Lottie followed her line of sight to the array of cars parked on the verge outside the church. An eclectic mix of Rolls Royces, Mercedes and top-of-the-range BMWs, with the odd Porsche thrown in for good measure.
People were heading off towards the crematorium, to say their final goodbyes before Marcus was reduced to ashes, but Lottie, Rory, and in fact most of the residents of Tippermere had been spared the ordeal. The crem simply hadn’t the capacity for that many people, so luckily, from their point of view, family and close friends took precedence and they could head straight to the wake.
The once-lush grass verges were cut through with dark slashes of freshly turned mud. Deep grooves, with churned edges that filled Lottie’s mind with endless images of dark damp earth, the final resting place for most people. For her mother.
From what she knew of Alexa, today’s ceremony would have amused her. The lopsided coffin making its way inside, the pall-bearers dressed in their red hunting jackets, incongruous in the dark, dismal, cold confines of the ancient church.
Marcus had been a man who knew what he wanted. Who liked the power that money gave him. Who thrived on the certainty that people would jump to his bidding. Lottie suspected he hadn’t been bothered about being liked. Being important was the thing. And in death he had surpassed himself.
On one side of the aisle, the pews had been filled with a crowd alien to this country environment. Brash designer suits, large handbags, a flash of gold at every turn and enough make-up, perfume and pungent aftershave to make the occupants of the other pews reel in their wake. The church would never smell the same again. On that, the residents of the village and its old vicar agreed.
The Very Reverend Walterson had raised his eyebrows at the crowd at the start of the service, and raised his uncommonly heavy collection tray with disbelief (and trembling hands) at the end. No doubt he would be praising the Lord for sheep in wolves’ clothing, or some such nonsense, as he sipped his sherry that evening, thought Pip, as she turned her attention back to Mick.
‘You going to give me a lift? I came with Amanda, but she’s off to watch her old life burn and be scattered.’
‘Where are they scattering him?’
‘In the indoor arena at the Equestrian Centre.’ Pip had her innocent face fixed into position, which the rest of them understood a second later.
‘He can do a running fuck.’
Rory spun around and somehow managed to keep a straight face as he looked at Billy. ‘I don’t think he’s doing anything anymore, to be honest, Billy.’ And for a horrible fleeting moment, Lottie saw a ghastly resemblance between her sometime lover and her father. They both had the curls, the grin, the ‘game for a laugh’ attitude, Rory was just younger, slimmer and taller. And dark-haired rather than gingery. A cloud scudded over the sun and she decided she’d imagined it. No way. ‘Maybe it was a running fuck that finished him off. Wasn’t exactly sprinting material was he?’ The grin broke out.
‘If they scatter the bugger over the rubber then I’ll never get the bloody horses in there again.’
‘But it was his dying wish.’
Lottie squinted at Pip, who winked back, then turned her angelic face back in Billy’s direction.
‘I think his dying wish was probably, fuck I wish she’d hurry up and come.’
A chorus of ‘Dad’ and ‘Billy’ rang out, and he chuckled.
‘They weren’t? Were they?’ The angel that had briefly invaded Pip had been replaced with the normal mischief-maker.
‘Ejaculation can put quite a strain on a man’s heart, dear.’
Lottie waited for divine intervention, or the ground to swallow her up. Neither of which happened. None of them had heard Elizabeth creep back in their direction. People rarely did, which was why she was so successful at gathering information.
Billy shrugged his ample shoulders. ‘Well they were in bed together, weren’t they, Pippa?’
‘That’s what she said when she rang.’
‘Come on, let’s get to this bloody party, crack the champers open, I say a bottle of single malt to the first person who finds out if he was.’ Billy smacked his hands together. ‘Agreed?’
‘But I don’t like single malt, Dad.’
‘We’ll drink it for you, Lots, won’t we Mick?’ Rory wrapped an arm around her shoulders just as she glanced up, straight into the dark eyes of the Irishman. ‘Not that you’re going to be the winner. My bet is on Elizabeth.’
He winked at Elizabeth, who sniffed but looked secretly pleased. ‘Will someone find Dominic for me? He seems to have strayed.’
‘He’s not a dog, Gran.’
‘Last time I saw him, he was paying his respects and comforting the grieving widow.’ Pip raised an eyebrow as she spoke, and swapped a look with Elizabeth. Not for the first time, Lottie wondered what the pair of them were up to and why they got on so well.
***
‘Where have you been?’ Lottie handed a rapidly warming glass of champagne to Rory and watched his Adam’s apple jump as he emptied most of the contents in one gulp. He’d only supposed to be parking her car in an obscure corner of the courtyard, as per the instructions from Elizabeth, and it had taken him what felt, to her, like ages.
‘Some cheeky bastard asked me to park his Roller for him, and not to scratch it.’ It was debatable whether Rory was most disgruntled about being taken for the hired help, or the suggestion that he couldn’t drive a car without scratching it. ‘Wow, they’ve gone to town on this place, haven’t they?’ He gave a low whistle as he gazed around the high-ceilinged entrance hall of Folly Lake Manor.
‘Looks like a tart’s boudoir to me.’
‘And you’d know, Billy?’
Billy laughed and gave Rory a none-too-affectionate slap on the back, which would have sent a lesser man straight into Lottie’s lap. ‘I wonder if Pip is out to win that whiskey.’ He nodded across the hall to where Pip stood shoulder to shoulder with the elegant Amanda, whilst managing to grab another couple of glasses off the tray of a passing waiter. ‘Anything stronger on offer, mate?’ The man, who they all knew as the son of a local farmer, nodded and rushed off to raid the cellar of its best whiskey.
***
Amanda had not been looking forward to the funeral to top all funerals. Not only was she sad at losing the man who had been her closest companion for the last few years, but she hated anything ostentatious. And Marcus was ostentatious with a capital O. She hated what he’d done to the beautiful manor house, hated the over-the-top diamond he’d put on her finger the day he’d proposed, and hated the fact that she’d made no real friends since they’d moved here, apart from Philippa. Their friendship was new, still developing, but Marcus had sensed trouble and had done his best to chase her off. Luckily for her, Pip wasn’t easily deterred.
‘Thanks for coming. You can’t begin to understand how grateful I am.’ Amanda watched the froth of bubbles in the champagne glass die down to a steady fizzle. ‘I just needed…’
‘No problem, that’s what friends are for.’ Pip picked up her own glass and heaved an inward sigh of relief to be dressed up and away from horses for once. And this event promised to be a hundred times more exciting than most of the things that happened around here. Most of them involving hooves. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine. Well, to be honest, I didn’t think I’d miss him this much.’
Pip waited. It was common knowledge that Marcus had played away regularly and spent more time on business trips than with his wife. And it was common conjecture that Amanda had someone else, she just had to have. She was glamorous, good company and, of course, rich. She was also too bloody discreet for Pip’s liking.
‘I mean, I know he wasn’t here much. But, I suppose, it’s just knowing he’s not coming back. He had other women, you know.’ She traced a long nail around the rim of her glass. ‘Well, of course you know, everyone knows. Oh, shit.’ Tears welled up in the smoky eyes, threatening to spill onto her perfectly made-up face. Pip shoved a tissue in her dire
ction. ‘Sorry, I’m being stupid. I mean, he was a sod, and I suppose I’d stopped loving him. But I was fond of him, and he was fond of me.’ She sniffed. ‘Well, I hope he was.’
‘I’m sure he was. I know it. Very fond.’ Pip hoped it wasn’t going to get to full-out tears, she didn’t do sympathy very well.
Amanda took a deep breath, then a long swig of champagne and smiled brightly. ‘I knew this funeral was going to be shitty.’
‘It’s fine, look,’ Pip waved a hand, ‘they’re all having a great time, just like Marcus wanted.’ Oh, God, she was going to have to try and console.
‘No, no I don’t mean in that way.’
Pip heaved an inward sigh of relief. For a moment there she thought she’d misjudged the person Amanda was. They weren’t very close, but they had built up a kind of bond based on mutual admiration and a need to talk about something other than horses.
‘It’s just they are all here. I wouldn’t have invited them, but it was in his will. All his family and friends. You don’t know Marcus’s family do you? Have you talked to any of them?’
Pip shook her head and took a good swig of bubbly.
‘They are gross, I mean really. Everyone in Tippermere must hate them. If you thought Marcus could be a bit brash and throw his money about,’ Pip had, but wasn’t going to admit it, ‘well, you should talk to the rest of them. He wanted a really big send-off, so I had to do it, but it would have been so much nicer without…’ Without all the fuss, all the false emotions, she wanted to say.
Pip shrugged. ‘But it’s how he was, Amanda. He’d have felt a failure if he’d just sneaked off; he was making a point and that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it?’
Amanda nodded glumly and fought back a new rush of emotion. She wanted the old Marcus, not the one he’d become. Couldn’t he have at least admitted to who he was in death, even if he wouldn’t in life? God, she really did have to get a grip and pull herself together, though. She was about to make herself look such a fool in front of everybody. Talking of which… ‘It’s not true, you know.’ She watched the froth of bubbles in the champagne glass die down to a steady fizzle as a passing waiter topped up her glass. Again. ‘What they’re saying.’
‘About?’
‘How he died. We were in bed at the time, as you know.’ She gave Pip a pointed look, but she didn’t flinch. Which either meant she was very thick-skinned, or hadn’t been the one feeding the rumour mill. ‘But we weren’t…’ The bubbles broke their hold on the inside of the glass, shot up to the top for air. Which is how she felt. It was noisy and hot, and she would just love to be able to escape, if only for a quick nerve-steadying fag and a glass of wine.
‘Sorry?’ Pip tilted her head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just so bloody noisy in here.’
‘We weren’t…’ she moved in closer, but Pip was still squinting with the effort of picking out the words, she took a deep breath, ‘we weren’t…’
‘You what?’
‘We weren’t having sex.’
The words shot out, loud and crystal clear, shattering the silence, which for some strange reason had just fallen, with an immaculate sense of timing.
‘Well that’s going to go viral, as opposed to virile.’ Rory’s voice boomed out, his warm laughing eyes fixed on her, and then chatter broke out again.
Amanda closed her eyes. ‘Oh. My. God. Everyone heard that, didn’t they?’ She drained the glass, took Pip’s and emptied that one too.
‘Well, maybe not everybody.’ Pip’s eyes had a twinkle.
‘Shit. That is going to be on Twitter within the next twenty seconds isn’t it?’
‘Already there, I’d imagine, looking at the discreet tapping of phones. I wonder what they’re using as the hashtag?’
‘I suppose he’d be pleased, to be infamous.’
‘It won’t be news to anyone.’
‘He didn’t die mid-orgasm because he hadn’t had one with me for months. But I guess you already knew that, everyone did, didn’t they?’
Chapter 7
‘Bloody heathens, get off the road.’ Rory took his frustration out on the horn, banging on it, no doubt in the way he wanted to bang one of the protestors who was half-blocking the road.
Lottie wasn’t even sure what sex the nearest one was, with a mass of purple and red-streaked hair, enough piercings to set a metal detector off, and a big shapeless duffel coat. ‘Why do they do it?’ She picked absentmindedly at a sticker that was struggling valiantly to hold its place on the dashboard.
‘Because they’ve got frig-all else to do on a Sunday. That’s why shops stay open these days, to entertain the masses.’
‘But it’s pointless.’ She gave up on the sticker, which was fixed more firmly than it looked, and went back to staring out of the window, trying to avoid looking straight at any of the crowd. ‘Did you bring my martingale, like I asked?’ Silence, which meant no. She was going to die, on a beautiful, sunny April morning, in front of a crowd of hunt protestors with a multi-coloured rainbow of hair.
‘God, they’ve all turned out this morning, must be expecting a death or something.’
Mine, thought Lottie as he pulled up in the car park of the public house and her horse stamped its approval from the back of the lorry.
There was quite a crowd, though, assembled for the hunt. The most visible member being Elizabeth, with what looked like a dead pheasant on her head and a fox’s pelt draped around her neck. On closer inspection, after she’d wondered briefly if she’d forgotten to put her contact lenses in, Lottie realised that the hat was tweedy with a couple of feathers stuck into the ribbon, and the fox was just a fur collar, pulled, from the slightly moth-eaten appearance, out of the attic just for the occasion. Gran was not going to let anyone tell her what to do, the anti-hunting lobby had, she frequently lamented, taken half the fun and all the danger out of what used to be an exciting day out. First they scrapped national service, and now the do-gooders had the temerity to start meddling in matters closer to home. Surely what one did in the privacy of one’s own estate was one’s own business? The Barbour wellingtons and tweed skirt completed the type of outfit that made British aristocracy the institution it was. And gave protestors a handy target for eggs, which was the point.
Lottie groaned as Elizabeth squinted at the lorry then headed their way briskly. And tapped abruptly on the door with a staccato volley of diamond-hard nails. If she’d done that, the ends would have snapped off, thought Lottie grumpily, not that her nails had pointed ends at the moment. They were more the normal dirt-ingrained chewed-down stubs. She swung the door open reluctantly and did her best to ignore the grin that was plastered all over Rory’s face.
‘Charlotte, come and have a drink.’
‘I need to unload the horses first, Gran.’ She jumped out and her legs wobbled on impact, in sympathy with her stomach.
‘You need a drink. It might make the ride a bit more fun. It just isn’t the same now they’ve taken all the surprise away. Nowhere near the thrills and spills that we used to have.’
‘It’s plenty of fun with this horse.’ The empty-stomach feeling had been replaced with an ‘I’m going to be sick any second now’ sensation. ‘I’ll come and chat as soon as I’ve got the horses ready.’
‘They should be tacked-up already, shouldn’t they? No time to pansy about, honestly, in my day the second we arrived we whipped off the rug and we were in the saddle.’ Elizabeth shook her head in general despair of the young people today and headed determinedly off to get another drink, pheasant tail feathers waving jauntily as she went.
Lottie wobbled her way to the tailgate and leant her hot forehead against it. A sick bag should be standard issue in a horsebox, the same as on a plane.
‘I can make it even more fun, and dangerous…’ Rory had joined her at the back of the horsebox and was doing his best to hinder her. ‘Just like back in her day.’
She slapped his hand and he tried his best to look affronted. ‘Go and get a drink while I get
them out.’
‘I’m not going anywhere near your gran.’
‘She’s okay,’ she peered round the lorry, ‘look, she’s been distracted by Tom.’
‘What’s he doing here? Looks like a misplaced mannequin. Or a feature for Horse and Hound.’
Lottie took another look and half agreed, but didn’t say so out loud. He did look a bit out of place, as if no one had explained the dress code properly. Although next to Gran it was almost comic, a fancy-dress party in the middle of a pub car park was the closest description she could get to. ‘He probably thought a tweed jacket was de rigueur.’ Complete with leather elbow patches, hmm. ‘What do you think they’re talking about?’
‘Dunno, but mini Tom-Tom looks bored.’
‘Tab, she’s called Tabatha, Tabby.’ The back of the lorry dropped down and both horses shrieked a welcome and stamped their feet, sensing the excitement to come, which made Lottie feel queasy again.
Her horse had been a gift from her father, and you know what they say about not looking a gift horse in the mouth… And she hadn’t been interested in this one’s teeth, well, not until they had sunk into every unpadded bit of her body, repeatedly. The mare was black in colour and black in temper. She was like a spoiled toddler who had got used to being the centre of everyone’s attention, recipient of cuddles because she was cute, and titbits because she was even cuter when she flicked her little toes out and scraped the ground. But the little hooves were bigger now, and she’d not taken it well when someone had suggested she might have to work for a living.
When Lottie had arrived back from Spain, her father had eyed her up and down and said ‘well if you’re staying here you better do some work. I’ve got a youngster that I picked up at a sales the other week. You can sort her out, I think you’ll get on fine, two of a kind.’ Which sent a little prickle of unease down Lottie’s spine and when he chuckled, it didn’t help one bit. Billy always had a young horse or two on the yard, bringing a promising horse on was a far cheaper route than buying one already at its peak. But the approach came with its drawbacks. Talented youngsters could be tricky customers. ‘Spirited’ was what they called it, Lottie thought ruefully.
The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights Page 104
