Well Groomed

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Well, she’s lying then,’ Niall said cheerfully, not rising to the jibe. ‘The reason I should know is because Lisette is currently shacked up with David Wheaton – they’re even sharing a room in the hotel, for Christ’s sake, although they’ve got two booked for form. I hardly see her sloping back to Haydown for a nightcap with Hugo when she and David have only been together a month, do you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be out of character,’ Matty said nastily, turning to watch his sister with irritated, scornful eyes. ‘Tell me, Tash, are you cooling your face in there, or have you inadvertently become welded to the ice box?’

  Re-emerging with a bottle of wine, she found that her face, despite the icy chill of the fridge, was burning.

  ‘Are you feeling okay, angel?’ Niall watched her with concern.

  Gripping the work surface for support, Tash stood up and nodded. She was so relieved to find out that Hugo wasn’t sleeping with Lisette after all that she wanted to run around the room kissing everyone. Whilst Niall and Zoe probably wouldn’t mind, she had a feeling that it would finish her brother off. She felt almost giddy, and hopelessly confused. She simply had to force Niall to come clean tonight. He was already half-cut, and leaving it any longer would just compound the awfulness of their ridiculous pretence.

  ‘I think Niall and I should get a couple of things straight.’ She cleared her throat loudly. ‘And you two should perhaps be the first to know.’

  Niall shot her a warning look. Opposite him Matty was knocking back scotch – he normally never touched it – and glaring at her witheringly, as though she was about to announce a change in bridesmaids or something equally petty.

  ‘What’s that, Tash?’ Zoe was transferring pans across the Aga lids, her hands buried in oven mitts. Tash couldn’t tell whether her face was flaming from the rising heat or because she had guessed what Tash was about to announce and was quietly, sympathetically embarrassed for her, but she looked likely to combust.

  Clutching the cool bottle tightly to her blue shirt, Tash looked at her brother’s clever, nervy face and gave him an apologetic smile that wobbled so much she had to bite her lip. He glared back unsympathetically, but she launched on anyway, determined to get it over with.

  ‘You were right all along, Matty,’ she started, her voice croaking with the effort of at last coming clean. ‘You always were the cleverest of the bunch. When we were in France, Niall and I decided that we—’

  ‘I am not going to be your fucking best man!’ Matty exploded furiously.

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ Tash bleated. ‘Well, I am, but not like you think . . .’

  ‘Just shut up about you and Niall, okay? I’ve told you my feelings on this bloody marriage,’ he raged on, undeterred, his anger now too explosive to be defused. ‘And right now, tonight, it’s the last thing I want to fucking discuss. I don’t care if you get married anymore – go ahead, get hitched, kill yourselves with unhappiness for all I care. I certainly am.’ He buried his head in his hands, anger evaporating as he descended into his black gloom once more.

  The wine bottle was being pressed so hard to Tash’s chest that she was almost cracking her ribs. She glanced desperately at Niall, but he was reaching across to take Matty’s hand, his craggy face wreathed in sympathy.

  Tash backed away in confusion. Matty had seemed so cheerful earlier and now he was positively spitting with brooding, wrathful unhappiness. Yet Sally was, apparently, chirpily unaware. Then she remembered her sister-in-law asking her to keep an eye on him and flushed even more guiltily.

  ‘Sally seems worried about you,’ she told her brother as she frantically fished through the drawers for a corkscrew. ‘She asked me to check you were okay.’

  ‘How very civil of her,’ he hissed, only just controlling another explosion. ‘I’m surprised she could bear to drag herself away from her Swedish toy boy.’

  ‘Stefan?’

  ‘Is that what he’s called?’ Matty shuddered. ‘Sally’s behaving like a bloody sixteen-year-old tease with him tonight, I can’t bear it. She’s only doing it to wind me up, but it still bloody hurts.’

  ‘Stefan’s probably to blame,’ Zoe told him gently. ‘He’s a terrible flirt, and he’s in a bit of a strop that Kirsty isn’t here.’

  ‘No, it’s entirely Sally,’ Matty sighed, looking up and rubbing his mouth sadly. ‘Listen, I’m sorry for being such a self-pitying jerk, but I’m at my wits’ end. I can’t do anything right at the moment. I keep expecting a divorce petition to land on the doormat.’

  ‘Are things really that bad?’ Niall asked in horror, pouring Matty another vast scotch and an even larger one for himself.

  ‘Worse if anything. Why d’you think I came here tonight? I’m clutching at straws like a faulty combine harvester. She hasn’t called all week – now she summons me down to rub my face in it and make me look a fool. And it’s all my fault for mentioning . . .’ He cleared his throat uncomfortably and glanced at Zoe. ‘For mentioning what – er – happened.’

  ‘You did what?’ Niall was appalled.

  ‘She was laying into me, saying how useless and apathetic I was, and I just snapped – I blurted something stupid about almost embarking on an affair. I suppose I wanted her to realise how much she was taking for granted.’ Matty clammed up embarrassedly.

  ‘But it wasn’t as bad as that!’ Zoe gasped, abandoning the dill she was chopping.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He looked up at her pleadingly. ‘I didn’t mention any names.’

  Listening in, Tash had pulled the cork so badly that most of it was now floating around in the bottle. It was incredible enough that her brother had been the mystery man who had engaged Zoe in a long, flirtatious kiss at the Moncrieffs’ barbecue two summers ago. But what was harder to get to grips with was the extraordinary way she and Niall were now talking Matty through it. They sounded like Richard and Judy gently working out a distraught caller’s marital crisis during a This Morning phone-in.

  ‘Perhaps you should have done,’ Niall was telling Matty. ‘Sometimes you have to stick your neck out to find out that your head’s not going to get cut off after all.’

  ‘If she knew the whole picture, she might stop trying to pay you back,’ Zoe added gently. ‘After all, it was terribly innocent. At the moment her imagination must be running riot.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Matty groaned. ‘She’s playing games, and that’s one thing she’s never done before – we’ve always tried to be die-straight with one another when we’ve hit a rocky patch. I’m certain Lisette is to blame – the marriage guidance counsellor from hell. She’s just counselling us down the river.’

  ‘Talking of which . . .’ Zoe craned towards the window. ‘Here they are – Christ, Hugo drives fast.’

  ‘Shit.’ Matty rubbed his face with the palms of his hands as though trying to get some colour back into it. ‘I bet she’ll just love seeing me like this.’

  ‘Don’t let her then,’ Niall said quickly. ‘Put on a front.’

  ‘You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ Matty looked at him with a sad smile.

  ‘I’ll give you tips.’ He stood up. ‘I think I’d better go and stand by my mother in case she accuses Hugo of leaving the hotel unstaffed or something. I wouldn’t put it past her to provoke a punch up.’

  He wandered out, followed by a despondent-looking Matty.

  Still fishing cork out of her wine bottle, Tash looked up at Zoe and paused, desperate to talk, however bad her legendary lousy timing was. Standing directly beneath an angled kitchen spot light, Zoe was whisking dill mayonnaise now, blonde hair gleaming almost white. In the silver dress, she looked ethereal and angelic.

  ‘He told me about the AA meeting,’ Tash said cautiously.

  ‘I’m glad.’ Zoe didn’t look at her. ‘I told him to, but he was too ashamed.’

  Tash listened as the dogs, hearing a car engine, scuttled through the house from the sitting room to perform their door duty.

  ‘You’re so g
ood to him.’ Tash swallowed, her throat suddenly bone dry as though she’d had an emergency tracheotomy.

  ‘Not especially.’ Zoe was looking more and more uneasy, her whisk rotating madly. ‘I’ve just been around when he needs a chat – I’d do the same for you, darling.’

  Tash shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Of course I would!’ She looked up from the bowl, blue eyes worried. ‘I love you, Tash, – you’re one of the family to me.’

  The dogs were barking like mad in the hall now as Hugo reversed his car loudly out of the courtyard, which was already too full of cars to park in.

  Tash took a deep breath, knowing she had just a little borrowed time while Hugo parked in the lane. She had to speak to Zoe before he came in, was determined to get at least a part of her messy life sorted out before she saw him.

  ‘This might sound strange, but you two look like a couple.’

  ‘What?’ Zoe jumped nervously, glancing towards the window where the Range Rover was reversing at a frantic pelt down the muddy drive.

  ‘You do,’ Tash insisted. ‘I keep noticing it recently. You and Niall, you look – act – like a couple who’ve been together for years.’

  Blonde hair tickling her eyes, Zoe barely dared move, her whisk slowed to a stop, the bowl held at an angle under the crook of her arm.

  ‘Really?’

  Tash nodded, listening to the car engine cut out in the lane, and Ma, having just been warned of Hugo’s imminent arrival, booming, ‘Not that Godforsaken man!’ from the sitting room.

  ‘You know we’re washed up, don’t you?’ said Tash in a low, urgent rush.

  Zoe nodded, her clever blue eyes softening.

  ‘H-how long have you known?’ Tash asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Officially, a few days, I suppose. Since you got back from France. Niall was in an awful state before you went away. But I’ve guessed for weeks – maybe longer.’

  ‘He didn’t used to phone the farm to speak to me, did he?’ Tash watched her face, hearing car doors banging in the lane now, followed by the electronic chirrup of an alarm being activated. ‘I mean, maybe at first, but he calls here all the time now, and you can’t pretend it’s to get hold of me any more.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Are you – I mean, have you—’

  Zoe shook her head violently. ‘No! Not at all. We’re friends, Tash, no more. I swear the most secretive thing we’ve done all week is have a couple of lunches to talk about how hellish he feels about what’s happened with you – and a furtive trip to an AA meeting. It’s hardly a whirlwind affair.’

  Figures were moving along the drive now. Tash could hear Lisette’s rasping, sexy voice raised in anger as she complained about Hugo’s driving. She wanted to lean out of the window and scream at them to wait a few minutes, longing desperately to resolve a situation in which she felt she was slowly suffocating to death.

  ‘He won’t let me tell anyone,’ she muttered hoarsely, hearing Hugo’s voice floating in from the courtyard now, soft and drawling as ever. ‘I want to say something tonight, but he won’t let me. He’s convinced we should keep it quiet for another week.’

  Zoe turned away, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘I’ve talked to him until I’m blue in the face, Tash. It’s like his drinking – telling him to stop won’t help. You have to take hold of his hand and keep holding it until he knows for certain you’re not going to let it go, not going to let him down.’

  ‘I’ve already let him down,’ Tash whispered bleakly.

  ‘And he’s covering up,’ Zoe went on urgently. ‘He’s tucking away the truth in the same way he hides countless bottles around the forge, thinking you won’t notice. He’s terrified that you’ll never forgive him once he tells you what this mess he’s got himself into might cost you. I’m sorry, darling, but it’s going to tear you apart when you find out.’

  ‘I know,’ Tash muttered, finding that tears were starting to leak from her eyes and slip warmly down her cheeks. ‘I know I’ll lose Snob. And if that’s what it takes to straighten him out, I’ll do it. Niall will just have to sell him.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Zoe gasped. ‘That Niall is planning to sell him?’

  ‘Isn’t he going to have to?’ Tash asked in confusion. ‘To get the money to buy himself out of the Cheers! deal?’

  ‘Darling, he’d never do that to you, even if he could. He knows how hard you’ve worked on that horse. That’s why he’s desperate for you two to go to Badminton without the tabloids on your back, sniffing around for a cheap quote, hounding you endlessly, putting you off while you’re working the horses, shattering your concentration – because that’s what will happen when this news breaks, believe me. It will be simply awful for you. Can’t you see that’s why he’s keeping up this act for you both?’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Oh, Tash! I simply don’t know.’

  Slamming the bowl down on a surface, Zoe turned and raced across the kitchen to give her a hug. Letting out a stifled sob, Tash breathed in her lovely, cool scent and felt Zoe’s strength and warmth seeping into her, giving her a tremendous, almost drug-like boost.

  The dogs were barking like mad once more. Hugo and his coterie were moving through the parked cars outside, taking their time as they paused to look at Zoe’s ancient Mercedes, but almost at the door.

  ‘You have to help me, Zoe,’ said Tash desperately. ‘You have to be completely honest with me. Do you love Niall?’

  Zoe pulled back to look at her, blue eyes suddenly guarded. ‘Of course I do – I love both of you.’

  ‘Not like that,’ Tash gabbled her words to get them out. ‘Do you love him? I mean love, love. Because I’m almost certain he loves you. Is in love with you – over, under and upside down with love for you.’

  Zoe froze, stiffening in her arms. ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she scoffed dismissively.

  ‘Oh, I know Niall.’ Tash laughed through her tears. ‘And I know what a cretin he is about telling someone how he feels for them at first, how terrified he is of rejection – we’re both exactly the same, it’s why we’re so hopeless together. You have to do it for him, Zoe. If you feel the same way, you have to hold his hand like you said. Because he won’t let go of mine until you do.’

  Zoe stared at her in silence and Tash was suddenly terrified that she’d got it wrong.

  ‘You d-do love him, don’t you?’ she stammered.

  Zoe smiled – that warm, luscious smile that melted the beautiful, glacier-smooth face into warmth and sympathy, her blue eyes glistening with tears.

  ‘I think I’m starting to.’ She nodded, giving Tash a tight squeeze. ‘I think one day very soon I could find myself loving him almost as much as you love Hugo.’

  Tash bleated in shock.

  ‘Oh, darling, it’s patently obvious you adore him,’ Zoe laughed through her tears. ‘It always has been.’

  A sharp rapping on the yard door separated them, and Zoe reached for a tea towel to swab her eyes. Tash searched desperately for something absorbent too, but she was too late. Hugo and Lisette were already entering the room with bottles of champagne and yet another extra guest as David Wheaton – tall, leather-faced and frighteningly cerebral – followed behind them wearing a comfortingly old-looking pair of cords and exactly the same checked Marks & Spencer shirt that Gus had on that night.

  ‘Sorry we’re late, darling.’ Hugo moved across to give Zoe a kiss. ‘Hope you don’t mind David coming too – I said you’re always blissfully informal about these things. You haven’t done individual boeuf en croûte or anything?’

  ‘No, no – it’s a whole salmon, we’re fine,’ Zoe said rather weakly.

  ‘Hi, Tash – still dewy-eyed, I see.’ Hugo turned to her with a caustic smile.

  Saying nothing, her chest absolutely exploding with emotion, Tash headed for the cutlery drawer to grab another place setting, turning her back to him. Why was he always so killingly cruel? She was acutely aware of what
Zoe had just said, and consequently paranoid that she’d been wandering around for ages making it patently obvious that she adored Hugo. Quite what exactly had made it so patently obvious was a mystery. She was pretty certain that she’d never mooned around gawping at him with her tongue hanging out, but she was almost doubting her memory on that one. She realised that she’d have to keep a closer guard on her emotions in future.

  Ever the smooth social engineer, Lisette was introducing David to Zoe, telling him loudly about Zoe’s former fame as a top-ranking features journalist. She seemed to know a remarkable amount about it.

  ‘I really wasn’t around for very long,’ Zoe said modestly, picking up her congealing dill mayonnaise. ‘And I wrote an absolutely appalling column for the Sunday Telegraph which pretty much killed my career off.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Lisette said easily.

  Tash stiffened as she felt Hugo move in behind her. Suddenly a hand reached around and stopped hers from scrabbling loudly in the cutlery drawer. Very slowly and carefully, he removed her fingers from their kamikaze blade-rummage and pulled her round to face him.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he muttered, not altogether gently, his cool blue eyes raking her face. ‘Because that’s a bloody silly way to cut your wrists.’

  Wearing an old rugby shirt and black jeans, he seemed to have made even less of an effort than Niall had. Tash noticed that he had hay all over one sleeve and he’d slipped his watch on the wrong way round – probably after a hasty shower. She longed to reach out and put it right for him.

  ‘What’s wrong Tash?’ he repeated, backing off a couple of feet as though worried she might do just that.

  Not really thinking, she mouthed, ‘You are!’ and headed through to the dining room to lay yet another place and search for a spare chair strong enough to hold Ma.

  She felt tearful and childish. The titanic conversation with Zoe had absolutely drained her and yet, she realised, she was not really much further on than she had been at the start of the evening, except that she was no longer so sure that Niall was planning to sell Snob. She just wished she knew quite what he was planning to do, other than wait for Lisette’s party to stage something dramatic. This evening, he seemed hell-bent on convincing everyone that the marriage was very much on – especially if he carried on drinking and adopted his garrulous, compulsive-lying character from the film, which he was certain to do with such a large audience to play to.