by Fiona Walker
‘For Seth and his guests.’ With a final few bunny hops, she took Sri’s reins back and remounted. ‘I know. It’s all right. I’m going. Gotta keep galloping.’
He looked anxiously at his companions. ‘I’ll ride with you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she muttered. She was desperate to get out of sight somewhere private, then remove her breeches and pants to shake the ants out. They were eating her alive now.
For a moment Dougie’s horse barred her way, along with the intense blue eyes that chased hers for contact.
‘Your flies are undone.’
‘Thanks.’ She did them up and cantered off with as much dignity as she could muster, given she was still carrying a small colony of stinging insects in her underwear.
‘“Beautiful Dawn”.’
The two words rendered Dawn momentarily speechless. Being wrestled manfully from the bonnet of a Range Rover by ‘the hottest man in Eardisford’ was alarming enough, but she couldn’t be entirely sure that he hadn’t just sung to her. It could be his accent, she reasoned, as she admired the cleft in his chin. He was taller than she remembered, and broader. And there was just one of him while there had been ten or twenty all spinning around last time she’d looked.
‘It’s great to see you again.’ A shy smile appeared below the flat cap. ‘You’ve changed your hair colour.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘“Beautiful Dawn”.’
Oh, God, he was singing. Dawn had never admitted to music-snob friends like Kat that she’d played the James Blunt song on a loop on her iPlayer at the gym for months.
The man’s only just proposed to your friend, the swine, Dawn reminded herself sternly. ‘Are you here to see Kat?’
‘I came to remind her about the ash dieback.’
‘Sounds like a colour treatment.’
‘It’s a tree disease. Need to check she knows about the felling this weekend. Dangerous to go near Duke’s Wood. Lots of big trees coming down.’
‘Timber!’ She beamed, admiring his neatly ironed checked shirt, its contents pleasingly flat-stomached and lean-hipped. Surely if Kat had turned him down, it would do no harm to flirt. ‘I’ve always wanted to know more about lumber-jacking. Perhaps I can come and watch.’
‘Definitely not. It’s not something for ladies’ eyes.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of wood in my time.’
‘I’m sure you have.’
‘But of course there’s leather against willow this weekend, which will be a sore sight for ladies’ eyes. I love cricket. I bet you’re a demon at the crease, aren’t you, Dair?’
Dair smiled stiffly. ‘I’m working all that day. Simulated game shooting.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Clay pigeons.’
‘What a shame. I love a man in whites. Would you like a drink? There’s a bottle of Prosecco open and I’m sure Kat won’t be long.’
He glanced at his beautiful watch and grimaced. ‘I have to meet a plane. Will you and Kat be in the pub later?’
‘You can bet on it.’ She gave him the umpire signal for ‘six’, both hands in the air, fingers pointing up.
Bottom on fire with ant bites and nettle stings, head throbbing, Kat trotted back to Lake Farm and found Dawn in a state of squiffy agitation as she rushed outside to meet her, wine glass in hand, having cracked into the second bottle. She was carrying the rubber ring.
‘I’m here!’
But Kat had already jumped off, landing on the ground and bouncing up and down as though the concrete yard was a trampoline, desperately trying to loosen the invaders from her knickers.
‘Aren’t you swimming?’ Dawn asked, as Kat quickly untacked Sri and pulled out the hosepipe to wash her off.
‘What’s the point? I thought I could rise to the challenge with a bit of fire in my belly, but I might as well face the fact I’ve got no backbone left.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘I’m sorry, Dawn. I’m a shit friend. You know the stupid things I do when I’m drunk. It was selfish to leave you here.’
‘I always love the stupid things you do when you’re drunk, Kat. And I’m so grateful you left me here. Really. It’s one of the best things you’ve ever done, buggering off like that. Hooray for doing stupid things when drunk. I will follow your lead.’
‘Sorry?’ Kat didn’t hear as the water jetted out of the end of the hose in loud splurting hiccups and she ran it across Sri’s patchwork body, bringing out strange blue freckles in her white sections.
Watching it pouring down on to the cobbles, Dawn remembered cheering Kat as she emerged pale, freckled and dripping from lakes and rivers to don a helmet and shoes ready to leap on a bike and pedal away furiously. The friends had swum together at the leisure centre two or three times a week when they were both nursing. She now turned to look out across the lake.
‘What if I cross it first?’ she asked, seeing a way to help, and to feel less guilty about chatting up Dair.
‘You are kidding, right?’
‘Why not?’ She turned back. ‘What are you doing?’
Kat had the hose end in her breeches now, shuddering with cold and relief as she doused the ant stings in a soothing flow of water. She didn’t think Dawn was serious for a moment, knowing her tendency to talk things up, then back out. But she hadn’t accounted for just how much wine Dawn had poured into an empty stomach.
‘If you see me doing it, you’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Dawn pulled off her top to reveal a frilly red bra. ‘I still swim every week. I’ll leave the horse out of it for now, and I could do without that buffalo being around, but I don’t mind. I’ll be across it in two minutes. Then we’ll do it together.’ She threw her T-shirt over a stable half-door, then took off her skirt.
Kat started to laugh. ‘You really are going to swim, aren’t you?’
‘Follow my lead!’ she shrieked, running towards the bank and diving in.
She resurfaced amid pond weed and alarmed duck calls. ‘Jesus! It’s cold!’
Kat switched off the hose and raced towards the bank. ‘You’re mad! Come out at once!’
‘You’ll have to come in and get me.’ Dawn was already swimming out into the deeper water. ‘Fuck, my contact lenses have gone funny! I can’t see where I’m going!’ She started swimming in a loop, heading blindly towards the causeway and the weirs that took water down towards the millstream.
‘Turn left!’ Kat yelled, pulling off her wet breeches and cursing as she tripped towards the rowing boat, the dogs running after her.
There was a frantic honking from the lake as one of the regular pairs of Canada geese started to warn Dawn not to get closer to his clutch of goslings.
‘My eyes!’ Dawn wailed, thrashing around as she tried to tread water.
Panic rising, Kat untied the rowing boat and hauled it to the end of the jetty, posting the dogs in before stepping in herself, the familiar terror already gripping her throat so tightly she could barely breathe.
As she began to row towards Dawn, who was now splashing blindly within inches of the angry goose, Kat heard another noise above the screeching, whooshing and honking: a plane engine.
Looking up, she saw an aircraft circling overhead, coming down towards the landing strip. Maddie started to bark furiously.
Chapter 53
Seth was not having an easy time piloting his VIP guest to his country retreat. He’d planned to fly Igor personally from Moscow to England, but Igor had protested that he had his own Boeing on constant standby with a full complement of staff, so why would he want to cram them all into the Indian’s Bombardier? Eventually, he’d ungraciously accepted a lift from the London airport where his big private jet was now parked, sending his entourage ahead in a fleet of glossy black people-carriers. Seth, who would normally use a helicopter for such a short transfer, was eager to show off the plane he’d just had refitted with state-of-the-art technology, but Igor seemed far more interested in Dollar. He had been trying to persuade her to become the fifth Mrs
Talitov for the entire flight. She loathed the portly little Muscovite, with his bloodshot bullet grey eyes and Miniature Schnauzer beard, and was playing it with admirable professionalism as always, passing him Stoli Elit shots and brushing off his lascivious advances. But Seth knew Dollar was volatile at the moment. She had been very touchy since he’d caved in to parental pressure and chosen his top three from the Brides List – a choice he would consolidate on this UK visit – and he was concerned that the Russian might just tip her over the edge.
Unusually for Igor – who generally travelled with at least a brace of glamorous girlfriends – he’d brought nothing more feminine with him this weekend than cotton buds to clean his guns.
‘I am here for sport,’ he told Dollar, in his deep growl, hands creeping towards her rear end. ‘My expectations are high.’ His tarnished little bullet eyes targeted her buttocks.
‘You will find this an exceptional sporting venue,’ Dollar assured him coolly, her dark eyes deadly. ‘Please return to your seat.’
As he did so, news came through that Igor’s support team was stuck in a convoy behind an overturned livestock lorry on the M50. He was still snarling furiously into a mobile phone when they came in to land at Eardisford. Seth and Dollar, who both spoke Russian and recognized a lot of ‘dolbo yeb!’ profanities, knew that it was more than his team’s lives were worth not to find the quickest way around the three hundred chickens currently roaming the central reservation between junctions one and two, even if it meant driving straight over them.
Flying down over the estate, Seth hoped to distract his guest with the incredible beauty of the place – it was certainly making his own jaw drop: he had never seen it in its high summer glory or actually landed to inspect his investment in person until now – but Igor was still shouting into his phone, apparently firing at least one driver: ‘Chush’ sobach’ya, dobloed!’
At last he threw his phone aside and peered angrily out of the windows as they roared low over the lake.
‘Ohooiet!’ His face lit up. ‘That is a beautiful welcome, my friend.’
Seth relaxed. He’d always known Igor would love it. Eardisford was the sweetener guaranteed to win him the deal.
But the Russian wasn’t looking at the house and parkland: he was gazing at a girl climbing out of the lake in nothing but a lacy red bra and panties, her hourglass body shimmering between the bulrushes.
‘You gave me Ursula Andress! This is good start!’
Closer to, Dawn wasn’t looking so hot. She had pond weed and algae in her hair, insect bites all over her goose-bumped skin and goose feathers stuck to her arms. And she was almost blind as she scrabbled through the bulrushes.
‘Kat! Where are you? Did we make it to the other side?’
‘Right behind you, and, yes, you did it!’
‘Yay! We did it!’ Unable to hear the rhythmic stroke of the oars or a small dog barking over the engine roar, which she took to be one of the JCBs, Dawn assumed her friend had swum in her wake.
‘I rowed.’
‘You rode the horse across!’
‘No, I rowed a boat.’ Kat clung to the sides of the little dinghy as the plane roared lower, its dark shadow crossing overhead as it lined up with the landing strip alongside the lake.
‘You got across. That’s what counts. What’s that noise?’
‘The new neighbour’s just arrived. We have to get you out of here.’ Kat was still almost paralysed with fear, wobbling her way towards the marshy banks. The dogs raced around on board, thinking they were about to get off, unbalancing the boat as she tried to angle it alongside the rushes so her friend could get in. ‘Hang on, I’ll –’
‘I’ll drive you both,’ insisted a sharp Scottish voice, as a figure in a flat cap loomed amid the reeds and irises to swathe Dawn in a checked blanket and whisk her away before the plane landed. ‘Get out of the boat, Kat.’
But Kat was floating rapidly back out to open water on a conveyor belt of ripples.
The plane was on the grass now, engines screaming as it braked.
‘I’ll see you back at the farm,’ she called. Rowing across the lake as fast as she could, catching crabs all the way, she was behind the cover of one of the islands when the steps were lowered on the newly arrived plane.
She let the boat drift for a moment, exhausted. There were still twenty yards of lake to cross before she reached the jetty. Now she saw a figure standing on the rickety wooden planking, the sun behind him, his hair a halo of gold.
‘Swim it! I dare you!’ called a persuasively husky voice.
In the boat, Maddie went into a frenzy of barking as she spotted her chum Quiver admiring his reflection in the water.
Kat stared at Dougie’s square-shouldered silhouette, butterflies rising through her so fast she was surprised they didn’t jet propel the little boat straight across the lake and on to the jetty. Her heart was going crazy, like a guitar tremolo. She could hear it strumming, ringing, pounding in her ears.
Equally excited, Maddie bounced around at the prow of the boat, claws skittering against the wood as Quiver yipped in greeting. With a loud plop, she threw herself in to swim to him, quickly followed by a less elegant splash as ever-faithful Daphne flew in her wake with a Dachshund belly-flop.
‘Shit!’ Kat stood up in a panic and the boat gave an almighty lurch, making her sit down again. The ringing in her ears was coming and going and she was terrified she was about to pass out.
The dogs were already halfway to dry land, pursued by an irate Canada goose.
‘They’re fine and so will you be!’ Dougie laughed, scooping Quiver up and stooping down to fish the elderly terriers out as they paddled up, grateful for the cool dip in the evening heat. He gazed across at her. ‘Just trust yourself.’
Kat gripped the sides of the boat, wobbling to her feet, telling herself that that she could not be outdone by a pair of deaf and incontinent dogs. I am going to do it.
The ringing in her ears was back. Then, as she looked across to the jetty to gauge the distance, she realized Dougie’s high-tech mobile satellite phone was ringing, stopping and ringing once more.
She sat down again gratefully.
‘You can do it, Kat!’
‘Answer your phone!’
‘It’ll go to voice mail. I want to see you swim.’
‘It could be an emergency.’
Wearily, he plucked it from his pocket and looked at the screen. Then he held it out and let it fall into the lake.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘It’s a dropped call.’
‘You idiot!’
‘Idiotic indeed,’ carped a dry Scottish voice.
Kat squinted across the lake as another silhouette joined Dougie on the jetty, shorter and squatter with a shadowed cowpat of a flat cap on his head.
‘That phone is not your property, Dougie,’ Dair berated him. ‘Your friend’s in the house, Kat!’ he called, across the lake. ‘I’ve lit the range.’ He turned back to Dougie, eager to gather his stray team member. ‘We’re needed, Everett.’
‘I’m not interested. I’m watching Kat swim.’
‘This is not the time to enjoy bathing diversions. Come with me.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Your job depends on it.’
‘Tell them to stuff the job.’
‘My job depends on it.’
‘Ha!’
‘I’ve heard the rumours. We all know what you’re doing to Kat. Leave her alone.’
‘What’s he doing to Kat?’ Kat yelled from the boat.
‘Yes, what am I doing to Kat?’ Dougie growled at Dair.
‘The whole village is talking about it. How you took a bribe to try to make her marry you.’
As both men squared up to one another on the narrow jetty, eclipsing the sun, an aggrieved moan came from the lake and Usha bobbed towards them, horns full of pond weed, defending her territory. Such was her bulk, the rip tide curved back to Kat’s little boat, causing it to sway b
ack into the island, ricocheting off a fallen tree. She flattened down in the jolting hollow, her head swamped with flashbacks. The blackout, ear-ringing fear was overwhelming now. All she could see was cold, breathless darkness, although she could clearly hear two men shouting above the lowing of a distressed water buffalo.
