Nothing to Lose (28 page)

September, as well as being warm enough to warrant It’s A Scorcha!’ headlines in the tabloids, had also, for Jasmine, been wondrously idle. True to form, Damon and his boys were running well behind on the refurbishment of the stadium, so she’d had little to do. Well, she thought, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d had nothing at all to do as a bookmaker, but absolutely tons to do otherwise.

There’d been the showdown with Andrew – not to mention her parents – and then her meetings with Peg about putting Ampney Crucis well and truly on the map once the Benny Clegg Stadium reopened. And, of course, there’d been Sebastian.

‘So . . .’ Clara’s voice was drowsy, only just audible above the sleepy rush of the waves and the crying of the gulls. ‘You’ve heard from him again, have you?’

Jasmine smiled to herself. ‘I had another letter this morning. ’

‘How quaintly old-fashioned,’ Clara yawned. ‘I don’t know anyone who writes letters any more. Everyone uses e-mail or mobile phones.’

‘As I haven’t got e-mail and he doesn’t have my mobile number,’ Jasmine said, ‘he would have found that a bit difficult. Anyway, he likes writing letters. So do I. And he sends me doughnuts on same-day delivery.’

‘Christ! Coals to Newcastle or what? Why on earth should anyone send doughnuts to you – when you have a standing order for supplies from the Crow’s Nest Caff?’

‘These are different ones – any that he finds that have unusual fillings or toppings. He sent me coffee and walnut ones last week.’

Clara sighed. ‘God, the last of the true romantics. Whatever happened to bunches of roses and buckets of champagne?’

‘I prefer doughnuts,’ Jasmine grinned. ‘They’re far more personal.’

Meeting Sebastian in St Edith’s graveyard on August Bank Holiday Monday had been a revelation; meeting him again later at the stadium had been like a dream. A dream, Jasmine had to admit, which had turned a bit sour when she’d realised that he was the delectable Brittany’s other half. But then, as he wasn’t thinking of her, plain old Jasmine, as a serious contender in the romance stakes, Brittany Frobisher hadn’t been overly important in the equation.

And anyway, Sebastian had just been so easy to talk to, and he’d understood her sadness, and – and it was a huge plus, of course – he was, without doubt, the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life.

Clara had been hopping mad at missing out on this tall, lean, tanned vision, with his floppy brown hair and ice-blue eyes, and his lovely crooked grin, and the freckles on his nose . . . Clara, it must be said, was now getting a little bit tired of hearing about them.

‘It’s the sort of thing you should have done years ago,’ she’d groaned when Jasmine was telling her about how sensationally wonderful Sebastian was for the five hundredth time. ‘When we were at school. Getting crushes on the most glamorous boys in the sixth form, writing their names on your pencil case, doing that love word-puzzle thing where you cross off corresponding letters of your name and his – that sort of thing. Even if you knew they wouldn’t look at you twice.’

‘Cheers,’ Jasmine had said sharply. ‘I do know where I stand, without you having to remind me.’

‘Oh, God, Jas – sorry. I didn’t mean –’

‘Yes, you did. Brittany Frobisher is constantly in the Top Ten Most Beautiful Women in Britain. Sebastian is stinking rich – not to mention drop-dead desirable. I’m well aware that I’m none of those. We’re just friends.’

And they were, Jasmine thought now, feeling the sun tingle on her bare arms. They’d been strangers who had become friends in the cemetery when he’d been so kind about Grandpa, and were still friends again later when she’d dropped the drinks in Peg’s office. That had been so embarrassing, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been out in the kitchen, mixing the lemon barley, thinking about Sebastian, mourning the fact that they’d never meet again then she’d walked into the office and – well!

And in the month since, he’d written her lovely chatty funny letters, with little cartoon drawings around the edges illustrating some of the things he’d been doing – and he seemed to do an awful lot. She’d been rather disturbed to discover that his parents were
the
Gillespies who owned the monstrous art deco greyhound stadium in Bixford. It seemed that this very fact – plus, of course, his involvement with Brittany – would rule the Benny Clegg Stadium out of any sort of contention for the Frobisher Platinum Trophy. However, because she hadn’t wanted Sebastian to be cast as the villain of the piece she hadn’t mentioned this to Peg or Allan or Roger. Neither had she mentioned Ewan’s brief to seduce Brittany, should it be necessary, to Clara.

‘And so,’ Clara wriggled down her skimpy bikini top even further, ‘what does Andrew make of all this postal snogging?’

‘It’s not like that – unfortunately. And after what Andrew said about my parents he knows he’ll be treading on very thin ice if he even
thinks
anything controversial in future.’

‘Jas – sweetie – I know I’ve said this a million times, but you had the perfect opportunity to dump Andrew that night. Why the hell are you still with him?’

‘I don’t know really,’ Jasmine sighed. ‘It’s just that when he’d suggested we buy a house together it seemed well, cruel, to tell him that I didn’t think I even wanted to stay with him. I mean, it’s not his fault, is it?’

Clara slithered down in her chair. ‘Give me strength! You’d forgive Attila the Hun for indiscretions! Of course it’s Andrew’s fault – he’s a complete prat. And you’re not stupid; you surely must realise that he’s only hanging on to you because you’re suddenly a lady of substance.

Jasmine cheerfully patted her ample thighs. ‘I’ve always been that.’

Clara sighed heavily. ‘You know exactly what I mean, Jas. He’s a money-grabbing toad. Now, unless you’re going to talk about the glorious Sebastian, please shut up and let a dynamic career woman catch up on her sleep. Oh, and – ’ she lifted one frame of the Raybans and squinted across the veranda – ‘I do hope you’ve realised that Mrs Seb Gillespie sounds a damn sight better than Mrs Andrew Pease?’

‘Oh pul-eease!’ Jasmine pulled a face. ‘Now who’s being infantile? Not to mention anti-feminist. I’m always going to be Jasmine Clegg.’

And that, she thought, was probably the whole sad truth. The showdown with Andrew, weeks ago now – on the day that she’d heard her mother cooing from behind the windbreak – had certainly changed the relationship. She’d lost her temper completely, and absolutely refused to share the feather mattress or the poppy and daisy duvet ever since. However, Andrew was still clinging on tenaciously to their engagement, and Jasmine was still dithering over the pros and cons.

Andrew had dared to suggest, that night, that Jasmine must have been totally mistaken about Yvonne and – even more outrageously – that it was her father who was having an extramarital fling. Philip, according to Andrew, who said he’d been treated to chapter and verse by a heartbroken Yvonne, had been having an affair for years, and that was the real reason behind the separate bedrooms. Andrew had found out about it, he’d said, when he’d called at the Chewton Estate house and found Yvonne in tears over another potential public humiliation at a council dinner, and had been sworn to secrecy. Yvonne, he’d maintained, hadn’t wanted Jasmine to know.

Jasmine, however, had scoffed at the whole idea. She’d
known
it was her mother’s voice on the beach, and she’d heard her mother whispering into the telephone, hadn’t she? And who in their right mind would ever fancy her father? And Andrew had to admit that Yvonne hadn’t actually been able to name names, but that the Ampney Crucis gossips had had Moira Cook, councillor for Parks and Cemeteries, down as the main contender for some time.

Moira Cook, as Jasmine had sharply pointed out, was practically in her dotage and had been spotted buying incontinence knickers in the Bournemouth branch of Boots. Anyway, Jasmine had said frostily, both Yvonne and Philip were far too old to be even thinking about sex, let alone doing it. The whole concept was disgusting.

‘Then why not ask them yourself?’ Andrew had snorted, red in the face. ‘Get it straight from the horse’s mouth!’

‘Not a nice way to describe my mother,’ Jasmine had smiled in the darkness. ‘Even if it is quite apt – and especially not after you said she was top totty.’

‘I did not! I said a lot of my workmates said they wouldn’t mind giving her – that is – um – thought that she was very attractive – for her age, of course . . .’

And then after they’d argued about that, she and Andrew had argued even more about spending her bookmaking profits on buying a prenuptial house. She’d maintained fiercely that she was more than happy in the beach hut – and Andrew had retorted that he would never be able to hold up his head at the dealership again if he had to live in a shed.

And that, Jasmine thought cheerfully, watching the waves roll gently onto the pale sand, was how they’d left it. The tiny diamond remained on her engagement finger, mainly because, thanks to Sebastian’s exotic doughnut supplies, she’d recently gained a few more pounds and nothing short of bolt croppers would remove it. In fact, she reckoned, it would probably take bolt croppers to remove Andrew from her life too.

She had, a few days after Andrew’s revelations, asked both her parents, separately of course, if there was any truth in the rumours. Their reactions, if she hadn’t been quite so personally involved, had been quite interesting.

Philip, in the Crumpled Horn, demanding to know where Jasmine had heard such salacious rumours had then choked on his shepherd’s pie and turned purple and had had to be revived with three fingers of whisky. Once breathing again, he’d said that he and Yvonne had been happily married for over thirty years, and that he would never, ever, cheat on his wedding vows. Jasmine, knowing that he cheated on his expenses and his tax returns, hadn’t been totally convinced. However, the thought of Philip, pompous and pot-bellied, rolling naked with the crepey Moira Cook did seem to be way beyond the bounds of even the most fevered imagination.

Yvonne, in her turn, had said that yes, she may have said that Philip was an unfaithful bastard to Andrew on that occasion, but she’d been in a temper with Philip at the time because he was away on another golfing weekend, and she was quite, quite sure that Moira Cook, or any other council crone come to mention it, wasn’t in the frame. When Jasmine had rather unwisely suggested that Yvonne, too, may be having a bit of a fling, her mother had giggled and said that unless Mel Gibson moved to Ampney Crucis she was afraid she’d be staying monogamous.

It had all been rather unsatisfactory, really. And now, Jasmine thought, watching the gulls sweep lazily over the shoreline, picking off tiny crabs caught in the shallows of the receding tide, even she was wondering if she may just have been mistaken about the voice from the windbreak. She hadn’t imagined the telephone call, though. It was all rather perplexing, but as her parents didn’t seem to be on the verge of divorce, she’d decided to let matters lie. She had far more important realities occupying her mind to waste time on speculations.

The decision she’d made to put Ampney Crucis on the greyhound fraternity’s map had been down to the meeting with Sebastian as well. Obliquely, of course, but still because of him. Once she’d discovered his Bixford connections, she’d realised that whatever miracle rabbits Damon Puckett and his boys pulled out of the refurbishment hat, the Benny Clegg Stadium would never hold a candle to the Gillespies’ super-duper multimillion pound glitterati racetrack.

Therefore, because they obviously wouldn’t be getting to stage the Frobisher Platinum Trophy at Ampney Crucis, she felt the least they could do would be to bring in more people – punters, visitors, owners and trainers – from outside the area. People like that family from London whose dog had won after Ewan had tied the headscarf on the hare, for example. There had been a bit of a stewards’ inquiry after the race, but the result had been allowed to stand – mainly because there was absolutely nothing in the Greyhound Racing Association handbook about whether or not the hare should be dressed or undressed – and the London couple had gone off proudly with their little trophy and promised to come back.

So, without consulting Peg or Roger or Allan – Jasmine had felt that at their age any build-up of expectation followed swiftly by disappointment may prove fatal – she’d contacted the GRA about the possibility of the Benny Clegg Stadium staging a Six-Pack Night every Saturday. The GRA had responded swiftly with a huge yes, and had sent her a bulky package containing everything she needed to know. It had arrived this morning, at the same time as Sebastian’s letter, and Jasmine had propped it on the overcrowded chiffonier and kissed the postman.

All she had to do now was sell this idea to the rest of the board members and start the advertising campaign, and then the problem of dark, wet, winter nights at the stadium with few punters and, for her, little income, would be solved at a stroke. She felt it was a huge step forward – and one which a year ago the Jasmine Clegg who’d worked for Watertite Windows and had been extremely grateful to Andrew for a fumbling and unsatisfactory night of one-sided passion, would never have had the guts to take.

‘Clara?’ She leaned precariously from her deck chair. ‘Are you asleep?’

‘Trying hard. Shut up. Unless you want to talk about sex.’

Jasmine didn’t. She didn’t have any to talk about. ‘I just wondered if you knew where Ewan was today.’

‘Why? Oh – do you want to talk about our sex life?’

‘Not really, thanks. I just needed to get everyone together at the stadium later on. Peg, Roger and Allan are no problem – they’ll be there anyway, stalking Damon and his boys and getting in the way. And Bunny and Gilbert’ll be fishing off the slipway behind Eddie Deebley’s. Finding Ewan is the problem . . .’

‘Not for me, it isn’t,’ Clara said smugly. ‘I know exactly where to lay my hands on him.’

Jasmine groaned. Clara and Ewan were hopelessly uninhibited. ‘Don’t be smutty. It’s too hot – and I’m celibate so it’s not fair. So, where is he?’

‘London, for a few days,’ Clara said without opening her eyes. ‘He’s on a mission.’