Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Why should you? You ride brilliantly.’

  ‘Got to prove myself.’

  ‘I think Hugo realises how good you are.’

  ‘Not just Hugo, everyone. My family, the selectors, Dillon,

  Faith.’ ‘Faith?’

  Rory’s cheeks striped red and he changed the subject, asking how Hugo was getting on in Australia.

  ‘Good. He’s off to New Zealand tomorrow.’

  ‘Bet you wish you were competing out there, too.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘We talked a lot about you in France. MC reckons you’ll never come back to competitive riding. Says you’re not at all like those steel-thighed old four-star mothers that take two nags round Badminton three months after dropping a sprog. You’re more of an earth mother, a home-maker. I see you baking Victoria sponges and leading toddlers around Haydown on Shetlands. You’re so solid, Tash. You’re great.’

  Staying up late to track Hugo’s progress at Puhinui, Tash threw herself into her painting, and occasionally sought solace on the internet as she waited for the online scoreboards to update. Her ‘click to buy’ shopping habit was getting out of hand.

  Addiction planted, she decided to find out whether it was possible to buy a tractor online. It was. So she did.

  Fascinated, she looked for a replacement car for the au pairs. One was secured and paid for via secure server in less than half an hour.

  ‘Jesus! Thank God you can’t buy horses this way,’ she gasped, terrified and exhilarated by what she had just done.

  Then …

  She had to force herself to take a break before she added two Shetlands for the children, plus a safe cob for herself, to her virtual shopping basket.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve bought this one as well?’ she asked Hugo when he woke her with a call at six the following morning to announce that he’d come second in Puhinui. There was talking and laughter in the background; he was obviously celebrating with connections.

  Yet his response was muted. ‘I’ve just found out why Lough hasn’t come to England.’

  ‘Is he there, then?’

  ‘Of course not. Nobody’s seen him for weeks, although I gather he was in custody for quite a while.’

  ‘Custody?’ Tash sat bolt upright. ‘Are you saying he’s been arrested? What for?’

  ‘Nobody seems to know, but it’s not exactly news to anybody over here. He’s so far on the wrong side of the tracks he has his own branch line.’

  In her room overlooking the courtyard, Beccy was awake in the early hours, as she often was these days, panicking about everything and anything, though she knew that these worries would disappear with daylight and common sense. Padding around restlessly, she went to make herself a cup of tea and was surprised to find that the kettle had only just boiled. She cocked her head to listen for sounds of life from Lemon’s room, but all was silent until the water began to bubble. She took her tea and a big bowl of cereal back to her room and picked up her mobile phone to look at her old texts from Lough. They no longer gave her joy, instead curdling the panic in her belly. She’d been such a childish, hot-headed idiot creating her own fantasy world, unable to conceive that it would threaten to impact so horrendously on real life. But that was how she’d always approached life, and was probably why she was where she was now, rattling towards thirty with nothing to show for it except a pact that she’d finally start copulating.

  Faith and Lemon seemed so much more self-assured than Beccy felt, for all her world travels. They also made her feel left out, their upfront attitudes and angry energy such a direct match, whereas she was secretive and vacillating, taking refuge in her daydreams. Every time she thought about the Libido-ration pact, she was riven with shame and fear. That wasn’t in her romantic game-plan. But then, she reminded herself, just look where her romantic game-plan had got her.

  She composed another text to Lough: Please send Lemon and the horses back to New Zealand. Do not come here. You are not welcome any more.

  But she couldn’t send it, frightened of what it might kick off. She preferred to bury her head in the sand, or beneath her pillow, if only she could sleep.

  Yet, quite incapable of leaving the itch alone now that she’d let it twitch against her nerve endings, she sent a different message that simply read How are you? Where are you? She wanted to know how much imminent danger she was in.

  Beccy paced around her little room some more, chewing her nails until, unable to bear being alone with her thoughts a moment longer, she got dressed and went outside.

  When Lemon appeared on the yard at six-thirty to start putting out morning feeds, he realised that the lights were on in the indoor school.

  Beccy was riding one of the youngsters, both so absorbed in their work that they didn’t see him come in. The horse was going well – really well. Last time Lemon had seen him, he’d been tripping around with his nose in the air like a real baby; now he was carrying himself properly, his body a curved bow of growing strength. Beccy had a real talent with the novices, showing a quiet courage and steely determination at odds with her usual vague manner.

  But the illusion was shattered when Tash burst in to the school, still in her pyjamas, a groggy child in each arm.

  ‘Lem! There you are!’

  At that moment Beccy’s horse shied and stormed up to the far end of the arena, fly-bucking with alarm and despatching its rider into the sand.

  By the time Beccy had caught the horse and led him back to the mounting block, Tash had dashed out again.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘I just had to convince her it’s all cool with Lough, yeah.’

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’ Beccy panicked that it had something to do with her text.

  ‘He’s been in serious trouble. He was detained trying to fly out of Auckland and his passport taken away. But he can leave the country now.’

  ‘Detained for what?’ Beccy demanded, her skin icy.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked shifty.

  ‘He hasn’t done anything seriously wrong?’

  ‘I guess not.’ Lemon shrugged. ‘After all, they can’t find a body.’

  ‘A body?’

  Chapter 32

  ‘I am not spending Christmas with your ex-wife!’ Nell screamed at Dillon. ‘Not, not, not, NOT!’

  ‘I think that’s clear.’

  ‘Just what does the bitch think we have going on here? A fucking kibbutz?’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ll have my daughters in the UK over Christmas. Fawn has come a long way.’

  ‘Well she can fuck a long way off if she thinks she’ll be getting a turkey leg and a chipolata off my family.’

  ‘We’re not spending Christmas day with your family.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘But everyone will be there!’

  ‘Everyone? Joseph, Mary and Barack Obama? Angelina Jolie and Oprah? Madonna and her orphans?’

  ‘Trudy will be there.’ She sounded pleading. ‘You love Trudy.’

  ‘And I have children with Fawn,’ he pacified. ‘I owe it to her – and them – to break bread at Christmas. We’ll all be here at West Oddford. I want you to be a part of that, Nell.’

  With that the last word on the matter, he wandered off to have a meeting with his farm manager.

  But Nell couldn’t let it rest. She secretly hated Fawn. In truth, she even struggled with Pom and Blueberry, who were sweet little minimes of Fawn, with their mother’s East Coast accent and prim smartness.

  She hadn’t seen Dillon for almost a week while he was yet again spending time with his children and taking advantage of the Johnston’s Malibu guest lodge, and now she faced the prospect of Christmas with his family including the ex in-laws.

  Taking Giselle for a play-date with young Garfield Belling, Nell had a heart-to-heart with her friend Ellen in her cosy Oddlode cottage, which smelled of the pine, holly and ivy that decorated its heavy beams. Carols were playing on th
e radio and there were freshly baked mince pies cooling on a rack in the kitchen.

  ‘He’s so bloody pig-headed.’ Nell stomped through to the sitting room to claim the best sofa before raking scatter cushions on to her lap to hug for comfort.

  Ellen, heavily pregnant, waddled after her bearing mugs of tea, with Postman Pat puzzles and Thomas the Tank Engine books clutched beneath her arms for distraction purposes. ‘He’s a rock star that wants to be a farmer.’ She handed the books and puzzles down to toddlers Garfield and Gigi.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I married an ex fraudster playboy who always wanted to be a cartoonist.’ She sank gratefully into a chair. ‘And I get the speech bubbles, not the crime thrillers.’

  ‘Spurs is divine.’

  ‘We’re a boring married couple these days. You have to decide if you want to be a farmer’s wife.’

  ‘I want to be Dillon Rafferty’s wife.’

  ‘You think he’s going to propose?’

  ‘I think he was close to it in South Africa: really gentle and sweet, wanting to be alone together. But the PR team there were amazing and there were so many parties it just didn’t happen for us.’

  Ellen gathered Gigi into a giggling hug of butterfly kisses and raspberries. ‘You have to ask yourself whether it’s Dillon you really want?’ She knew Nell well and loved her dearly, and wasn’t alone among those many friends worrying that this relationship was very damaging for her.

  ‘Of course I want him!’

  ‘And what about Milo?’

  ‘He’s married.’ Nell glared at the Christmas lights shaped like little angels that were draped from the big stone mantel.

  ‘Doesn’t mean that you have to be married to compete.’

  ‘Yes I do. He always has the upper hand.’

  ‘The upper hand in marriage,’ Ellen sighed. ‘Do you love Dillon more than Milo?’

  ‘Differently.’

  Ellen rested Gigi on her lap and pressed her chin to the little girl’s head, staring fixedly at her friend. ‘I want you to think very, very hard about this, Nell.’

  Nell thought very hard for a nanosecond.

  ‘If it weren’t for the cheese, he’d be so totally, totally perfect,’ she sighed.

  ‘A farmer’s wife must like his cheese.’

  Nell let out a sceptical snort. ‘He makes one called “I love Ewe” that’s shaped like a heart. It’s flavoured with cranberries. Horribly tart.’

  ‘And what about Dillon’s heart?’

  ‘Oh I have that already,’ she giggled. ‘I just haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.’

  ‘Don’t abuse it, Nell,’ Ellen warned, her voice unusually stern. ‘If he’d rather be Old MacDonald than Ol’ Blue Eyes, you mustn’t punish him for that.’

  Dillon loved the Dorset Horns: they bred year round, meaning they were reliable milkers. His new miniature cheeses wrapped in local wild garlic leaves, branded I Owe Ewe Lodes, were flying off the farm shop’s shelves this Christmas. It was a far more exciting prospect for him than his Christmas single, a reworking of the old David Essex classic ‘A Winter’s Tale’ that was being downloaded by his target female audience faster than if it was a George Clooney striptease on YouTube. Dillon hated his over-produced, rocky version with a vengeance, but he cynically agreed with his record company that it would be a smash hit, and perfectly timed to cash in on his high-stakes success.

  He was exhausted from ever-shifting time zones. He seemed to have been on the publicity circuit in perpetuity. So many names to remember, so many anecdotes to tell and re-tell, so few hours in which to sleep, so little time to share with those he loved. These days he found he had more peace and time to think in the Johnston’s Malibu guest lodge than he did at home in the Lodes Valley. It was starting to become his refuge from Nell.

  He had barely noticed her driving away earlier, although now he realised she was gone he registered a sense of relief familiar with her absense these days.

  Dillon had allowed idle thoughts to drift in the direction of splitting up with Nell for a long time. But he’d never been good at ending relationships; like removing splinters, he preferred other people to do it for him. Instead, he retreated behind his BlackBerry and work schedule as often as possible. The relationship that had been so good on paper no longer stood up in an increasingly paper-free world. Nell crowded him in cyberspace when he was away, continually texting, emailing, PMing and video-calling. If she could have projected a three-dimensional image of herself into his hotel suite he suspected she would. When she travelled with him she ransacked his headspace like an over-zealous customs official going through a suspicious suitcase. Yet her body thrilled him. Sex was never better with Nell than in hotels. She got off on hotels.

  She fitted into the landscape in the Cotswolds like one of his gorgeous rare livestock, an old breed with class and sense and local knowledge. But the Lodes Valley bored her. She loved travelling the world and living out of suitcases, networking and partying and hanging out in VIP rooms.

  In South Africa he’d almost plucked up the courage to end their relationship. It was going nowhere and, while the sexual kick still stirred him from his apathy occasionally, it hadn’t blossomed into the supportive family unit he’d hoped for. Nell’s jealousy was starting to impact upon his relationship with his daughters and ex-wife.

  Lately she’d started accusing him of being boring and parochial, and he guessed she was right. He was happiest here in the Cotswold drizzle, up to his gumboot-tops in sheep droppings, talking lambs, milk yields and field rotation with his stockman.

  Tomorrow he was flying to Abu Dhabi to sing at a wedding for so many million dollars he couldn’t have refused, but his body ached to stay put in his beloved farm and sort out his personal life.

  He took a photograph of a winter lamb springing past and mindlessly texted it to Faith, who he knew missed the Lodes Valley desperately.

  Ever-reliable, she replied within thirty seconds.

  Where the hell have you been? Rory obnoxiously big-headed. Been out hunting today. When are you coming here to see your horses?

  He texted back Boxing Day, although wasn’t at all sure if he’d be there. His PA had accepted the invitation to the Beauchamps’ shoot on his behalf while negotiations with Fawn had still been ongoing. Now that he definitely had his children, ex-wife and current girlfriend to juggle, he doubted he’d get them all to Haydown alive if Fawn and Nell had to share a car, and he was certain that guns were a very, very bad idea indeed.

  His phone was beeping. Faith again, this time with a blurred, lopsided photo of something that looked like a Christmas turkey, plucked and trussed a week early.

  ? Dillon replied.

  My arse says you’ll never come here.

  He grinned and saved the picture to his gallery, getting into the Christmas spirit at last.

  Dillon made the mistake of laughing when Nell found the trussed-turkey photo on his phone.

  ‘How dare you keep another woman’s bottom on your mobile!’ she screeched.

  ‘It’s obviously not a real arse,’ he pacified, fighting amusement.

  ‘You saved it!’

  ‘Because it made me laugh – it’s an armpit or knees or something.’

  ‘So you’ve studied it quite closely then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There! I’ve deleted it.’

  ‘Oi, that’s my phone!’ He made to grab it, but she threw it over her shoulder.

  They were in his bedroom at West Oddlode Farm. Gigi was back with Granny Dibs and Nell had just changed into a very tight electric blue sweater dress and black patent high-heeled boots. She looked fantastic.

  ‘I’m taking you out to dinner,’ she now insisted. ‘I can’t let you go to Dubai on a row.’

  ‘Abu Dhabi,’ Dillon yawned. Frankly, he wanted to be alone. Nell’s idea of taking him out to dinner was inevitably a very over-priced Michelin-starred country house hotel where he would be recognised and pointed out before having to pick u
p the bill for a lot of food and champagne she’d rejected. Then she’d announce that she had booked a room and he would follow her meekly, knowing that the sex would be phenomenal in their temporary quarters, as Nell insisted on trying out the bed, the bath, the dressing room and, quite possibly, hanging from the beams. He only wished she was as inventive at home, but his beloved house and fantastic, huge bedroom no longer seemed to inspire her. He was half tempted to put a minibar in one corner and lay out a tray of miniature toiletries in the en suite to see if it would spice things up.

  It had always been his Achilles heel; he couldn’t end relationships calmly and sensibly. It was the big joke – the rock star incapable of breaking hearts. Infidelity was his only Get Out of Jail Free card, and right now he had no takers and no inclination to take. His failure to get it right with Nell just saddened him, and he longed to be alone.

  But he forced himself out tonight, determined to show some guts at last and tell her that it was time to call it a day. Lately even Fawn had been advising him what to say to end the relationship, convinced that Nell was making him depressed.

  To his surprise, Nell took him to the New Inn in Upper Springlode, where they sat in one of the discreet oak panelled booths eating Gloucester Old Spot bangers and mash followed by a massive board of local cheeses, including several from the West Oddlode range.

  ‘I love you,’ she told him simply.

  He gazed at her beautiful, fine-boned face. Those sea green eyes invited him to dive straight in with a siren’s call.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch lately,’ she went on. ‘I think it’s time I started looking after your heart more carefully.’

  The end notes to their relationship died on his tongue after that.

  That night, he lay back on his own bed in his beloved farm and studied the exquisite cello curve of her back as she straddled him, his endpin sliding out of sight, the rise and fall of her buttocks accelerating, her ankles forcing his legs further apart so that she could drive him deeper, her head tipping back on her long neck. Her hair, still wet from a hot shower, was so short that he could study the delicate nape, the clasp of her necklace resting at the top of her spine and several little moles clustered beneath it. He reached up and touched them.