by Fiona Walker
If she closed her eyes she could taste Rory’s lips, their salty sweetness, the plump yield of silken lip and the scuff of stubble, the scent of horse, leather and field on his skin, the warm breath from his nostrils. She could remember the instinctive way his hand had risen up to her cheek, warm and protective, and the surprised intake of breath.
Her core shuddered with the pleasure of it, cut so short, taken from her by her own stubbornness and fear. The thought of leaving him physically hurt.
She traced her fingers along the hard, flat bronze and then up to her flat, bony chest.
She was right to go, she told herself. It was time for the caterpillar to disappear into its chrysalis.
Chapter 15
For three days, Beccy leaped on her iPhone every time it rang, but it was never her sexy Kiwi. She knew it was silly to imagine that he would call again, especially given that he had mistaken her for Tash in the first place. What man in their right mind would make secret calls from half way across the world to a married woman with a toddler and a newborn?
Yet in her Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxanne fantasy world, she’d already conducted endless conversations with him to the point of his frenzied confessions of love amid her tearful revelations of her true identity.
Then, out of the blue, he texted.
Flights booked.
There followed a list of flight times and numbers, transporter details and bedding and feed requirements. No flirtation. No confessions. Not even an x at the end.
Beccy had a dilemma. If she gave Tash and Hugo the information they would inevitably want to know why he had texted her and not called or emailed them. Hugo was irascible enough about it as it was. She supposed she could make up a fairly plausible excuse – she had taken his call in the first place, after all – but the more she stalled the more indecisive she became and, in her customary fashion, she ended up saying nothing at all. Instead, that evening, she texted back.
Hurry.
It seemed suitably ambiguous yet hinted at longing.
It took him almost a day to come up with: Things bad there?
Unspeakable.
More excruciatingly long hours passed before: Hang in there.
Satisfied that she had told no lies, Beccy allowed herself some more Cyrano de Bergerac fantasies before suddenly panicking that she might have put him off coming and so hurriedly banged out another message. UK riders are quaking in their boots knowing you are coming here at last.
Another agonising wait proceeded before she eventually read: And you?
Quacking with anticipation.
It was only after she’d pressed send that Beccy realised her mistake. He’d think of her as some demented duck now. She burned with mortification.
But this time his reply was almost instant: That makes us birds of a feather.
Beccy kissed the little glowing phone screen, wishing him good-night – her time – with a hasty I’m tucking my head under my wing now before taking a victory waddle and quack around her room, then lying wide awake in bed thinking about him.
Sweet dreams arrived moments later.
Racked by insomnia and delight, Beccy could only daydream – his time – imagining him checking his phone as he dismounted after a gallop through his lush New Zealand pastures.
Sleeplessness has never felt so sweet, she told him truthfully.
Late at night and in the early hours, exchanging these intermittent, intimate bon mots that felt so bad yet so irresistibly thrilling, Beccy refused to succumb to guilt. The way she saw it, Lough’s arrival could only benefit Haydown, where it was all work and no play. If he was as bad tempered and horrible as was commonly rumoured, she was happy to let him think he’d been texting Tash and to stand back to watch the storm break. That might even give Beccy a clear route to Hugo at last. And if Lough Strachan was, as she was starting to think, a misunderstood, passionate hero, then she might just be tempted to reveal her true colours. Either way, she couldn’t lose.
He bowled some curveballs, however, like his next text: How did you know that I’d know?
Beccy had no idea what he meant and it took her ages to decide upon a reply, anxious that she was missing something and that texting back Know what? would expose her as an imposter. Then, listening to the radio late that night, she heard the answer sung out: There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known. Thank heavens for John Lennon.
His comeback was excitingly double-edged: AllYou Need Is Love?
Love is all you need, she picked the letters carefully across the number keys.
This time Lough’s response kicked her after-hours daydreams back into check. You don’t know me, Tash.
Beccy took her phone under the duvet, texting blindly You don’t know me either. The irony sat so heavily in her chest that she lay awake that night, feeling weighed down with stones.
Seconds before her alarm clock rang out, her phone beeped, vibrated and lit up. Quack.
Quack, she echoed back, SMS flying half way around the world in less time than it took her to brush her teeth, her reflection pink-faced with joy, knowing she was already late for morning feeds and that Hugo would shout at her, and for once not caring.
From that moment on the ice broke between Lough and Beccy as they ducked and dived eagerly, quacking across a hemisphere of oceans and ponds. Every time Beccy’s phone chirruped she felt her heart thrum. She lay awake staring at her phone on the bedside table, waiting for it to light up like a firefly. She asked him endless questions, longing to know more about the dark-eyed rebel who rode like Xenophon. Most of the things she quizzed him on were embarrassingly juvenile – his favourite films, music, literature – but his answers still provided her with pieces that she could put together to make a picture of a bright loner, a man hewn from two clashing cultures with a rich imagination and a great desire to educate himself and to understand the world around him. His taste in movies ranged from old classics to art house films she’d never heard of; when asked if he liked The Piano he replied dryly that it was okay, but he preferred guitar music. As well as The Beatles, he loved Jeff Buckley and a band called Straitjacket Fits that Beccy had to Google. He read mostly horse stuff, but I studied French literature as a kid and love Camus, so my bookcase scares visitors. You?
Beccy didn’t think it was a moment to share the fact she was currently half way through the latest Marian Keyes, taking occasional breaks to flick through OK! magazine. French literature does it for me too, she replied happily. It wasn’t a lie. She’d loved reading Zola and Flaubert for her French A level; Madame Bovary had been a favourite, with the dashing, adulterous landowner Rodolphe Boulanger making her think of Hugo.
Read to me sometime, Tash. I want to hear your voice again.
Beccy shuddered, thinking about that first magical call. He had heard her voice, not Tash’s. So what if she’d softened and Sloanified it a bit to sound like her stepsister; it was still Beccy who had spoken to him, who had flirted with him and heard that amazing gruff, sexy voice in return.
Inspired, she headed to Marlbury library on her afternoon off and borrowed a translation of Cyrano de Bergerac, but found it highly disappointing because she’d forgotten that stupid, noble Cyrano dies still denying his lifetime’s love.
She texted New Zealand afterwards: x
A kiss?
A rosy circle drawn around the verb ‘to love’.
That blew it; she should never have quoted Rostand, least of all using the L word again. He didn’t reply for two days. Beccy started to panic, taking long, unscheduled breaks from yard work to drive up to the ridge beside the telephone mast where there was maximum reception and wait in vain for a response.
Then, to her eternal relief, he texted: Tell me you love good food.
Beccy, whose appetite had never deserted her despite faddiness that had taken her from vegetarian to vegan to fruitarian at various points, texted back with a triumphant affirmative.
I can’t wait to cook for you. What’s your favourite food?
Better and better. For all her greed, Beccy was hopelessly basic in the kitchen. Thai, North Indian, Lebanese, tapas she replied ecstatically. And best of all, stew with dumplings.
I will cook you stew he promised. That’s total ambrosia for a Kiwi.
She laughed, daring herself to suggest And rolypoly to follow?
Haven’t got a sweet tooth, he revealed, not getting the innuendo. Can’t stand jam. My dad’s favourite. Sticks in my throat.
It was a silly detail, but Beccy’s heart soared. She had always hated jam intensely. It reminded her of those first years after her mother remarried, when Henrietta went into country-wife overdrive and made endless pots of conserves from every fruit in James’s vast garden. The smell of jam-making still made Beccy feel sick, associated as it was with the wretched misery of becoming a reluctant and unwanted stepdaughter.
Hate jam too. My stepfather’s favourite. Sticks in my throat. But I love stew.
I love stew too.
x
x
Those two kisses criss-crossed the world as the birds of a feather finally lay down to roost, knowing they had crossed another invisible boundary.
Can I call you? he wrote the next time.
Any time, she replied eagerly before remembering that she was Tash and ‘any time’ wasn’t an option for a married mother of two with a business to run.
When he did call she was lolling in bed just before midnight, The Truth about Cats and Dogs playing on her laptop, which she was finding considerably more cheering than Rostand.
‘Tash?’
‘Yes,’ she managed to splutter vaguely, heart hyper-charged.
‘Now, in this blessed darkness, I feel I am speaking to you for the first time.’
That sexy Kiwi drawl was unbelievably potent. Beccy reeled, her heart on fire. It was a quote from Cyrano de Bergerac, when he speaks to Roxane in the darkness beneath her balcony, pretending to be her suitor Christian but in reality confessing his own love.
He’d read the book!
‘I know Hugo’s in Holland tonight,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she managed another strangled affirmative. Hugo had indeed disappeared to the Netherlands first thing that morning to compete at Breda CIC, the one-day equivalent of the three-day CCI, catching a lift in an owner’s private plane so that he could ride and return home within just two days and not interrupt preparations for Burghley.
‘So you’re all alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Talk to me.’
For a moment, Beccy wanted to hang up so badly she couldn’t breathe. She suddenly thought about Tash and her children in the house a few hundred yards away, probably breastfeeding little Amery and listening to Radio Four in bed. Disgrace and embarrassment threatened to asphyxiate her.
‘I c-can’t talk,’ she managed to whisper.
‘Sorry. Dumb of me to call. Forget it.’
‘No. Please don’t go.’
She clung on to the phone for what seemed like for ever, hand shaking, heart battering her ribs, watching blindly as a muted Uma Thurman and Ben Chaplin moved about on her laptop screen.
‘Okay, I have a question for you,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s nothing personal – well, not directly. It’s about my father.’
‘Yes.’
‘We haven’t spoken for a long time. Years, you know. We fell out.’
‘Go on.’
‘Now he knows I’m leaving he wants to meet up.’
‘That’s good.’
‘No it’s not. He’s a shit, I want nothing to do with him. He just wants money. He always does. But he’s used my mum to get at me.’
‘Oh.’
‘I can’t leave her here like this with him around.’
‘So you might not come here after all?’ she bleated, torn between relief and regret.
‘That’s what I’m asking, Tash.’
She almost wished he was talking to Tash right now. She was always good at advice and sympathy. Beccy just wanted to get back to Cyrano de Bergerac and flirting.
‘If you meet your dad and pay him off, will he leave your mum alone?’
‘I guess.’
‘So there’s your answer.’
There was a long pause and Beccy sensed that perhaps she’d said the wrong thing. In her head she could hear Tash’s soft husky voice urging ‘Bring your mum here with you, Lough’ or ‘Stay there and sort it out’. But Beccy, spoilt little rich girl, came up with ‘pay him off’. Nice one. She needed to rescue this fast.
‘I have a question for you,’ she said, grateful to have found her voice, that soft Tash voice she aped so well.
‘Okay.’
‘Are you really as ruthless as they say?’
‘Depends what they say.’
‘Don’t they call you the Devil on Horseback in New Zealand?’
‘Some do.’
She took a deep breath and crossed her fingers. ‘So why can’t the Devil on Horseback stand up to his own father and tell him to leave his mother alone?’
That was more like it, Beccy reasoned, feisty and direct with a smoky touch of sensuality to her voice. She was back in business.
There was another long pause. On screen, Abby and Brian were having phone sex. Beccy sighed jealously.
‘You don’t know my pp,’ he said eventually. ‘He talks with his fists.’
‘Afraid of getting beaten up?’ she teased.
‘Yeah, quite frankly.’
‘Then perhaps you should think twice about coming here after all.’
‘You planning to beat me up, then?’ That amazing voice deepened with amusement and flirtation.
A slow smile spread across Beccy’s face as she realised she was back in the game and on familiar, flirty turf.
‘Not me. But there are a lot of jealous types around here, you know.’
‘Don’t I just. Reckon I’ll have to watch my back out there.’
‘Just your own?’
‘I’ll watch every part of you if you like.’
She was shivering with excitement now. Forget Abby and Brian, this was a million times more thrilling. Her nerve endings were so charged, she expected her duvet to combust. She couldn’t resist sliding her hand down between her legs.
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘I’ll just hold you.’
Oh. My. God. Beccy’s fingers encountered a warm geyser bubbling over a pip-hard little rock and as soon as she touched it she climaxed, shuddering quietly and shamefully into her pillow.
‘Still there?’ he asked after several seconds. ‘Afraid I might start a fight out there?’
Beccy suddenly didn’t want to flirt any more. ‘This is serious, Lough. Don’t you dare give me away here.’
‘I was under the impression your husband had already done that?’
It was a few moments before she could take in what he had said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Nothing. Forget I said it.’
‘What are you talking about here?’ Her voice had risen from her breathy Tash impersonation towards her normal pitch. She didn’t care whether she was pretending to be Tash or not. She wanted to know.
‘Ask Hugo.’
Beccy carefully closed the lid of her laptop and balanced it on her bedside table, pulling her duvet up to her chin, causing Karma, who was asleep on the end of the bed, to fall off with a thud as she was rolled from her twelve-tog nest.
‘Still there?’ he asked again.
‘Yup.’
‘A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear,’ he began to quote, ‘infinity captured in the bee’s brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover’s lip: “Forever”.’
Beccy closed her eyes, feeling the weighty lurches as Karma climbed aboard the bed to make herself comfortable once again.
‘I wanted to kiss you the first time I ever saw you competing in Melbourne.’
Beccy’s eyes
snapped open again.
‘What was that?’
‘Melbourne three day event. I saw you compete.’
‘When?’
‘Six years ago. My first time there. The horse got a knock flying over and we didn’t declare. I was in the crowd on cross-country day. You were riding one of Sandy Hunter’s advanced horses. I watched you through the water – the mare was a famous hydrophobic, but you pretty much carried her through it. It was great riding. Then some nutty girl tried to throw herself in front of your horse, remember?’
Beccy closed her eyes. How could she forget?
‘Somebody stopped her,’ she remembered, the dizzying frenzy of that day more blurred in her mind than ever. Days on end with no food, living in a hostel in St Kilda with a Norwegian girl called Mjoll who she’d met on the Gold Coast, and who shared big blocks of crumbly brown dope and fed Beccy’s paranoia about her stepfamily. Knowing Tash was going to be in Melbourne with Hugo, longing to punish her for having what Beccy wanted, for driving her out into the wilderness in search of purpose.
‘I stopped her,’ Lough’s deep, gruff voice said simply.
‘You?’
‘Yeah. Small world, huh?’
‘Ohmygod.’
‘I came to meet you in person the next day – you were signing books. But you didn’t recognise me and I got tongue-tied. You were feeling crook and Hugo was being mean, I remember that. I was a nobody then, just a small-town Kiwi vet with big ambitions. I’ve still got the book – you spelled my name wrong when I said “Lough as in Scottish loch.”’
Beccy was barely breathing. ‘And the girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘The girl who ran out in front of Ta—’ She corrected herself, panic rising. ‘In front of my horse. You saved her life. What happened to her?’
‘No idea – she ran off before security could get at her. Looked pretty spaced-out to me.’
‘Would you recognise her again?’
‘Yeah, sure. Scary eyes. And she had a pretty distinctive tattoo of a mermaid on her shoulder.’
Beccy fingered her shoulder and wriggled lower under the duvet.