Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

  Yet, knowing a little camaraderie would help on such a day, he decided to sleep on the spare bunk in the horsebox that night. The room in the bed and breakfast, with its empty cots and the scent of Tash still lingering, depressed him too much to stay there. But when he arrived at the lorry park with his bags and the Rat Pack at his heels he found Beccy, Karma and Twitch waiting outside on the step to the groom’s compartment, teeth chattering as they leant together for warmth.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in just yet,’ she warned.

  But Hugo, black-tempered and yawning widely, swept past the gathering on the steps like Ranulph Fiennes yomping through a cluster of mountain goats in the foothills.

  Shortly afterwards there was a brief girly shriek, an outraged bellow and then – rather surprisingly – uproarious laughter all round.

  Beccy took her phone out of her pocket and checked it. She’d heard nothing from Lough for twenty-four hours now. She felt increasingly sick.

  As the gales of laughter continued inside the horsebox Beccy wearily clambered up the steps and opened the door. They were all gathered around the table drinking cheap rosé.

  ‘There you are!’ Rory greeted her like an old mate despite having unceremoniously booted her out earlier on. ‘Join us! Bring Cooler!’

  ‘Karma.’ She perched awkwardly in a free spot, wishing it were closer to Hugo who was behind the table with his back to the window, customary fag dangling between his lips.

  ‘Tash has gone home.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ She tried not to betray how much the news made her heart lift.

  ‘It seems Lough Strachan’s arrived to join our happy Haydown team.’

  ‘He’s in England?’ Her heart was jet-propelled into her throat.

  ‘So it appears.’ Hugo’s blue eyes were glacial as they narrowed and focused on the wine bottle. He topped up his glass and then poured one for Beccy. ‘Here, you look like you need one of these as much as I do. Is grooming for Rory that awful, you poor darling?’

  Beccy’s face flushed deep red. Suddenly the freefall panic of thinking that Tash was with Lough Strachan right now paled to nothing as she took the glass from Hugo and looked him in the eye. He still had her heart so totally kidnapped she couldn’t care less if Lough had Tash tied up in the Haydown cellars demanding to know why she had led him on.

  It was one of the most exciting evenings of Beccy’s life, watching Hugo get drunk and rant a lot, particularly when Rory walked Sylva back to her waiting car. Her ten minutes alone with Hugo was thrilling, not least because among his ramblings he dropped a gem of an indiscretion.

  ‘Lough Strachan’s a total shit!’ Hugo announced in one of his more lucid moments. ‘If he touches a hair on Tash’s head I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Why would he want to touch Tash?’ Beccy asked with more feeling than she intended.

  ‘Because I lost her in a bet,’ he mumbled, burying his face in his hands.

  She wasn’t sure that she heard this right, but it made no difference because a far more immediate, more spine-tingling moment came when he slumped across the table and, reaching out, gripped her hand in his.

  Like a reflex, she pulled his fingers to her lips and kissed them. The tasted of cigarettes and horse.

  Hugo lifted his face from the table and stared at her in surprise.

  Which was when Rory walked back into the horsebox, kicking mud from his boots. ‘How about that then? A pre-match shag from Sylva. Result!’

  The fact that both Beccy and Hugo jumped sky-high bypassed Rory entirely.

  ‘What a woman!’ he announced theatrically as he sagged down on the seating. ‘I’m going to win this for her.’

  ‘You have about as much chance of that as young Beccy here has of winning Miss Singapore.’ Hugo snapped, the drink making him cruel.

  ‘Want to bet?’ Rory scoffed.

  But to his surprise, Hugo almost bit his head off. ‘Yes I fucking well bet! And this is one wager I know I won’t lose!’

  Mortified, Beccy mumbled something about giving Karma a run and bolted outside. It was still raining. The going would be awful tomorrow, she realised.

  Her phone was beeping again. Nervously she fished it out and felt cold shame drench her as she read Lough’s name. He and Tash must have rumbled her.

  She read the message with wide-eyed surprise, wondering whether this was some sort of joke: Lost my Dad. Losing my liberty. Never had you to lose – my greatest regret. Will not come to England. As the song says, there’s nothing you can save that can’t be saved. I apologise for everything. L

  Chapter 23

  When Tash watched Rory lift the Blenheim trophy live on television she had a Kiwi at her side, but it wasn’t Lough Strachan. It was his head groom, a small ball of high-camp energy called Lemon, who reminded her rather quaintly of Mickey Rooney in National Velvet, although with far more piercings and a rather alarming bleached yellow Mohican sprouting from his otherwise conventional mousey short back and sides.

  ‘Is that why you’re called Lemon?’ She pointed to the hairy yellow shark’s fin.

  ‘No, my real name’s Lemmy. My parents are big Motörhead fans, yeah? Not great when you’re the Abba-loving only son of a sheep shearer growing up in the middle of nowhere, yeah?’

  Tash nodded sympathetically and they both lapsed into silence as they watched Julia Ditton interviewing Rory, who replied ‘Bloody brilliant!’ to every question.

  ‘When I was fifteen, I ran away from home to work for a racing yard near Matamata,’ Lemon went on. ‘They called me Lemon there because I’m small, round and have an acid tongue, yeah? You can call me Lem if you like. Lough does. He was one of the veterinary team who used to come to the yard. That’s how we met.’

  Watching the hands slapping Rory on the back on screen, and realising Hugo wasn’t among them, Tash wasn’t really listening properly.

  ‘Lough?’ she asked eventually, wondering if she should try to call Hugo again. He obviously hadn’t stayed on to support Rory. He’d be on his way home, having show-jumped before lunch.

  ‘Scottish mother,’ Lemon told her. ‘His father wanted to call him Roto, which is Maori for lake, but Ma Strachan insisted on Lough.’

  ‘But she used the Irish spelling.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Irish spell it with a “gh”.’ She stood up to leave. ‘The Scottish with a “ch”.’

  ‘Lough’s mum left Glasgow when she was three, so I guess she never knew that. She’s not the brightest spark.’ He looked at her with surprising directness. ‘Why’re you so interested in Lough’s name?’

  ‘I’m a pedant. I like clarification.’

  ‘That’s what Lough’s mother’s called.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Tash turned back in the doorway.

  ‘Clara Fecashean,’ Lemon hammed a bad Scottish accent.

  ‘Really? Isn’t that an Irish name?’

  ‘Duh! Like, joke!’ He was laughing so much he almost toppled his chair over, pointing at her in glee. ‘Clarification. I can’t believe you fell for that. You are so gullible.’

  Tash flashed a weak smile and went out to phone Hugo, but his mobile was going straight to voicemail. She left another message saying that there was still no word from Lough Strachan, let alone any sign of him arriving in the UK.

  Lemon seemed remarkably unfazed by this turn of events and was more than happy to make himself at home and enjoy the hospitality on offer. He grabbed the remote and switched to an old episode of Baywatch on satellite, making himself at home amid the squashy cushions on the quadruple sofa, ogling both The Hoff and Pamela Anderson.

  Lough’s non-appearance on the flight from Auckland was a mystery his head groom didn’t seem able to solve. Lemon had travelled with the four horses on a specialist air-freight flight while Lough stayed behind a further night, aiming to catch a passenger flight that would get him into Heathrow to coincide with his precious cargo being passed fit, rested and ready to travel on to Berkshire via horse transporter. Lem and the horses had a
rrived on schedule; Lough had not. He wasn’t answering his phone and had left no message.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked eagerly as he received a text on his bright yellow mobile.

  ‘He handed the keys over to his landlord and set out for the airport.’ He pocketed the phone again. ‘After that, nothing. He didn’t check in.’

  Tash was perplexed. ‘We weren’t expecting you to arrive this weekend.’

  ‘Lough’s pretty oddball, but he defo sent details – I was there,’ Lemon assured her. ‘And he’s spoken to you, yeah.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  Lem’s eyebrows shot up towards his Mohawk. ‘He’ll be here,’ he promised easily. ‘He had some family stuff to sort out. He must have missed his flight and be in such a fuck-off bad mood he doesn’t want to call until he’s sorted it.’ He settled back to watch Baywatch.

  At a loss, Tash located Veruschka in the kitchen entertaining Cora with the peg bag while she hung the washing on the ancient pine airer that could be winched up to the ceiling. Tash was embarrassed to spot her biggest, tattiest post-Caesarean pants swinging among Hugo’s far nattier black boxer shorts.

  ‘Those can go in the tumble drier,’ she snapped more crabbily than she intended.

  ‘Huh? Is not okay?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ she replied, settling the mewling Amery on a bouncy chair where he began chirping and admiring his own hands.

  She picked up the phone and checked the dial tone. It purred reassuringly, and she dialled Hugo’s mobile. Straight to voicemail again.

  It was no wonder he and Lough got on so well. They were both lousy at answering their phones or explaining their whereabouts.

  Not that she was entirely convinced that Lough and Hugo did get on that well. From what Lemon had said earlier, she was amazed that they had come at all.

  ‘You’d have thought they were sworn enemies after the Games. But then he went to see his mum in Auckland for a few days and when he came back he said we were coming here.’

  Lemon was fabulously indiscreet. He had already passed on some salacious gossip about several notable Kiwi event riders, had confirmed or refuted well-worn rumours that Tash had never quite believed, and was equally eager to know all about the Haydown set-up.

  ‘Rory Midwinter’s a bit of a dish, isn’t he? Is he gay?’

  From what Tash had seen of Rory so far, she very much doubted it.

  Reassured that the children were okay, and aware that Veruschka – who hated being watched while she worked – was giving her the evil eye over Hugo’s socks, she grabbed a coat and headed outside to check on Vasilly, who was clearing out the old lodge house for Rory. Previously rented as a weekend cottage by a pair of London solicitors who had tightened their belts as a result of the credit crunch and relinquished the tenancy, the little brick and flint cottage by the Haydown entrance gates had been unoccupied for almost three years. Tash had harboured vague plans of a holiday let, but hadn’t found time to do anything about it through her two pregnancies, and now it was dusty and neglected, smelled of damp and mice, and was filled with oddments of furniture. Worse still, the ivy almost covered the windows in places and the garden was waist high with couch grass and nettles, the path tangled with ground elder like a cargo net on an army assault course.

  Rory – who had been moving across in a very chaotic, one-horse-at-a-time fashion – had been staying in the house whenever he was at Haydown. But the return from Blenheim would mark his relocation proper, and Tash wanted to make his new home more welcoming.

  When she had left Vasilly in the lodge that morning he’d been wearing goggles and waving his beloved strimmer around in the garden, looking as though he knew what he was doing. Tash had pointed out the ivy that needed cutting back, and some broken furniture to mend.

  Walking around the crumbling wall that separated the main garden from the little lodge one Tash smelled the familiar tang of bonfire smoke. Then she got a faceful of thick, acrid fumes and stopped in her tracks.

  The garden was stripped bare. Everything had gone – the ancient rhododendrons, the herbaceous borders that teemed with lupins, delphiniums and foxgloves in summer, the hollyhocks and rose bushes, the hebes and the fruit bushes were all gone. As was the ivy – every last leaf of it hacked from the walls that had worn their green foliage like an old lady hanging onto her fox fur for over a century. Now, pale, bony and pockmarked, veined with old ivy trails and riddled with strange stains, the cottage looked like it had been the centre of a gun battle.

  Vasilly, who was busily feeding the entire contents of the garden through the mulcher, looked very pleased with himself.

  In the centre of what had once been a pretty, if overgrown, lawn a pyre raged. Poking from it like dismembered limbs, Tash recognised various items of familiar furniture.

  One glance inside the house confirmed her fears. Vasilly had taken all the contents and set light to them.

  ‘I do good?’ Vasilly asked when she came out, not noticing that she was white with shock. His big, red face was wreathed with proud smiles. He was sweating heavily from the effort of such hard work.

  *

  ‘It’s all my fault, not his,’ Tash hurriedly explained when Hugo finally returned to see his pretty lodge descaled and gutted. ‘Please don’t tell him off. He tried really hard.’

  ‘He’s devalued the place by about ten grand in a day!’

  Rory, meanwhile, found the whole thing hilarious. He thought his new quarters ‘quite charming – and very Zen’.

  Red-faced, Tash explained that he would have to share it with Lough when he finally arrived: ‘I thought he and Lem were a couple,’ she whispered indiscreetly, ‘but it seems not. Lem insists he won’t live with him, and says he prefers the company of women so I’ve put him in the stables flat with Beccy.’

  Rory preferred the company of women too, but after Blenheim he was happy to forfeit the company of Beccy, with her strange moods, undisciplined dog and awful hippy hair.

  Tash prepared a special welcoming and celebratory meal for their new rider – and for Lemon – but Hugo blighted it by remaining silent and sour-faced throughout, and complaining that the fish smelled off. Rory was equally lacking in appetite. Having remained sober for almost a week to keep sharp-eyed and focused on the competition, he was intent on making up for it as quickly as possible.

  Only Lemon appreciated the effort:

  ‘Lemon sole. That’s so cute. Shame I’m a vegan.’

  ‘Oh no, really?’ Tash was mortified.

  ‘Nah. Only kidding. You’re so gullible! I love it, yeah.’

  ‘He’s odious,’ Hugo muttered when he and Tash were alone in the boot room, as he returned from yet another trip to the cellar to slake Rory’s bottomless thirst and she fetched the lemon cheesecake she’d left setting in the old meat safe. She was rather embarrassed that she’d hit upon the food theme, and Hugo clearly loathed the new arrival.

  ‘You knew what he was like when you invited Lough over.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’ A muscle was slamming in his cheek. ‘I never spoke to Lemon.’

  ‘I’m sure he gets easier to be around when he relaxes. We’re all a bit tense. Can’t you make more of an effort?’

  But Hugo’s exasperation seemed unshakeable. He wasn’t usually a bad loser, but both his horses had put in silly run-outs across country that he knew were his fault. To Tash’s frustration he seemed to blame her for his poor scores, insinuating that if she had not fled back to Haydown on the slightest excuse he might have put in better cross-country performances and pulled up through the ranks. Unwilling to enter a full-blown row in front of the Haydown’s new team members, Tash let it go.

  His other dining companions were already winding him up enough as it was.

  ‘Always a tough call when the apprentice has more magic than the sorcerer,’ Lemon joked, earning the dirtiest of looks from Hugo and an ill-timed ‘hear hear!’ from Rory.

  Nobody there could deny the skill of Rory’s performance
, least of all Rory.

  Having struggled for so long with little support, he didn’t really know how to take success. He was accustomed to living alone and talking to his terrier, or relying upon the adoration of his many female fans and clients like Faith. What’s more, he was positively reeling from the on-off attentions of Sylva Frost at Blenheim (culminating in a definite ‘on’ with another knee-trembler in the back of the horsebox after he loaded the victorious Humpty for the journey to Berkshire). His urge to brag won him no favours with the Beauchamps at a very tense supper table.

  ‘Julia Ditton called me the next Fox-Pitt, did you hear? And Brian Sedgewick was all over me after the prizegiving, so it can’t be long before I get called up for my team uniform fitting.’

  ‘You can borrow Hugo’s,’ Lemon joked. ‘He won’t be needing it for a bit!’

  Lemon flirted shamelessly and pandered to that ravenous new-found ego for all it was worth. Mohawk bobbing, he asked endless questions about Rory, his horses and his life, subjects on which Rory was all too happy to dwell with barely a passing reference to Hugo, or indeed the elusive Dillon Rafferty and his millions.

  ‘It’s been tough. I’ve nearly given up so many times – when I smashed my leg, when the money’s run out, when Whitey almost died. This is a reward for all the hard times.’

  ‘Yes, congratulations.’ Tash smiled at him warmly. ‘We’re all really proud of you.’ She tried not to notice that Hugo was paying far more attention to reading the messages on his indestructable mobile than listening to the new arrival.