Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

  Tash went around each stable, making sure that the automatic drinkers were working, that hay racks were topped up and rugs correct.

  Afterwards she stood for a long time staring up at the dark sky, wishing that she was going to France. She missed Hugo so much it hurt. They were both so stupidly stubborn at times. But if she thought about Marie-Clair’s lifestyle and her forceful sexuality and ribald humour, the late night meals, early hours drinking sessions, wild pranks and desire to spend all day in the saddle she knew that there would be no place for her and the children there. She was appalled that Hugo couldn’t see it too.

  The following morning, somewhat jaded from a long night with the extremely demanding MC, Rory thought any chances of victory were blown when The Fox overreached badly just three fences into the cross-country and pulled up lame, forcing them to retire. As usual he couldn’t get hold of his owner to report the bad news, Dillon currently being somewhere in Japan with his mobile switched off.

  Yet that afternoon he climbed no less than twenty-three places on the leader board after a blistering ride across country in appalling weather on the brave but inexperienced Rio.

  By equal contrast, this horse’s owner sent a text almost before Rory had dismounted. Saw it all online. Bloody amazing. Love my horse! Big it up for the boys. UCnDoMgc. F x

  Rory felt uneasy under such Big Brother scrutiny. And since when had Faith started saying ‘Big it up’ or whatever gobbledegook UCnDoMgc meant? It must be one of her Essex affectations, along with silicone and stilettos. Nevertheless, he saved the message to his phone memory, alongside the Bonne chance MC has sent him just before he set out. Then, stifling a yawn, he handed Rio to Jenny and went to study the scoreboard.

  Earlier in the day, Hugo had posted a safe and solid round on the equally inexperienced The Cub, racking up some time penalties but still securing the top slot. But now Rory had bolted home so fast he’d climbed two points above his trainer the night before show-jumping. On another occasion Hugo would have been praised for his caution, for putting the horse first and thinking more long-term for once. But such was the cruelty of contrast that critics immediately chorused that he had lost his edge and that younger men like Rory were riding more boldly and bravely in the traditional spirit of the sport. In the post-competition interviews one journalist accused him of selling out and losing his nerve. It seemed he couldn’t win their approval either way.

  Chapter 29

  Hugo: ‘I CAN’T WIN!’ shouted the Horse & Hound report on Pau CCI****, which featured a thumbnail of him looking very grumpy as he and Cub sailed over the Fontaine Jump. The large photograph of Rory clearing the last show-jump on the flashy stallion Rio was much more flattering, and was captioned ‘Pau … sers! ’ The commentary pointed out that the Midwinter string looked likely to take all next year, and would bring the recently failing fortunes of the Beauchamps’ yard a much-needed boost, particularly as Lough Strachan had apparently changed his mind about coming to the UK.

  Tash scanned the rest of the report as she waited for Sylva, who insisted on collecting her and the kids for their lunch date, but was now over an hour late. It didn’t make great reading. Hugo came across as a terrible loser, with his quote taken quite out of context. She only hoped that she could cheer him up by bagging Sylva as a new owner by the time he returned from France.

  ‘Rory did good, yeah.’

  Tash jumped, realising that Lem had wandered into the house and was standing right behind her, reading over her shoulder. She wished he would knock first. It never bothered her when Beccy or Jenny came in unannounced, but something about Lem made her edgy, especially with Hugo and Rory away. He was become increasingly proprietorial.

  ‘My girls want to know what to ride after lunch,’ he said now.

  ‘It’s written on the office board,’ Tash told him, disliking the way he used ‘my girls’ for Beccy and Faith. The three had formed a little clique that she privately thought brought out the worst in them all, particularly Beccy, who was ever more distant.

  ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Tash pointed to the reference to Lough in the report. ‘I had a very strange call from him the other night, but he definitely said he was still coming.’

  ‘He’s had a spot of bother with his passport,’ Lemon said airily, before changing the subject. ‘You look great, Mrs B. Going somewhere nice?’

  ‘Lunch with a prospective owner.’

  Stressed out from a morning spent battling the yard’s broken-down tractor, and then embarking on a rescue mission to collect the Czech au pairs who had got stranded in Marlbury’s multi-story with the Beauchamps’ decrepit Volvo that they used as a runaround (‘a total death trap’ to quote the AA man), she wasn’t feeling as serene and ladies-who-lunch-tastic as she might have hoped. She couldn’t get the black crescents of oil and grease from beneath her stubby nails despite minutes of scrubbing with a nailbrush – but at least they matched the dark crescents beneath her eyes.

  ‘La-di-da. I’d better get back below stairs, m’lady.’ Lemon doffed an imaginary cap and headed towards the back lobby, poking his tongue out at Cora as he passed to make her laugh, but the little girl burst into tears instead.

  ‘So Lough definitely is coming?’ Tash checked as she gathered Cora into a hug.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ He stalled at the door. ‘Don’t panic. He’s half Maori, remember. They see time differently.’

  ‘Well perhaps the non-Maori half could get his arse in gear,’ Tash snapped, realising too late that she sounded just like Hugo.

  Lem stopped and looked back at her over his shoulder.

  No longer crying, Cora was ramming her Elmer Elephant down her mother’s top and giggling furiously as she pointed out ‘Mummy’s boobies!’

  ‘Lough’s risking everything to come here.’ Lem’s voice had lost all its jokey edge. ‘You’d do well to remember that as you sit here in your big house with your rich husband, playing happy families.’

  ‘Hang on a—’

  ‘Lough and Hugo have a deal. I know you upper class Brits think life’s all one big game, but Lough plays hardball, yeah?’ It sounded like a threat.

  Clutching Cora tighter, Tash glanced nervously out of the window and was relieved to spot a vast four-by-four with blacked-out windows rolling up outside followed by a huge, shiny Hummer.

  ‘Well if he doesn’t get here soon any deal is off,’ she told Lem curtly, gathering her children and ushering him out of the house.

  ‘He can’t leave New Zealand yet.’ Lem stood in the doorway.

  ‘And I can’t leave this house until you step aside.’

  He turned away angrily, hissing to himself. ‘From what I hear, Lough’s the least of your worries.’

  Tash wanted to run after him demanding an explanation. But she had a child under each arm, and cars waiting.

  Sylva, who was on the phone, blew kisses and smiled.

  Immediately separated from her children who were whisked into the back of the Hummer along with their car seats and encased behind its blackened glass with a small army of Eastern European nannies, Tash found herself sliding about on a vast expanse of leather beside Sylva in the back of the four-by-four. She was still giving whoever was on the end of the line a very hard time. ‘I will fire you if this happens again, you understand? This is not the sort of publicity I need right now. You should have handled it completely differently. You are an idiot, and you’re on borrowed time …’

  Still trying to calm down from her conversation with Lem, Tash gazed straight ahead at the back of their driver’s head. He had no perceivable neck, and his arm muscles were as big as pit-bull torsos, she noticed. The radio was blaring Dillon Rafferty’s new single.

  Sylva came off the phone at last and barked something in Slovakian at Pit-Bull Arms, who turned off the radio and switched on the sat nav.

  ‘The driver is my cousin Olaf,’ she explained to Tash. ‘He has no sense of direction, which is why we are late. I won’t introduce you because he speaks no En
glish and he is nasty.’

  Tash caught two eyes studying her in the rear view mirror and smiled awkwardly before turning to Sylva. ‘Are you okay? That sounded a tricky call.’

  ‘It’s all good. No publicity is bad publicity, after all – but they didn’t have to know that.’ She flashed her gorgeous smile. ‘I have been looking forward to today so much. This has been a horrible week. You must cheer me up with talk of horses, Tash.’

  Then before Tash could get a word in Sylva started listing her grievances. As the sat nav guided them with soothing Slovakian tones through West Berkshire and over the border to the Oxfordshire Chilterns, she complained non-stop about her disloyal friends who all talked to the press, her cold-blooded documentary team, her lazy agents (she had several), a swimwear launch she’d just starred in, her useless PAs, her horrible Cotswold weekend retreat, the illustrator for her latest children’s book and – most of all – her mother, who had wanted to come along that day.

  ‘I say no. Mama, I am allowed to haff friends of my own. I tell her you would not like her, Tash, because you are posh and she is trash.’

  Tash found her alarmingly outspoken. She craned around to check that the Hummer carrying the children was still behind them and realised in a panic that it had gone.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Sylva rested a warm hand on her arm. ‘My nannies are taking them to a lovely play area while we have lunch. They will look after them.’

  ‘Are they all family too?’

  ‘Yes. We are a close family. My sister Hana is bringing my niece Zuzi to live with us too. She will be my Cotswolds housekeeper.’

  ‘Your niece?’

  ‘No, she is just a child. Pretty child. Very like her mother.’

  ‘She and Hana must be stunning if they’re anything like you.’

  ‘Hana is very plain,’ she said confusingly, then made Tash jump by reaching up to pull out the clip that she had crammed into her wild hair to keep it off her face. ‘But you are very beautiful, I think. There! Much better.’

  Tash’s hair spilled over her eyes and she blew an embarrassed raspberry to stop it tickling her nose. ‘Well at least it hides my face, I guess.’

  With a few quick flicks, Sylva’s expert fingers styled the wayward bed-head to one side so that it just fell over one eye, then she leaned back to admire her handiwork. ‘It’s a very sexy face. I like sexy friends.’

  Tash pondered this for a moment while Sylva whipped out a compact and checked her immaculate make-up. Feeling she should keep her end up, Tash fished around in her bag but found that all she had were a couple of old hairbands, a cherry lipsalve and a broken comb with what appeared to be a boiled sweet impaled on its teeth. She settled for applying some lipsalve and admiring Sylva’s brightly knitted mohair peplum jacket over a black and white striped catsuit and red boots with heels as long and narrow as Visconti fountain pens.

  Amazingly, she realised, she was on trend today. Her own outfit of bright, clashing jewel colours and monochrome, inspired by the fashion pages of the Sunday Telegraph supplements that her mother-in-law stockpiled in her loo, had looked rather cutting-edge and cheering in the dusky mirror in her room, although when she’d later reassessed it in the less flattering mirror in the brightly lit downstairs loo it looked like she’d been styled by a colour-blind parrot fetishist with jumble-sale rejects.

  Sylva’s outfit worked much better, not least because she had no baby sick on her shoulders or tractor oil on her cuffs.

  Yet Sylva, who handed out compliments in almost every sentence, made her feel surprisingly good about herself. She said she envied Tash’s clear skin, her fabulous bone structure and – when they tumbled out on to a tarmac turning arc in front of a very exclusive Thames-side restaurant near Henley – her height.

  ‘My goodness, I forgot you are so tall – your legs finish where my arms begin, and I’m wearing my highest Jimmy Choos!’ She gaped up at her lunch companion in awe.

  Lunching with Sylva was not a low-key event. Everybody in the restaurant turned and stared as she walked past, despite its exclusive reputation. She was just too famous – and too gaudy – to ignore. And she was demanding, insisting that their table be changed twice, that the flower arrangement was removed ‘because I cannot see my beautiful friend through all that foliage’, that she ate food ‘off menu’ and drank cocktails made to her own recipe.

  At least all the attention-seeking and posturing took Tash’s mind off the whereabouts of her children.

  And Sylva’s cocktails – apparently a mixture of vodka, coffee liqueur and coke – were strangely delicious. They drank two before lunch, followed by a bottle of vintage Cristal.

  The champagne acted like a truth drug on Tash, who never normally drank during the day unless Hugo won a four-star, and who had barely touched any alcohol since Amery’s birth. Allowing herself this rare treat, she got tight incredibly quickly. Any attempt to sell Sylva the idea of owning an event horse rapidly lost focus, although Sylva remained gratifyingly interested in everything she said. Tash was surprised by how clever she was, and how knowledgeable.

  ‘Rory got me riding again, and I like your sport,’ she explained. ‘He has a very good owner, of course. Dillon Rafferty is a big fan of eventing, yes?’

  ‘God no – Rory never hears from him,’ Tash admitted. ‘But that’s how most event riders like it, as long as the bills get paid. The less interference the better. Although we treat all our owners really well at Haydown,’ she added quickly, reaching for her drink.

  ‘Maybe Dillon will visit his horses this winter, now that they are with you there?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Tash nodded, taking a swig of champagne. ‘He’s a lovely man. So unaffected, and he’s such a champion of the countryside. Perhaps I should invite him to our shoot? We usually ask a couple of owners.’

  ‘Oh, I love shooting!’

  ‘You could come too,’ Tash suggested eagerly, taking another gulp of champagne, which went up her nose. ‘It’s a Christmas thing, so you’ll probably be away—’

  But Sylva already had her phone out to put it in her diary as waiters bore down on their table with oversized white tableware.

  Afterwards, Tash couldn’t remember exactly what she ate, if indeed she had eaten anything (although the tomato soup stains all over her lap and breadcrumbs in her bra indicated that she had at the very least handled her food thoroughly).

  By the time their plates were removed and a fresh bottle of Cristal placed in the cooler beside them Tash was rambling freestyle about eventing and event riders, joking about their reputation for infidelity.

  ‘Sounds like showbusiness.’ Sylva nodded at the waiter to refill Tash’s champagne glass, while she helped herself to more water. ‘And is the reputation justified?’

  ‘Oh yes. Some riders are beyond redemption.’

  ‘What about Hugo?’ She was typically direct.

  Startled, Tash looked at her over her glass, her mind full of sudden, horrible visions of Hugo seducing his way around the lorry parks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted in a frightened voice. ‘I thought I could trust him with my life, but lately he’s been behaving so strangely. I think he might be …’ She couldn’t say it out loud.

  Those big blue eyes radiated sympathy across the table. ‘Darlink, you are talking to a world expert on unfaithful husbands. Now tell Sylva everything.’

  ‘I really don’t want to bore you.’

  Nonetheless, cocktails and champagne surging through her veins, Tash found herself telling her dining partner about her concerns over her marriage.

  ‘He’s become so distant, and he always has so many women running after him. We used to live in each other’s pockets but now we’re apart so much it’s like we’re in different orbits. It’s been worse since Amery was born. He wants things to go back to the way they were, but we’ve changed. I’ve changed.’

  Sylva’s advice on matters of the heart was predictably uncompromising.

  ‘You are a beautiful girl, but
you do not make the most of yourself. Man likes to fight for his meat like a bear, you understand?’

  ‘Are you suggesting I disguise myself as a salmon and leap out of rivers at him?’

  She laughed. ‘You are funny. Men desire us before they marry us like a member of an audience watches an act – we showgirls come out and flaunt a bit of arse, strike a pose, flirt over the footlights. But after we marry he only wants the private performance, yes?’

  ‘I guess.’ Tash didn’t think she’d ever posed over the footlights, but she let that pass.

  ‘Seduction is a gladiatorial sport played out in a huge arena. Marriage is a duel in a private room.’

  ‘We’re event riders. We do it in the open.’

  ‘You make jokes to hide your true feelings.’ Sylva sighed. ‘It is so British. Both my marriages ended when the showgirl became a married mother. Strawberry was paranoid that I was having an affair. He thought our child wasn’t his, but still wanted sex three days after he was born. When I refused he said I was a bad wife. Then I found out he had another woman all along. And of course the world knows that Jonte was being unfaithful before our baby’s umbilical stump fell off.’

  Tash thought it terribly sad that a woman who was still so young had been through such a bad time. ‘You must hate men.’

  She shook her head. ‘I love men. I love women. It’s what we do to each other I hate. When we were very poor in Bratislava my mother kept a little money aside in a secret place, but my father always found it and drank it, you know? He said it was his right. One time, we were so broke that she sold her hair, her beautiful long blonde hair – just for food for her family. My father was so angry he beat her black and blue, then he took the money and bought a whore for the night. He boasted about it to her afterwards, saying that she was too ugly to love any more without her hair.’

  Tash was too appalled to speak.

  Sylva held up her hands apologetically. ‘He was not always such a bad man, my father. He became bitter that my mother always loved her children more than him. So many men are like that.’