by Fiona Walker
She could hardly deny it. It seemed they were both harbouring so many secrets in their marriage these days, the gangplank was fast becoming impossible to lower amid the jostle of burning boats.
The following Sunday, two dozen roses were delivered with the note, ‘To the mother of all invention, from the bull in a china shop. You are perfect.’ She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, but she knew she had to build bridges fast.
At Hyam Hall trials, the weekend before the party, they shared a rare night in the horsebox and Tash packed George’s finest in anticipation. But that evening a stab of pain through her belly told her that the horny feeling which had been cooking away the previous night while Hugo was inconveniently addressing an after-dinner speech to a hunt supporter’s club in Wiltshire was now at an end. True enough, when she checked in the loo, her period had come. Hugo never minded the occasional ‘red shag’, but Tash found it embarrassing, and certainly had no intention of enacting her grand seduction with a towel on the mattress and a tampon to hand.
He’d been back over two weeks and they had yet to make love.
Wearily, she called home to check how Alicia was coping with the children.
‘I can’t get that Kraut to leave the house,’ she warbled, sounding three parts cut already.
‘She’s Czech.’
‘Yes, keeps checking them, yes!’ Alicia boomed, shouting as usual to compensate for her deafness. ‘Says she will sleep here tonight. Won’t take no for an answer. Is she staff? Do we pay her overtime?’
‘No, no – it’s fine. Let her stay.’ At least Veruhska was conscientious. Tash couldn’t help longing for her own mother. Alexandra had come to England regularly when Cora was a baby, looking after her when Tash started competing again.
‘I miss her,’ she told Hugo now.
‘Are you saying my mother can’t cope?’ he demanded huffily.
‘No, she’s great! And she has the Czechs.’
‘Quite the little domestic dream team. And let’s not forget Lough manfully keeping the home fires stoked while I was in the States.’
‘What?’
‘I must thank him for keeping you company so often. I gather you two had lots of cosy suppers together.’
‘Along with the Moncrieffs, the Stantons, the Bucklands—’
‘But not every night.’
‘Hugo, what are you suggesting?’
‘You tell me.’
‘What are you talking about? Absolutely nothing went on.’
He glared at her furiously. ‘I just don’t want to find you’re keeping any secrets from me.’
Swallowing hard, Tash thought anxiously about the two hundred guests primed to arrive at Haydown the following weekend. She found she couldn’t look him in the eye.
Tash battled hard with her competition nerves, eager to show Hugo how much she had bounced back into the saddle. It was the first time he’d seen her compete this season and she was in contention in both her sections after the dressage and show-jumping. But then across country she held too much back, riding over-cautiously on both horses and posting hopelessly slow times.
‘Stop to chat to friends on the way round?’ Hugo asked afterwards, which did nothing for her self esteem.
Lough was also competing at the trials, having travelled there in his leased Ketterer box and three of his four horses on board. When he caught up with Tash in the stable lines he gave her the sympathetic pat on the back she badly needed, and the understanding in his dark eyes was a huge boost.
‘You did a good job out there. I was proud of you,’ he told her. ‘Better to be safe but slow when you’re still building your nerve and stamina.’
She smiled at him gratefully. ‘I’ll be better after the party.’
‘Party?’ He looked blank.
She stared at him, hardly able to believe he could have been missed off the guest list. But she had left all that to Sophia.
‘You must come …’ She started to gabble about the surprise fortieth extravaganza, but after a while he held up his hand.
‘I’ll pass.’
‘Please don’t.’ She reached out to grip his arm, steering the belligerent hand down. ‘It would mean so much to me. I really want you and Hugo to get onto a better footing, and it’s always lovely to have an excuse to dress up and celebrate.’ She was certain a big party would cheer them all up, and help to break the ice between the two men.
He tilted his head to look at her fingers on his sleeve, her knuckles still dusted with scurf from being pressed nervously into her horse’s mane over every cross-country jump.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Thanks. Good luck for your round.’ Tash squeezed his arm gratefully before dancing away, oblivious of the tens of eyes following her, hands raised to faces as the gossips started to speculate about just how close Hugo’s wife had grown to his handsome Kiwi work rider during his prolonged absence.
Heading back to his horsebox to change, Lough found Lemon entertaining Beccy. Although they appeared to be doing no more than having a cup of tea, she still bolted as soon as she saw him, dashing past with her cheeks flaming.
‘And g’day to you too,’ he muttered, looking around for his cross-country kit.
‘She’s shy,’ Lemon said breezily, standing up. ‘She doesn’t want to get drawn into the “love triangle”.’
‘The what?’ Lough started zipping himself into his body protector while Lemon made his way through to the horse area of the box to fetch tack from the lockers.
‘You’re being talked about, didn’t you know? It’s all around the course. You and Mrs B are big news.’
Lough hurried after him. ‘What the fuck have you been saying, Lem?’
‘Nothing! Not me!’ Lemon held up his hands, a bridle in each. ‘But I can’t stop other people talking. They’ve seen the hot ’n’ smokin’ way you look at her.’ He hammed a Yankee accent. ‘No smoke without fire, after all.’
‘Only thing getting fired around here will be you if you talk like that again,’ Lough snarled, grabbing a bridle and stalking out.
This put Lemon in such a sulk that he for once didn’t wish his boss luck as he headed off across country, although Lough hardly looked as though he needed goodwill as he flew around the first half of the course. Heading to the finish to wait for them, Lemon found Beccy cooling off Hugo’s horse after his round.
‘How’d he get on?’ He fell into step alongside her.
‘Clear.’
‘Bastard,’ Lemon hissed, kicking at a divot. ‘You should have left his girth slack.’
‘I could never do that,’ Beccy gasped.
‘Of course not, Ms Goody Two Shoes,’ Lemon sneered. ‘Remind me to buy you a new doormat for your birthday. The one on your face is looking worn out.’ He peeled away to get ready for Lough’s return.
Beccy battled tears, not realising that Tash was behind her and had heard this last comment.
‘Let’s take this chap back to his box.’ Giving Beccy’s back an encouraging pat, Tash steered her towards the stable lines, speaking in an undertone as they walked. ‘Beccy, I don’t want to interfere, but I’m really not happy hearing Lem talking to you like that.’
‘Don’t listen in then.’
‘I’m sorry. I know you two are terribly close,’ Tash went on carefully, ‘but are you really sure he’s boyfriend material? Wouldn’t it be better to take it easy for a bit?’
‘No it wouldn’t!’ Beccy flashed, making the horse start back. ‘He is my boyfriend, so please keep your nose out of my business and leave us alone!’ She led the horse away, leaving Tash standing in her wake feeling foolish for trying.
She was still holding the bucket of sponges, spares, wipes and sweat scraper. Suddenly it made a strange buzzing noise and started to vibrate, making her drop it in alarm, imagining a giant insect in there.
Hugo’s phone fell out on the grass, a blue light flashing away on its rim to indicate new messages.
She hastily pocketed it a
nd gathered the rest of the things back into the bucket before darting behind the portaloos to look at his inbox.
You are riding for a fall.
Tash took a couple of moments to take this in. Then she checked the sender, but it was from a caller listed as Shadowfax, with no contact details. Scrolling through his inbox, she found half a dozen similar messages such as: Watch your back … Countdown to the final farewell and – most worrying, and sent three days earlier – Your wife is fucking the Kiwi. For a mad moment, ludicrous images of herself with a green fruit sprang to mind.
It came as absolutely no consolation that there was nothing on Hugo’s phone from V. That he’d never mentioned the messages appalled her.
Chapter 55
‘How is it possible to send an anonymous text message?’ Tash asked Beccy, her fount of all IT knowledge, the next day.
‘Why d’you want to know?’ Beccy looked wary, still mistrustful around Tash. ‘Can you still not work your BlackBerry?’
‘No – I just wondered.’
‘It’s easy. There are internet sites for it.’
‘Why would anybody do that?’
‘Because they can. It’s great for chatting up people you fancy.’
‘And threatening people.’
‘I think they legislate pretty carefully against that.’ Beccy eyed her suspiciously. ‘I wouldn’t go there, if I were you.’
Tash opened her mouth to protest her innocence, then closed it again, knowing that she had to keep quiet until she had done some detective work. ‘You’re right. I’ll just send a strongly worded letter. Thanks Beccy.’
She checked the main Beauchamp Eventing email account that day. There was a host of malicious messages, just as there had been before Christmas, but these were even worse, threatening that horses would die, calamity strike and disaster crash down on them if Hugo didn’t retire from the sport. She wondered what or who they could have upset so much, her blood running icy in her veins.
The worst email simply read: Look after your family, Beauchamp. Those poor little bastards won’t have a Daddy much longer.
Hugo claimed the messages were nothing to worry about. ‘We’re in the public eye and the public get very misty-eyed about horses – somebody has probably seen YouTube footage of me giving a horse a clout and now wants to exact revenge in cyberspace.’
Tash found it impossible to believe this was a random cyber-crank. ‘Somebody is seriously out to get us, Hugo. It’s not just the messages. They slashed your tyres, they kidnapped one of the Rat Pack, they could have could have cut the horsebox brakes and poisoned the horses for all we know!’ She was so terrified she clung to him like a child that night.
Hugo remained stoical. ‘I’ll guard you all like a lion. And whenever I’m away, I’ll make sure Vasilly has a bloody big baseball bat near by at all times.’
After that, he made a concerted effort to delete all the malicious texts and emails that came through before Tash could see them, but his riding and competition commitments meant he wasn’t always quick enough.
Privately, Hugo suspected Lough but couldn’t prove it. They avoided one another completely on the yard and could still be in two different continents for all the contact they had. It was only at competitions that the gloves came off. At the three-star trials in Norfolk’s Burnham Market, Lough triumphed over Hugo with a big win on his top horse, Rangitoto, and claimed another section on his second advanced horse, the little chocolate dun mare Pihanga.
A week later at the South of England trials, Hugo reversed the placings and forced Lough into second in three sections.
‘It’s not fair,’ complained Lucy Field. ‘They’re not letting the rest of us have a look-in.’
‘Stand well back,’ Gus advised. ‘With any luck they’ll have killed each other by Badminton.’
The growing press speculation surrounding the professional rivalry between Hugo and his tenant rider soon had a nasty twist to it.
In the build-up to Kentucky, totally unfounded and very damaging rumours about Hugo suddenly started spreading through equestrian internet forums. Many said he was cruel to his horses; some that he was equally aggressive and violent to his wife. Within days, stories appeared in the sporting media, with claims of malpractice that even reached the nationals, who took delight in dredging up the photograph of Debbie Double-G, topless and tantalising, kissing Hugo at the Olympics.
All the allegations were immediately retracted once Hugo got his lawyers on the case, but the timing was awful and the mud had already stuck. Eventing was a very muddy sport, and when it dried on hard it could take a lifetime to wash off. A valuable new sponsorship deal with an accountancy firm fell through, and a lucrative television contract was cancelled.
As the date for the Haydown contingent’s departure for Kentucky three day event approached, Hugo’s status as British pin-up and ambassador for the sport looked ever more shaky.
‘There’s a very focused smear campaign being orchestrated against you.’ Gus pointed out the obvious when he came up to Haydown to use the cross-country course. ‘You must know who’s behind it.’
Hugo distractedly fed Gus’s horse a mint from his pocket, watching with narrowed eyes as Lough rode out of the yard with Tash, Beccy and Lemon. Although Tash was hanging well back on the nutty Lor, and Lough was at the front of the line, there seemed to be an invisible thread between them. Hugo had noticed it before when they were riding together. They never spoke or even exchanged glances, but he was certain he wasn’t mistaken. He was dreading the thought of leaving them at Haydown when he and Rory returned to the States, but he badly needed a good four-star result to salvage his reputation, and Sophia and Ben were flying out especially to support the horse they part owned. He had to trust Tash.
‘Whoever it is can throw all they like at me,’ he told Gus now, ‘but if they touch my family I’ll find them and shoot them.’
While Gus trotted eagerly back to Lime Tree Farm to pass on this latest news to his team, Hugo took a call from Mogo managing director Mike Seith that was guaranteed to intensify the enmity between himself and Lough yet further. The sponsors wanted a ride-off between the top Brit and his New Zealander team-mate. This was typical of the company, which often employed such tactics. Having at one time supported a team of six riders and started this year promising a Haydown exclusive, Mogo now planned to reduce to just one rider–ambassador – whoever ended up higher on the points board at the end of the season. Hugo was certain that Lough must have suggested the challenge. Having been away in the States at the start of the season, he was already lagging way behind.
That Rory wasn’t even being considered in the Mogo sponsorship race didn’t register with Hugo and Lough. They considered him well enough supported by Dillon Rafferty to survive. But to Rory, exclusion from the Mogo challenge spelled a very uncertain future and was a bitter blow to both his pride and pocket. Dillon hadn’t paid a bill in a long while; the papers were full of pictures of him and Sylva Frost playing happy families. Rory left endless messages to no avail. Relying on individual patrons was notoriously risky, and Rory knew that he couldn’t afford to keep paying his way at Haydown without more traditional corporate support.
Quietly getting on with his riding away from the Zeus and Poseidon rivalry, he’d scooped a decent cache of top-ten places in the spring events, but no plaudits so far this year. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to keep going.
He badly needed a sounding board, and Faith was the first person to spring to mind, just as she’d been on his mind when he was on the other side of the Atlantic. But long gone were the days when she would send him twenty texts by lunchtime. He’d expected to hear from her as soon as she’d checked out the URL on the cowboy postcard, but she’d been ominously quiet of late. When asked, Beccy and Lemon said vaguely that she never got any time off, but Rory suspected she had a boyfriend, one of the Moncrieff’s flash young blood City clients, or a National Hunt hell-raiser attracted to those terrifying fake boobs and
her amazing vivacity. He hoped they didn’t exploit her lion’s heart.
Badly in need of advice, he turned instead to his latest fairy godmother. Marie-Clair had told him never to ring her at home even if he was dying, in case her husband answered. He left several urgent messages on her mobile, but she didn’t return his calls.
He felt so down that he dared himself to text Faith after all, risking egg on his face. But gratifyingly she responded within twenty seconds of him suggesting they meet for a drink with How soon?
Yet even Faith had nothing great to offer in the way of wise counsel when they met in the Olive Branch for fizzy water, beer nuts and a game of skittles. ‘You’ll just have to win more, Rory. That’s how it works.’
She’d become even more brusque lately, he noted. He blamed the influence of Penny Moncrieff, who was incredibly school-marmish and ragged Gus endlessly.
‘I can barely afford the entry fees as it is,’ he grumbled. ‘I spent all my capital in America. Hugo’s been paying for everything since then,’ he revealed anxiously, firing off a skittles ball that missed its targets totally. ‘If I don’t have a win soon, he’s bound to ditch me, especially now we know Mogo doesn’t want me at the end of the season.’
‘What about Dillon?’ Faith was surprised.
Rory laughed bitterly, shaking his head. ‘Now Nell’s out of his life he’s lost all interest in me. Owning horses was all about impressing her. And Sylva just pretended to be interested in eventing to get at Dillon.’
‘That’s not true.’
He lowered his head modestly. ‘Thanks for imagining she saw more in me than a way to get at Dillon, but—’
‘Oh, that bit’s true.’ Faith waved her hand at him impatiently. ‘But Dillon certainly didn’t back you because of Nell.’
‘Whatever.’ Rory was too dejected to care. ‘He’s not backing me right now, full stop.’ He looked up at Faith again, drinking in the intensity of her gaze, the blue eyes sparkling to either side of her long noble nose like the beams of a lighthouse.
