Rumor Has It (43 page)

    Then a door opened upstairs and Max appeared at the top of the staircase in his dressing gown.

    'God, I'm sorry.' Tilly wished she could evaporate on the spot.

    'Well, at least it's only you.' Max looked relieved. 'You said midnight.'

    'Erin was ill. I'm really sorry… I'll go out again…'

    Max shook his head. 'It's OK. He was just leaving anyway. Um, we'll be down in a minute.'

    Mortified, she waited in the kitchen. True to his word, Max came downstairs less than three minutes later, followed by a clearly embarrassed Tom Lewis.

    'Well, this is awkward.' Max came straight to the point. 'Look, can we just be honest here? This is the first time. I thought we'd be undisturbed. Tom's leaving Harleston Hall at the end of term. He's moving up to teach at a school in Dundee in September. For his sake, I hope we can trust you to keep this… tonight… to yourself.'

    Tilly flushed. As if she would broadcast it. 'Of course I will. I won't say a word to anyone, least of all Lou.'

    'Thanks,' said Tom. 'Right, well, I'll be off. Bye. Don't worry, I'll see myself out.'

    'I hope your bike's all right.' It was a toss-up which of them was blushing more, Tom or herself.

    'I'm sure it'll be fine.' With a brief smile he was gone.

    'Oh God, I'm so sorry,' Tilly groaned again when the front door had closed behind him.

    'Hey, he was leaving anyway. He turned up ten minutes after you left to meet Erin.'

    So at least they'd had an hour and a half together before she'd turned up to ruin everything. 'I can't believe he's gay. Oh God, Lou
told
me he'd broken up with Claudine. Is that why? Did she find out?'

    Max shook his head. 'Claudine never was his girlfriend. Just his flatmate. She helped out when Tom had to produce a partner.'

    Even these days, the pressure was still on for a lot of people to conceal their sexuality. Tilly thought of all the school mothers point lessly lusting over and flirting with their children's superfit teacher.

    'Oh, Max. And now he's moving to Scotland. Do you really like him?'

    He shrugged. 'What's not to like? But we both knew nothing could ever develop. Poor Lou, it was traumatic enough when she thought her mother might make a play for him.'

    He had a point. As a feeble attempt at a peace offering, Tilly handed over one of the steaming parcels of chips. 'Here, these are for you and Betty.' Another thought struck her. 'Poor Kaye too. She really did fancy Tom.'

    'I know. Let's not tell her, eh?'

    'Probably best. Everyone she's attracted to turns out to bat for the other side. Oh God…' Seized by an even horribler thought, Tilly exclaimed, 'Don't say Parker's gay too.'

    Max grinned and ate a chip. 'Don't worry; some of us have better gaydar than my ex-wife. Parker's definitely straight.'

    Well, allegedly stunning. Not that Tilly had ever been lucky enough to check the place out for herself. Still, there were worse ways to spend a Saturday night than at home on a comfortable sofa, with a widescreen TV in front of you and a cute dog on your lap. Outside, rain was bucketing down and gusts of wind were rattling the branches of the beech trees.

    Whereas inside, it was warm and dry and one of her all-time favorite films was about to start on TV.

    With impeccable timing Betty stretched, jumped off her lap, and trotted over to the living-room door. She turned and gave Tilly a meaningful look.

    'Fine, but you have to be quick.' Unfolding her legs, she went over to let Betty through. The trouble with dogs was they didn't ap preciate how much you hated to miss the first few minutes of a film while they snuffled around the garden in search of the perfect place to pee. As she opened the kitchen door a smattering of rain hit Tilly in the face. 'Yuck, I'll wait here. No hanging about out there, OK?' Hopefully with weather like this, Betty would do whatever she had to do and shoot back inside, pronto.

    The little dog obediently slipped past her into the darkness of the back garden.

    'Faster than a speeding bullet,' Tilly called after her.

    Afterwards, she wondered if saying that had somehow tempted fate. One second, all you could hear was the wind and the rain. The next, a volley of high-pitched barks rang out, there were sounds of a furious scuffle and Betty shot across the grass, closely followed by a fox. Letting out a shout of alarm, Tilly glimpsed the fox's long bushy tail as it chased after Betty,
faster than a speeding bullet
, down the lawn and into the depths of the bushes at the end of the garden.

    Oh God,
Betty…

    Tilly raced barefoot after them but they were gone, over the drystone wall and vanishing into the woods beyond. Panting and panicking, she yelled out Betty's name over and over again. Last week a big old dog fox had managed to tunnel into the chicken coop over at Barton's Farm and had left sixteen chickens dead. Poor Esme Barton had been inconsolable. Foxes were nasty creatures who killed for the fun of it, and Betty was only small, a third of the size of the one that had just scared her half to death and chased her over the wall.

    Did foxes slaughter dogs too? Tilly's heart thump-thumped against her ribcage. She hadn't heard of such a thing happening. Then again, she was such a townie, she just didn't know.

    And it had to happen while Max was away. She raced back into the house, dragged on a pair of wellies, and found a torch in the kitchen drawer. It didn't work. After hunting high and low, she discovered Lou's Game Boy and with shaking fingers transferred the batteries from it to the torch. Right, leave the back door open in case Betty came home while she was out searching for her… oh please, please don't let the fox have ripped her to pieces…

    Twenty minutes later, Tilly was back again, soaked to the skin and hoarse from shouting Betty's name. Her throat was burning, she was dripping water all over the kitchen floor, and Betty still wasn't home. This was serious. Sick with worry and gasping for breath, she glugged down a mug of water and reached for the phone. There was no question that she needed help, but who to call? Ruin Nesh's birthday party by phoning Lou? Contact Max who was a hundred miles away? Kaye at the Randolph in Oxford? Or how about Erin, except she was still laid low with her virus…

    OK, she knew what she had to do. Tilly scrolled through the names stored on the phone until she reached the only one she could feasibly call. Erin might be ill but Fergus wasn't. He'd come over and help. Except Betty didn't know Fergus; if she were terrified and hiding or lying injured somewhere and heard a stranger shouting her name, would she creep out of the undergrowth and go to them?

    She might not, and they couldn't afford to take that risk. Whereas there was someone else Betty was so besotted with that she'd crawl over broken glass to reach him. Not unlike most of the single females in Roxborough.

    'Jack?' Tilly's voice cracked with emotion as he answered the phone. Rain dripped off her nose and she brushed it away with a shaking hand. 'I'm really sorry, but Betty's missing. Can you help me?'

    She didn't ask what she'd interrupted, what he'd been doing at ten o'clock on a Saturday night, and Jack didn't tell her. Nor did he waste any time. Having arrived less than eight minutes after her phone call, he listened grimly to Tilly's description of the fox chasing Betty out of the garden, and from his car fetched a far more powerful torch than her weedy one. 'Right, we'll start in the woods and spread out after that. Got your mobile on you?'

    Tilly nodded and patted her jacket pocket.

    'OK.' Putting up the collar of his jacket, Jack said, 'Let's go.'

    He was so strong and dependable. In a situation like this, when you were desperately in need of help, nobody did it better than Jack.

BY MIDNIGHT TILLY'S HOPES were fading fast. The rain was still hammering down, she'd never been wetter in her life, and the wind was howling like a wolf through the trees. There was still no sign of Betty. They'd been searching and calling for her non-stop and would surely have found her by now if she were alive.

    Oh God, it didn't bear thinking about. Lou would be devas tated… they all would. Blundering on through the darkness Tilly tried not to imagine how Betty might have suffered—sharp teeth sinking into her neck, blood spurting out, flesh being ripped—

    Phone ringing in her pocket. Fearing the worst, she scrabbled with the pocket flap and braced herself. In her mind's eye, Jack was crouching in the rain over an inert, lifeless body. She let it ring twice more, suffused with cowardice, postponing the moment when she'd have to hear him tell her that Betty was dead.

    'Yes?'

    'I've got her. She's safe.'

    The words reverberated through her brain. For a moment she wasn't sure she'd heard him right. Through chattering teeth, Tilly said, 'Is she alive?'

    'Alive and kicking and very muddy.' Jack sounded as if he were smiling. 'Come on, meet you back at the house.'

    Tilly ran all the way. Jack and Betty arrived two minutes later.

    'Oh Betty,
look
at you.' Bursting into tears of relief, she held out

her arms but Betty, predictably, preferred to stay in Jack's. 'Where have you
been
?'

    'She was trapped in a rabbit hole. Must've been running away from the fox when she fell down it, then couldn't manage to scramble up again. I called her name and heard this tiny bark,' said Jack. 'The grass was muf fling the sound. Then I had to reach right down, grab hold of her front paws, and haul her out. It was like helping a cow to give birth to a calf.'

    'Oh sweetie, how horrid for you.' Tilly lovingly stroked the little dog's ears; she was covered from head to foot in slimy mud. 'We need to get you into the bath.'

    Jack's mouth twitched. 'Thanks.'

    'Not you.' Tilly paused. 'But thank goodness you came over. Betty would have died if you hadn't found her. You saved her life.' The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized their significance. God, the irony of it. Rose had saved her parents' dog's life too and had died in the process.

    Jack didn't comment on this, thankfully. He simply glanced at her and said instead, 'I'll give you a hand.'

    Upstairs in the bedroom, they scrubbed and shampooed Betty between them in the roll-top bath. Less than keen on being sprayed with the shower attachment, Betty put up something of a squirmy struggle but after twenty minutes she was clean again. Jack wrapped her in a bath towel and gently patted her dry. Betty, exhausted by her exertions, was fast asleep within seconds.

    Downstairs, he lowered a gently snoring Betty into her basket. Catching a glimpse of herself reflected in the kitchen window, Tilly marveled at Jack's ability to look glistening and irresistible when wet, whilst she resembled a bedraggled refugee. Not that it mattered. She was past the stage of doing herself up for him.

    'Well, thanks again.' Now the drama was behind them she thrust Jack's coat at him, anxious to see him gone. 'I hope we didn't wreck your evening.'

    He took the waxed jacket from her. 'So I'm leaving now, am I? I've outlived my usefulness and you're kicking me out.'

    
Yes
. Because this isn't easy for me, you know.

    Aloud, Tilly said, 'It's late. You must want to get home.' Hastily, before he could say he was in no hurry, she added, 'I'm shattered.' And faked a yawn for good measure.

    The look Jack gave her signaled that he recognized a fake when he saw one. 'Tilly.' He shook his head slightly. 'Why are you still giving me such a hard time?'

    Oh God. 'I'm not, I'm just tired.' Moving towards the door, she opened it.
Please leave, please leave.

    Jack followed her to the door, then turned and placed a hand on the back of her neck. He bent his head, drawing her to him, and kissed her.

    It felt like coming home. The feel of his mouth on hers, warm and dry, was simultaneously the most perfect experience of her life and the most agonizing. It was all too much to handle, because her body wanted him but her brain was yelling that she couldn't—
abso
lutely couldn't
—let it happen. Her whole life she'd held back a part of herself for this reason. Fear of hurt meant she'd needed to be the one in control of any relationship, and up until now she'd achieved that. Loss of control was just too scary to contemplate, particularly when it involved someone who could have anyone they wanted, because why on earth, out of all the women in the world, would they choose you? Even now, while her heart was thumping crazily away and adrenaline was causing her whole body to tingle and fizz, she knew the subsequent untold misery would far outweigh the fleeting moments of joy.

    His hand sliding up from her neck to the back of her head, his other arm around her waist, Jack murmured, 'See? I'm not so bad, am I?'

    Tilly closed her eyes. It would be so easy to agree. She was bal ancing on a high-wire, teetering this way and that. The tiniest slip and she would be falling helplessly to the ground. And that wouldn't be something you'd easily recover from.