by Fiona Walker
‘And you still want to find the right man to love?’
‘Oh yes!’ Her pretty face lit up at the thought. ‘I have promised myself that, and my children. But the next man, he will already be a father, you know? They understand the way things work, that children change things. It’s funny: I liked Jonte’s father; and we almost became lovers. He loved me very much. He asked me to run away with him but I am not unfaithful, ever, in my married life.’
Tash’s jaw dropped. ‘Your father-in-law asked you to run away with him? Jonte Frost’s father!’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Sorry.’ She glanced around at their fellow diners as she reached for her glass and took a bolstering swig.
‘When Jonte got wind of what was going on it was the only moment he really wanted me back, when he clocked that his own father might steal the jewel from under him. D’you see what I’m saying?’
‘Not really. Hugo’s father died ages ago, and anyway he was a horrible old goat.’
‘We have saying in Slovakia, “Ni nepovažuj za svoje, o môžeš ztrati”. It means, don’t take for granted anything you may lose.’ She fixed her with a determined look. ‘Make your husband see what he’s got and what he stands to lose if you’re neglected. You must take pride in yourself – wear sexy lingerie, pamper your body, dress better and value yourself. Make him value you. Make him jealous!’
Sylva reached across the table and took Tash’s hands. ‘Another saying from my country is: “o máme, o to nedbáme a za iným sa zháame.” We disregard what we’ve got, always chasing what we’ve not.’
‘You think Hugo is chasing something else?’
‘No, darling Tash.’ Sylva rubbed her thumbs on Tash’s wrists, at the acupressure point known as the Very Great Abyss, a focus for loss, longing and regrets. ‘You are the one who is chasing something else.’
Tash smiled at her squiffily, not really understanding. ‘So if I get better undies and spend a few more minutes each day in front of the mirror things will get better?’
‘You need an admirer, Tash.’
Tash shook her head violently. ‘I couldn’t have an affair!’
‘We’re not talking infidelity here, darlink. Just flirtation. The two are very different things.’
‘I really don’t do flirting.’
‘You will flirt with me,’ Sylva ordered.
Tash snorted with laughter.
‘For practice,’ she insisted smoothly.
Tash hiccupped. ‘If it means you’ll buy an event horse then I’ll flirt my socks off.’
‘That’s the spirit, darlink!’ Sylva laughed, signalling for the bill.
Once they were back in the car, being smoothly chauffeured by Olaf, Sylva gave Tash a crash course in flirtation.
‘If you talk to a man like this,’ she told Tash, sitting respectably beside her on the hand-stitched leather upholstery of the back seat, ‘then he thinks nothing of it, but if you talk to him like this,’ – she slid closer so that her slender body connected alongside Tash, warm and soft – ‘he takes notice; and if you talk to him like this,’ – she turned her head so that their faces were inches apart, lips and eyes on a level, her breath warm against Tash’s skin – ‘then he gets the message.’ Her voice had dropped to a husky purr. ‘And if you talk to him like this,’ – she suddenly slipped a long, slim thigh over Tash’s knees and swivelled up so that she was astride her lap, facing her, their lips just a millimetre apart – ‘he knows you mean business.’ She cocked her head and smiled cheerfully. ‘You see?’
Tash had her arms up as though being held at gunpoint by the double barrels of Sylva’s vast cleavage, her torso pressed back against the seat. ‘Yes, but you’re Sylva Frost,’ she pointed out nervously. ‘No man would complain about you doing that to them. Most men I know would have me sectioned.’
‘You are very beautiful, Tash,’ Sylva purred, her big blue eyes so close to Tash’s that she could have counted those perfect, individually applied false eyelashes.
Just as she was starting to look around for a panic button, Olaf suddenly pulled into the staff car park of a big Georgian boutique hotel. They parked in the delivery bay by the kitchens.
‘The kids are all here,’ Sylva said briskly, climbing off Tash and pulling out her trusty compact to check her make-up, tease out her mane and reapply her glossy lipstick. ‘The press are all out front. They think we haff been here all along. Your babies will be okay with flash cameras, yes?’ Not waiting for an answer, she hopped out of the open door being held by her gum-chewing cousin, who spat on the tarmac beneath after she’d shot past.
Forgoing her own cherry lipsalve this time, Tash clambered out less elegantly but no less speedily as she realised that she was going to see her children.
The nannies, toddlers and Amery were in an amazing soft room filled with luxurious padded climbing frames and ball pits, shelves piled high with books and toys for the offspring of wealthy guests who wanted them entertained out of sight for long hours. Cora hurled herself at Tash like a small missile; Amery was asleep.
‘I use this place a lot,’ Sylva told Tash as she gathered her two adoring boys to her chest. ‘We will go out by the main entrance. The cars will be waiting for us, but I warn you it will be a stampede. My driver will take you and your babies home – I have a photoshoot this afternoon with my beefy boys here.’ She nuzzled Kol and Hain, who both had her blue eyes and amazing cheekbones and giggled deliciously. ‘We are going to prove that Mummy is a responsible parent, aren’t we guys?’
‘Have you done something particularly newsworthy, then?’ Tash asked.
‘This is why I love you.’ Sylva laughed. ‘You really have no idea, do you?’
Tash shook her head.
Sylva let out a big sigh, eyebrows raised somewhere between self-mocking and martyred resignation. ‘An ex lover has done a kiss and tell about our relationship.’
‘How awful.’
‘She is an old friend. We’ll work through it.’
‘She …?’ Again, Tash’s face coloured as she thought of her recent flirtation tutorial.
At that moment the doors to the hotel opened and the cameras started flashing frenziedly, catching her looking as though she was having a menopausal flush.
Tash would never forget the bustle, the shouting, the endless click-click-clicking of digital cameras. She had never encountered anything like it, even when her relationship with Niall had been under massive media scrutiny. Her children, thank goodness, seemed oblivious. Amery was still asleep and Cora was much more interested in the alpacas that the hotel had in a small paddock beside the drive than the pack of yelling minotaurs with the vast telephoto lenses grouped in front of her.
‘I will text you!’ Sylva promised Tash as they posed briefly for the clamouring masses.
‘I don’t have a mobile phone,’ she apologised.
‘Email me then.’
‘I don’t really do email either.’
‘Twitter? Banter? Facebook?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll call you!’ Sylva promised, with lots of blown kisses.
By the time Tash got home, there was already a message on the phone from Sylva – bored to shreds in make-up – telling her that she must get herself better connected and networked, ‘then we can stay in touch all the time, darlink!’
Which was in direct contrast to Hugo who, no doubt languishing by the super-heated indoor pool in MC’s Loire retreat, had not deigned to call all day.
Still decidedly tight, Tash automatically picked up the handset to ring him and stopped herself, instead taking her time feeding and bathing the children before pouring herself a vast glass of wine and looking through her wardrobe for inspiration. She strutted in front of the flattering bedroom mirror in her few favourite dresses, striking model poses and hearing Sylva’s fabulously Bond-girl voice saying, ‘You are beautiful woman.’
Still wearing a much-loved pale green Ghost dress bought for her by her sister that date
d back to her honeymoon and was fabulously forgiving, she floated downstairs, poured herself another glass of wine and fired up Hugo’s computer.
Twitter took just a few moments to join; its irreverent little-sister site Banter was even easier. Both offered to find her ‘followers’ by checking her email address book. These were almost all Hugo’s contacts, but Tash just pressed ‘yes to all’ and went to do night-check.
After lurching around, cannoning off walls and falling over buckets, she sought sanctuary at the stable door of Dove, her favourite broodmare, who was expecting the last of Snob’s foals the following spring – an embryo transfer from her top mare, Deep River, that meant there would be a half-sibling to Fox, Vixen and Cub.
The lunch with Sylva had cheered Tash up enormously, but also made her feel more unsettled than ever. She couldn’t shake the image of Sylva’s father rejecting her mother when she sold her hair for food, or of Sylva, so desired by every man in the country yet spurned by two unfaithful husbands. Where did that leave her?
Backing unsteadily away from the stable door she glanced up at the stable flat, its windows glowing.
She was tempted to march up there and demand to know what Lemon had been talking about that morning, but she was too tired and drunk, and too much of a coward. She found him rather frightening, although she knew that was silly. He probably felt far more vulnerable than she did, trapped here in England with his boss thousands of miles away and totally reliant upon the Beauchamps for income and security. He was bound to lash out.
There was an odd smell in the air. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed to try to identify it. Then she looked down at her hands and realised that she had picked up an air freshener instead of the baby monitor. She rushed inside, where all was uncannily quiet, including the house phone. She glanced at it resentfully. I will not phone Hugo. I will not phone Hugo, she told herself, determined to do as Sylva prescribed.
En route for bed, still in her dress, she realised she hadn’t switched off the computer. Twitter was still active, and there were tweets left, right and centre, with more followers than a religion. Banter had an equal number of rants.
Tash suddenly realised why. It was the Sylva effect.
Now that Britain’s most-Googled celebrity single mother had left a row of kisses on her previously blank Facebook wall, no less than two hundred people had requested to be her friend.
Tash didn’t care what anyone else thought. Sylva was going to be good for business.
Chapter 30
‘Bloody hell look at this!’ On the flight back from France, Rory stopped leafing through a copy of Cheers! he’d found abandoned on his seat and thrust it at Hugo.
In it, just before the six-page spread of Sylva posing with her boys and opining about her teenage bisexual ‘experimentation’ was a big photograph of Tash, dressed like a bizarre parrot with orange stains on her crotch and loo roll trailing from her heel, towering over Sylva Frost and a gaggle of excited-looking children as they left a chavvy boutique hotel. Single mum Sylva supports new best friend Tash ran the caption, and beneath it was a short piece insinuating that ‘openly bisexual’ Sylva had been comforting Tash through marriage difficulties.
‘Who the fuck is saying we’re having marriage difficulties?’ Hugo waved the magazine around furiously at Tash as soon as he got home.
‘They make these things up,’ she bleated. ‘We were having lunch to talk about her buying an event horse.’
He looked at her as though she’d just driven a muck spreader through the kitchen. ‘That ghastly woman will give eventing a bad name. We have to think about the good of the sport. For God’s sake put her off.’
He was on a quick turnaround. In two days he was heading to Cardiff with Sir Galahad for the Express Eventing Cup, an indoor competition that was to three day eventing what Twenty20 cricket was to test series, and which carried a huge cash pot that he was determined would swell the Haydown coffers. Then, as a part of the Olympic gold-medal squad (and soon-to-be-disbanded Team Mogo), Hugo had taken up an invitation from Equestrian Australia to ride at Adelaide three day event before taking part in a two-week lecture-demonstration tour across the country. He would then fly to New Zealand for Puhinui Three Day Event before returning home just before Christmas.
‘You can fly Lough Strachan back here,’ Tash told him, but that just put him in a blacker mood.
‘Man’s an unreliable shit. He can stay in Auckland as far as I’m concerned. Ten to one he’ll be competing at Puhinui on some new wonder neddy trying to make me look like a berk. I think he just sent his parakeet groom here as a joke at our expense.’
Faith had been up since dawn in her little Lime Tree Farm attic room, readying herself to see Rory again. She was wearing her new shell jacket for his return, its zip lowered despite the November chill to just the right height to show off her chicken-fillet-enhanced cleavage. She’d matched her tightest metallic pink breeches with long leather boots that showed off her great legs and had teased out her now shoulder-length hair in a sexy cloud. Then, as a finishing touch, she’d put on a slick of lip gloss to draw attention to the straight white smile and detract from the nose, which was still undeniably bulbous despite hours of careful shading as Carly had taught her.
When she drove into the Haydown courtyard to start work he was already there, standing by Whitey’s stable. Her heart roared and she threw herself out of the car and ran up to him as eagerly as his terrier Twitch.
To her dismay, he was uncharacteristically angry and wouldn’t even look her in the eye.
‘Who gave you permission to bring my horse here?’
Faith reached instantly for her attitude as protection.
‘You brought my horse here without permission,’ she pointed out hotly.
‘That’s different. I compete Rio for you; we have an arrangement.’
‘Actually, I think you’ll find that I agreed to leave him at Overlodes, then went back to find you’d both gone!’
‘So you thought you’d “borrow” my old horse, is that it?’
That was it in a nutshell, but Faith wasn’t about to admit it. ‘That Jules woman is useless. The other horses are tough enough to cope, but Whitey needs specialist care to stay in work.’
‘He’s retired.’
‘You said last summer that he still has a three day event in him.’
‘That was just idle talk. He’s too old and knackered, and he’s had too much time off through injury. You should have left him be to enjoy his old age in peace.’
You just don’t want him – or me – here cramping your style, Faith thought furiously, pulling up her zip because her heart was beating so hard her chicken fillets were slipping.
Rory still wouldn’t look at her.
Across the courtyard, Beccy and Lemon were observing the reunion with interest.
‘So he’s the reason she’s here.’ Lemon sighed, noticing the way Faith’s whole body cleaved towards Rory when they were talking, even when she was yelling at him.
‘I think it was just coincidence that the Moncrieffs asked her to help out here,’ Beccy pointed out.
‘In the magical universe there are no coincidences and no accidents,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.’
‘William S. Burroughs!’ She recognised the quote in delight. His writing had kept her sane when travelling. Lemon was a kindred spirit.
‘Who?’ Lemon was still watching Faith, adding distractedly. ‘It was written on a postcard in Lough’s place in New Zealand. He kept it propped up on the mantel.’
He sauntered across to get a closer look, noticing Rory had picked up on Hugo’s mannerisms while they’d been away together: the way he ran his hand through his hair, the arrogance of his tone and the legs astride, hands on hips army captain stance were all pure Hugo. It made him less likeable.
‘Good to have you back, yeah, mate.’ Lemon slapped him on the back so hard that Rory nearly fell over. ‘Don’t put our girl here off her work
– we’re short-staffed enough as it is. If you guys want a long catch up, we’ll all meet up in the pub tonight.’
‘Who does he think he is?’ Rory asked in surprise as Lemon swaggered away.
‘So are you coming?’ Faith demanded aggressively.
‘What?’
‘To the pub.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine.’ They turned and walked in opposite directions, both deeply disappointed by the reunion.
On that first day home, Hugo rode the young Haydown horses back to back, from dawn until late evening in the floodlights to get a feel for their training levels and what to prescribe for them next season. Soon they would all get a winter holiday, and Hugo always liked to stop on a good note so they came back fresh and enthusiastic in the New Year.
‘You should be doing this,’ he told Tash as she watched from the rails in the driving rain, hood plastered to her head and eyelids windscreen-wiping her contact lenses.
‘I haven’t got my nerve back yet,’ she admitted.
‘Well, get it back. It’s like sex. The more you do it, the better you get.’ It was a very barbed comment.
Acutely aware that they weren’t making love much at all – and with Sylva’s words still ringing in her head – Tash donned the Ghost dress and a sassy attitude that night for seafood linguine and too much Brown Brothers Riesling, attempting to be flirtatious and yet enigmatic.
Perplexed by all the eyelash-batting and hair-twizzling, and the fact that she kept talking to him with her face millimetres from his, Hugo asked if she had forgotten to put in her contact lenses, or was feeling overtired.
Within minutes of joining Faith and her new friends at the Olive Branch that evening, Rory regretted coming out. He’d quite liked camp little Lemon when he’d first arrived at Haydown, but he’d become cockier and cruder, bedding in like a virulent weed while Rory was away in France.
‘These are my hos,’ he bragged as he settled between the girls and put his arms around them in a show of ownership. ‘Limey’s my older woman, and Eff’s my tom-boy friend.’