Kiss and Tell

by Fiona Walker

  It was a decisive moment, a pebble spun down in to their new well of friendship to check its depth. It was a long, long time before an echo came back up to them.

  ‘Back home, there’s a mountain on the North Island called Taranaki,’ Lough said eventually. ‘Maori legend has it that it used to live with its friends Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe, but then it made the mistake of falling in love with Tongariro’s pretty wife, Pihanga. When Tongariro found out a huge battle ensued and Taranaki ultimately lost. He uprooted and plunged west towards the setting sun, gouging out a deep, wide trench through the land as he went. The next day, a stream of clear water sprang from the side of his friend Tongariro, and it flowed down the deep scar that Taranaki had left on his journey to form the Whanganui River. There are those that say Taranaki is silently brooding and will one day return inland to fight Tongariro again. The Maori are scared of living between the mountains for that reason.’

  Rory listened, his head on one side, the alcohol rush receding. ‘It’s a beautiful story. I’d like to go there one day.’

  His companion didn’t look up, the pain of the story having ripped out his throat.

  ‘Are you saying property prices will suffer between here and Maccombe because people will fear living between you and Hugo?’ Rory checked.

  Lough smiled sadly, looking into his drink and shaking his head.

  ‘Or are you saying that Hugo will cry such a stream of tears the Moncrieffs will need to sandbag Lime Tree Farm?’

  ‘Nah,’ he laughed, surprised at the strange liberation joking about it granted. He looked up at Rory. ‘I’m saying you’re right, Rory. Fuck it, you’re right.’

  Rory nodded, appreciating how hard that must be for him to admit. He was nowhere near that close to admitting it about himself and Faith yet, despite clear photographic evidence to show him it was another lost cause.

  ‘We all climb the wrong mountains sometimes,’ he sighed now, ‘but that doesn’t make it any easier when we fall off the side.’

  Lough managed another rueful smile.

  ‘I’ve never even got past base camp,’ Rory admitted. Then he thought about Faith and his heart blew open. ‘Faith’s not a mountain.’ His head went into his hands again. ‘She’s my Sherpa. She’d climb alongside me all the way. Oh fuck.’

  Lough looked down as his phone beeped with a text message. It was just Penny, back late from Hartpury after a very long negotiation to sell a horse, asking whether the yard horses had been fed and whether he had a note for her?

  ‘Shit!’ He groped inside his coat pocket and fished out the note India had written hours earlier, two hand-written pages in a shredded envelope now crusted like papier maché after so many downpours had seeped through Lough’s seams and into the jacket lining.

  Before he could phone Penny to explain and apologise, Rory started prising the leaves apart. ‘They’ll never know – we’ll dry it on the radiator and have it looking like new in no time … Hang on.’ He started to read a few lines. ‘Fucking hell. Listen to this …’

  India had, it seemed, stumbled on the truth behind a career- and marriage-wrecking myth. She and her brother Rufus were very close to their cousins by marriage, both of whom had been at the New Year’s Eve party. Young Huey Moncrieff, in particular, had reported having a fantastic time there, something he’d been boasting about at his boarding school ever since. His GCSE work had improved no end: he’d leaped up the grade forecasts and was predicted all As and Bs. But it wasn’t until Rufus took his cousin out for an end-of-term drink before the boy flew home to South Africa that the full story came out, and had now started the slow process of filtering its way back through the family.

  ‘“He told Rufe that he got very intimate with a girl at the Lime Tree party”,’ Rory read aloud now. ‘“It was in the dark in the hayloft and it definitely went past first base, but not a lot further because he bottled it when his mother appeared on the scene. He doesn’t know who the girl was, just that she was older and very experienced. Rufe said nothing to him about what’s happened, and we really don’t want to get him into any trouble and he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong” …’ It was obvious from the letter that she wanted to protect her cousin. It was equally clear that the man who’d got carried away with a drunken Beccy on New Year’s Eve hadn’t been Hugo Beauchamp, it had been Huey Moncrieff. And to the young Hugo’s mind, the encounter had been a first sexual experience close to perfection.

  Rory and Lough stared at one another in shock.

  ‘And Beccy cried rape.’ Rory whistled in disbelief as he read through the crumpled pages.

  ‘She never said that,’ Lough snapped. ‘Lem said that.’

  ‘She’s a hysteric.’ He handed the pages back. ‘Everyone knows she’s a coin short of operating normally.’

  ‘Take that back!’

  ‘She’s sweet, but she’s a fruitcake. You don’t know her, Lough.’

  Lough carefully placed the sodden letter on the table. ‘Actually I do. We text a lot.’

  Rory stared at him in amazement. ‘And how long has this been going on?’ he asked, sounding like an elderly aunt.

  ‘On and off, about a year.’

  ‘A year?’

  ‘Since before I came here. That was her texting earlier. She’s very low right now.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She’s screwed up a few lives recently, not least her own.’

  ‘Don’t be so quick to judge her,’ Lough said quietly. ‘She’s taken a lot of wrong turns in life, and I know all about that. But she’s amazing underneath.’ A smile touched his lips.

  Rory’s face brightened with a sudden realisation. ‘You think you’ve got the loose change to make her add up, don’t you?’

  Lough glared at him with such force Rory thought his eyeballs would freeze. ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Wake up and smell the blue mountain coffee, Lough,’ Rory laughed. ‘You’re half way up the tallest peak already, but you’ve been too busy looking across at Pihanga’s pretty rockface to notice you’ve climbed so high.’

  Another pebble fell into the well. This time it span for so long Denise had time to take their empty glasses, wipe the table, double-check Faith’s surname really was Beautiful and pick a couple of dead leaves off the carnations in the vase between them before it splashed into the water.

  ‘Can I borrow your car?’ Lough asked Rory urgently.

  ‘Totalled it ages ago,’ Rory apologised. ‘I’ve got Hugo’s quad bike here. Any use?’

  ‘Not to get to Windsor.’ His Yamaha was up on a stand in one of Gus’s barns with its back wheel off because he hadn’t got around to fitting a new drive chain. ‘I’ll have to take my horsebox.’

  Rory shoved the battered note under his nose. ‘Go back to Lime Tree Farm and show them this: they’ll lend you a car. If not, just nick Gus’s bike – he leaves the keys tucked in his helmet lining for a quick getaway these days in case Penny discovers Lucy’s been in touch and starts waving the kitchen knives around.’

  He was out of the door before Rory could ask him why on earth he wanted to go to Windsor. It seemed an odd time to start sightseeing.

  Chapter 82

  In Benedict House, a fine-looking Georgian villa sitting in ten acres of meticulously landscaped grounds where Royal Berkshire met commuter-land Surrey, Pascal had, for several hours, been enjoying Henrietta’s hospitality as both patiently awaited Beccy’s awakening in the pretty bedroom above their heads with its Laura Ashley wallpaper festooned with crystals and dream catchers. According to her mother, she had been lying wide awake in there for days reading endless trashy novels, watching daytime TV and crying a lot. But that day, rather curiously, she had been largely comatose. It was now almost dark, and she was still asleep.

  ‘Her painkillers are very powerful,’ Henrietta apologised as she made yet more coffee.

  Pascal’s mobile phone rang out with a refrain from Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1, making Henrietta jump.

  He held up his
hand apologetically as he took the call. ‘’allo?’

  ‘This is Lough Strachan again. Please don’t hang up.’

  ‘Okay.’ Pascal was magnanimous.

  ‘I have to talk to with Beccy Sergeant.’

  ‘Oui, bien sûr, moi aussi.’

  ‘No, I’m not Aussie, I’m from New Zealand.’

  There was a brief pause before Pascal confirmed: ‘I am visiting Beccy now, but she sleeps.’

  ‘I must speak with her.’

  ‘Porquoi?’

  The New Zealand boy was clearly not a great communicator, especially on the phone to a stranger who couldn’t understand much of his accent, but he said enough to convince Pascal to give him the address for Benedict House and agree to wait for him to arrive.

  After the call, he glanced at his watch impatiently. He had booked a room at the Great Fosters, where he was very much looking forward to sampling the restaurant. He’d had half a mind to tell Lough Strachan not to come, but he had a feeling this break could be his only way of getting to the bottom of this whole sorry riddle, and he owed it to his beautiful Xandra to find out the truth.

  He’d never seen the home where his wife’s first marriage had been thrown against the rocks, and felt as though he had walked on to the set of a Jane Austen costume drama; it was so pretty yet fusty and formal. He found it all the more strange and disconcerting to be so politely welcomed by the very blonde, very English Henrietta. She had even baked croissants in his honour. James was away in Scotland, playing in a golf tournament with other retired bankers, she’d apologised, to Pascal’s great relief.

  And while Beccy was childlike in her morbid distress and wouldn’t talk to him at all, Henrietta proved as sensible and openminded as she was protective and concerned.

  ‘It was my older daughter Em who Beccy really talked to about the … sexual encounter with Hugo,’ she explained, turning as pink as the stargazer lilies bursting from pots in her conservatory, but equally open. ‘She hasn’t said a lot since. She is very embarrassed about it, and the riding accident has knocked so much of the stuffing out of her.’

  ‘Is it possible,’ Pascal spoke carefully now, not wanting his bad English to confuse his meaning, ‘that Beccy may have mistaken someone else for Hugo?’

  ‘Impossible. He said his name.’

  ‘I say my name, Pascal, but I am not the only one en France,’ he pointed out. ‘At a party, there are many of us I think and in a darkened room a pretty girl could find ’erself confused, non?’

  Henrietta shook her head. ‘You are unique to those who love you – the way you smell and feel and touch.’

  ‘Beccy, she loves Hugo?’ He was starting to understand the situation better, although he wished it were otherwise.

  ‘A crush,’ Henrietta nodded, ‘but a very long-lived one.’

  ‘That is the effect Hugo has on women.’ He puffed out his cheeks in bewilderment, utterly failing to see the attraction these arrogant, sporty upper-class Brits had when their passionate, wine-loving Gallic counterparts were so much more rewarding.

  Glancing discreetly at his watch and again hoping Lough would arrive soon, Pascal tactfully changed the subject to her beautiful garden, and before he knew it they were having a warm and animated discussion on slug control for nasturtiums. Ten minutes later, she was giving him a torch-lit guided tour of her herbaceous borders.

  Beccy could hear their voices outside her open bedroom windows, ghastly old-fogey droning about aphids. She wanted to hurl something out of the gaping sash, but the only things to hand were her iPhone and her laptop, both of which provided vital communication with the outside world. Not that she was communicating yet, but she was keeping tabs.

  The pain was searing again. She longed to ring the emergency bell Henrietta had placed on her bedside table, but couldn’t face her mother lecturing her on reducing her analgesia again, and anyway she was set on pretending to be asleep until the French detective went away. She’d stashed a few of the really potent knock-out pills under her pillow. She dug one out now, and tucked it under her tongue. There were now just three left so she must have taken a lot more than she was meant to.

  She drifted off to sleep, but woke up with pain searing through her pelvis, her hips full of razorblades. She felt dry-mouthed and sick so drank water, taking two more pills but not caring. It hurt too much.

  Beccy closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. There was a droning, snarling noise in her head now, like maddened insects.

  She must have dropped off again because she had a dream that Lough was in her room, standing over her and saying her name.

  ‘Beccy – Beccy, wake up.’

  ‘Hi.’ She smiled up at him groggily.

  Those turbulent, dark eyes came in and out of focus. He had a strange red stripe across his forehead.

  ‘Is that a Maori thing?’

  ‘Huh?’

  She had to say it several times to be understood, her words slurring horribly.

  ‘No, I borrowed Gus’s bike off the yard and the helmet’s too tight,’ he explained and then he started talking about something, but she couldn’t keep up. He was spinning around her.

  She tried to remember how many pills she had taken. More than ten? Surely not. Then again … She started to tip over the cliff into lovely blackness.

  Her eyes snapped open. Lough had his fingers laced through hers. How bizarre. How beautifully bizarre.

  ‘… cousin called Hugo,’ he was saying ‘… admits it all … just fifteen … carried away … terrified he’s done wrong … got to sort this out … both your sakes …’

  She closed her eyes and listened to his Kiwi drawl. She remembered flirting with him on the phone all those months ago, the giddy sense of sexual attraction, a world away from sucking salty stale underpants in a stables loft in Berkshire.

  These painkillers were the best.

  ‘This was Tash’s bedroom as a kid,’ she told him. ‘You love her, don’t you? Just imagine her lying in this bed at fifteen, dreaming about getting carried away in a hay barn, writhing away right here where I am.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  She opened one eye but five Loughs were spinning around so she closed it again, and waited to tumble over the cliff edge. At least the pain had gone, even if the dreams were weird. How many pills had she swallowed today? Ten? Twelve? Maybe more …

  She’d stolen rather a lot of the pills in recent days, several little foil trays sneaked away when her mother wasn’t looking. Could it be as many as sixteen?

  Now, suddenly, through the soup of analgesia, Beccy started to panic. But her body was so sluggish and her mind so muddled, she had no familiar adrenalin spike of fear and fight.

  Lough was talking again, that lovely voice: ‘Beccy, this is serious. The man you were with on New Year’s Eve wasn’t Hugo Beauchamp.’

  She started to feel as though she was floating up above her own body.

  He took her hand. It was clammy and cold. ‘Hugo Moncrieff is Gus’s nephew. He’s fifteen. He was the one you were alone with that night.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ she murmured, her voice sounding miles away in her head. ‘Life is full of them, don’t you find?’

  ‘Do you understand what I’m say—’

  ‘I went to the Melbourne Horse Trials once,’ she said dreamily, cutting him off mid-flow. ‘The three day event. You were there. So was Tash. That’s a coincidence.’

  ‘Beccy, we have to talk about—’

  ‘I ran out in front of my stepsister’s horse. You saved my life.’

  Lough shut up abruptly, a flutter running through his regular heart beat.

  ‘Crazy thing to do.’ Her voice was increasingly distant, especially to her own ears. ‘But I just wanted to be gone. And you kept me alive. You kept me safe for just a little bit …’

  Lough looked at her pale face, trying to recognise something familiar in the features, in the wide cheeks, rosebud lips and little snub nose. He’d relived that moment again and again over the
years.

  ‘I’m scared, Lough.’ Her gaze was unfocused now, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘The pain was just so bad, I wanted it to stop.’ Her voice slurred and she closed her eyes.

  ‘It was a long time ago.’ He squeezed her hand, which was limp in his.

  ‘No.’ Her fingers twitched as she fought sleep. ‘You don’t understand. I never could count very well … taken too many … kill the pain … feel so scared. Please don’t let me die, Lough.’

  ‘I’m here,’ he soothed distractedly, guessing she was overtired.

  He glanced around the room, Tash’s old room, dating back to a childhood he knew nothing about, a woman he knew nothing about and, if he admitted the truth, a fantasy built from one fateful day. There were framed photographs of Beccy on horses all over the walls now, little personal knick-knacks on the dressing table and windowsills, china horses and old trophies. It smelled deliciously of sweet peas, cocoa butter and clean hair. It smelled of Beccy.

  It took over a minute for Lough to realise that she hadn’t fallen asleep again. Her eyes had rolled back and her breathing was so shallow it was almost gone.

  Then it seemed to stop entirely.

  With a bellow for help, he pulled back the covers and checked her airways, breathing and pulse before starting to perform CPR.

  ‘Call an ambulance – I think it’s an overdose!’ he shouted at Henrietta as soon as she ran into the room.

  The heel of his hand in the middle of Beccy’s chest, fingers interlaced with those of his other hand, he compressed at regular intervals, counting down from thirty.

  Then he tipped back her chin and pinched her nose, closing his mouth around hers – oh what a first kiss – breathing until her lungs filled. Once. Twice.