by Fiona Walker
‘That’s great,’ Tash said weakly.
‘And you mustn’t worry about a thing. Promise me?’
‘Not a thing, I promise.’
‘Etty could talk about nothing but the wedding all week. She’s so excited. Listen, I’ve had a little idea . . .’
Tash groaned. Her mother’s ideas, however little, had a tendency to be on a grand scale.
‘Pascal and I have decided that, if you and Niall are going to get married in June, you should have a lovely long holiday together with us in the Loire in May.’
‘I can’t.’ Tash didn’t even need to look at her diary. ‘It’s Badminton month – I’ll be competing every weekend.’
‘Three days’ break midweek, then. You and Niall will need a pre-wedding rest. These things are frightfully stressful, darling.’
‘We simply haven’t got the time.’ Tash was glancing up at her wall chart, cause of much misery. ‘Niall will be on the publicity tour for Tough Justice then, and there’s talk of him doing a British film around the same time.’
‘Hmm.’ Alexandra would clearly not be dissuaded by such trivialities. ‘We’ll just have to work out something closer to the time. Now, have you had a chance to turn your mind to bridesmaids yet? Do you think Tor can be trusted?’
Tash turned her eyes to heaven.
Zoe’s son, Rufus – tall, sooty-blond and utterly without principle – did absolutely nothing to help arrange the party. Instead he nicked a couple of four-packs and stole across the snow-crusted courtyard to the flat above the stalls where Gus’s lazy head groom, Ted, was back from Christmas with his parents and in dire need of blood-pollutants.
‘Christ, I wish I’d stayed here again this year,’ he moaned, ripping the ring off a lager can with desperate haste. ‘One sweet sherry at six-thirty, then two stouts with my dad in front of the box, and a last-orders lager top with an illicit fag in the local pub if I was lucky.’
‘Are your family a serious bummer, yeah?’ Rufus pulled a face.
‘Totally horrific, mate.’ Ted put two fingers to his head and pulled an imaginary trigger, never for a moment considering the notion of admitting that his family were far more ashamed of his howling snobbery than he was of them – gnomes, stone cladding and all.
Ted liked to show off to Rufus, which largely involved boasting about how much alcohol he could ship, dope he could smoke and football trivia he could dredge up from memory. A self-styled ‘bloke’ in the Loaded, lager and Fantasy Football League mould, he cut an incongruous figure on the eventing circuit. But for all his laid-back, hard drinking attitude, horses had remained his only true love since the first time he’d clopped along Blackpool front on a donkey, aged six. His on-off girlfriend, the irascible Franny, often moaned that were he to treat her with the slavish love he bestowed upon Gus’s horses, she’d chuck him for being too much of a wet New Man. Instead, Ted expected her to dress up for him, cook for him, perform extraordinarily athletic sex for him, and then visit the fridge for him immediately afterwards to fetch him a post-coital lager which he could sip in the bath that she would, of course, run for him. Franny was surprisingly meek in her compliance.
Rufus watched as, swigging lager, Ted crunched his way over his littered floors to examine his hair in the wardrobe mirror. He was totally paranoid about his hair – an obsession that sometimes seemed almost psychotic. He didn’t so much have bad hair days as a bad hair lifetime; it was the one thing in which he lacked confidence. He had been known to spend an entire day in bed when he couldn’t get his hirsute black curls to lie right.
But despite this, Ted was something of a hero-figure to Rufus who, at seventeen, was three years younger and, due to his cosseted background, far more naive. Ted had taught him how to smoke, drink, criticise videos, chat up women, drive off-road vehicles and roll a spliff. He liked Rufus’s eager enthusiasm and devotion, but rather resented the way that the younger lad, even at seventeen, attracted women so effortlessly. Rufus, with his spidery height, big smile and sooty, long-lashed grey eyes, was something of a babe-magnet. Ted, who was well under six foot, stout, topped with a curly black thatch and in possession of a broken nose, fared less well. It was his humour, dogged determination and well-practised seduction skills which pulled, but – despite a phenomenal success rate – he still resented the youngster his natural looks and straight hair, so took every opportunity subtly to undermine them.
‘You’re not going to wear that tonight, are you, mate?’ He turned around and studied Rufus’s blue corduroy shirt critically.
‘Hadn’t really thought about it,’ Rufus confessed. He seldom thought about his clothes beyond selecting them for warmth and practicality.
‘Take a tip.’ Ted tugged on his cigarette and rubbed his tired, red eyes. ‘Blue’s naff. Yellow. That’s what you want, mate.’
‘Yellow?’ Rufus nodded, absorbing the information earnestly.
‘Yup. Women can’t resist yellow.’ He turned back to the mirror again. ‘D’you think I should get my hair cut?’
Later, dressed in one of Gus’s yellow shirts which he had bartered tomorrow’s mucking out for, Rufus looked pretty awful. The shirt was ridiculously big, and the colour clashed with his mouse-blond hair and lent his cream and pink complexion a sallow, jaundiced tinge. In contrast, Ted was sporting a navy Breton shirt which brought out the intense dark blue of his cheerful, roaming eyes. He’d tried to slick down his dark curls to his scalp with hair-gel, but they kept springing up like unravelling knitting wool.
Zoe had done her usual efficient, understated job of preparing both the house and herself for an influx of friends. Lime Tree Farm could never look tidy; it was a practical impossibility given the heaps of detritus which weighed down every available space and which had to remain in place for Gus to know where they were. But Zoe had an uncanny knack – acquired through years of living with the Moncrieffs – of making those piles of vital rubbish look artistic. She was helped on this occasion by the fact that so much could still be disguised with Christmas decorations. Cards perched on the top of piles of magazines and schedules, making them appear to be rather grand paper columns; holly was pinned neatly around feed charts on the walls, tatty lampshades on the ceilings and the numerous and rather frightening mounted antlers which Gus was absurdly fond of collecting. Even the most horrific Lime Tree eyesore – a wooden faux-flame candelabra which Penny was inordinately proud of stealing from their honeymoon hotel in Spain – could be disguised beneath a vast bunch of berryless mistletoe which Zoe had bought cheaply at Marlbury market. The gleaming white berries were in fact plastic pearls from a broken necklace of India’s, but Zoe felt they were suitably convincing.
‘You’re not wearing that, are you, Mum?’ Rufus bounded downstairs, blond hair on end. ‘With your legs on show like that?’
‘I certainly am.’ Zoe smoothed down her red velvet dress as she headed towards the kitchen to put out glasses.
To add insult to injured pride, Tash could hear the Lime Tree party from almost half a mile away as she lurked unhappily in the chilly forge. In fact, she could hear stereophonic parties, as the racket from the Olive Branch’s annual knees-up fought to compete with the Moncrieffs’ raucous bash.
Tash, having wallowed self-pityingly in a luke-warm bath for nearly an hour, was swathed in Niall’s stripy dressing gown and a head-towel, reading one of the scripts he had been sent before Christmas. She almost fell off the sofa when the door was pounded upon vigorously.
Shrinking back, she ignored it, glancing at the clock on the oven.
It was only ten-thirty. She groaned and tossed the script on to the rickety coffee table. God, she was bored.
The fist was still pounding a persistent tattoo, accompanied by a familiar voice calling her name with charmless superiority.
‘Tash, I know you’re bloody in there. Open up, you silly cow.’
Tash set her mouth angrily and continued to ignore him. She had no desire to greet Hugo with puffy eyes, red nose and a mascara-stained t
urban on her head.
‘We’ve come to take you to the bloody party!’
Beetroot, who was barking herself hoarse on Tash’s side of the door, let out a terrified yelp and scuttled away as the cat-flap flew open and a very tanned hand thrust a parcel through it.
‘Your Christmas present.’
Tash’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment. Hugo had never once bought her a present in her life. He seemed to derive particularly cruel pleasure from his failure to memorise her birthday, whilst his – 28 March – was a date which had once leaped out of her teenage diaries as though encircled in red.
She scuttled silently across the floor and looked at the package.
It was wrapped in luxuriously thick green and bronze paper, with a lot of loopy red ribbon and a large tag shaped like a figgy pudding. Silently, Tash reached out to flip over the tag.
At the same moment as she read the words ‘For Penny and Gus, from Kirsty, with gratitude and love’, the tanned hand re-emerged from the cat-flap and gripped her firmly around the wrist.
‘Ouch!’ Tash tried to pull away but he was far stronger than she was.
‘Now either we stay like this all night,’ came the muffled drawl through the flap, ‘or you let us in.’
Tash didn’t like the ‘us’. Peering through the open flap, she could see a lot of denim-covered upper thigh where Hugo was kneeling on the snowy front step, and could just make out the cruel, sharp line of his chin which was stretched downwards so that he could talk to her. There was also, however, a distinctly sickly waft of strong, feminine perfume and – yes – she could just make out the dim image of a strappy black shoe and a slim, ten-denier ankle in the background.
‘Bugger off,’ she muttered, looking around for something with which to hit his arm.
There was nothing within reach and Beetroot, who was proving to have a very warped sense of loyalty, had crept back to the door and was sniffing Hugo’s sweater cuff with interest, snaky tail rising from between her back legs to wag excitedly.
‘Listen, I’m only fucking here because Penny is upset that you haven’t turned up. She sent me on an errand. Says I can’t have a bloody drink unless I return with you in tow.’
‘Don’t be so wet, Tash,’ came a purring Scottish lisp from behind Hugo. ‘Just open the bloody door. We’re freezing our balls off out here.’
‘I always said you had balls, Kirsty,’ Tash muttered under her breath.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
But Hugo had heard her childish retort and was gripping her wrist so tightly that her hand was in danger of turning blue. In fact it was going to turn blue anyway as a sharp blizzard came whistling in through the cat-flap. Tash, wearing only the dressing gown, was beginning to shiver. Beetroot, the disloyal minx, had started to lick Hugo’s wrist now.
‘Flattered as I am by your lust, Tash,’ he drawled, ‘I think I must warn you that it’s rather misdirected.’
‘That’s my dog,’ she grunted, trying again to pull away. ‘Look, will you two just piss off? I’m not celebrating New Year this time.’
Sighing, Hugo let go of her wrist. ‘Fair enough. Not sure I fancy sharing space with you in this bloody-minded mood anyway. Can I have my present back, please?’
Gritting her teeth, Tash ejected it at speed through the flap. She only just stopped Beetroot from following it out.
‘Happy New Year!’ Kirsty called huskily as their snow-muffled footsteps retreated.
Tash hoped Kirsty’s heels sent her flying into a ditch. She crawled back to her sofa and wished that she didn’t always feel so monumentally anti-social whenever Niall went away.
That had been her chance to be conciliatory to bloody Hugo, she realised. Her opportunity to fulfil her promise to Zoe and be nicer to him. If only he wasn’t so effing arrogant. He’d made it perfectly clear that he’d only come to collect her under heavy duress. And he’d undoubtedly only agreed to do so because it gave him the opportunity to slope off with Kirsty for an illicit grope, far away from the eyes of so many gossipy friends. The sod!
She turned on the television to be confronted by Sir Harry Secombe warbling a hymn from on top of a Welsh mountain. She quickly turned it off again and flumped over to the fridge, which was almost bare because she’d already raided it twice that afternoon. Three cold roast potatoes and half a tub of brandy butter later and she felt no better. She just felt sick.
Penny phoned again twice to beg her to come over, but each time Tash just thanked her and told her gently and firmly that she was far happier at home waiting for Niall to call.
‘But that won’t be for hours – come over for just one drink at midnight, huh?’
Tash wouldn’t be persuaded.
It was ten to twelve before she changed her mind. She’d just polished off her fifth fig roll and was washing it down with one of Niall’s cans of Guinness – the only alcohol she could find. Burping with an indigestive spasm in her chest, she realised just how smug and snide Hugo would be over the next few weeks if she didn’t pole up at all. He’d call her gutless and childish. It was just the sort of ammunition he devoured, storing it up for the perfect opportunity to put her down and mob her up.
She had no time to lose.
Dragging on the first outfit that came to hand, she ripped the towel from her tangled, half-dry hair, stepped into her Doc Marten boots – which were the only ones she could walk on ice in – and threw a chew to Beetroot before legging it towards the farm.
The Doc Martens might have given her a great grip, but the undone laces tripped her up three times. Tash landed twice on her bottom in deep snow and once nose down in a hedge. She sat in the middle of the lane, her wet backside soaking up yet more icy dampness, and hastily criss-crossed the laces around her ankles, her frozen fingers slowing her down to a hopeless fumble. Then, slipping her way upright again, she felt her buttocks clench against the cold air as she slithered and tripped towards the farm gates.
She arrived just as they were about to count down the hour.
‘Thirty seconds to go!’ came a scream from the sitting room to the left.
‘Everyone into the sitting room – double quick,’ called Gus.
For a moment, Tash was swept on a tide of familiar faces towards the huge, candle-lit room. Despite its size, however, it simply could not accommodate all of Gus’s and Penny’s guests and Tash was stranded with a dozen or so others in the hall, unable to squeeze inside. Amongst them was Kirsty Judd, balancing her long, curvy legs on the two strappy shoes Tash had spotted through the cat-flap earlier. She looked sensational – her freckled skin tanned in the Australian sun to a tawny gold, her fox-red hair freshly cut into a feathered urchin bob, her magnificent cleavage balancing like two rust-dusted golden globes on the wired corset of her tight little cocktail dress.
Looking down at her own inside-out and wrongly buttoned checked shirt – the same shirt that she had mucked out in a week earlier – Tash realised that she was in unflattering contrast on the looks front. Her thick, woolly tights, Doc Martens and frayed denim hotpants were too grunge student for words, her hair was a damp, chilly bird’s nest of tangles, her nose a glowing beacon, her eyes as pink and puffy as two snapdragons. She looked unbelievably rough. The only kiss she was likely to get in the next minute was the kiss of life.
As the huge crowd in the sitting room started counting backwards from ten, Tash slunk towards the shadow of the stairs and tried to blend into the vast pile of coats slung over the banisters.
‘Hi, Tash – so you made it after all,’ purred that slinky little voice, as mellifluous as maple syrup sinking through a waffle. Kirsty would make Jean Brodie sound like a Glaswegian welder.
The counting had just reached seven.
Grabbing an abandoned half-full glass of red wine from a nearby bookshelf, Tash managed a very stiff half-smile aimed in the general direction of Kirsty’s vast cleavage.
‘Must find Hugo.’ Kirsty melted away towards the sitting-room door just a
s he emerged from the kitchen, yawning widely and carrying a bottle of duty-free champagne.
Swinging her narrow-eyed gaze from Kirsty’s enviously schoolboy bottom to Hugo’s tall shadow, Tash drew in a sharp breath as she clocked his tan – as dark and smooth as chocolate praline. With his tortoiseshell flop of wavy hair, straight, straight nose and Barclaycard-blue eyes, he looked like a photofit of every schoolgirl’s dream man. Tash’s teeth gritted with hatred.
The count was now at five.
Hugo looked up from tugging at the champagne foil and, catching Tash watching him, smiled nastily before moving lazily towards her. ‘So you made it after all?’
‘She’s gone that way.’ Tash jerked her head towards Kirsty’s retreating freckled back as the count reached two.
‘Really?’ he said flatly, standing opposite her now.
‘One . . . Happy New Year!’ came the shrieks from the sitting room as the sounds of greetings, kisses, popping champagne corks and whoops drowned out Big Ben on the radio.
Hugo hadn’t moved a muscle. He barely seemed to notice that the year had turned at all.
Tash backed slightly away into the stairwell, alarmed by his uncharacteristic attention. He was smiling broadly and watching her with condescending interest, as a scientist watches a white mouse which he has just injected with a deadly virus.
The next moment she almost passed out as there was a loud bang inches in front of her. Suddenly, she was aware of icy, wet froth hitting her hot, breathless chest.
Laughing at her, Hugo lifted the bottle of champagne to his lips, lapping at the foaming rim before taking it in his mouth and swallowing a lengthy mouthful.
‘Did I give you a fright?’ he mocked, passing the bottle to her. ‘Happy New Year.’
Holding up her chin, determined not to rise to his teasing, Tash took a hasty swig and thrust it back at him.
But Hugo was now gazing up at the ceiling.
‘How extraordinarily inappropriate,’ he murmured, cocking his head so that his tortoiseshell forelock flopped from left to right.
Following his gaze, Tash blushed crimson with mortification as she realised they were standing directly under Zoe’s fat bunch of mistletoe which now bore only two pearl berries.
