by Fiona Walker
‘They’re much better!’ Faith said hotly, thinking of Rory. ‘Yours are all footballers, boy bands and reality TV stars.’
‘At least they’re under fifty. Yours are all wrinkly has-been actors and ancient rock grandfathers. Talking of which, isn’t the Rockfather moving in up the road from you? Are you sure you’re not getting Daddy muddled up with son and Pete’s the one coming to your party – I hear he likes young girls. You might be in there …’
‘Don’t be disgusting! He’s so old!’ Faith squealed with laughter.
For months it had been common local knowledge that Dillon Rafferty’s even more famous rock-legend father, Pete ‘the Rockfather’ Rafferty, had bought magnificent Fox Oddfield Abbey, just a couple of miles from his son’s more modest working-farm country retreat, and after lengthy renovation work that had kept all the locals agog was poised to move in with his young model wife. The press were on tenterhooks for moving day – and out in force in the locality – in the hope of capturing any reconciliation between Pete and Dillon. The father–son relationship was famously fiery, and the two had now been estranged for several years. It was rumoured that the Rockfather’s move to the Lodes Valley was a big gesture towards rapprochement.
‘My mum is really excited,’ Faith told Carly now. ‘Can you believe she used to have all Mask’s albums when she was my age? She swears he was as big as Dillon then, and just as good looking, although I can’t see it. Pete Rafferty is such an old raisin.’
‘Maybe he’s your real dad!’ Carly suddenly shrieked. ‘He lived in Ireland for ages, didn’t he?’
‘Pete Rafferty is not my biological father,’ Faith said through gritted teeth, wishing Carly didn’t always see her unconventional parentage like the plot of Mamma Mia. ‘And he is not coming to my party, Dillon is. You don’t have to believe me until you see for yourself, but you do have to promise me that you won’t go all silly when he’s near or flirt with him, because he’s off limits. Like Rory’s off limits. Dillon’s bringing Nell Cottrell. It’s all over the papers – you must have seen it.’
A fortnight earlier a tabloid had photographed trust-fund babe Nell coming out of Dillon’s London townhouse one Sunday afternoon, wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing when the couple had been snapped leaving Bungalow 8 in the early hours of Saturday morning. ‘Raff’s Lost Weekend with Single Mum’ the headline had shouted, much to Nell’s disgust. The media had been after the story for weeks: Dillon Rafferty, the heartthrob superstar whose comeback single had been at the top of the charts all summer, had a new love interest.
‘Ohmygod, it is her!’ Carly clearly believed that, at least. ‘I read about in Closer this week and thought I recognised the name. It’s that poisonous cow who tried to trap Magnus, isn’t it? What do men see in her?’
‘She’s very beautiful.’
‘If you like the boyish Carla Bruni look,’ Carly sniffed.
‘Some men do,’ Faith mused, fleetingly wondering whether she really needed to endure the pain of a boob op. Rory had also once been in love with Nell, after all – a girl in possession of a chest as flat as her own. But that was years ago and Rory’s cleavage tastes had evolved, besides which, whereas Nell had the sexily androgynous look of a tall Milanese street urchin, Faith had the wide-shouldered heavy features of a rugby forward.
‘Only closet gays, in my experience,’ Carly was pondering androgyny and sex appeal.
‘Dillon Rafferty is not a closet gay.’
‘If you say so. You obviously know him so well …’ Carly said then, realising that cutting off her nose to spite her face was not wise when she desperately wanted to come and advise Faith on how to have her nose redesigned to suit her face, she hastily added, ‘I promise I won’t flirt with him or swoon in his starry presence if he actually turns up, which I somehow doubt. Please tell me you have some decent single lads coming, that don’t have number-one albums all over the globe and a leech girlfriend parking her Kelly bag on their Porsche dashboard. I have to make Grant jealous. I called you instead of him today, remember? Don’t let me down, Faith.’
‘Not a problem – there are loads of sexy guys coming,’ Faith promised, quickly changing the subject before Carly could demand the finer details. ‘But Mum has just sprung something that seriously threatens Double-D Day.’
However, when she told her friend about gayfather Kurt’s offer of a year’s training in Essex, Carly’s reaction was one of delight.
‘This makes it so much easier!’ she shrieked. ‘You’ll be based just up the road from here. I can cover for you better when you have your ops. My parents always spend September at the villa so you can recuperate at my house.’
‘But I can’t possibly leave Rory for a whole year,’ Faith said in a small voice.
‘You have to, don’t you see? The surgery is just the beginning. You must wait for the scars to heal, for a start, and then I’ll to teach you how to dress, walk, talk and shake that tush, Beyoncé. You’ll need sexual mileage to seduce him – you’ve told me enough times he always falls for incredibly predatory women. I’ll get you out clubbing, introduce you to some Colchester lads for a few flings.’
It sounded like Faith’s idea of hell.
‘The thing is,’ she voiced one last worry. ‘I can’t ever be a top dressage rider with massive fake boobs.’
‘Of course you can: look at Jordan.’ Before Faith could protest, Carly said that her dad was coming to take the phone away, reminded Faith to line up those sexy men for her and hung up.
All afternoon Faith dwelled on the rather pitiable array of single men she had invited to her party. She had none, apart from Rory – who was strictly off limits to Carly on pain of death – and a few deadbeat computer geeks and emo types from college whom Faith had befriended by virtue of the fact that they, like her, were oddball loners.
Seeing a brilliant excuse for speaking to her beloved Rory for the third time that day – her previous calls being to ask whether she had left her crop behind after her lesson that morning (she knew she hadn’t), and to remind him that the farrier was coming to Rio that afternoon – she pressed her most-pressed speed dial on her mobile.
‘Yup?’ Rory answered groggily, making her suspect that he’d been napping in his office again.
She came straight to the point: ‘Do you have any dishy friends that you can invite along to my eighteenth?’
He laughed. ‘Well, Spurs and Flipper both adore you and your mother, as you know, so I’m sure one or both could be persuaded to leave the pregnant wives sucking coal in front of old ER repeats for an evening.’
‘Single friends.’
‘I suppose I could sound out Hamish and Trist,’ he offered reluctantly, knowing that his twentysomething hell-raising cronies were hardly likely to relish the idea of a teenager’s birthday party unless the totty was seriously tasty.
‘I have several friends coming from Essex,’ she exaggerated. ‘Really stunning girls – think Jodie Marsh meets Caprice.’ She hoped that he’d question her definition of stunning.
But predictably Rory – an out-and-out boob man – was delighted by the description. ‘Damn! I wish I was coming now.’
The colour drained from Faith’s face as she held on to the wall beside her to stop herself swaying.
‘You what?’
‘I wish I was coming. I’ll be at the Scottish Championships. Typical of my best bloody owner to demand that I compete at the opposite end of the country that weekend.’
‘But I’m your best owner,’ she bleated desperately, trying to sound jokey but in fact sounding as though she had just seen Bambi’s mother die, ‘and I demand that you come to my party – or I’ll take Rio back.’
‘Don’t joke, he’s my only sound advanced horse,’ Rory groaned, not picking up on the desperation in her voice. ‘I have high hopes for him at Bloneigh Castle.’
‘You’re taking Rio to Scotland on my birthday?’ She was practically sobbing at the injustice of it all.
‘Dillon
called me the day entries closed and insisted on Snake Charmer being fielded at the championships – some idea Nell’s got into her head, I should think. But as you know, the horse has gone hopping lame this week. The organisers have been great and are letting me swap around and take Rio into the three-star now. And Dillon is still covering all the costs because we can take his intermediates to make up numbers.’
Rory now competed several horses for Dillon, but lameness and injury had plagued these expensive investments during their time with Rory, and Faith derived little pleasure from the fact that her own stallion was out-performing the rest, particularly if that meant he was going to Scotland without her.
‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ she demanded now, furious that Dillon – and Nell – were unwittingly wrecking her love life.
‘I’m sure I mentioned it,’ he said, knowing that he hadn’t. Like most event riders, Rory developed tunnel vision when it came to planning his competition calendar, the desire to field his horses to their best advantage superseding family, friends and, at times, even the owner’s wishes. ‘Bloneigh is a seriously good track to get Rio’s four-star qualification. If he does well we might think about Badminton next year.’ He was dangling a huge carrot in front of Faith’s nose, but she was too upset by his desertion to care.
‘But … but … you’ll miss my party.’
‘And the busty Essex babes, I know,’ he sighed regretfully. ‘Still, you should be pleased that Rio’s going.’ Accustomed to following his competitive progress like an acolyte and hanging on his every word, he now launched into a long, rambling monologue outlining his strategy for the coming seasons, completely unaware that, at the other end of the line, she was incredibly upset. ‘… and if all goes well there, I’ll get short-listed for Aachen.’ He had always dreamed of being on the British team
Faith closed her eyes, thinking of her birthday without him – the star guest, the only reason for going ahead with this hellish, man-free unwanted party. Rare tears slid through her lashes.
‘… if you’d told me a year ago that I might stand a chance of getting a Union Jack on my hat silk or be in a position to chase the Rolex Grand Slam, I’d have died laughing …’
‘Bully for you,’ Faith muttered, hanging up because she was starting to cry and didn’t want him to realise. She was now more determined than ever to wow him with her all-new body, even if it took a year to overhaul.
Mopping her face and splashing it with cold water, she thundered downstairs to the vast Wyck Farm kitchen, where Anke was ladling homemade vichyssoise into a thermos to take around to her father, who was in a care home in nearby Lower Oddford, and complained endlessly about the food.
‘I will go to work for Kurt after all.’
‘Of course.’ Anke, who had an iron will, had never doubted it. ‘And will you be taking Rio?’ She disapproved enormously of Faith’s decision to let her dressage horse take part in a dangerous new three day eventing career.
‘No. He can stay with Rory.’
Faith had already decided that Rio would be her hairy, four-legged spy in the Midwinter camp, keeping links with Rory alive while she focused on implants and half-passes in Essex.
‘I see,’ Anke said carefully, hoping that she wasn’t expected to fork out for a new dressage schoolmaster.
‘I’ll ride whatever Kurt has free,’ Faith insisted. ‘You always told me that it’s best to ride as many different horses as possible when you’re learning the ropes.’
Anke was impressed. It was the way she herself had improved from national to international grand prix level over thirty years earlier, selling her top horses to fund a trip to the UK to be based for six months with top judge and trainer Peggy Rees-Eddison and her then working pupil Kurt Willis. The rest was dressage history.
‘I’ll call Kurt straight away,’ she told her daughter delightedly. ‘He’ll be thrilled. He and Graeme are coming to your birthday party on Saturday.’
Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Rory wouldn’t be there, Faith consoled herself. He was just Kurt’s type.
Later that afternoon, having cycled up to Upper Springlode to pay the farrier, Faith found Rory asleep on the sofa in his ramshackle cottage. Twitch the terrier was curled up on his chest, and both were oblivious to the television blaring in the corner of the room.
With his dark blond hair falling over his face, tangling with those long, sooty lashes and flopping over his wide cheeks to tickle his half-smiling mouth, he was so beautiful he made her heart burn with longing. His languid, greyhound-lean body was dressed in threadbare breeches, mis-matched loud stripy socks with his toes poking out and an ancient British Eventing polo shirt. He looked like a ragamuffin but, just like his horses that wore ancient, holey rugs and moth-eaten bandages, the body beneath the rags was glossy, muscled and unfairly super-fit given how much he abused it.
Quietly and efficiently, Faith tidied the worst of the mess away from the floor and surfaces – the place was a tip, as usual – and made Rory a cup of strong black coffee because he had run out of milk, although she did find a big box of chocolates in the cupboard, no doubt a gift from another admiring client. It was the only food in the house.
He awoke groggily, muttering about a broken stopwatch.
‘What?’ Faith thrust the coffee at him.
‘Nothing – a dream. What are you doing here?’
‘Looks like I’m going to finish off the yard work for you and turn horses out, as you’re in no fit state.’
‘I was just catching forty winks after watching the Ebor.’ He nodded towards the television.
‘Channel Four Racing finished over an hour ago – that’s some crummy old movie.’
Rory squinted tiredly to the screen, where two people were riding on horseback across a spectacular landscape.
‘This isn’t a crummy old movie, Faith. It’s The Man from Snowy River. Man, I love this film! You wait – the best movie kiss ever is about to happen. The girl in this film is gorgeous.’
Immediately interested, Faith squashed in beside him, only to leap up again a moment later as a set of teeth as sharp as a piranha’s sank into her thigh. ‘What the …?’
Rory barely glanced round. ‘Oh, that’s just Milo, Nell’s dog. I’m looking after him while she’s in the States.’
Emerging from beneath a very flat tapestry cushion, the poppy-eyed Chihuahua gave Faith a dirty look and slunk on to the arm of the sofa to lick his miniature paws.
‘Is Dillon serious about her, d’you think?’ Faith sneered, certain that any control Nell had over the Rafferty eventing string would be a decidedly bad thing.
But Rory shushed her as a couple appeared on screen sharing the same saddle, and Faith watched agog, now sitting on a pair of spurs.
When it happened, the kiss was curiously charming and old-fashioned. The couple rode up to the top of the mountain ridge and, as a storm gathered force in the distance, they had a long, delicious-looking kiss on horseback interspersed with fabulous sweeping shots of craggy valleys and sunset gallops.
To her amazement, Rory had tears in his eyes as he watched. ‘How perfect is that, huh? And isn’t she beautiful?’
‘She’s okay.’ The girl was, Faith realised excitedly, quite unlike Rory’s usual taste in ageing glamourpuss pin-ups. She had frizzy hair, for one, and quite a flat chest and her features – while they bore a passing reference to those of Sophia Loren – were not exceptionally pretty. Best of all, she wasn’t over fifty.
‘My sister had this on video when we were kids – she watched it to death. It’s about a ranch hand who falls in love with the boss’s daughter, Jessica. She’s a serious crosspatch. Like you.’
Better and better.
‘Later, there’s just the best scene ever when Jim proves himself a man not a boy by galloping down a mountain side – you wait and see.’
Faith didn’t need asking twice, although she knew guiltily in the back of her mind that the horses required feeding and turning out for the night.
Fetching the chocolates and snuggling back among the cushions, trying to ignore the fact that Twitch was licking her ear (if only it was Rory), she watched the movie unfold to its exciting denouement with what was indeed one of the most spectacular – and terrifying – bits of horsemanship she had ever seen as the heroic Jim jumped his horse straight over the edge of a cliff and chased the herd of brumbies down what looked like a sheer mountain face. To her shame, Faith found hot tears on her own face when he finally earned the respect of his boss and the men.
Rory, having whooped all the way through, sat up gleefully for the closing scene as Kirk Douglas, the boss, said, ‘You have a long way to go yet, lad.’ He then loudly chorused the reply from another ranch hand: ‘He’s not a lad, brother, he’s a man. He’s a MAN!’
‘Is that it?’ Faith was seriously disappointed that there was no more kissing, and instead Jim rode off into the sunset leaving Jessica waving from her father’s gate. ‘He just doffs his hat to her?’
‘Not ready to settle down.’
‘Hmph.’
Yet Faith was left in no doubt that she had just gained a valuable insight into the mind of the man she loved, for all his sins, and it was a surprisingly conventional, romantic one. Indoctrinated by Carly to think that all men wanted was tits and arse and attitude, she found herself absolutely swimming in love and gratitude. She almost believed her mother, who maintained that Rory was a lost sheep whose solitary life and love of classical music indicated a poet’s soul, although Faith knew with absolute certainly that he’d be a poet who loved big breasts, like John Donne.
As she helped him finish off the yard, spraying horses with citronella-scented repellant to ward off the flies before turning them out into a spectacular Cotswolds sunset dancing with midges, topping up hay and water for all those left in the stables overnight and sweeping hay and straw from the aisle in the American barn, she whistled along to Vivaldi on the radio and fantasised that she and Rory were galloping around together, kissing on mountain tops. Out of habit she stopped at White Lies’s box and pressed her nose to his warm, whiskery muzzle, smelling of the Polos his master had just sneaked to him as he passed. Rory claimed to have no favourites, but Whitey was special, a battle horse whose career as both a point-to-pointer and eventing star had been fearless and noble, and whose escape from death just a year earlier had been miraculous, not least because it marked a turnaround in Rory’s fortunes. Faith adored the big grey horse with his laid-back attitude, knowing he was as devoted to Rory as she was. Like his master, he could be undisciplined and lazy, but he was equally lion-hearted and easily bored. When Rory had tried to retire him to the field in the spring he’d taken to leaping the hedges to accompany the rest of the yard’s horses out on hacks, so they’d brought him back into ridden work as a nanny to the youngsters, and he was now thriving in old age.