Kiss and Tell (38 page)
But Sylva, who already thought uppity Sophia Meredith far less likeable than her sister, undermined that sense of well-being in an instant. ‘Forgive me, I meet so many people … your name is?’
Sophia looked hugely put out. ‘Actually, I’m Lady Malvern.’
‘How lovely – like Lady Gaga,’ Sylva teased, knowing perfectly well who she was.
Stranded together, the two women – former models, mothers and expert self-publicists, but almost a generation apart – looked around desperately for a distraction.
It came in the form of Mike Seith, the Mogo managing director, banging on a glass at the PA mic in the corner and introducing Hugo to his eager guests: ‘… our Hu-gold medallist, our Beauchampion, our Mogo team captain who represents what this brand
stands for – tough, resillient, outstanding performance, top of the ranks, an out-and-out winner and, of course, incredibly good looking. Please welcome Hugo Beauchamp!’
Hugo sent a titter of laughter through the tent by politely requesting that his wife get off the phone. Then he ran a hand through his thick tortoiseshell hair and stepped forward to charm the room.
‘Good afternoon. Those of you who saw my dressage test earlier might not agree with Mike’s wonderful appraisal, but in my defence I have to say that if the rules allowed the horse and I to compete in Mogo waterproof wear we’d be home and dry. Very dry.’
Primed to respond to any Mogo name checks, his captive audience laughed obediently.
But Hugo wasn’t at his best. Usually a natural, witty public speaker and excellent raconteur, he was suffering from lack of sleep and from the blow to his ego after two appalling dressage tests on horses that were expected to do much better.
His competition strings were suddenly looking frayed. He’d sold two four star horses and retired another one in the past month, actions for which he took full responsibility but that were starting to seem foolish if these lower-ranking horses didn’t progress. Based on today’s performance, he could be left with just one four-star horse next year. And his sponsors were already in possession of itchy feet.
He knew that delivering a lacklustre speech was hardly going to win Mogo approval, but as soon as it started to go wrong he found that he couldn’t do anything to rescue the situation.
He hadn’t really thought through what he was going to say and now, instead of finding that the adrenalin rush from that lack of preparation gave him great off-the-cuff one liners as it had in the past, he just felt distracted and ill at ease. He was aware that, across the room, Rory – who’d posted a far better test than his trainer – was not listening to a word he was saying, instead flirting loudly with Sylva and Sophia Meredith. Most distracting of all, Tash was holding his mobile phone as though it was an unexploded bomb and making discreet hand signals.
Then, just as he was finally starting to win over his audience with an anecdote about losing his way in a foreign championships and finding himself tangled up with a bunch of carriage drivers, he heard a strange barracking from the floor, accompanied by what sounded like a slow hand clap:
‘
Ho ri ti! Ha ho ripe! Ka mau! Hi!
’
Directly in front of him, Tash let out a squeak of recognition and looked at the phone in her hand.
Don’t answer it, Hugo thought desperately, somehow still talking into the mic.
But Tash had the phone to her ear and was making her way towards the exit.
Hugo’s knuckles whitened and he glowered at the audience, muttering, ‘It was all a bit of a fuck-up, basically.’
There were a few titters. Mike Seith covered his eyes. Rory let out a seal-bark of laughter.
Mood blackened beyond repair, Hugo carried on, praising the Mogo product range by half-hearted rote and making it abundantly clear that he would rather be standing anywhere else than right there. The applause when he finished was more from relief than praise. He couldn’t wait to get out on to the course with his wife and dogs.
But, to add to his ire, Tash had other plans.
‘I think Lough Strachan’s arrived at Haydown!’ she announced breathlessly the moment he left the Mogo tent, handing his mobile phone back.
Hugo wanted to hurl the thing into the nearest puddle.
‘I must get back to Maccombe!’ she panted, all too eager to escape.
‘Absolutely not!’ he insisted. ‘Send someone else.’
‘There is no one else.’
‘Jenny can go. Or Beccy – send Beccy back.’
‘It hardly looks good sending poor Beccy. It has to be one of us.’
‘Well, for God’s sake take someone with you,’ he said, making it sound like they’d had a break-in rather than an unexpected arrival.
‘I’m taking the Czechs and the children of course,’ she pointed out, before adding guiltily: ‘It’ll be much easier for you to concentrate without us getting under your feet.’
‘You’d better buzz off home then. And I’d prefer it if you don’t answer my calls in future. Let it go to voicemail. Better still, turn the bloody thing off when I’m speaking in public.’ He stomped off to gather his dogs from the lorry park without so much as a farewell.
Tash almost ran after him to try to pacify him, and to offer to walk the course with him before she left, but she held herself in
check, unwilling to put herself up against his bad mood. Hugo was only being vile because he was so tense, this week’s task playing on his nerves far more than usual. The Olympic gold medallist was expected to shine but his horses were uptight and underpowered, his sponsors increasingly unimpressed and his wife wholly distracted. It didn’t make his behaviour any less immature, but Tash understood it. She’d suffered from competition nerves far more than her husband and at times had battled to stay positive. Over the years, Hugo had played a large part in controlling her tension until it had almost totally disappeared at the peak of her success, but now that he needed her to return the favour she was helpless.
He needed the old, practical Tash by his side, upbeat and focused, who could read a course and solve potential problems with a keen eye and instinct; she understood the way he rode better than anyone, along with each individual horse’s way of going, meaning that her help was invaluable. But that Tash wasn’t here this week and she knew it. This Tash was a distracted, over-emotional mother whose first instinct upon seeing the track she’d completed many times in the past in its differing incarnations was to wonder why on earth anyone would want to undertake such a dangerous endeavour. All the fences looked monstrous to her and she was genuinely scared for Hugo.
Coming to Blenheim to support him had been a big mistake, she reflected, especially bringing the children plus the Czechs and their Eurovision Song Contest wardrobe. Any excuse to relieve Hugo of it all seemed heaven-sent. She hoped he could focus on the competition without all her distractions that got on his nerves and disturbed his preparation. She would make it up to him when he returned to Haydown, she promised herself, already craving home and routine and domesticity, even if there was a strange New Zealander there.
‘Mr Beauchamp, he stay here to ride horses in Queen’s garden?’ Veruschka asked as they left the park, craning over her shoulder for the last glimpses of Blenheim Palace through the rear windscreen.
‘Yes, he’s staying a few more days.’ Tash glanced towards the lorry park, where she could just make out the green and gold livery of the Beauchampions lorry. ‘We’re all rooting for him.’
But the thin wedge that had edged between them during the summer splintered wider as she drove away far too enthusiastically,
firing up the heated seats, an Eurythmics CD on the stereo and the sat nav pointed at home.
Singing along to ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves’ and telling herself that she was doing the right thing, Tash tried not to feel too grateful for her liberation. Away from the lorry park gossip it was much easier to put jealous thoughts from her mind, to stop dwelling on their deferred sex life and Hugo’s active text life, and to enjoy being the great woman behind the great man.
‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves!’ she repeated, only hoping that Beccy would cope without her.
Unaccustomed to being so far down the leader board on the eve of cross-country day, Hugo was sorely tempted to drive home to handle Lough Strachan’s arrival himself, certain that the man had timed it deliberately to coincide with Blenheim. But it wasn’t in his nature to wimp out and so he girded his loins and resolved to salvage some dignity with good, fast clear rounds the following day. Dusk falling, he walked the course as he intended to ride it – quickly, efficiently and with no distractions. He refused to think about Lough Strachan and the secrets they shared; he couldn’t afford to. When he got back to the start–finish area he set out once again and walked the course afresh, head bowed against the driving rain. It was now dark, but he trudged on, his exhausted, sodden dogs trailing behind him. In his pocket his phone rang continually – different ringtones to identify the callers – Tash from Haydown, Rory’s mobile, Jenny, Ben. He ignored them all.
Yet, knowing a little camaraderie would help on such a day, he decided to sleep on the spare bunk in the horsebox that night. The room in the bed and breakfast, with its empty cots and the scent of Tash still lingering, depressed him too much to stay there. But when he arrived at the lorry park with his bags and the Rat Pack at his heels he found Beccy, Karma and Twitch waiting outside on the step to the groom’s compartment, teeth chattering as they leant together for warmth.
‘I wouldn’t go in just yet,’ she warned.
But Hugo, black-tempered and yawning widely, swept past the gathering on the steps like Ranulph Fiennes yomping through a cluster of mountain goats in the foothills.
Shortly afterwards there was a brief girly shriek, an outraged
bellow and then – rather surprisingly – uproarious laughter all round.
Beccy took her phone out of her pocket and checked it. She’d heard nothing from Lough for twenty-four hours now. She felt increasingly sick.
As the gales of laughter continued inside the horsebox Beccy wearily clambered up the steps and opened the door. They were all gathered around the table drinking cheap rosé.
‘There you are!’ Rory greeted her like an old mate despite having unceremoniously booted her out earlier on. ‘Join us! Bring Cooler!’
‘Karma.’ She perched awkwardly in a free spot, wishing it were closer to Hugo who was behind the table with his back to the window, customary fag dangling between his lips.
‘Tash has gone home.’
‘Oh yes?’ She tried not to betray how much the news made her heart lift.
‘It seems Lough Strachan’s arrived to join our happy Haydown team.’
‘He’s in England?’ Her heart was jet-propelled into her throat.
‘So it appears.’ Hugo’s blue eyes were glacial as they narrowed and focused on the wine bottle. He topped up his glass and then poured one for Beccy. ‘Here, you look like you need one of these as much as I do. Is grooming for Rory that awful, you poor darling?’
Beccy’s face flushed deep red. Suddenly the freefall panic of thinking that Tash was with Lough Strachan right now paled to nothing as she took the glass from Hugo and looked him in the eye. He still had her heart so totally kidnapped she couldn’t care less if Lough had Tash tied up in the Haydown cellars demanding to know why she had led him on.
It was one of the most exciting evenings of Beccy’s life, watching Hugo get drunk and rant a lot, particularly when Rory walked Sylva back to her waiting car. Her ten minutes alone with Hugo was thrilling, not least because among his ramblings he dropped a gem of an indiscretion.
‘Lough Strachan’s a total shit!’ Hugo announced in one of his more lucid moments. ‘If he touches a hair on Tash’s head I’ll kill him.’
‘Why would he want to touch Tash?’ Beccy asked with more feeling than she intended.
‘Because I lost her in a bet,’ he mumbled, burying his face in his hands.
She wasn’t sure that she heard this right, but it made no difference because a far more immediate, more spine-tingling moment came when he slumped across the table and, reaching out, gripped her hand in his.
Like a reflex, she pulled his fingers to her lips and kissed them. The tasted of cigarettes and horse.
Hugo lifted his face from the table and stared at her in surprise.
Which was when Rory walked back into the horsebox, kicking mud from his boots. ‘How about that then? A pre-match shag from Sylva. Result!’
The fact that both Beccy and Hugo jumped sky-high bypassed Rory entirely.
‘What a woman!’ he announced theatrically as he sagged down on the seating. ‘I’m going to win this for her.’
‘You have about as much chance of that as young Beccy here has of winning Miss Singapore.’ Hugo snapped, the drink making him cruel.
‘Want to bet?’ Rory scoffed.
But to his surprise, Hugo almost bit his head off. ‘Yes I fucking well bet! And this is one wager I know I won’t lose!’
Mortified, Beccy mumbled something about giving Karma a run and bolted outside. It was still raining. The going would be awful tomorrow, she realised.
Her phone was beeping again. Nervously she fished it out and felt cold shame drench her as she read Lough’s name. He and Tash must have rumbled her.
She read the message with wide-eyed surprise, wondering whether this was some sort of joke:
Lost my Dad. Losing my liberty. Never had you to lose – my greatest regret. Will not come to England. As the song says, there’s nothing you can save that can’t be saved. I apologise for everything. L
When Tash watched Rory lift the Blenheim trophy live on television she had a Kiwi at her side, but it wasn’t Lough Strachan. It was his head groom, a small ball of high-camp energy called Lemon, who reminded her rather quaintly of Mickey Rooney in
National Velvet
, although with far more piercings and a rather alarming bleached yellow Mohican sprouting from his otherwise conventional mousey short back and sides.
‘Is that why you’re called Lemon?’ She pointed to the hairy yellow shark’s fin.
‘No, my real name’s Lemmy. My parents are big Motörhead fans, yeah? Not great when you’re the Abba-loving only son of a sheep shearer growing up in the middle of nowhere, yeah?’
