The Country Escape (9 page)

When Dawn woke up late in the morning, she was thankful at least that the rain had stopped hammering on the roof – and indeed dripping through it to ping and plop into the many bowls and buckets that had been placed around her room.

It took her several minutes to get her bearings, her head pounding. Had she been concussed?

She had no idea how she’d got into bed or where she’d been before that. She was still wearing her Topshop dress, along with a threadbare dressing-gown and bed-socks, none of which were hers.

Someone had placed a halogen heater close to the bed, although they’d clearly crept in to switch
it off at some point, either to save on electricity or prevent an explosive watery short-circuit, or both. But the room was still warm enough for Dawn to slip out of bed without getting goose-bumps, stand still for a few moments to ensure her pounding head was with her, then pad across to draw back the sagging crocheted blanket that was acting as a curtain at the tiny, deep-set dormer window.
She was surprised to find the sun gleaming through the trees, casting the lake and parkland in gold.

Then she gasped. The big house had disappeared beneath white sheets. It looked as though somebody had gift-wrapped it in gauze. It was covered with scaffolding. How could they have done that in one morning?

She groped for her smart-phone, which predictably had no reception but could
tell her the time and day. Dawn sat down heavily on the bed. Somehow, she’d lost an entire day. What was more, the missing twenty-four hours had been St Valentine’s Day.

She closed her eyes, trying to piece together the time-lapse jigsaw: her arrival, catching up with Kat, coming to the farm, meeting horrid Russ, then heading off for a meal in the pub. Had there been a meal? There was something
to do with a dare, she was certain. And a bubbling green drink, although maybe she was thinking of a movie.

She couldn’t remember the details of her evening in the pub at all. Dawn had clubbed her way around London in a haze of alcopops and ecstasy for years and never suffered a blackout like this one. This place had a very weird and wonderful vibe, she decided nervously, like Oz meets
Salem.

The cry that came from outside her window made her jump so high she cracked her head on the low dormer ceiling. It was unearthly, agonized and urgent. Head and heart pounding, she tied the dressing-gown cord tighter and belted outside.

In the farmyard, Trevor the peacock regarded her beadily from the roof of Kat’s muddy car and let out another agonized cry.

Dawn sagged
against the door, wondering if she was going to pass out.

‘You’re awake!’ Kat appeared from one of the lopsided outbuildings, wheeling an overloaded barrow, scarlet hair escaping from a beanie. ‘I was about to check on you again. I tried waking you up with a cup of tea about an hour ago, but you were still totally dead.’

‘I lost Valentine’s Day! What the fuck happened?’

Laughing,
Kat abandoned the barrow and splashed across the yard. ‘You tried the scrumpy. Then Hopflask. Then brandy. Then – acting very much against advice – more Hopflask.’

‘And?’

‘Nobody survives Hopflask.’

‘Did I sing?’

‘Yup. Mostly Rihanna, but a smattering of Britney. But that was in the car on the way home, and you were only semi-conscious.’

‘Oh, fuck, I was that
wasted?’

‘Do you remember meeting Dair Armitage? You talked to him for hours.’

‘I remember absolutely nothing.’

‘Oh, shit. I only let Russ convince me to leave you two chatting so long because he thought you’d find out something about Eardisford’s new owner. We’re pretty certain Dair knows more than he’s letting on.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Kat’s big green
eyes looked both guilty and frustrated. ‘Jed the chef heard a rumour that the estate had been bought by someone called Seth from Yorkshire. When he Googled, all he came up with was an eighteenth-century cricketer and an old character from
Emmerdale Farm
. The story’s probably a totally false trail, but the estate is definitely under new ownership and Dair knows who’s bought it.’

Dawn rubbed
her aching temples and eyed her friend apologetically. ‘Even if Dair told me everything, I wouldn’t have a clue.’ She closed one eye as a brief, unpleasant flashback hit her. ‘Was he carrying a gun?’

‘Yup. Small, bald, yellow teeth, voice like Frankie Boyle.’

Dawn screwed up her face. ‘No – I only remember the gun. And nice dogs. And a chin.’

‘That’s the one. I should warn
you, he is now totally in love with you – look.’ She pointed above Dawn’s head.

Dawn glanced up and let out a scream as she saw two dead birds swinging from a hook.

‘I
never
get a brace of pheasant,’ Kat told her. ‘You are something special. He’s called in twice already this morning. I’ve told him you were meditating.’

‘How quickly can you get me to the station? And you’re
packing too. I’m taking you out of this place, Kat. You’ve changed. You used to be so…’

‘Suicidally unhappy?’

‘Before that. You were cocky, full of life… you’d do anything for a dare.’

‘What am I now?’

Striking a pose by the wheelbarrow, Kat had mud on one cheek and so much straw and dust in her beanie it looked like a termite mound on her head. The hair that was escaping,
red as a rose petal, highlighted her winter paleness. Her wellies were patched up with electrical tape and she was wearing a sweatshirt promoting sheep wormers. She looked curiously, eccentrically beautiful.

Dawn gazed at her for a long time, hangover pinching, and saw that the big smile was no longer just a self-defence move. She had an incredible glow about her today. It was different
from the old glow – gentler, more slow-burning, curiously serene – but it was undeniably there. She was genuinely relaxed. ‘You’re very rural,’ she said lamely.

Kat took her hand. ‘Let’s check there’s enough hot water for a shower and get you some breakfast. Then we can go riding with my friend Tina, if you’re up to it.’

Dawn wasn’t sure she was capable of putting a spoon into her
mouth, let alone her foot into a stirrup, but it was amazing what a hot shower, a three-egg omelette and mountains of toast could achieve.

By the time they were walking through the dappled sunlight of the woods, trailed by the snuffling, panting pack of aged Lake Farm dogs, she had a real spring in her step, which turned into a nervous jog when Kat pointed out all the disturbed earth where
the wild boar had been rooting. ‘There’s a seriously big male round here – the females are mostly at the other end of the estate; they live in groups called sounders, but the males winter out in this wood. You can hear them fighting at night sometimes. That and the stag bellowing – that’s his handiwork.’ She pointed at a tree stripped of bark. ‘I’ve not seen him this year, but Russ has. He’s as
big as an ox with antlers like a dozen bayonets.’

Tina’s little stableyard was at the far end of the village, and they stopped off at the tiny Eardisford church graveyard en route so that Kat could put fresh flowers in the little vase on Constance’s grave. Eardisford’s last chatelaine had been buried in the Mytton family plot in a private ceremony to which Kat had not been invited. Yet
she was now the only one who visited the grave regularly. Today she had brought a spray of snowdrops.

‘Constance loved them. They’re late this year.’ She cleared away the dead leaves from the plinth and read the lettering. ‘We had the same birthday. She thought that was wonderful.’ She looked up at Dawn, eyes bright. ‘I told her what happened with Nick, stuff I haven’t told anybody.’

Dawn was dying to ask what that was, but it seemed disrespectful when they were standing over the grave of the dear departed confidante, and Kat was talking again now.

‘She might have been old, but she was seriously sussed. Nothing shocked her. She said a lot worse went on among the army officers in India. She offered me sanctuary here as well as her animals. She left the farm in my
care on the understanding that I look after them – they’re all ancient, so it’s not a job with long-term prospects, but I can stay for as long as I live or until I marry. Constance talked me through it very carefully. She didn’t expect me to stay long, but she asked me to promise her that I would do two things before my tenure was up.’

‘And they were?’

‘To ride the Bolt.’

Dawn struck a pose, eyebrows shooting up.

‘Not
that
Bolt. It’s a horse-race thing. That’s why I’m learning to ride.’

‘And the other?’

‘To marry for love.’

‘But I thought that invalidated her legacy, the sanctuary, Lake Farm…’

‘She knew exactly what she was saying, Dawn. That’s the whole point. When I’m ready to get married, I won’t need a sanctuary any more.’

‘What about the animals? Won’t they need you?’

‘I’m not about to marry anybody, Dawn. They have nothing to worry about.’

‘So is Russ…?’

‘We’re taking it
very
slowly.’ The big, easy smile was back and she hugged herself happily before leading the way back through the churchyard.

Dawn wasn’t sure about the ‘Tireless’ nickname for Tina, the riding instructor,
who had a thin, tangled blond bob that looked like the mane of a toy lion, very dark bags under her eyes and seemed even sleepier than the baby strapped into the car seat on the far side of the arena rails, but she was certainly multi-tasking. As well as teaching her regular pupil and visiting friend, she was constantly on the phone or texting, checking on her kids – there was a small boy on
a pedal tractor and a brat on a pony to contend with too. When she wasn’t shouting at them, she was shouting at the girl groom to turn out or bring in horses, berating the two dogs that seemed intent on eating the muck heap or baiting Kat’s oldies, yelling instructions to a farrier who was hot-shoeing under an archway and – most of all – shouting encouragement at Kat.

‘Brilliant!’ Her voice
had the valley-crossing shrillness of a hunting horn, softened by a slight Herefordshire accent. ‘Feel that bum coming under you and the strength in your thighs! Inside leg to outside hand, remember? Don’t forget to breathe!’

‘I won’t.’ Kat moved into a ragged canter on Tina’s small, very speedy pony. ‘I’m finally getting the hang of breathing.’

Dawn noted that while her friend might
be breathing okay, she was riding appallingly. She knew Kat had been learning for months, but she was totally uncoordinated, losing all her natural grace and clinging on like a kid on a banana raft being towed through big waves. She got maximum points for enthusiasm and effort, but none for balance or rhythm, and Tina was clearly struggling to make headway despite heaping on praise.

‘You’re
doing brilliantly! We’ll have you in the Ladies’ Race at the point-to-point at this rate. Keep your leg on and go large.’ She took a call on her phone and started squawking at somebody about a hunt meet.

Dawn, who had hoped to go for a gentle hack alongside the river, let her cobby little horse walk around the sand school while she took advantage of the phone signal to check her messages,
which conveniently got her out of flying around at full tilt as Kat was doing.

‘You’ll have to go a lot faster than this to ride the Bolt!’ Tina called. ‘That’s barely working canter.’

Dawn took a discreet photo of Kat flying past with her arms around the pony’s neck, about to text it to the Watford posse, then stopped herself. Kat didn’t deserve to be made a fool of. She was determined
to do this and she needed loyalty and support. She also needed a better riding instructor. Having wandered out of the sand school to sniff her baby’s nappy, Tina had left the gate open and the pony Kat was riding charged straight through it and headed back to its stable. To her credit, Kat found this incredibly funny and promised to work hard on her brakes next time.

‘So what exactly is
the Bolt?’ Dawn asked Kat, after the lesson had come to its premature halt and they walked along the sunken lane that led back to the village.

‘It’s Mytton family tradition, although nobody’s tried it for years, not since Constance, I think. The idea is to gallop from one end of the estate at Duke’s Wood to the Hereford road at the other between the quarter chimes of the church clock. It’s
about three miles, so fifteen minutes should be easy at a good hunting pace, but the horse and rider have to swim across a three-acre lake, which makes it almost impossible. Generations of Mytton men have tried and failed to make the time and win the Eardisford Purse, including Constance’s father, Charles. Only a handful succeeded.’

‘What’s the Eardisford Purse?’

‘I never asked.’

‘Sounds bloody dangerous. Why would she dare you to do that, especially if she knew about your fear of water, and what happened with Nick? The accident… the river…’ She trailed off.

‘She wanted me to start living again, especially so because she was dying. I’m sure she thought she’d live to see it, but I started learning to ride and just wasn’t good enough. I’m still not.’

‘You’ll get the hang of it soon,’ Dawn said encouragingly.

‘Not for the Bolt. Especially not on Sri.’

‘The horse with the funny ears?’

‘Sri hasn’t been ridden for years, but it’s what Constance wanted. She rode a Marwari horse when she did it. She set a new record. I don’t think I’ll ever do it. Even supposing I can get the hang of riding, I’m too scared to swim the lake. I
can’t even row on it without having a panic attack.’

‘Was what happened in the river with Nick really an accident?’ Dawn asked quietly.

Kat threw a stick for one of the dogs. ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’

Trying to hide how hurt she was that Kat would rather confide in a nonagenarian nutcase with a penchant for impossible challenges than herself, Dawn went into
an over-reactive flurry of ‘No worry, of course, sure! Not a problem!’

Kat quickly changed the subject to Marwari horses, the rare Indian breed that Constance had been instrumental in introducing to Great Britain to help guarantee its future. ‘They were almost driven into extinction during British occupation – the army preferred Thoroughbreds, and thought the Marwari a common native that
was only suited for hard labour. But they’re a brilliant ridden horse, with the endurance of an Arab and the fearlessness of an Iberian. They’re proud too – they’d go into battle without looking back if you asked them to, but that loyalty has to be earned. Sri totally ignored me for six months.’