Kiss and Tell (34 page)
It had been a great week. She was IFOP, IFOJ and very, very far IFOKK. The paparazzi were in her pocket. She had them on side again. She had two photoshoots – one with and one without the kids – scheduled for the following week to disprove the depression claims and show how fabulous her life was. She had initially intended these to take place at her new retreat, Le Petit Château in Upper Springlode, but she couldn’t face the idea now that she knew the place better and so had instead hastily rearranged one to a swanky country-park hotel, and before that a high-profile family outing to Blenheim Horse Trials, where she intended to publicly establish her connection with the sport Dillon patronised, and privately to support Rory. He was the one upbeat thing about this place, but he was leaving.
She hated her Cotswolds retreat. On paper, Le Petit Château had
seemed the ideal base, an eccentric folly of a house perfect for a princess, with its French-inspired turrets and towers hidden in a wonderful walled garden on the outskirts of the pretty little village. But in reality it wasn’t much of a fairytale. What had looked like the mellow gold of locally quarried stone on the glossy brochure photographs was in fact Bradstone and on close inspection almost as ugly as the Duckworths’ Coronation Street cladding. The house was not the historic mini castle she and Mama had imagined: it was more of a theatre set, an eighties fabrication designed with no eye for practicality or light. Inside, it was a rabbit warren of small, dark rooms that smelled of mildew. The big open fireplaces were fake, the mullions were fake and the beams were fake. It had originally been custom-built for eccentric seventies glam-rock star Barry Bullion, who was now a tax exile living with a posse of alarmingly young housemaids on an island off the coast of Sumatra. It was only after she’d moved in that Sylva discovered Barry’s reputation was as tarnished as his fake gold taps. Rumour had it that the now-empty, ivy-clad pool house had once housed orgies of rent boys and cocaine-snorting schoolgirls, and that the house was said to be haunted by Barry’s depressive stalker Queenie, a transsexual who’d hung herself from the fake Japanese pergola shortly after he emigrated.
Brought up on the twofold superstitions of high-grade Slovak folklore and devout religion, Sylva took the restless souls of the undead very seriously indeed.
She refused to stay in the house alone for more than a few minutes at the time, grateful that she had, as usual, travelled with as many members of her entourage as custom-made baby blue Louis Vuitton suitcases. Along with two PAs, her cook and her stylist, she had brought three burly Slovakian cousins with her from Buckinghamshire to clear up the place and redecorate, leaving Mama, the boys and the army of nannies at home in Amersham until the Château was more family friendly.
Her first fortnight in Upper Springlode had brought her no closer to Dillon Rafferty, apart from by her proximity to his home. He was overseas and Sylva had been trapped in her house with just his farm shop, their snooty neighbours, a few rides around his neighbourhood and his playboy eventing protégé to distract her. She felt she would have more chance of bumping into him if she had spent the fortnight hanging around the VIP lounge at Heathrow.
This Cotswold recce had been designed by Mama to be a path-building exercise profiled by her TV crew, with Sylva seen to be chatting up the locals, hacking prettily around the leafy lanes, buying organic veggies and designer cheese from Dillon’s farm shop, maintaining a high media profile as the Lodes Valley’s loveliest new resident and generally establishing herself as the perfect future wife for the heartthrob rock star turned farmer. Instead, she had got wet, scared and saddle sore, and had largely been overlooked. Rory’s obvious desire and admiration was in refreshing contrast to local snobbery.
‘You’ll have to come and see me in Berkshire,’ he said now, head still upside down as he watched her dress, sleepy pewter eyes crinkling appreciatively.
She flashed a non-committal smile, knowing that dabbling with Rory at all was very risky indeed – Mama would have a fit if she knew that her girl was bedding Dillon’s sporting interest. But Sylva had always enjoyed dangerous sports. She felt confident that Rory was far too focused on his competitive career to get clingy or committed. Nor would he be indiscreet, too wary of the nature of her fame to want that sort of press attention; it would blow his concentration and his competition prospects. Sylva trusted him. He was a lovely, flirty plaything overflowing with energy that was perfectly suited to converting into sexual endeavour. Sylva’s mindset had been much the same when she had been travelling through Europe to compete as a part of the Slovakian modern pentathlon youth squad. Her sexual awakening had come with fellow team members, most of them strappingly good-looking army boys who fell in love with her and fought each other over her. The black eyes and broken noses on the medal podium had been the cause of great speculation when Sylva was among Slovakia’s elite junior pentathletes. Like Rory, she’d known no shame or restraint, but she had also been far too selfish and focused upon her sport for real relationships, making her short, passing affairs very discreet. Her taste for sportsmen dated back to those days, although experience had since taught her they made better bedmates than soulmates. As was the case with Rory.
He was a pleasant pick-me-up and very good for the ego while she was carrying so much surplus weight, but her main target was Dillon and she knew that she could not let Mama down by getting
distracted. It was good that Rory was moving away from the village. Sylva had to concentrate on the Cheese-maker, as she now thought of her future husband, both musically and as a farmer. Having had a brief pop career herself, Sylva was more of a Madonna fan and found all that guitar-heavy sentiment a bit embarrassing. But Dillon’s edible as opposed to audible cheese was certainly delicious and one of the reasons for her continued mysterious weight gain.
Inadvertently forewarned by Rory, Sylva was on full alert for Dillon’s only trip home during her stay in the area. He had flown in with daughters Pom and Berry and brought them straight to the farm for a long weekend, disappearing behind the high gates and not coming out.
Sylva spent a frustrating, rain-lashed afternoon on one of Rory’s horses trying to get close enough to West Oddford Farm to encounter the family, but the boundaries were impenetrable. Her rather vague, fanciful plan to fall (very carefully) off her horse and land prettily at his feet in Restoration heroine fashion was thwarted.
Instead, she decided to ride back to the stables via Fox Oddfield Abbey, knowing that there was a big bridle path there known locally as God’s Corridor, which ran almost past the front door of Pete Rafferty’s new stately playpen. She figured that rather than have an entirely wasted morning, she might as well check out the in-laws. Sylva had always thought Mask’s former frontman wildly sexy, having grown up with all the band’s albums that could be bought on the black market reverently stacked beside the hi-fi in her parents’ apartment and a poster of that iconic Warhol image of Pete’s wild-haired, laser-eyed face pinned to their kitchen wall.
But her horse had barely trotted twenty yards beneath the dripping branches of the oak trees along the unmarked byway when a flat-capped man in a pick-up brimming with barking dogs, gun racks and halogen lights roared up behind her and ordered her away.
‘This is surely a public right of way?’ She laid on the Slovak glamourpuss charm but he was impervious, his cap pulled so low over his wide-jawed face that he was unable to see above her booted ankle.
‘S’not a bridlepath no more, misses, so youz best go back the way you come.’
Sylva tilted her head winningly. ‘And you are?’
‘Castigates, they call me. New boss don’t want trespassers.’ He jerked a big thumb in the direction of the Abbey.
‘Is your boss Pete Rafferty?’
‘None your business, missus, with respect.’
Apologising politely, Sylva trotted away to drop the horse back at Overlodes and consulted a map in Rory’s cottage while her clothes dried over the Rayburn and Rory set about warming her up.
Soon she was lying back across the map with her legs around Rory’s waist, but she already had no doubt that she’d taken the correct path marked with the green dashes. Father and son both liked their privacy, it seemed. She would struggle to get anywhere near their inner circle without a personal introduction. Rory might be far from ideal on that front but, being a great gossip, he was at least a superb fount of information and had already told her that the only time Dillon Rafferty was guaranteed to be at home these days was when his two pony-mad little girls visited from the States. Her own sons were frustratingly too young to befriend them, but she was certain there was a way in.
By the time she was dressed again, Sylva had figured out exactly what the password to his inner circle might be, and who might say it best.
Zuzi.
As she walked back from Rory’s yard across the little village green known to all as the Prattle, she pulled her mobile from her pocket and called her older sister in Slovakia, her mother tongue sounding curiously out of place in this mist-laced corner of a quintessentially English parish. ‘It is time you joined us here, Hana.’
‘I cannot leave my family!’ Hana’s soft voice was strangled with fear as the day she had long dreaded suddenly arrived without warning.
‘
We
are your family. Mama is here, and all your cousins,’ Sylva insisted. ‘I want you here with us. And Zuzi.’
‘But … but …’
‘She must come to this country. Think of her education and her future. You cannot deny her any longer. My PA will book a flight for you both. She will email you details.’
‘What about Pavol?’ Hana asked about her husband in a tiny voice.
‘He will stay behind. He has a job.’
‘I have a job, Sylva. I am a classroom assistant. I have never left my husband’s side in ten years.’ She was barely able to whisper for the encroaching tears. ‘Zuzi will be heartbroken to leave her friends, her school, her home.’
‘She has a new home now.’
The sobs had reached her sister’s voice. ‘The press will find out, Sylva. The secret will get out. It will ruin your career.’
Sylva stared at a fat Mallard duck waddling towards the pond pursued by several ducklings. ‘Perhaps it is time for that too, Hana. Our sad little story would not affect my career now, I think. They may even see this as a happy ending. You will come and then I will decide whether we tell the truth at last.’
There was a small gasp of horror, but Hana knew better than to protest further. Sylva financially supported everything that she and her husband held dear – their home, their holidays, their car and their only, beloved daughter.
After ringing off Sylva watched the ducklings swimming behind their mother, stripes rippling from their tiny slipstreams.
Her groin still hummed from its joyful union with Rory’s eager thrusts, fluttering twitches of pleasure lingering inside her like those ripples upon the water’s surface. She patted her rounded belly, which was spilling very slightly over her skinny jeans. It was time for self-denial again – sexual and nutritional. She must forfeit occasional sex for regular exercise with her personal trainer, fasting and dieting back down to her usual size. As she walked the last few hundred yards to her horrible faux château, she wondered whether it was finally time for a tummy tuck. Three pregnancies would eventually take their toll, even if one did a hundred abdominal crunches a day, as she did. She wasn’t eager to revisit the surgeon’s knife again – the last time she’d flown to LA for a few discreet adjustments, she’d had a reaction to the anaesthetic from which it had taken her weeks to fully recover. But plastic surgery was a necessary evil these days, she reminded herself. No pain no gain, as they said in this country. Like childbirth.
‘Two pregnancies,’ she reminded herself as she reached into her pocket and pressed the remote control for her electric gates.
Lying awake the night before her marathon dentistry-then-surgery makeover, Faith rehearsed a call to Mr Ali Khan, explaining that she couldn’t possibly go through with it.
But the following morning, as she looked at her boyish chest in the mottled mirror of the mobile home’s badly lit bathroom, she was less certain. If she had breasts like Sylva Frost a whole new world would open up to her, along with Rory’s fickle heart.
Carly’s escape plan worked perfectly. Kurt and Graeme were away competing in Germany. At her friend’s insistence, Faith texted them to say that she had been kicked in the face by one of the young stallions and was going to have to get her nose re-set and her teeth fixed, but that they mustn’t worry because Carly’s family would look after her. As her father was a dentist, the gayfathers assumed she was in safe hands. They had no idea that Carly’s parents were in fact away in Spain. Now Faith could legitimately disappear for forty-eight hours.
Carly bustled her and her pre-packed hospital bag into the pink Mini Cooper and accelerated along the half mile of tree-lined drive like a getaway driver, long before the other seven staff members at Piaffe Court could notice a thing.
In less than an hour the girls were walking into the Harley Street dental clinic that was the first port of call in turning Faith into the woman of Rory’s dreams.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Carly asked caringly just before Faith temporarily lost the power of speech in order to gain the power of a whiter than white smile.
‘A new phone.’ Faith thrust her purse at her.
By teatime, now in Mr Ali Khan’s care a few hundred yards along the same illustrious street, dopy from a pre-med and her mouth still floppy from her veneer fitting, Faith was waiting in her private room. Carly had gone to have her hair extensions reglued, leaving her friend with a fluffy pink good-luck teddy bear and strict instructions not to play with her new mobile phone.
Faith pulled it from its box and groaned. It was baby pink. Groggily she slotted in her old sim card and switched it on in case
there were any messages, but its sleek face reported nothing apart from a low battery.
