by Fiona Walker
‘Plath!’ She let out a strangled sob of a laugh.
‘You know one another?’ Rory asked, big hand wilting to six o’clock as he hurriedly zipped up his fly.
Dillon’s record-industry friend was fresh from rehab, in need of a new direction, and clearly desperate to make her stay at Overlodes a success even though she had no apparent qualifications to run a yard apart from an ancient British Horse Society assistant instructor’s certificate dating back to her teens, a horse of her own and a lot of recently purchased books about stable management. Her lack of experience alarmed Rory. Her association with Sylva astonished him.
‘You could say so.’ Jules was now doing a laughing-crying thing that further surprised Rory, to whom she had only spoken in a sardonic monotone since her arrival. ‘We met on the pentathlon circuit as teenagers. I called her Sylvia, which drove her mad, but used to get her all the latest CDs from the UK for her Discman so she decided to forgive me.’
‘Then Jules became a record promoter,’ Sylva laughed as the two women fell into a hug that, to Rory’s slightly paranoid and for once sober mind, was distinctly Sapphic.
‘And Sylva became a pop star.’
‘That nobody west of Vienna had ever heard of,’ she giggled, pronouncing it ‘vest of Wienna’.
‘And I suggested you came here seeking fame and fortune,’ Jules boasted, like a schoolteacher reminding a former pupil turned megastar that their history classes had once been their reason for living.
‘You always told me to come here,’ Sylva purred into her shoulder. ‘Always making this little Slovak travel far from home. My Jules Verne.’
‘And you are still attracted to utterly unfaithful, untrustworthy and beautiful men, I see, Plath.’
‘I am very trustworthy, I’ll have you know!’ Rory said indignantly, although he was secretly rather chuffed by the summary.
‘We’re not,’ Sylva giggled again, nudging Jules who snorted with laughter, both transported back to teenage friendship.
He watched as they tilted their heads back and stared at one another’s faces with tearful affection in what he decided was a very tATu fashion – he could almost see the chain link fencing and the school uniforms.
‘In that case, early start tomorrow and all that. I might just go to bed and crash out,’ he announced grumpily, adding half-hopeful, half-joking: ‘Unless you two care to join me?’
Still giggling, Sylva and Jules glanced at one another. ‘Okay.’
Even as he opened his mouth, Rory knew that it would be incredibly uncool to cry ‘Hallelujah’, so he managed to limit it to ‘Ha!’, which was all the cue the girls needed to take his hands in theirs and drag him towards the cottage’s little staircase door.
They bounded upstairs, clothes flying. As they hit the bed, the long-case clock in the room beneath them was ringing out midnight and Rory’s cock was proudly confirming the time, ready for action.
‘Ding dong,’ Jules leapt aboard first, which was no bad thing because Rory couldn’t last long for darling, sexy Sylva. For Jules, he could hold hard and enjoy the show. She was, in fact, rather spectacular in a cobby sort of way, and reminded him rather excitingly of Clare Balding. She effortlessly rolled him over and bounced on top of him like a wrestler.
Rory wrestled back some sexual authority by pressing his elbows into the pillows to either side of her and showing off his power drill.
Gratifyingly, Jules eyes widened and she let out an amazed wail, arms flailing around, gasping breathlessly, reaching out for her beloved Plath.
Twelve o’clock was threatening to ring out again when Sylva slithered aboard, her full lips on Rorys left earlobe and her thighs resting against Jules’ wide freckled cheeks. It would all have got far too deliciously confusing if it weren’t too wonderful to bother to decipher.
Rory had the night of his life, watched disapprovingly from the threadbare wingchair in the corner of the room by Twitch.
Having moved back downstairs to catch up while Rory slept, Jules and Sylva were still curled up spine to spine together on the dog-eared sofa at three in the morning, both dressed in Rory’s freshly laundered hunting shirts, pulled from the rack above the Rayburn.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ Sylva purred, blowing the steam off a camomile tea. ‘In this little backwater, in this little village.’
‘The Cotswolds are the new Kensington and Chelsea,’ Jules reminded her as she sucked the froth from an instant cappucino. ‘I have plans for this place – The Stable Diet and Detox. I’m going to get urban fitness fanatics to come here to tone up and chill in all this fresh country air – mucking out is a great work out, after all, and Londoners love all this rural simplicity stuff. I’ve already got bookings through to Christmas. One record label is sending their entire sales team.’
Sylva was impressed. ‘You always could make a silk purse out of a cow’s ear as you say in England.’
‘Sow’s ear. But I’m making a pig’s ear of it right now,’ Jules groaned. ‘I’d forgotten how much hard work horses are. I only agreed to do it as a favour to a good friend.’
‘Dillon Rafferty?’ Sylva made the connection smoothly.
‘You know him?’
‘Not yet, but we are close neighbours and have a lot in common so I am sure we will meet soon. Through our children, maybe, or our interest in horses.’
‘If you’re angling for an invitation, forget it,’ Jules picked imaginary specks off her white shirt. ‘You’ll annihilate him. He’s as soft as those cheeses he makes.’
‘I’m merely interested in getting to know the locals. I think Dillon will be a close friend.’
Jules studied her face sceptically, knowing the old Sylva too well to believe she’d changed in recent years, ‘Is Mama behind this?’
Sylva turned away irritably, realising they’d been rumbled.
Jules sighed. ‘I’ve known Dillon a great many years and, believe me, he is not your type. If you want to get to know your neighbours, target the Abbey. Pete’s old school: you’ll fancy him much more.’
‘I know his wife,’ Sylva said pompously, based on their one encounter. ‘I would never do that to Indigo and her babies.’
‘And Nell Cottrell?’
‘Oh, I have no respect for her, she broke darlink Rory’s heart once.’ Sylva stood up and stretched luxuriously before heading upstairs to fetch her clothes.
When she reappeared, Jules watched her dress, marvelling at her beauty. She was a breed apart and always had been, even as a teenager on the pentathlon circuit, where her self-possession and ambition had been legend. Then, as now, she had treated sex as sport.
Jules recalled reading that the poet John Betjeman, as an old man, had been asked whether he had any regrets and replied, ‘Yes – not enough sex.’ Sylva had more than enough sex; it was regrets she had always lacked.
‘Don’t screw with Dillon, Plath,’ she now warned in a low voice. ‘He’s far too straight for you, and he’s still hung up on his ex-wife. His daughters mean everything to him.’
‘As do my boys to me.’ Sylva zipped up her baby blue leather jacket as far as her lacy cleavage.
Having seen Sylva’s sons plastered on the cover of the weekly gossip magazines since birth, Jules could guess just how much they meant to her. ‘If you need publicity, pick on an easier target, one that’s in the UK more than a few days at a time for a start. Use me if you like. I have nobody to hurt and it’d be great publicity for this place.’
‘You’re not famous,’ Sylva muttered.
‘At least give it a try,’ Jules urged. ‘I’ll give the redtops a story that makes you look quite adorable and will, of course, be set so far in our distant past that nobody will blame you for having a little dalliance during your teenage sexual awakening.’
‘Not so distant past,’ Sylva laughed, starting to warm to the idea. ‘Mama will hate it.’
‘Not if you’re on all the front pages looking gorgeous.’
‘Okay, we’ll do it,’ Syl
va shrugged, walking across the room to an old desk beneath the casement window where she rooted through the drawers and drew out Rory’s passport. Then she dropped it into one of his bags.
‘He needs someone to look after him,’ she told a surprised Jules.
‘Not you, though?’
Sylva shook her head with a ravishing smile. ‘I need a grown up, darlink. A real man. I’ll be here at seven-thirty tomorrow, yes?’
‘What?’ Jules yawned, looking at her watch and balking.
‘The Stable Diet and Detox,’ she headed for the door. ‘I need to lose a great deal of weight. Your system will be perfect.’
‘But Plath, you’re not remotely—’
The door slammed.
‘—overweight.’
Chapter 25
When Kurt Willis attended his regular dental check in Chelmsford’s most exclusive practice, he naturally took the opportunity to thank his dentist for all his help after Faith’s accident.
‘We were so grateful Carly was there and enlisted your help. Faith’s teeth look amazing. In fact, I was wondering if we couldn’t spruce up my veneers to look like that? That new smile quite transforms her face.’
By the time Kurt’s teeth had been probed, scraped and polished, the girls’ web of lies had been exposed and Faith was about to have the smile wiped off her face. Not that she had smiled much in the recent weeks of driving rain and twelve-hour days, but she’d ridden some amazing horses, worked hard and gained invaluable coaching. Assiduous, talented and gutsy, Faith had all the makings of a top rider, but now Kurt’s trust in his stepdaughter and working pupil was quite shattered.
He and Graeme called her into their massive open-plan bungalow for an inquisition, taking up position on opposite sides of the forty-foot room on suede Eames sofas that matched their colouring, blond for Kurt, dark brown for Graeme. Faith was forced to perch on an orange Flocks pouf in the middle of the room while they rounded on her.
They were seriously mad.
‘You told us a stallion kicked you.’
‘I know.’
‘It didn’t, did it?’
‘No.’
‘We labelled that horse a danger! All so you could indulge your vanity.’
Faith shrank back, knowing it was the truth. However much she’d tried to play it down, to get on with her job and put that weekend behind her, the guilt she felt wouldn’t go away. A good horse had been sent back to its breeder in Germany as a result of her lies.
‘Why did you say it?’ Kurt demanded.
‘It wasn’t my idea!’ she bleated, starting to explain about Double-D day and Carly’s elaborate plan to enable the makeover.
But before she’d got beyond describing the dash for the gate in the Mini, Kurt covered his eyes in horror. ‘You went for a boob job?’
‘Yes, no, that is—’
‘I’d ask for your money back,’ Graeme sniped. Admittedly, Faith wore a lot of baggy layers to ride, but he coached enough artificially enhanced Essex housewives to know that her physique was still more Vincent Price than Katie Price.
‘How can you hope to be a professional rider with tits?’ Kurt howled.
‘But I didn’t—’
‘You’ve let me down,’ he stormed, standing up and stalking across a vast expanse of cowhide rug to the ten-foot-wide pebble fire, where he paced beneath a life-size portrait of himself and Graeme riding a pas de deux and flicked his highlights about for effect. ‘You’ve let down your darling mother. You’ve let yourself down.’
Kurt loved a big scene, imagining himself Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. It was months since he’d had the opportunity to flounce quite so theatrically. In secret, he was grateful for an excuse to lay in to Faith at last. He might claim to want a protégée, but this one was sullen and ungrateful, despite having the makings of a superstar rider. Her talent was all the more frightening because she seemed to care so little about it. Nobody on his yard was more dedicated or put in longer hours, yet he sensed Faith’s heart and ambition lay elsewhere, and that she was merely treading water with him. He wanted some of that fire he knew she possessed, but here in Essex, she was all cool water, a trait that had sometimes handicapped her ice-queen mother.
‘Do you want to be as good as Anke was, Faith? Better, even?’ he asked now, striding from his fireplace to his Rennie Mackintosh desk, which he leant against with dandyish aplomb. ‘Do you really want success?’ He lifted his chin, fully expecting her to take the baton as they reached a breakthrough. ‘Because if you do, you’re going to have to fight for it, honeybunch.’
Faith looked him square in the eye, saying nothing but thinking back to the past few weeks of simply throwing herself into the work to make up for all those unanswered texts and late and lonely nights sitting in the caravan, or occasional dreadful evenings out on the town with Carly trying to be something she wasn’t. She thought about Sylva Frost and her high-maintenance glamour, seducing her dreams away. She thought about her beloved Rio relocating to the Beauchamps’ fantastic Berkshire yard along with half a dozen other Overlodes competition horses. She felt increasingly like poor White Lies who had been left behind, overlooked because he was no longer considered useful.
Faith still remembered the first time Rory had let her ride Whitey in open country, and the sheer speed with which he’d powered over hedges and ditches. ‘We would have won the Foxhunter Chase if we’d stayed in racing,’ Rory had laughed afterwards. But when Faith had asked why he hadn’t done just that he’d looked at her askance. ‘Just because you can win something doesn’t make it the natural choice. Where’s the challenge in that? It’s what you want to win that counts.’ It was one of the wisest things she could remember him saying, and the reason she’d decided Rio should swap from dressage to eventing.
Faith had been bred to be a dressage rider. It was in her genes, just as being flat-chested, ginger-haired and long-legged were part of her make-up. She’d come away to reinvent herself, but instead of becoming more feminine and beguiling she’d found her body toughening to muscle with all the hard work, her resolve hardening and her skin thickening as she reverted to type. Yet her heart was utterly unchangeable; it wanted to break out of the arena and gallop across country.
Kurt strode back to the fireplace, where he stood facing her, hands on hips, issuing the challenge again. ‘So what’s it going to be, Faith? Are you going to fight?’
She had a sudden ludicrous image of them grappling one another down on to the designer hearthrug to battle it out like Grecian wrestlers while Graeme watched on, a poodle to each side of him. It reminded her of the film Women in Love. She wasn’t sure if she had grown from girl to woman while she had been away, but she knew she was in love.
‘I want to have a go at eventing,’ she said in a small voice.
Kurt’s handsome, tanned face lengthened with disappointment and he looked away.
On the sofa, Graeme snorted with laughter. ‘Oh God, it’s worse than we thought. Not only has she been under the knife in the name of love, now she wants to pop logs with hunting toffs and farmers from the colonies.’
‘It’s the best test of horse and rider!’ Faith flared. ‘Four-star eventers have more courage and skill than anyone.’
‘You won’t get anywhere with that attitude, smiler,’ Graeme snarled back, though he was quietly thrilled by this turn of events, having already lined up a lovely young Swedish rider as Faith’s replacement.
Faith rounded on him. ‘I like my attitude!’ She cocked her chin, displaying some of that fire at long last. ‘And I like my teeth. In fact, I wish I’d had more work done!’
‘Why not?’ sneered Graeme. ‘You’ll have plenty of time now you’re out of a job.’
Faith’s mouth hung open, showing off her very white teeth as she registered what was happening.
Confirming her fears, Graeme looked victoriously at Kurt. ‘In the words of Alan Sugar …’
With a shrug of regret, Kurt nodded. Graeme had been impossibly jealous
since Faith’s arrival, having never really dealt with Kurt’s previous marriage or his stepchildren. He was all for an easy life. There was no point having a protégée if she wasn’t ready to be tamed, and he really preferred riding the horses himself. But he would miss Faith’s pure, raw ability.
She hung her head. ‘I really am sorry about the stallion. I hated lying.’
To her surprise, Kurt waltzed forward and took her face between his hands. ‘My darling child, you have a lot to learn. But your attitude – and your teeth – are quite dazzling. What better for the girl who always bites off more than she can chew?’
*
Later that same drizzling grey October morning, Faith made the long, traffic-choked drive from Essex to the Cotswolds. She had never been so mortified. Before today, she hadn’t been given so much as a detention or an official reprimand of any kind. Now her gayfathers had just fired her.
Her eyes barely focusing on the road beyond the sweeping wind-screen wipers, Faith deeply regretted her shabby behaviour towards Kurt and Graeme. They had been good to her. They were family, and she’d abused their trust. Her mother would be livid.
Yet a part of her couldn’t help feeling liberated. She longed to see Rory and was desperate to get back to the way things had been before. She would never let him down, or desert him, again.
Turning on the radio, she found Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings playing on Classic FM, so absurdly romantic and yet saddening that rare tears almost blinded her progress along the M40, her battered heart at bursting point.
The truth hit her with every passing slip road. She wasn’t going home to Rory. He had gone to Berkshire without looking back. He had taken her horse. He had sent just a one-line text to let her know. Worse than all of that, he had played with the ultimate Slovakian sex kitten. Rory, her beloved, her only Rory, was increasingly a stranger.
She took a deep breath, blinking to see, wishing that she had asked Mr Ali Khan for massive Sylva Frost boobs after all, as well as a tiny button nose and buttock implants. Carly had been right all along, she needed some mileage. She had an awful lot to learn about men and sex. An eighteen-year-old virgin had no hope of bagging a seasoned playboy.