Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

‘Where are you?’

  ‘Somewhere near Sheffield.’

  ‘Sheffield?’

  ‘I thought I’d take a drive. It’s all right, I’m going home now.’

  Which didn’t really put her mind at rest, although at least she could call Penny and reassure her that Beccy was safe, if not necessarily very well.

  ‘Good luck today!’ Penny said cheerfully. ‘It’s like old times, eh? You and Hugo going head to head. You’ll feel like you’re back on Snob again.’

  Ringing off, Tash realised she couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t ride across country on such a strong horse with her head all over the place.

  Hands shaking, she dialled Hugo’s mobile to tell him that she was going to withdraw, but it rang inside his coat lying beside her on the seat.

  Angrily, she wrenched it out of the pocket and scrolled through his messages. There were three texts from V: So disappointed I can’t be there with you x … Thinking of you x … Remember your secret ‘other half’ is rooting for you xxx

  Hurling the phone across the living area, Tash stood up shakily and changed into her familiar red cross-country kit. Now her sense of indignation was revving at full throttle, she was determined to conquer her fear and go head to head if it killed her. Yet the adrenalin high did nothing to assuage the nerves attacking her ability to function, and by the time she’d walked to the stables she was drenched in a cold sweat, almost hyperventilating and her vision closing.

  Holding Cub and waiting to leg her up, India looked at her in shock. ‘You look awful.’

  ‘I’m s-sick,’ she told her.

  ‘You’ll have to withdraw.’

  ‘No way – it’s just n-nerves.’

  ‘Stay there,’ India insisted, thrusting Cub’s reins at her. ‘I’ll fetch help.’

  There were tens of people around, and Tash huddled in Cub’s stall wishing them all gone, along with the noise and the fuss and the excitement. She wanted to be back home with her children.

  Thinking about the Cora and Amery made her cry. She had deliberately put them to the back of her mind, but now she’d conjured up their faces she couldn’t make them go away. How could she ride a horse she couldn’t control with two such small children relying upon her? What if they were left motherless?

  A warm hand closed reassuringly on her shoulder. She knew who was standing behind her even before he spoke.

  ‘Calm down, Tash.’ Lough’s voice was as deep and soothing as a mountain lake. ‘Just breathe slowly. Concentrate on breathing, nothing else. In. Out. In and out. Deep breaths. That’s right.’

  If Hugo saw them he’d freak, Tash realised, letting out a hysterical laugh.

  ‘Just breathe, otherwise you’ll faint again. In and out. Slow breaths.’

  She did as she was told and oxygen finally started to make it to her addled head.

  ‘In and out. In and out. In and out. That’s right. Good girl. In and out.’

  Oh God, she was thinking about sex again, she realised and started to laugh once more.

  ‘Calm down, you’re losing it again,’ he said levelly.

  Within five minutes she was breathing regularly, her heart slowing and the cold sweat receding as Lough got her to focus entirely on her cross-country ride ahead, making her visualise the task in front of her, break it down into manageable sections to realise it was well within her capabilities.

  ‘Okay, jumps one through four – how will you do them? How will it feel to clear them and kick away afterwards?’

  She told him, repeating the exercise throughout the course.

  ‘And you gallop through the finish. How does that feel?’

  ‘Fantastic,’ she replied, feeling as though she’d already done it.

  ‘Okay, let me check Lem’s got my horse ready and we’ll go through that again while you warm up.’

  Many an elbow nudged another at the sight of Tash and Lough warming up at the edge of the woods, cantering circles side by side, trotting on a loose rein, popping over the practice fence, talking all the time.

  ‘He says more to her than he’s said to the rest of us in three years on the New Zealand squad,’ one of his team-mates complained.

  ‘Certainly more than her husband’s saying to her right now,’ another observed. ‘Looks like the rumours are true. Mrs Beauchamp might be riding for the Kiwis soon.’

  Tash didn’t notice the scandal-mongering or care, her determination to ride well now eclipsing all other thoughts. Without Lough, she probably wouldn’t have started out on the course at all, and she certainly wouldn’t have finished.

  But it was Hugo who saw her off, turning up in the nick of time to take over from India, checking her girth, patting her thigh and wishing her luck. ‘You look nice and relaxed.’

  ‘I am relaxed,’ she realised with surprise, glancing momentarily across the warm-up area to see Lough chatting to fellow New Zealanders in the distance, his big dark eyes meeting hers across a hundred yards and giving her courage.

  By the time she was being counted down in the start box, Tash was looking forward to it. She could hear Lough’s voice in her head: ‘Okay, fence one – how do you ride it? How does it feel?’

  Letting Cub surge under her, harnessing his power, she flew the first as she’d intended and it felt even better than she could ever have imagined.

  She rode the course for a safe finish without heroics, taking the straightest lines to maintain her rhythm without getting into any battles with Cub, knowing that her lousy dressage had put her too far out of contention to be competitive. This was about self-preservation. She needed to contain and channel Cub’s strength, not fight it. Her confidence soared as they progressed, checking her timing markers, clearing the fences with barely a touch and left in no doubt of Cub’s scope and self-assurance. As Lough had predicted, when she galloped through the finish she felt fantastic, all the more so to see him there, on the other side of the ropes waiting to start, dropping his reins and clapping his hands over his head in delight as she rode past giving him a thumbs-up and looking deliriously happy. It was the first time anybody had seen him smile in weeks.

  Hugo was waiting at the finish with a conciliatory hug, his own smile guarded and his attention already being pulled away from her because he’d stopped warming up his horse to watch her and had to remount. But his respect for how she had ridden was totally heartfelt, burning a brief hole through any wariness between them. ‘That was magnificent. You looked just like your old self out there.’

  Tash couldn’t stop smiling.

  There were no smiles in the Beauchamps lorry that evening, however, despite two clear rounds. Word had got back to Hugo of his wife’s last-minute coaching session with Lough, yet he said nothing, his handsome face more shuttered than ever. Nor did he make any comment when he discovered his phone lying in one of India’s boots.

  The atmosphere between them was corrosive, a row brewing like an over-inflated dinghy waiting to burst, yet neither of them yet willing to dig in the first needle. Tash wanted to tackle him about V, to round on him about his hypocrisy, but she was too exhausted to move. Two nights of insomnia followed by an epic battle with her nerves had drained her. She couldn’t eat a thing and it took all her energy to clean her teeth and crawl up to her bed.

  If Hugo’s hand stole across her body that night, she had no idea. She was dead to the world. She didn’t even know if he came to bed at all. By the time she woke up at six-thirty, her head pounding, he was already out running, his phone with him.

  Lough didn’t smile again that weekend, not even when he claimed victory at Luhmühlen in a last-minute reprieve when Hugo’s horse kicked out the penultimate show jump, dropping them just behind the New Zealander and gifting Lough top slot. His first four-star win in the northern hemisphere was no triumph compared to forfeiting Tash, who Hugo had policed closely all day.

  At the ceremony, just for a brief moment as the two men lined up side by side to collect their laurels in a reversal of fortune from their famous
Olympic meeting, Lough turned to Hugo. ‘Can I have her now?’

  Hugo didn’t take his eyes from Sir Galahad’s twitching ears. ‘You haven’t yet won the bet, Lough.’

  ‘Watch me. I’m on one hell of a winning streak.’ Lough rode forward to receive his trophy, the crowd applauding and whooping appreciatively for the great battle they had witnessed between the year’s most talked-about rivals.

  Chapter 70

  With India not qualified to drive the big HGV lorry, Hugo and Tash were due to share the long haul down to Düsseldorf and then across the Dutch border to a big equestrian centre near Maastricht where the British horses were all to be stabled prior to the European Championships in Aachen.

  Hugo had arranged for them to pick up a hire car and drive south to Switzerland after that, before crossing back over the border into Germany and into the Black Forest to the little village in which Jenny and Dolf were holding their wedding celebrations. It was to be the closest thing to a romantic break he and Tash had enjoyed since Amery was born, and although it seemed almost laughable in current circumstances, Tash clung to the idea of a holiday, knowing it was their only chance to be alone and try to mend the rapidly widening cracks.

  But they had barely got out of Luhmühlen, heading west past Bremen before she felt monumentally car-sick. Wedged beside India and Hugo in the cab, she battled nausea all the way to Düsseldorf. She’d always suffered travel sickness on and off, particularly when over-tired, and today was as bad as it got. She couldn’t drive at all.

  Propped up by coffee and energy drinks as he stayed at the wheel, Hugo was chillingly unsympathetic and increasingly wired on caffeine.

  ‘Are you pining for something?’ he baited. ‘Or is that a guilty conscience?’

  The row had been simmering quietly for hours, mostly consisting of sniping from Hugo as Tash felt too lousy to fight her side properly, and was acutely aware that poor India had found herself the sturdy tree trunk around which cat and dog were running, snapping and hissing.

  ‘Let’s not get into this now, Hugo,’ she pleaded.

  It was after eleven o’clock at night. They were roaring along the near-empty Autobahn, eating endless miles of tarmac, the occasional sports car flying past them at full pelt. The radio was playing dreary Euro-pop.

  Hugo couldn’t let it go. He was furious: furious with himself for yet again missing out on a victory; furious that Tash should have done so much better on a horse that would have won with Hugo on top; most of all he was furious because he had caught Lough Strachan on top of his wife.

  ‘You can’t even be bothered to lie about it any more,’ he hissed.

  ‘There’s nothing to lie about,’ she said wearily. ‘I fainted. I was practising my dressage test. He happened to be there.’

  ‘And you happened to be topless.’

  ‘I’d passed out because I was so hot!’ She felt nausea rising. ‘It was ninety degrees in the shade. That furry cat thing was your choice!’

  ‘Rather fitting given that you’ve been shagging like a feral cat all week.’

  ‘Only you.’

  ‘Too much information!’ India held up her hands.

  Hugo ignored her.

  ‘Yesterday, Lough was practically in the saddle with you.’

  ‘I was spaced out with nerves. You were nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘You could have rung my mobile.’

  ‘I did.’ Bile was rising so high Tash struggled to speak and she tasted the acid in her mouth. ‘It was in your coat. In fact—’

  ‘The man is in love with you, Tash!’

  India held up her hands again. ‘If you’re going to argue like this, would you mind not dribbling and spitting on me so much?’

  They lapsed into silence, and Tash suddenly realised she was going to throw up again.

  ‘I can’t possibly stop yet,’ Hugo told her when she made distress signals. ‘We’re on the Autobahn. You’ll have to go in the back.’

  She managed to scrabble into the living area via the cab’s cut-through and rushed to throw up into the chemical loo, the smell of vomit and waste making her retch all the more. She then lurched back towards the cab wondering whether she should try to lie down. She felt faint again.

  ‘I think you should see a doctor.’ India had swivelled around in her seat to peer at her through the cut-through. ‘You look grim.’

  But Tash shook her head. ‘I always get travel sick.’ Seeking medical attention late on a Sunday night in a foreign country with four horses on board a seventeen-tonne lorry wasn’t really an option unless she was dying.

  ‘Well, you’re both certainly going to need that holiday,’ India pointed out brightly, determined to lift spirits. ‘Although I’m not sure a road trip would be my first choice if I suffered from travel sickness,’ she joked, turning to Hugo to recommend a hotel she knew in Strasbourg.

  Poor India, Tash thought wretchedly. She had looked after the horses well, groomed superbly and been tremendously cheerful and diplomatic, but she must be wishing she had stayed in London.

  Tash sat down on a sofa seat in the swaying living area for a moment before she fell down. The thought of a road trip appalled her. India was right, what had she been thinking? A mountain driving holiday was her worst nightmare, especially given how fast Hugo always drove.

  A holiday meant time to talk. A holiday meant time to sleep. A holiday without the children, however selfish, meant time to try to patch things up, to talk about the Lough situation and – if she dared – to tackle the V texts. The word ‘holiday’ had deafened her to all else until now, as she contemplated the very real prospect of chucking up at every bend in the road.

  Jenny had told her that the hotel in the Black Forest where all the wedding guests were staying was incredibly romantic, part grand ski lodge, part schloss and part cuckoo clock, surrounded by wooded mountains. Battling down the motion sickness, she lurched back to the cut-through. Hugo’s temper wasn’t improved when she accidentally kicked him twice clambering back into the cab, then knocked his Minstrels everywhere, but she still pitched her idea, stomach churning.

  ‘Let’s fly straight to Stuttgart once we’ve dropped off the horses,’ she said as she settled back into her seat, sweets crunching beneath her. ‘I’m sure there are flights.’

  But Hugo seemed determined to re-enact the opening credits of The Italian Job. ‘I want to drive there.’

  ‘Flying’s so much more relaxed,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’ve planned the bloody route.’

  ‘I want to fly!’

  They were passing the eastern outskirts of Düsseldorf now, the city stretching out in a bright urban glow.

  Hugo indicated to turn off at the next slip-road.

  India studied the glowing little rectangular screen on the dash that indicated they drive straight on. ‘Natalie Sav hasn’t said anything about coming off here.’

  ‘But Mrs Beauchamp has,’ he said acidly as they left the Autobahn.

  India looked to Tash who shook her head, feeling too ill to worry about it. She didn’t care where they were stopping as long as she could get some fresh air.

  As Hugo navigated roundabouts and more anonymous highways, it became increasingly obvious where they were heading. They were following signs featuring a little aeroplane and closing in fast on Düsseldorf airport.

  ‘Hugo, you can’t take a horsebox into an airport.’ Tash realised what was going on with a yelp of alarm. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Dropping you off darling,’ he hissed. ‘You want to fly. This is an airport. Domestic or international?’

  ‘Hugo, don’t be silly!’ This facetious side of him appalled her. She hadn’t seen him behave like this for years.

  They were already within the airport’s perimeter, following the bus and coach routes to avoid any height restrictions. It was almost midnight and very few people were about. Nobody stopped them or even gave then a second glance as Hugo drove the big shiny horsebox emblazoned with Team Beauchamp Event Hors
es right up to the terminal, pulling up in a coach stop.

  ‘Get out!’ he ordered.

  ‘Hugo, please don’t do this!’

  ‘Yes, stop it, Hugo,’ India agreed, close to tears. ‘This is awful.’

  He was glaring out of the windscreen, knuckles white on the wheel. ‘You fly on ahead, Tash darling,’ he drawled. ‘Can’t have you puking all the way through the lowlands. Now push off. These horses need to get to their beds.’

  ‘You can’t just throw me out.’

  ‘You want to have your Black Forest gateau and eat it, that’s fine by me. Why not give Lough a call and see if he can meet you there? An All Black in the Forest.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Tash covered her ears.

  An airport security guard had started to take an interest in them now, talking into his two-way radio and fingering his gun as he approached the horsebox.

  With horror, Tash realised she was going to be sick again. She clutched her mouth and, groaning, wrenched open the door. The blast of heat and diesel fumes in her face, mixed with cigarette smoke from the smokers by the door made her reel. She only just leaped down and across to a discreet gutter in time.

  ‘Better ask for extra sick bags on the flight,’ Hugo called after her before turning to talk to the security guard who had appeared at his door and was starting to complain vociferously.

  When India jumped out of the cab carrying Tash’s bag, into which she’d crammed some essentials, along with her own duffel bag, she said, ‘You’re ill. I’m staying to look after you.’

  But Tash shook her head, wiping her mouth. ‘You have to stay with Hugo.’

  ‘No way. He’s gone barking mad.’

  ‘The horses need you there. Please, India!’

  ‘Then come with us. He’ll calm down.’

  Now she was out of the lorry, Tash had no intention of getting back in. She’d never felt so sick, or known Hugo so angry or cruel.

  ‘You talk to him, Ind,’ she begged. ‘Try to get some sense out of him. I just can’t get through. He really thinks I’m having an affair with Lough.’

  India looked at her incredulously. ‘But you are having an affair with Lough.’