Well Groomed

by Fiona Walker

  Springing upright, Tash realised that she had no time to lose; she was going to have to destroy the evidence.

  It was too big to fit into her bag to steal away and dispense with in private later, and the cardboard was too thick to rip. When she tried, she merely bent it around and caused two of the photographs to fall to the floor.

  Hearing the loo flush on the other side of the bathroom door, she looked around desperately for inspiration. Bingo! In front of her was the open window, and on a table in front of that were several match books.

  Not thinking too far ahead, Tash fumbled with the matches until one spluttered and took. The card was largely made up of glue and photographic card so went up like a toxic bomb, blue-black smoke licking towards her fingers in seconds. Victorious, Tash threw it out of the window.

  Gusted by the wind, it flew straight back in again and landed on the laundry basket.

  In a panic, she ran over to it and tried to pick it up, but it was a ball of foul-smelling flame now and threatening to ignite the basket and its contents within seconds. Hugo’s trousers were already developing scorch marks. Tash searched madly for something to pick it up with, but there were no tongs to hand.

  In a total flap now, she grabbed the two mobile phones from the top of the dresser and, extending the aerials, carefully used those as metal chopsticks to lift the flaming card from its wicker tinder and rush it towards the window.

  She almost made it, but at the last minute her flaming bundle crackled loudly, shooting sparks into her face before plunging to the floor.

  ‘Shit!’

  Wailing, Tash started to stamp on it with her one boot. It stuck fast to the plastic sole, threatening to burn off her leg. She let out an anguished shriek and started to hop around like a crazed hopscotch champion.

  Wandering out of the bathroom at long last, Hugo was remarkably quick at sizing up the situation. Within seconds he had sped back into the bathroom, fetched a plastic cleaning bucket of water and tossed it over Tash’s melting boot, extinguishing the flame instantly.

  She was breathless with relief and mortification, but as she opened her mouth to gulp her apologies, Hugo held up his hand, face stony with fury.

  ‘Don’t even bother to explain,’ he hissed. ‘I can’t take it right now.’

  Shutting her mouth again, Tash swallowed and nodded meekly.

  He started to pace around the room as though chained there, his tortoiseshell hair on end where he had rubbed his hands through it, blue eyes searing into the furniture with such angry intensity that Tash expected every piece spontaneously to combust.

  She backed away slightly, aware of the water in her boot starting to warm up. A repulsive smell of burning plastic lingered in the air. Biting her lip, she wondered whether she should boldly walk into the bathroom, extract her boot and then leg it, but she supposed that wouldn’t be diplomatic. After all, she had just tried to flood his bathroom and burn down his bedroom. They were tremendously competitive with one another, but these acts of sabotage were rather too much even by Hugo’s Machiavellian standards.

  Thankfully he had stopped pacing and was staring at her with an unreadable expression that could register anywhere between utter contempt and mild fear on the emotional scale.

  ‘Er – sorry,’ she muttered, but Hugo butted in before she even got the word fully out.

  ‘Shut up.’ He started pacing again.

  Clearly not the right move, Tash realised. In fact, she had regressed the situation somewhat.

  The pacing was really fraying her nerves. She thought about joining in and pacing – or limping – around with him, but decided not to risk it. He wasn’t beyond hitting her when he was in this state. Besides, she was standing in a pool of water and figured that wading it around the room wouldn’t go down too well.

  She was dying to escape back to the party and dive into a huge drink. Niall would think she’d gone home without him at this rate. But Hugo was pacing between her and the door now, barring her way. And she really needed that other boot. Keeping an eye on his restless stalking, she started to edge towards the bathroom.

  He stood stock still and swung around to her, making her jump backwards in fright and almost land on the bed.

  ‘You’ve already done in there,’ he drawled. ‘Don’t you want to throw paint over one of the drawing rooms, or torch my kitchen instead?’

  ‘Er, good point.’ She swallowed, not liking the menacing glint that had returned to his eyes. There was no mistaking this expression. It was pure evil, and she was suddenly certain that he was pacing in order to determine which form of punishment would be most satisfactory to make up for her vandalism that night.

  ‘Just getting my boot,’ she yelped, diving into the bathroom and almost crowning herself on the bath as she slithered over the wet floor.

  As she picked her boot out of the money plant and hastily sat on the loo to pull it on, she noticed that half a bottle of whisky was standing on the cistern. She was certain it hadn’t been there before. Nor had the newspaper which was open at the sports pages and now sucking up water from the floor.

  Tugging up the zip of her sodden boot, it dawned on her that Hugo had been sitting alone in a distant bathroom at his own party, swigging whisky, compelled by some deep well of unhappiness to seek solitude and drunkenness. She suddenly felt a great wave of pity for him.

  Wandering back out again, however, she found that he had gone. So had the two photographs which had fallen from the card when she had tried to rip it.

  The party was raging at full throttle now. Squelching back downstairs, Tash was faced with the sight of two of the country’s top event riders re-enacting the show-jumping final of last year’s Badminton in the hall. Using a mixture of pot-plants, umbrellas and walking sticks as fences, one rode piggy back on the other as they stumbled and toppled their way into each ‘jump’, spreading plant, soil, leaves and laughter throughout the room.

  Sliding around the walls behind everyone’s backs, Tash crept into the room where Niall had been talking to Lisette and Zoe earlier.

  They were no longer there but, disastrously, Hugo was, sitting in amongst a noisy group which included Sophia and Ben, Stefan, the Lime Tree mob and Sally, who hailed Tash like a long-lost friend stumbling off a ship in port.

  ‘Honey!’ she whooped. ‘Over here! We’re playing truth or dare, like a bunch of teeny boppers. I’m trying to persuade Hugo here to spin the bottle.’

  ‘Christ!’ Tash muttered under her breath before shaking her head with as big a smile as she could crack open. ‘I’m just going to find Niall – see what time he wants to leave.’ She peered quickly at Hugo to see what sort of mood he was in after the loo fiasco, but he was staring bleakly into his glass of scotch, a fingernail broodily tapping its rim.

  ‘He’s gone already.’ Sally waggled her hand to coax Tash towards them. ‘Zoe found Rufus wrapped around one of the downstairs loos and needed a hand getting him home. He said to tell you he’ll try to get a cab back here as soon as they’ve put him to bed. Zoe’s whacked, so she’s not planning to come back. Here – have some champagne.’ She held up the bottle as Tash shuffled within reach, her boots quacking like ducks as wet skin sucked against wet leather with each step.

  Sitting as far away from Hugo as possible and determinedly not looking at him, she squashed herself between Sally and Ben, who was absolutely plastered – his usual state at parties. Sophia, as sober as a school bus driver and thoroughly disapproving, narrowed her eyes as Tash, who had lost her glass, took a quick swig straight from the bottle.

  ‘Isn’t that a little unhygienic?’

  ‘No – it’s very sexy,’ Stefan butted in on Tash’s behalf, taking the bottle and swigging from it himself.

  ‘I can’t believe how many people gave you booze for your birthday, Hugo,’ Sally giggled, regarding a vast stack of bottles to one side of them. ‘It’s like a millionaire’s cellar in here.’

  ‘I always get bottles for my birthday.’ Hugo shrugged, his face
guarded and sulky. ‘I should just lodge a list with Majestic. I’ll probably chuck most of it up later – talk about many happy returns.’

  ‘I suppose it’s the obvious gift for the man who has everything but a drinking problem.’ Sally swigged from her glass, her face pink from overindulgence. ‘I’m sorry mine was just some old plonk. Did you and Niall get Hugo booze too, Tash?’ she looked across with slightly unfocused eyes.

  She was about to say yes when Hugo muttered icily, ‘Tash and Niall didn’t, so far as I know, bring anything but their fame and glamour – although Tash seems quite keen on toasting the birthday boy and lighting up the candles on his cake.’

  Flustered, she muttered something about leaving it at home.

  ‘I thought I told you to leave Niall there too,’ Hugo said suddenly, his tone deliberately light and flip.

  Looking at him, Tash found his eyes boring into hers and was totally thrown. ‘Er, I’ll get a drink,’ she muttered.

  ‘Take your pick,’ Stefan laughed, starting to rifle through Hugo’s clanking gifts, his long legs stretched to either side of the cache. ‘There’s Bollinger, Moët, Taittinger, Lanson – Christ there’s even a couple of Krugs here. Or if you want something stronger there’s—’

  ‘Ben and I gave Hugo a Trollope first edition,’ murmured Sophia, who had recently taken to giving ‘cultural’ presents. Tash had received a very odd compact disc of a trendy modern composer for Christmas; one minute of it was enough to evict Niall to the pub and cause Beetroot to try and hide in the coal cupboard. Twenty minutes later it had still sounded as though the orchestra was tuning up.

  ‘I’d rather have just had a trollop.’ Hugo smiled malevolently, and looked up. ‘Talk of the she-devil . . .’

  ‘Hi, guys.’ Red-faced Richie grinned over them, dwarfing them in large, square shadow. ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’

  Hugo winced at the cliché and shot Kirsty a dirty look before shrugging. ‘Why not? After all they let anybody in these days, according to my mother.’

  ‘In where?’ Richie looked confused, square forehead creasing.

  ‘In Kirst—’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down next to me!’ Tash beamed brightly up at Richie, aware that Hugo was at a pitch of drunkenness that was dangerous when whetted.

  Hovering behind her gargantuan fiancé, Kirsty was clearly gibbering with nerves, but far too eager to keep Hugo in view to be subtle about it. She perched on a foot stool opposite him, eyes darting towards his face as often as a darts player checking the scoreboard. Even sitting on the floor beside Tash, Richie towered above most of the assembled company, red face grinning inanely. She decided she rather liked him.

  ‘Actually we were playing a game of truth or dare.’ Penny was pulling the foil from another champagne bottle, her feet hooked up on to Gus’s knees. ‘You can join in. It was Tash’s turn, wasn’t it?’

  She wanted to dare herself to tell the truth for once and announce that she refused to play, but she was feeling far too gutless, aware that Hugo was taking brief breaks from shooting Kirsty evil looks to shoot them at her.

  ‘I’ll do a dare,’ she croaked.

  Gus rubbed his hands together with delight. ‘Now we should be able to think up something really juicy. Particularly as Niall has bunked off early.’

  A quarter of the way down a fresh bottle of scotch, Hugo glanced up, eyes glinting as never before. ‘I think,’ he drawled, letting the words roll slowly from his pink tongue, ‘that she should ride my new toy to the bottom of Twenty Acres and back.’

  ‘Christ – you’d trust her with your bike?’ Ted was wide-eyed with amazement and jealousy. ‘You only dared me to pinch your mother’s bum!’

  ‘That,’ Hugo smiled, ‘was far more dangerous.’

  Looking at Tash’s white face, he watched her flinch as Penny’s champagne cork flew out, jumping almost six feet into the air. Catching him watching her, Tash stared defiantly back at him.

  ‘Haven’t you got livestock in there?’ Ben asked, a hiccup coursing up his throat so that he sounded as though he was speaking with a gob-stopper in each cheek.

  ‘Nope.’ Hugo continued staring straight at Tash.

  She didn’t dare look away. He was challenging her loud and clear. This was her punishment.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ Penny protested, sucking froth from the top of a Bollinger bottle. ‘It’s pitch dark out there.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Tash.’ Sophia was, for once, genuinely concerned. ‘You could kill yourself.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Tash lifted her chin and stared Hugo out.

  ‘Good girl.’ He grinned. ‘Let’s go.’

  Eighteen

  * * *

  A LARGE CROWD ASSEMBLED out on the gravel driveway. Many of Hugo’s guests had already left, but of those still there, none headed for their cars as they filed out into the cool, damp March night. Hot breath clouded and mingled in front of flushed faces as a nightjar chattered in the garden and Hugo’s two guard dogs barked from the yard.

  Twenty Acres was a large, claggy field that sloped at an acute angle down from the house towards the valley below. It was perilously steep and pitted, and useless for anything other than rough grazing as the sheer incline was too acute for most farm vehicles. One or two timber and tyre fences were dotted sporadically around it, which Hugo used to train his horses over. It was also host to several small coppices and a couple of deep ponds where the heavy clay soil held on to water in the damper months. In the past, Tash’s heart had caught in her throat just cantering at half-pace down it. The prospect of racing down it on a large motorbike was making her feel physically sick.

  Laughing and chatting with the milling party guests, Hugo was extremely drunk but still walking and talking fairly normally. Only his glinting eyes gave him away. When he tossed Tash the ignition keys, they landed plum in her hands.

  She was trembling with cold now, her teeth chattering like a rattling window, her back tightening like a drum skin where her dress was gaping open at the top.

  It took her several moments to figure out how to turn on the bike’s ignition. Tash had spent a considerable amount of time the previous summer rattling around the fields of the Moncrieffs’ farm on board an old scramble bike that had belonged to one of the part-time grooms. She was fairly familiar with staying on board over rough terrain – even in the dark. But Hugo’s bike was far bigger and more powerful than the scrambler. She could barely touch the ground with her damp, booted feet as she pushed it off the rest and switched on the lights.

  The next moment, she let out the throttle and it roared into life like a minotaur chasing a piece of string.

  As a whooping Ted opened the gate which led straight on to the drive, the bright halogen headlight slashed through the dark, highlighting churned up mud in the gateway, the crystal tips of the dewy grass, and the top of a distant tree. The field wasn’t even visible as it sloped out of sight within metres, disappearing into a darkened chasm.

  Tash caught her breath. It would be like riding off a cliff.

  ‘Tell her not to do it, Gus.’ Penny was trying to galvanise some help to stop the dare. But Gus stood stock still, arms crossed against the cold, and simply shrugged, enjoying the show.

  ‘I think thish could be rather rash, Tash old thing.’ Ben approached her, smoothing his messy hair and lurching drunkenly where he was being prodded by Sophia from behind. ‘Think how ghastly it would be if you hurt yourself all over a shilly game.’

  But Tash was revving the engine and didn’t hear him. All she could think was how much this would tick off Hugo. He’d clearly expected her to wimp out, and she hadn’t even complained.

  Those party guests lining up by the fence to watch were swigging from bottles and cans as they giggled and gossiped and chatted, seeing this as an entertaining side-show, numbed by drunkenness to the idiocy of it.

  Sally had drunk far more than usual too, but suddenly felt horribly sober. As she dashed towards the puttering bike, sh
e crashed into Lisette who had wandered outside to watch, swathed in a long velvet coat, glass in hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lisette took in her panic-stricken expression.

  ‘I’ve got to stop this,’ wailed Sally. ‘Tash is planning to ride round that bloody field like some sort of teenage joy-rider. It’s Hugo’s fault. I’m going to kill him.’

  Lisette’s warm hand entrapped her wrist and held it tight. ‘Don’t. Let her get on with it.’

  Sally tried to wrench her arm away, but Lisette clung on tightly.

  ‘You may want Niall back,’ Sally hissed, ‘but letting Tash try and kill herself isn’t the best method, believe me.’

  Lisette’s huge, painted eyes glittered in the steely light and she tightened her grip so much that Sally winced.

  ‘I don’t want Niall back,’ she whispered. ‘But if I did, Tash is certainly helping me all the fucking way. Why d’you think Niall was drinking for England, Ireland and the States tonight and looking as though he’d had teeth pulled with every drink, huh?’

  Only half listening, Sally was craning around to see Tash talking to Gus and Stefan, trying desperately hard to laugh even though she was shivering madly and pasty white with fear. She had lost so much weight that she looked like a fragile, leggy bird perched on the great bike with her ridiculously flimsy party dress rucked up to show a lot of slim, pale thigh. Sally wanted to throttle Hugo who was standing alone a short way off, bottle to his chest as he tugged sporadically on a cigarette, its long red end sparking in the dark.

  ‘Tash is in love with him.’ Lisette jerked her head towards the solitary figure. ‘Not Niall. That’s why he’s miserable, why he’s fucking around with actresses, drinking himself to death and clinging to the apron strings of that ageing mummy tonight. Don’t feel sorry for Tash – feel sorry for Niall.’