely planted hedge, which provided both shade and a windbreak, they all gasped at the vision of opulence. The pool was Olympic-sized, with a springboard at the deep end. Steps ran the width of it at the shallow end, and yellow tiles lined the interior, creating dazzling emerald green water. The boys were already in, playing a fiercely contested water polo tournament – James and Max versus Monty and Billy – although no one was keeping score.
The girls billowed out the fluffy towels and arranged themselves on the steamers, fussing with sunglasses, magazines, suntan lotion, the direction of the sun, straps and hairbands.
Tor, who spent eight minutes flapping about, spotted a pitcher of lemon barley only once she’d sat down. She eyed it greedily. The heat, combined with the all-day drinking, had done her no favours and she was parched. She’d already taken off her kaftan and she felt insecure at the prospect of walking around in her itsy-bitsy number. Still . . . everyone was busy reading, dozing and playing. They weren’t going to be interested in what she was doing.
She got up and padded over to the table, instantly feeling six pairs of eyes swivel round and follow her.
‘Um, does anyone else fancy a drink?’
‘Thought you’d never ask,’ they chorused.
‘I’ll go and get some more ice,’ said Lily, whose lounger was nearest to the poolhouse and in direct sight of an ice bucket.
‘Is there a loo in there?’ Kate asked, following her.
Tor stood at the table, pouring and serving for the girls, then placing the other tumblers on a tray and carrying them over to the water’s edge.
‘Here you are,’ she said, kneeling down slowly and trying not to spill the drinks.
Billy and Max went off to practise their dives, but Monty and James swam over, resting on their forearms at the side. With his hair wet, Tor could see that Monty’s scalp was clearly burning in the sun. His skin looked scrubbed pink and as shiny as a button. James, on the other hand, had dipped under the water just before he got to the wall, surfacing with his hair pushed back from his face, and looking as sleek as a seal.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking a tumbler and grinning up at her.
‘Yeah, thanks, Tor,’ Monty said.
‘Pleasure,’ she smiled. ‘Um, Monty do you want me to get you some lotion? I’ve got a waterproof one in my bag somewhere . . .’
‘Don’t bother!’ Kate called from inside the poolhouse. ‘He won’t be told. Just leave him to it. A nasty dose of sunstroke should be enough to warn him off for next time.’
Monty rolled his eyes and sank beneath the water, still holding his glass.
Tor giggled and shook her head.
‘Come on, let’s carry on, boys,’ Monty called when he resurfaced, placing his glass on the side and swimming to the centre with the ball.
Tor stood up and was just going to walk back to her chair when she heard a long, leery wolf-whistle.
She jumped, startled, and saw Harry Hunter fifty yards away, striding up the lawn to the pool area, pulling off his cricket shirt as he went.
‘My god, woman, you look even tastier with your clothes off than you do with them on. And you were streets ahead then,’ he said, smiling wolfishly and heading straight for her.
Tor took a step back. ‘Hunter’ was the word. That man was a predator.
‘What are you doing here so soon, Hunter? I’d have thought you’d be on the crease till sundown,’ she heard James mock.
Harry looked down and saw his old foe, along with Monty and the boys, in the water. With a quick sweep, he spotted James’s glamorous ex lounging around the poolside. He hadn’t seen any of them from further down the lawn and had thought he’d spotted an opening with Tor. She was vulnerable, easy prey, he could tell. And Christ almighty, he just wanted to feast right now. His run-in with Cress had left him incandescent and his mood hadn’t improved when he’d caught Kate bounding off with White and his friends in the golf carts – the distraction of her departure had seen him bowled out for a duck.
He looked back at James. Even this place wasn’t big enough for the two of them. Monty was treading water and tossing the ball casually above the waterline. Harry caught sight of the scar below his ear again. Why did he know him?
Billy raised his hand to receive the ball, utterly uninterested in this adult banter, and Monty threw it to him. They chucked the ball a few times and Max swam over, turning the game into ‘Piggy in the Middle’.
‘Oh, hello. How’s it going, Hunter?’ Kate asked, walking out through the doors of the poolhouse. She’d missed his approach to Tor.
Harry’s eyes took in her figure in the imposing aquamarine halterneck swimsuit, instantly overwriting the visual impression Tor had made in her bikini. Had Monty not been underwater, he would have punched Harry square in the jaw for looking at his wife in that way.
But Monty was underwater, and anyway, everyone’s attention was immediately diverted by a sudden clatter. Lily had followed Kate out of the poolhouse, and the silver ice bucket she had been holding was lying on the floor.
Visibly pale, she stood rooted to the spot staring at Harry, before finally regaining her poise, and without a word, walking over to the pool’s edge.
Tor figured he had that effect on people a lot. He was Harry Hunter. And here he was, shirtless and sexy. It was an overwhelming experience.
‘Monty,’ Lily said bossily, holding out a tube of sunblock. ‘Put this on or your wife’s going to divorce you on the grounds of irreconcilable pinkness.’
Monty grinned, and Harry watched him swim over obediently and start applying the lotion to his head.
He remembered. They’d had a thing. Monty had been sniffing around her years back.
‘Are they still winning?’ Kate asked, picking up the ice from the floor and wondering why Harry looked so cross. She’d noticed he hadn’t brought Emily along.
‘Looks like it,’ James smirked.
‘White’s right, for once. I’m a shit captain. And anyway, everyone’s bollocksed,’ Harry said, taking his shoes and socks off.
He walked up to the diving board and, without any preamble, executed a brilliant splashless dive, surfacing in between James and Monty. He intercepted the ball mid-air and pounded it over to Billy, before dipping down and swimming the rest of the length underwater.
He pulled himself out of the water by his arms, his trousers dripping wet and clinging to his thighs, just as the Tatler photographer jumped out of the bushes and took the shot. ‘You’re not a fucking paparazzo,’ Harry snarled under his breath. ‘Ask nicely when you want my picture.’
The photographer nodded silently and backed off.
Harry turned back to the group. ‘Anyway, I shan’t interrupt. I can see you’re all playing happy families, and nobody likes a gooseberry, do they, Kate?’ He paused for a beat. ‘I’m going to take a shower. Care to join me?’
And without waiting for her answer, leaving his clothes discarded around the lawn, he sauntered back to the Lodge.
Monty gawped like a fish at his retreating back.
‘What did he say? Did I just hear right?’ Monty looked incredulously at James, then at Kate, then back at James. ‘Did he actually stand there in front of me and invite my wife to shower with him?’
‘Oh, do shut up, Monty,’ Kate snapped. ‘Of course he didn’t mean it. He’s saying it to wind you up. It’s what he thinks we expect him to say.’
She watched Harry disappear out of sight. Tor came up and stood next to her.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ Kate said pensively. ‘He’s a bloody sore loser. But that was ripe even by his standards.’
‘What’s he going on about gooseberries for?’
‘Your gue
ss is as good as mine.’
‘I think something happened with Cress earlier,’ Tor whispered again.
‘What? Really? You think they . . . ’
‘No, no,’ Tor dismissed. ‘Nothing like that. She wouldn’t. But I think something’s gone on between them. It’s not like her to leave early.’
‘No, it’s not. I should probably go and talk to him,’ Kate said.
‘Mmm. He’ll listen to you. But I’d give him a chance to cool down. Catch him after dinner. He looks pretty dangerous to be around at the moment.’
Kate snorted. ‘That man’s dangerous in his sleep.’
Chapter Twenty-six
Everyone had agreed to meet in the drawing room at eight, but Tor felt nervous at the prospect of walking in on her own, now that Cress had gone. She stood on the edge of the bed, trying to get a full-length view of herself in the face mirror. She’d gone for the ivory satin Dolce & Gabbana dress adorned with crimson poppies – the one she’d told Cress gave you fabulous boobs. God knows, after all the weight loss following Hugh’s death, she needed as much help as she could get.
She was just getting the last hairpin into position when she heard laughter in the hallway. She let it pass her door, then tiptoed across the room and looked out. A couple she didn’t recognize were heading down to the drawing room.
‘What are you doing?’ Kate asked, looking amused by her cloak-and-dagger act.
Tor smiled sheepishly. ‘Looking for you?’
She opened the door wider and Kate ambled into the room. She looked killer. She had on a peach silk strapless column dress with a high split that flashed her thighs, but her auburn hair swung around her shoulders freely and she was in flat white beaded thong sandals.
‘Oh God – am I overdone?’ Tor asked, her hands rushing to her updo and then just as quickly down to her high heels.
‘You sound like a Christmas turkey,’ Kate laughed. ‘And no. You look gorgeous.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘Where’s Monty?’ Tor asked, realizing he wasn’t with Kate.
Kate rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t!’ she said crossly. ‘He’s delirious. Heatstroke.’ She shook her head. ‘Didn’t I say? I mean, I did, didn’t I? I spent all day warning him, but no – why listen to me? I’m only the wife.’