Prima Donna (15 page)

It wasn’t like she needed the money any more. She was already rich enough to never have to work again and still live like an empress, but if her career ended now – at the precocious
age of twenty-four – well, what was she supposed to do with the rest of her life? How could she
justify
herself? She’d only just begun. She couldn’t be looking at the
finish line already. She just couldn’t.

She felt the tears bubble up again. As much as she tried to keep them hidden they were never more than two blinks away, and the outer edges of her eyes were red raw from the permanent
dampness.

There was a brief rap at the door and Violet breezed in looking like Jayne Russell in
The Outlaw
.

Pia instantly bit her lip hard. Why did she have to arrive now, moments after Pia’d learnt she’d just lost a million dollars from her annual earnings? She sniffed lightly and
composed her features back into a scowl.

‘Finally!’ she said scornfully.

Violet didn’t respond. She clearly felt no need to explain her protracted absence. After all, it wasn’t like Pia was going anywhere.

Pia swivelled her silky head and watched her cross the room. There was something about Violet that commanded attention. She seemed stately, luscious and barely tamed, like a goddess of
fertility. Physically, she was Pia’s opposite – an Amazon to her nubile nymph.

‘Where have you been?’ Pia asked tetchily, feeling like a rusty old dowager confined to her bed. ‘I was expecting you
days
ago.’

‘I got held up,’ Violet replied breezily, taking up a position at the foot of the bed.

‘At gunpoint, I hope,’ Pia muttered.

Violet raised an eyebrow. She was going to enjoy this.

There was a stiff silence. ‘What?’ Pia snapped.

Violet tipped her head. ‘Anything to say?’

Pia looked at her through slitted eyes. ‘No.’

Violet paused. ‘Okay,’ she shrugged casually, walking back towards the door. ‘I’ll leave you, then. You look like you’re withering nicely.’

‘Where are you going?’ Pia demanded. ‘You’ve only just got here.’

‘You knew the terms,’ she said, opening the door and stepping into the hallway.

Pia watched it shut. Again. Leaving her alone. Again.

‘Oh for Chrissakes! I freaking apologize!’ she screamed at it, feeling hot tears of frustration fall.

Violet opened it slowly. ‘Hardly the most gracious apology I’ve ever heard,’ she drawled, one hand on her hip.

‘I never promised it would be gracious,’ Pia snarled, trembling from head to foot with nervy agitation, a frightened aggression that made her look like a cornered animal. Violet
almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

‘That’s okay. Your tears will suffice,’ she said, smiling victoriously as she walked past the bed and pulled a yellow silk curtain across one half of the window to keep the low
sun from dazzling Pia. A shaft of sunlight was edging across the bed and would, within a few minutes, be at her eye level. She looked back at Pia as though pleased by this random act of
consideration. ‘There. Now isn’t that better?’

She walked back across the room and stood by Pia’s feet. Mrs Bremar walked past Pia’s room, carrying a pile of laundry, and Violet drew herself up.

‘And how are you feeling?’ she asked brightly – and clearly for the housekeeper’s benefit.

Pia glared at her. ‘How do you think?’

Violet ignored her fury and looked down, examining Pia’s foot. ‘The swelling’s gone down a bit, which is good, and the colour’s nice and pink,’ she murmured.
‘Can you feel your toes?’

Pia nodded sulkily.

‘Do you feel any tightness or soreness in the cast? Does it feel like one area’s rubbing more than anywhere else?’

Pia shook her head.

‘Excellent. You’re doing very well.’

Pia snorted in derision at Violet’s low bar. ‘Very well? Hrrmph. I appreciate perfection isn’t something
you
strive to achieve on a daily basis, but how exactly can
the cast not rubbing be considered progress? It’s just
nothing
.’

Violet smiled at her with a saintly patience that didn’t match the contempt in her eyes. ‘On the contrary, Pia,’ she said in a patronizing tone. ‘At this point in your
recovery, it’s exactly what we want to see. Clear, fresh, pink tissue, minimal swelling. It all indicates everything’s healing nicely inside at the musculoskeletal level,’ she
said, keeping her voice that bit too sweet. ‘Now, we’ll just do a few proprioceptive exercises before supper to boost your circulation and keep up muscle memory. It’ll stop you
getting restless as well. Now that all the surgical drugs have left your system and you’re fully alert again, you might find yourself becoming more restless and sleeping gets harder. This
will just help fatigue the muscles a bit, and minimize atrophy.’

She lifted Pia’s leg at the knee, supporting the cast with both hands, and – being careful not to manipulate or rotate the foot – gently levered it in towards her body.

Pia sighed reflexively. It felt so good to move. For someone who defined herself through movement, physical confinement felt akin to torture. She closed her eyes and let herself be bent and
stretched and pushed and pulled. First one leg, then the other. She was used to working with physiotherapists at the company – although
they
were specialists.

‘How does that feel?’ Violet asked, as she swapped Pia’s legs over again.

‘It’ll do until the proper physio gets here,’ she said curtly. ‘When’s she arriving anyway?’

‘In a few days, hopefully.’

‘That’s just great. And in the meantime I’m stuck with – I don’t know, what are you? A horse whisperer?’

Violet flicked her eyes up at Pia, amused rather than tormented. ‘I wish,’ she chuckled. ‘It would make my life a lot easier. Rest assured, I’m just an equine
physiotherapist.’

‘And how do you become one of those?’ Pia asked disdainfully. ‘A subscription to
Horse & Hound
and a massage certificate?’

Violet laughed again. ‘You’ve got a quick wit for a dancer,’ she quipped, equally cruelly. ‘No, not quite. I’ve got a degree in human physiotherapy and I’m a
chartered physiotherapist. I practised for seven years as a human physio before switching over to equine work. You have to have a minimum of two years’ human experience before you’re
accepted on the course, so I guess you might say I’m actually overqualified to be working on
you
.’ Like Will, she made it sound like she was doing Pia the favour, dragging
herself down from the lofty heights of horse anatomy to deal with a mere human.

Violet rested her leg back on the bed and looked up at Pia, a satisfied glow in her eyes. ‘Right, well, that’s you done for now. Those exercises should tire you out nicely for
tonight, and we’ll do some more work in the morning. Little and often is the key. Is there anything else I can do for you while I’m here?’

‘Send Mrs Bremar in,’ Pia instructed. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

‘I wish I could, but Mrs Bremar’s gone to the shops.’ She narrowed her eyes.

‘No, she hasn’t. She just walked past. I saw her.’

Violet tipped her head to the side, sympathetically. ‘You must be imagining things. You’re still on a lot of meds. I’ll take you.’

Pia couldn’t think of anything much worse. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll wait for her to get back.’

‘Ah, but she won’t be back for hours yet,’ Violet smiled. ‘And I’m so glad to be of assistance,’ she said sarcastically, lifting Pia’s tiny frame and
shifting her from the bed to the wheelchair before she could protest.

She pushed Pia across the snow-white carpet into the vast en suite.

‘Here, let me help you,’ she said in a bullying tone. Pia was struggling to hold her foot up off the floor because, even with her incredible balance, the weighty cast threw her off.
Violet pulled up Pia’s nightie, eased her knickers down and carefully lowered her onto the loo.

Pia’s jaw clenched furiously at the indignity of relying on this uppish woman’s help. Eleven years of competing in ballet – in the training school and then in the company
– had taught her there was no solidarity among women, and she felt that more than ever right here and now, when she was weak and broken. This woman was supposed to be a nursing figure, but
she behaved like a competitor, a rival, like they were two chess queens going into battle.

‘Well, you don’t need to stand there and listen. Go out,’ Pia ordered abruptly.

Violet, a vicious smile on her face, sailed out just as a shower of gravel scattered against the windows, startling both women. A car careered to an abrupt halt outside.

A door slammed shut and they heard the bell start ringing insistently downstairs in the hall.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Violet exclaimed, running across the bedroom to the window. She pulled the sunny curtain back and heaved the sash window open.

Pia watched her from the loo, as she leant out and looked onto the drive.

‘Holy crap!’ Violet muttered.

‘What? What is it?’ Pia called from the bathroom, desperate to see for herself.

The bell stopped ringing suddenly and Pia heard another door slam. Voices raised.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’ shouted one male voice. Will’s? There was a pause, but she could still hear movement, muffed, like something being
thrown across the gravel. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’

‘She nearly died! Because of you! She nearly died!’

‘
Who
did?’

‘Jessy!’

‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!’ Scorn.

‘She found the drugs your little pet left behind. Just as we were crossing back into the EU. She swallowed them. She had to bloody swallow them. Because of you!’ There was a pause in
the shouting, but still a noise, like scuffling.

Pia was nearly falling off the loo trying to hear.

‘You can stick your job! I’ll have nothing more to do with you. You can take this as formal notice for termination of our contract. You’ve got three months to get your horses
out of my stables and, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay the hell away from me!’

A car door opened.

‘Oh! And while we were trying to save Jessy’s life, the horsebox was nicked – with the horses still in the back.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll leave you to explain that to the insurers, shall I?’

Pia heard the car door slam shut and gravel pepper the windows again as the car sped back down the long carriage drive.

‘Tanner! Wait!’ Violet shouted, waving after the disappearing car. ‘Come back!’ And she raced across the room, her long skirt flying about her endless thighs.

‘Violet! Wait!’ Pia echoed as Violet flashed past. ‘Help me back into the chair. You can’t leave me here.’

Violet braked sharply and stared at her patient for a moment. ‘Oh, you’ll keep.’ She winked, before disappearing out of sight, after him.

Tanner was sitting in his favourite threadbare armchair by the Aga when Violet walked into the kitchen. He was propping his head up with one hand, a whisky in the other;
Biscuit, his working retriever, lying blissfully across his feet.

‘What on earth came over you?’ she asked bluntly, without any preamble. ‘You
assaulted
him.’

‘Nothing he didn’t deserve,’ Tanner mumbled darkly, keeping his eyes on the amber in his glass.

‘Oh I see. Beating up your boss and jacking in your job is all in a day’s work, is it?’

‘I haven’t jacked in my job. I’m just not working for
him
any more. I don’t need him. He was only ever the easy option anyway. I’ll build the business away
from him.’

Violet stood against the door jamb and absorbed his defiance and defensive body language. Whether he would admit it or not, Plumbridge Stud’s fortunes relied almost entirely on Will
Silk’s patronage and finding a new breeder and player with Silk’s deep pockets would be easier said than done. She couldn’t imagine what could be so bad that he’d beat up
his boss and dump his business.

‘You’re cutting your nose off to spite your face,’ she said, not frightened of contradicting him. Her session with Pia had left her in a buoyant and feisty mood.

‘I’m happy to do it if it gets him out of our lives,’ he shrugged nonchalantly.

‘You’re a damned fool,’ she said, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her ample chest. ‘Just tell me what happened. Maybe the situation isn’t beyond
repair.’

‘I don’t
want
it to be repaired,’ Tanner countered furiously, his eyes blazing. ‘And I don’t need
you
to sort it out. You’re my partner, not
my mother.’

Partner? Not girlfriend; not lover. Partner, as though they were business associates.

‘Well, as my
partner
,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell me where you’ve been for the past ten days. The tournament finished a week
and a half ago.’

He guessed from the tone of her voice that she had found his absence suspicious. If only.

‘Jessy got sick,’ he said flatly. ‘Rob and I had to look after her.’

‘Rob’s a vet,’ she said, pointing out the obvious. ‘And while I’m sure there are those who would argue Jessy has an arse the size of a horse . . .’

‘Rob was the best option available to me – the only option, in fact.’

‘Right. After all, why use a French hospital when you’ve got a
vet
onside?’ she drawled.

‘We couldn’t afford to get the authorities involved,’ he muttered, ignoring her sarcasm.

Violet paused. ‘Why?’

Tanner looked at her. He didn’t want to be repeating all this. The experience had been shattering. Jessy had suffered heart failure and he wasn’t sure Rob was ever going to forgive
him for forcing him to treat her in a motel room with only the drugs in his vet’s bag.

‘Alonso left a stash of coke in the truck. Jessy found it at the EU border and swallowed it,’ he said simply.

Violet paled. ‘My God – is she okay?’

‘She will be.’ He drained his glass.

‘Are you?’ she asked, in a gentler voice.

‘I will be, now that Silk and his acolytes are out of our lives.’