Boot Camp Bride (9 page)

‘Well, that’s a good thing, Charlotte,’ her father observed. ‘If this partner of yours teaches you restraint then working for Sam Walker won’t be a complete disaster.’ The rest of Charlee’s family nodded wisely, but instead of coming back at them in her usual confrontational style, Charlee sent them a Mona Lisa smile. They’d all be singing from a different hymn sheet when they saw her by-line in
What’cha!
in a few weeks' time. Accompanied, maybe, by a head and shoulders shot of Charlee Montague: budding journalist.

‘Surely Poppy Walker isn’t your partner?’ George observed. ‘The girl’s just filling in time until she bags herself a rich husband who’ll fund her horse habit,’ he explained to Miranda.

‘She snorts cocaine?’ Miranda asked, surprising them all by knowing the street name for the drug.

‘No-oh, Miranda, horses - plural; animals with a leg at each corner. Used in eventing?’ Charlee flashed George a do you really know what you’ve married look. Miranda blushed and said no more and, for a moment, Charlee felt guilty for bating her; she was easy prey. Then she remembered the number of times Miranda had brought up the subject of her lack of career prospects, and/or a ‘serious boyfriend’.

‘I don’t suppose,’ Charlee began, turning innocent blue eyes on Miranda and George, ‘you’ll be attending the Boxing Day meet at the Walkers. With your being vegan, I mean.’ Conflicting emotions crossed their faces: disapproval at blood sports, but an awareness that most of the best families in Berkshire, and potential political sponsors, would be attending the meet.

‘Well, it would be rude not to,’ Miranda answered for her husband. ‘We will have to compromise our principles, for George’s career,’ she sighed, as though she was making a great sacrifice.

‘We will all be there - as usual,’ Henry Montague said, making plain this wasn’t up for debate. ‘Charlee - and the boys, too, when they arrive. Folly Foot Stud keeps my practice afloat. Apart from which, the Walkers are old friends …’ he growled, and poked his vegan sausage around the plate as if it were radioactive. ‘Barbara, could you please cook me some bacon?’ he asked in despair.

‘At least they follow an aniseed trail nowadays and there isn’t a kill at the end of it,’ Miranda observed, as though justifying the whole idea of hunting with hounds to herself.

‘Not what the sabs say,’ Charlee said. Perhaps sensing the undercurrent, Henry Montague suggested that they each open one present while they waited for the other Montagues to arrive.

‘Good idea, darling,’ his wife concurred. ‘Charlotte. Fetch them from the sitting room and we can open them at the breakfast table.’ As she crossed the hall, Charlee muttered that it was time they stopped using her as the family gopher. She was a grown woman with a burgeoning career. What part of that didn’t they get?

She returned with the presents and experienced a slight twinge of guilt as George ripped back the paper to reveal a copy of Ffinch’s award-winning tome. The very copy Ffinch had given to her the night of the award ceremony. Then she relaxed. Ffinch would never know that his book had been recycled, would he? She didn’t feel quite so guilty when Miranda and George handed her mother, father and herself an envelope, explaining that they wouldn’t be giving presents this year. They would be donating money to worthwhile causes in their names, instead.

‘Typical,’ Charlee heard her father mutter under his breath and they exchanged a conspiratorial look across the table. As a vet, he had raised thousands in his practice for worthwhile causes and didn’t appreciate a share in a cow in some Indian village as a Christmas present. He’d been hoping for a bottle of ten-year-old malt whisky.

‘Is it like a pantomime cow, George? Do I have the front half or the back half?’ Charlee asked, looking at the gift card. ‘Perhaps Daddy and I have shares in two different cows. Is that how it works?’ Barbara Montague sent her a reproving look.

‘Well, thank you for the book, Charlee. I’ve wanted to read this for ages.’ George’s resigned expression acknowledged that Charlee and his father would be ribbing him for months to come over their shared cow. ‘Fonseca-Ffinch, quite an adventurer,’ he turned the frontispiece over. ‘And signed, too. Do you know him, Charlee?’

In the past, Charlee would have blurted out the whole story of their meeting; how she’d spent Christmas Eve in a skip with a man everyone rated - apart from her - but she now kept quiet.

‘Sort of.’ Then she handed her mother the pashmina she’d bought for Christmas. And waited … she knew what was coming, and steeled herself for each hurtful word.

‘Thank you, Charlotte, but it’s not quite my colour. Have you kept the receipt? Ah, it’s from Harvey Nick’s, I’ll exchange for something more suitable next time I’m in town.’ And with that, the present was put back in its tissue paper and left discarded on the large welsh dresser. Thanks, Mum, Charlee thought silently but maintained a stiff smile. It was the same every year; no present she ever bought remained unchanged for long. Sometimes she thought that a gift voucher would do just as well and save them both time and effort.

‘I think it would suit you very well, Barbara,’ her father put in, giving Charlee an affectionate look. Charlee shrugged away the hurt and handed her father a soft, cashmere scarf.

Where, once, her mother’s indifference and open preference for her sons had had the power to wound - now it no longer mattered. Charlee’s skin (and her heart) had hardened over the years and now the barbs bounced off, almost painlessly. Knowing that her mother had suffered badly with postnatal depression after her difficult birth and that they’d never bonded, held no water with Charlee. It was all so long ago, but somehow Barbara Montague could not forgive her daughter for putting her through the hell.

Charlee started as the Victorian doorbell, worked by a series of pulleys and levers and with its own distinct sound, rang out over the kitchen door.

‘Who can that be?’ Henry Montague wondered. Charlee was glad that she looked too disreputable to welcome a visitor and returned to her coffee. Her father closed the kitchen door behind him and muffled male voices were heard in the hall.

The kitchen door was pushed open and her father returned with a visitor.

‘Charlotte; a work colleague - for you.’

‘Work colleague?’ Charlee licked marmalade off her fingers. ‘Who?’ When Henry brought the unexpected guest into the kitchen, Charlee leapt to her feet, galvanised. ‘Ff - Ffinch. What are you doing here?’

Fonseca-Ffinch’s gaze swept the room, taking in the family gathering, the copy of his book lying half out of its wrapping paper, and gave Charlee one of his knowing half-smiles. It was obvious that she’d recycled his gift and offering him a quarter share in a sacred cow wouldn’t go even part way to repairing this new rent in their partnership.

‘Merry Christmas, Mr and Mrs Montague,’ he greeted courteously, nodding towards Barbara, George and Miranda. ‘I’m sorry to call unannounced on Christmas morning but I need an urgent word with Charlee.’

‘Oh my God,’ Miranda exclaimed. ‘You’re him, I mean he - I mean Rafa Ffinch, the author … of this book.' She held it up so the family could see Rafa’s portrait on the back cover. ‘You need to speak to Charlotte?’ she asked incredulously and they all turned to look at Charlee like she’d sprouted horns and a tail. ‘George is a prospective parliamentary candidate, I’m sure that -’

‘I’m sure of it, too,’ Ffinch said in a conciliatory voice that didn’t fool Charlee for a second. ‘But unless George speaks Russian …’ He shrugged and looked admiringly in Charlee’s direction. ‘He wouldn’t really be of much help. It’s Charlee or no one I’m afraid.’ He pressed his lips together.

‘Of course,’ Barbara and Miranda almost fell over themselves in their eagerness to push Charlee forward. Ffinch, looking every inch the go-to photojournalist in black jeans, boots, scarf and vintage flying jacket, turned back to Charlee. His slow sweep of her made her blush to the roots of her hair. He did a double take when he saw the cows' head slippers and, lips twitching with ironic amusement, he coughed and brought himself under control.

‘Merry Christmas, Charlee … nice slippers.’

Charlee looked down at the threadbare cow’s heads and then back at Ffinch. The last time she’d seen him she’d been wearing her LBD, sheer hold-ups and five-inch heels. She could tell he was thinking - who is the real Charlotte Montague; the rebel without a cause, the up for anything rookie journo, or the grown woman wearing night attire from her teenage years?

‘What do you want?’ she hissed at him, pulling down her pyjama jacket while her family burbled on, innocent of the atmosphere between them.

‘A word.’

‘It’d better be a good one. It’s Christmas morning and as I told you last night, I’m on holiday,’ she said, fiercely. ‘And before you tell me that a good journalist never sleeps and the news waits for neither tide nor time, let me remind you that this is my home and I didn’t invite you in.’

‘Perhaps,’ her father intervened, ‘you would like some breakfast and a cup of coffee, Mr Fonseca-Ffinch …’

‘Ffinch; please,’ Rafa smiled at Henry Montague.

‘… that would give Charlotte a moment to have a shower and get changed?’ And get in a better mood, his censorious look implied.

‘Of course,’ Ffinch nodded and sat down at the table, pushing his book to one side while the women fussed around him. Half-turning in his chair he said, ‘Don’t take too long … partner, I’ll be waiting.’

Chapter Thirteen
Speak Russian to Me

Charlee showered in record time, pulled on a pair of skinny jeans and a big shirt, slapped on some war paint and searched round for her shoes. She remembered kicking them off in the hall last night so, in lieu of anything better being at hand, slipped on the cow’s head slippers and was back in the kitchen before Ffinch was on his second mince pie. Clearly, he was a big hit with her family because they all protested when he left the table. At Henry Montague’s suggestion, Charlee led the way across the hall and into his study to continue their conversation in private.

Charlee shut the door behind them and then rounded on Ffinch.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded, dropping any pretence of civility.

‘And a Merry Christmas to you, too, Montague. Okay - I can see that you’re not in the mood for pleasantries, so down to business. I’m returning your flask because you seemed quite attached to it last night. And I can see why.’ Putting his leather messenger bag on the floor he pulled out a flask covered in Mutant Ninja Turtles. ‘Family heirloom?’

 Charlee knew she had to explain quickly, otherwise he’d have the upper hand once more. ‘If you recall, you were most insistent I bring a flask of coffee on our stake-out. Mr Hansrani who runs the corner shop didn’t have any flasks for sale. And, so, to help me out, he loaned me the one from his son’s lunch box. Okay? I don’t really own a Ninja Turtle flask. What do you take me for?’

‘The kind of woman who wears massive slippers shaped like a cow’s head?’ he suggested. Charlee suspected he enjoyed needling her, but it was hard to know for certain because he was poker-faced and giving nothing away.

‘Those are my old slippers, from before I went up to university. So you can stop being so amused at my expense. And, anyhow, I don’t have to justify myself to you, Ffinch. Just tell me what you want and then I can get back to my Christmas breakfast.’

Finch folded his arms, tilted his head on one side and gave her a searching look. ‘I know I warned you not to go all mushy on me Montague,’ he observed wryly. ‘But you needn’t take it to the other extreme. Anyone would think you didn’t like me.’

Charlee chose not to answer that, but her silence spoke volumes. ‘What does my opinion of you matter either way? You made it perfectly clear last night that I almost ruined the mission by going off-piste, couldn’t wait to get your phone back and didn’t even bother to thank me for a job well done.’

‘But I did thank you …’ Ffinch put in, moving round to her father’s desk and making himself comfortable in Henry’s swivel chair. Then he started rotating slowly, annoyingly, and very much at his ease.

‘Yes, you did. Ironically. Sarcastically. Pollyanna on crack cocaine is how you described me,’ Charlee reminded him.

‘I think at one point you told me to lighten up? That wasn’t polite or friendly, now was it?’ Almost absent-mindedly, he started to rearrange her father’s fly-fishing equipment on the desk. Charlee walked over to the desk, put her hands flat on the top of it, leaned forward and gave him a ‘don’t bullshit me’ straight look.

‘Okay, Ffinch. The truth. Why are you here? Today of all days.’

He got up from the chair and moved over to the window where he stared over the ha-ha and towards the Berkshire downs. Then he turned round, put the iPhone on the table next to the window and pressed the voice recorder app. Charlee listened to a reprise of the models speaking Russian and then their discussion about the vintage evening bag. At the end of the conversation, Ffinch stopped the recording.

‘So?’ Charlee asked.

‘Do I need to spell it out?’

‘Apparently,’ Charlee responded and waited for an explanation. She did not intend to make this easy for him - seemingly, he needed her help. Needed it badly enough to turn up unannounced and uninvited at her family home. He must be pretty keen to learn what was on the phone …

‘I don’t speak Russian.’

There. He’d said it!

‘However, I do? And you’d like a translation?’ She couldn’t resist a triumphant smirk, knowing what it must have cost him to come here on Christmas morning and ask for her help. ‘Why is it so important?’ she asked, taking a step back and looking at him suspiciously.

‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘Oh, I think I do.’ Ffinch looked at her for several long moments, his expression suggesting that he would be giving Sam Walker a less than flattering account of her.

‘Very well, you tell me what they said and I’ll tell you why it’s important.’

‘Partners?’ she asked, holding out her hand.

‘Partners …’ Ffinch repeated under his breath, as if the word transported him to a place and time a world away from Berkshire on a frosty Christmas morning. He no longer seemed aware of her presence. The colour had drained from his face, leaving him pale, wan and with the look of a man recovering from a long illness. Or, from an experience he couldn’t - wouldn’t - share with her. Standing quietly, Charlee tried to get the measure of him, to work out the reason behind his sadness.

‘Partners?’ she persisted, holding out her hand to shake on the deal.

With a visible effort, Ffinch pulled himself back into the room.

‘Partners,’ he conceded. Then, quite unexpectedly, he took her hand in both of his and held on to it, giving Charlee the impression that he drew some kind of emotional strength from the physical contact. Before she had time to give the idea further thought, he snapped out of his reverie and sent her a lopsided smile that didn’t quite marry up with the darkness behind his eyes. ‘Although, I’d say that someone who owns cow’s head slippers and a Ninja Turtle flask is hardly in a position to make any kinds of demands.’

‘Montague and Ffinch,’ Charlee couldn’t resist going the extra mile. ‘It has a certain ring to it.’ She gasped as he tightened his grip on her hand, pulled her towards him and held her close. Remembering her response when he’d stood behind her in Sam Walker’s office looking into the mirror and she’d almost made a fool of herself, Charlee tried to pull free. Her heart was beating like a mad thing, her breath had caught in her throat and she was blushing like a schoolgirl.

The very epitome of mushy.

‘Montague and Ffinch? Don’t. Push. It. Montague,’ he growled with mock-ferocity and then released her. ‘Translate, now.’

‘Okay, okay. No need for the
King Kong
routine,’ she protested, flexing her fingers as though he’d crushed them during the handshake. ‘You’re the alpha male, the pack leader, I get it. Okay? But what they discussed is so insignificant, I think you’re going to be majorly disappointed.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Sending him a defiant look, Charlee did as asked. ‘Anastasia and her bridesmaids have checked into a boot camp for brides in just over three weeks to lose weight and get toned for the wedding. Although there isn’t a spare ounce of fat on any of them. She probably weighs as much as my left leg.’ When he didn’t laugh at her self-deprecating joke, Charlee felt rather deflated. This could turn out to be a very short-lived partnership she reflected as she switched off the voice recorder and handed the phone to him.

‘Boot camp for brides? Is that it, nothing else? ’

‘She mentioned her fiancé, that Russian financier Yevgeny Trushev and how she could have anything she wanted, no expense spared. Then they all admired her diamond ring, which was practically a supernova, and talked about girly things.’

‘Hmm,’ Ffinch returned to staring moodily out of the window. ‘Girly things?’ he persisted, jangling loose change in his jeans pocket.

‘Yes, like she’d wanted to book into a boot camp nearer London for the weekend, but her fiancé insisted on booking her into one in Norfolk … near Brancaster, or Thornham; somewhere like that.’

‘Norfolk?’ He whipped round, looking suddenly very interested. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ Charlee snapped back. ‘Anastasia pronounced it Nor-fol-k. I thought it was rather sweet at the time and … What is it?’ Her antennae had started to twitch. Judging from Ffinch’s expression he was onto something, although why a boot camp on the edge of the Norfolk marshes should interest him wasn’t clear.

‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter,’ he responded, the shutters coming down. Charlee felt the bonds of their partnership straining before they’d been tested under fire. ‘You look disappointed - did you think there was more to it? That you’d be working undercover like a latter-day Miss Marple?’ he asked with unwarranted harshness.

‘Yes, only sixty years younger and with better clothes,’ Charlee snapped back to cover her disappointment. That’s exactly what she had thought; now all her hopes and dreams had turned to dust. Story of her life …

 ‘This was a simple mission and you’ve fulfilled the brief - there’s no need for me to monopolise any more of your valuable time.’ Ffinch put the iPhone in his messenger bag and then slung it across his body. ‘Thanks, Montague, you’ve been a great help - see, I remembered to thank you properly this time. And look on the positive side, you’ve proved to your family - and Sam - that you’ve got what it takes to make it as a journalist.’

‘You don’t know anything about me or my family, so spare me the amateur psychology. And as for Sam, I think he already knows my worth otherwise he wouldn’t have chosen me for this investigation. So don’t patronise me - you, you …’ Charlee couldn’t bring herself to use an expletive on Christmas morning and settled instead for pointing towards the door like a gothic heroine dismissing an unworthy suitor. ‘There’s the door - I suggest you use it. Partner.’

He crossed the study and paused briefly with his hand on the doorknob. His eloquent look made it clear he wanted to say more but was deterred by her uncompromising expression.

‘Go back to your family and wish them Merry Christmas from me, Montague. I’ll see myself out.’