by Fiona Walker
Having spent the final hour of the flight locked in a First Class wash room, changing and applying make-up, Nell was now hiding her perfectly painted eyes behind oversized dark glasses, a Hermès scarf tied over her beautifully styled hair and a long summer mackintosh buckled over the floral playsuit she’d bought in Saks the previous day.
‘Where’s your little girl, Nell?’ one of the hacks called out.
‘With her grandmother,’ Nell said smoothly, despite Tania frantically signalling for her to say nothing while trying to bat all the press away with the aid of her vast Mulberry handbag. ‘I can’t wait to see her.’
But when they were finally ensconced behind the tinted glass of the vast car sent to pick them up, the Louis Vuitton luggage and tens of designer shopping bags crammed in the boot and Tania dispatched in a humble black cab, Nell suggested that they take a suite at Cliveden for the night. ‘The label will pay.’
‘Why should they?’ Dillon laughed incredulously. ‘They’ve already put us up in five-star luxury in New York just so that you could shop all week. I have houses in London and Oxfordshire; I hardly need to stay in a hotel near Henley. Besides, I want to get back for my kids.’
‘They’re still in LA with Fawn, packing their little suitcases,’ she pointed out sourly, having found herself stranded at the Four Seasons for several dull sunbathing and shopping afternoons a fortnight earlier while he spent time with his children and ex-wife at his former in-laws’ Malibu beach house.
‘Yes, and when they land tomorrow the kids will come straight to West Oddford,’ he reminded her.
‘So I can have you all to myself for a night? At the London house?’
‘That’s all ready for Fawn,’ he sighed.
Since their divorce, Dillon and Fawn had maintained a close transatlantic relationship for the sake of their two daughters, Pomegranate and Blueberry. When in the UK, Fawn always based herself in the couple’s former marital home. The Nash-designed Regent’s Park terrace was now officially Dillon’s property, but they remained wholly cordial about it and anglophile Fawn regularly stayed there for weeks at a time, much to Nell’s discomfort. Six-year-old Pom and four-year-old Berry, already wholly accustomed to life spread between several sites, were more than happy to rattle straight off the LA flight into a car chauffeuring them to the Cotswolds while their mother headed towards North London alone. Nell, by contrast, felt profoundly disorientated and ill at ease after just three weeks in the States.
Coming back to find the UK in the grip of Olympic fever didn’t help. It was just days away from the opening ceremony and the whole country had gone Olympics mad. On reflection, she guessed it was safest to stay at home. But Dillon’s beloved West Oddford Farm felt more like a love rival than home, and he was clearly still a long way off asking her to share it with him for more than a night at a time.
Ever the rolling stone, who now had her own pet rock star, Nell was much happier living in hotel rooms and well-staffed holiday houses, where there was room service on tap and one could just as equally hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door as walk out, slamming that door and driving away at the drop of a hat to let somebody else pick up the mess.
‘The farm will be full of people,’ she curled up to him. ‘I want you to myself just for one night.’
‘You’ve had me in the States for three weeks.’
‘I’ve hardly seen you!’
‘We’ve been together most nights.’ He didn’t want to get into the argument about Fawn again. Nell wouldn’t leave it alone, like an itchy rash. Asking her along to the States after the story about their relationship had gone public had been a last-minute, hot-headed decision that Dillon had regretted in hindsight. He’d wanted to protect her from all the press attention in the UK, but instead he had almost suffocated her with his own commitments in America, a schedule of work, plus delicate family politics, that had been planned for many months and took no account of a girlfriend accustomed to long walks together, lost weekends and lazy lovemaking that sometimes stretched over several hours.
‘I had to work, Nell. You knew that was the deal when I asked you along.’
‘You didn’t exactly spell out that the only private time we’d get was a few lousy hours each night sharing a bed in a strange hotel with the air-con switched off, a wake-up call booked for six and a your BlackBerry vibrating every ten minutes. And now we’ve got your kids coming, then you’re off to Italy in less than a week. I think I deserve one night of your undivided attention, don’t you?’ She licked her lips playfully.
Dillon stifled a yawn and wrapped his arm tightly around her, knowing that she was attention seeking because she had been neglected and was totally unaccustomed to it. He couldn’t deny it; his schedule was so punishing that he was neglecting everything.
‘Two Souls’, the song that had relaunched his career, had been Number One in the UK for over three months now, as well as topping charts all over Europe and the Far East. It was now also Number One in the States and, with maximum airplay and downloads, the album had already gone platinum and promoters were howling for a stadium tour.
Dillon was exhausted and strangely depressed, hating himself for his lack of gratitude but unable to stop the resentment crawling all over him. His comeback had been a huge success, exceeding all expectations in every possible way except one – his own euphoria had not returned. He had no sense of that giddy, grateful, boy-in-a-magical-toyshop feeling that he’d once relished when out-selling every recording artist in the world, including his father. He simply felt strained, homesick and appalled at the apple-polishing, toadying and freeloading he encountered everywhere he went.
He found himself continually questioning why exactly had he staged a comeback when the place that he had escaped to was so good?
Despite having lived in some of the most prestigious addresses in the world, West Oddford Farm, a lopsided pile hidden at the end of half a mile of drive, tucked in a discreet fold between two hills as plump and soft as matronly breasts untouched by silicone, was the only home in which he truly felt content. A working farm, managed by a great team in his absence, it had become Dillon’s major project and raison d’être after the simultaneous collapse of his marriage, career and mental health. It had helped him through a prolonged breakdown and crippling writer’s block. He had bought the farm on a whim, more because he needed a bolthole away from the media glare than because he wanted to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, but his interest in food had soon sparked an interest in farming. Once a dairy farm, West Oddford boasted three hundred acres of wood-skirted land with no rights of way crossing it, ensuring complete privacy. It also came with vast tracts of outbuildings that Dillon had soon bored of wandering around with a shotgun picking off crows and rats and started to want to bring back to life. Rare sheep, cattle and pigs were soon installed, initially for decoration but then for produce. He became interested in butchery and husbandry, in meats and cheeses, in nurturing the kitchen gardens that sheltered a burgeoning vegetable plot, filling the glass houses and soft-fruit frames, in maximising yield in his ancient orchards and nuttery, all of which were brought back to life by endless tranfusions from his dwindling savings. Gaining organic status became an obsessive mission, later transcended by setting up a farm shop and, more recently, the marketing of a whole range that sold in exclusive food halls and delicatessens across the world.
It had taken time, but gradually West Oddford Organics had become a byword for good quality, a favourite of the wealthy Cotswold Boden wives brigade. As its dashing figurehead, Dillon had rather unexpectedly become a spokesman for all things foodie, organic, seasonal and British, with a regular column in a Sunday supplement and radio and television shows often clamouring for quotes.
Dillon was at last taken seriously by those erstwhile harsh critics – his neighbours, particularly neighbouring farmers and nimbys. His passion and zeal were acknowledged as great things. His farm shop, which had quickly outgrown its modest quarters in a converted milk parl
our and relocated from the farm itself to retail premises in picturesque Morrell on the Moor, incorporating a café and deli, was a mecca for foodies and star-spotters alike. Everyone assumed Dillon was cashing in. But the process, with its vast set-up costs and very narrow margins, had in fact almost bankrupted him and he was faced with a very real dilemma of selling the London house – something he felt he couldn’t do to Fawn and the kids – or make some real money at last. He had even contemplated such horrors as the Strictly dancefloor to score a quick, much-needed cash injection.
It was at that point that he’d first heard ‘Two Souls’, in the most unlikely of settings – a local auction house where its writer and composer, nineties pop icon Trudy Dew, had played it on a grand piano that was up for sale and Dillon, like everyone there that day, had been bewitched. He’d persuaded his record label to buy the rights to it. Now the world was enjoying the haunting, uplifting, unforgettable song. Rather too much. It was currently playing in every shop and mall, was aired hourly on radio stations, was being used as lead-in music on TV and downloaded on to every iPod the world over.
Although he still rated the ballad as the best he’d ever come across, Dillon would quite gratefully not hear, play or sing it again for several years. He was fed up to the back teeth of it.
Today, a hot summer’s day, it was playing out of the open windows of a hundred cars crawling along the sticky tarmac of the motorway.
Normally insistent upon leaving the air-con switched off and fresh air allowed in as a vague gesture towards shrinking his carbon footprint, Dillon irritably told the driver to close all the windows.
Nell had fallen silent now, moving away from him to snuggle up to a big leather armrest and stare sulkily out of the window at newly planted fir trees sliding by, her fingers tappity-tapping on the glass. With her slim, tanned limbs, hollow cheeks and great, black oversized glasses, she suddenly reminded him of a fly. She’d certainly been buzzing around like a maddened bluebottle in the past few days, but he supposed he had kept her shut away in hotel rooms day after day while he worked. This was her first long trip away without Giselle and it must be trying for her, however much she denied it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed, reaching out to take her narrow, long-fingered hand, stopping the nails from tapping. ‘I meant for you to have a better time.’
‘I had a great time,’ she lied gallantly, ‘I just don’t want it to end.’
He squeezed her hand, wondering if he could explain to her why West Oddford was so important to him, to his sanity and why he so badly needed to get back there – with her, whom he so adored and with whom he longed to have a relaxed, family relationship as opposed to the show-stopping media love affair they appeared to have tripped into. He had fallen for a local girl, after all. She’d seemed made-to-measure for him from the start; like him, Nell was a city–country hybrid who combined partying with London’s fashionistas with the shooting, tweed and mud splatters of time out country life. She understood the seasons, both the social one and the farming and bloodsports calendar. She knew the valley and the ridgeway better than anyone he had yet met. Her family were an Oddlode dynasty. On top of which, she was a mother struggling to keep her child’s life as normal as possible despite separated parents. If anyone could understand him, she could.
It also helped that she looked so good, easily out-classing the leggy girls rented from model agencies by the ton to fill music industry parties, and who were consequently very thick on the ground in more than one sense. Nell was beautiful, bright, sharp-tongued and self-aware. She was also more adventurous than any lover he’d had, certainly any lover he could remember which, given than a lot of his past sex life, including the conception of his children, had been conducted while he was too stoned and pissed to remember a thing, wasn’t perhaps as great an accolade as it first appeared. But she was his first long-term lover since cleaning up, and she was amazing. She could turn him on in an instant; she had him hooked. He just needed the time to appreciate her more.
‘I’m better at home,’ was all he could lamely muster. ‘I’m a nicer person at West Oddford.’
‘You’re a wonderful person,’ she reached down to lower the zip of his flies, a naughty smile dancing on her lips, impatient to be the ultimate groupie with an Access All Areas pass.
Dillon immediately felt his groin tighten as his band member leapt in response.
Sometimes he might struggle to get to a place with Nell mentally that was as good as their relationship on paper, but that was never the case physically, whether they were in London, LA, the Cotswolds, the Caribbean, New York or somewhere on the M25.
Much later, having nodded off soon after the Stokenchurch Gap, Dillon woke with a start to find that the car’s engine had been switched off and it was parked on a familiar, weed-strewn square of gravel in front of the large American barn at Overlodes Equestrian Centre. It certainly wasn’t West Oddford Farm. His driver was lurking about fifty yards away, smoking a sly cigarette behind a large rainwater butt. Nell had disappeared.
He stretched and tumbled groggily from the car to go in search of his errant girlfriend.
She wasn’t hard to track down, sitting coquettishly on Rory Midwinter’s desk in the yard office having just staged a very emotional reunion with her Chihuahua, Milo.
‘You’d rather come here to collect your dog before seeing Giselle?’ he balked.
‘Gigi will be in the middle of her afternoon nap,’ she pointed out pragmatically. Her mother Dibs, with whom Giselle was staying, was an old-fashioned Irish stickler when it came to strictly enforced regime.
‘Besides which, Nell knew you’d want to check on your best-ever investment,’ drawled a lazy voice as Rory came through from the tack room carrying chipped mugs of tea, that unique, cloud-partingly sunny smile on his face. ‘Not to mention the fact that you are both no doubt gagging for your first proper brew since touching down. It must be weeks – here!’ He thrust a steaming, grubby-rimmed mug of stewed tea at Dillon, who tried not to think too longingly of his big, homely kitchen with its Earl Grey and comforting earthenware mugs.
Feeling ungrateful, he took a hefty swig and burned his tongue.
‘So how are the horses going?’ he asked tiredly, wishing he felt more interested. He struggled to remember their names and only returned Rory’s calls or checked how he was doing when Nell reminded him to, which was usually when she wanted to pick a fight with him or manipulate his diary for her own ends.
‘The horses are not going that great,’ Rory grimaced apologetically. ‘We have a technical hitch in the wham-bam-Grand-Slam masterplan.’
‘To what plan?’ He had totally forgotten that one of the challenges he had set Rory, upon investing in him, was to win the famous Rolex Grand Slam. This consisted of taking the title in the top three international three day events in succession.
‘Burghley’s probably a non-starter. Sid looks like he’s back in the locker room early this year. He’s lame again.’
‘Rory must go to Burghley!’ Nell protested over Milo’s head, ‘You must go to Burghley, Rory. Mustn’t he, Dillon?’
‘Must he?’ Dillon sighed, gazing solemnly at the photographs that crazy-paved the walls, almost all of them Rory hurtling across country on a horse, most of them photographer’s proofs. It looked much more fun than sitting in hot studios under too much pan-stick and powder, telling a caring daytime television anchor about your nervous breakdown and addictions, and the beauty of organic brie. He was feeling increasingly jet-lagged. ‘Why is Burghley important?’
‘He owns a four-star horse and has never heard of Burghley,’ Nell teased, threading her arm through his.
Dillon in fact knew Burghley Horse Trials was one of the ‘big three’, a top-ranking autumn three day event akin to playing Reading Festival in musician terms, but he couldn’t be bothered to protest. There were so many horse trials at so many country houses he lost track. Like rock festivals.
‘It’s a beautiful place,’ Nell insisted. ‘We
must go. Is the horse really not up to it, Rory?’ She keyed him with her eyes.
Rory could be bullied on most things, but not his horse’s welfare. ‘The vet scanned his front legs yesterday. Might never compete again, if I’m honest.’
Dillon tutted under his breath, seeing fifty thousand pounds going up in smoke, or more accurately, retiring into a field.
He’d first encountered Rory not long after he bought West Oddlode Farm, when country life was a hobby and every weekend was a house party. Determined to learn to ride, he’d block-booked lessons with Rory and later brought along gangs of friends to ride out around the valley, falling off regularly. One such tumble had smashed Dillon’s leg so badly that he was still lame, and had no desire to ride again. But Rory and his talent remained an inspiration, as did the wonderful horses he produced. When Rory’s only top horse had been injured so badly that his career was thought to be over, everybody surrounding Rory thought that meant his competitive dreams were washed up too. His most loyal fan, Faith, had even given him her own horse to ride, but it was never going to be enough. Then, as Dillon’s fortunes were revived through a new album deal and his career looked set to rocket, he’d stepped in as benefactor. He’d always adored shopping for beautiful things, a trait inherited from his father, and so it had been no great trial to buy a string of event horses, particularly as one of his oldest friends was well-connected and had led him straight to the veteran four-star campaigner Snake Charmer, known as Sid, and the younger, three-star Egley’s Opposition, aka Humpty, who was popularly believed to be a superstar in the making. He’d also funded a clutch of cheaper novice horses, bought by Rory off the racetrack at bargain prices and schooled on to event. Some were successful, but most failed, either too untrainable or too unsound to get close to the big league.
Eventing was a very hit and miss affair, as Dillon was learning. The big gatherings at grand country houses weren’t the only parallel with the music industry. For every successful rider there were tens of eager young wannabes waiting in the wings, along with groupies and teenage fans. Being a professional event rider meant a life lived on the road, a horsebox in place of a tour bus, setting up camp and performing at different venues week in, week out. Only the very lucky few ever made it to the big time. When they did, they spent even more time away from home, far from the acres of familiar turf they loved.
