Well Groomed (82 page)

‘Oh God, he’s going for a swim!’ Ben groaned, covering his eyes.

The crowd was starting to cheer rather uncharitably as they saw another fall coming, but at the last minute, Hugo managed to gather up the unravelling knitting of reins in front of him and pull Snob around to the right on an accurate enough line to get him clambering out over the boat in an inelegant but effective fashion before pelting towards the Pick-ups.

On the stands Tash and Ben clutched each other for support and screamed with delight.

Ben was the first to recover.

‘Er – yup, jolly good that, huh? Sorry to grab you like that, Tash.’ He backed off and turned pink.

Puffing loudly, the Merediths’ au pair had clambered up on to the stands with a freshly changed Henry. Both Lotty and Josh, on Sophia’s far side, were wailing loudly now.

‘They both need the lavatory, Bernadette,’ Sophia announced before the poor girl had a chance to sit down. ‘Can you take them?’

‘But, Madame, there is ver’ long queues.’

‘Now!’ Sophia snapped.

‘
Oui
,
Madame
.’ Handing Henry over, she grabbed the kids and panted off again.

‘Good way for her to lose weight,’ Sophia said smugly, turning to Tash. ‘So are you marrying Niall or not?’

‘The truth is,’ Tash stood up, pausing to listen as the commentary announced that Hugo was safely up the Beaufort Staircase, ‘I haven’t seen him lately to ask – excuse me, I’m going to run across and see Snob finish.’

Leaving them all gaping, Tash raced across the car parks and just caught Snob pounding the fastest route through the Quarry as though the mud wasn’t there. As he streaked off into the distance with Hugo huddled over his neck, Tash did a little rain-dance of happiness and pelted off to wait at the finish, where Jenny, Penny and India were already installed beneath the tall copper beech, listening eagerly to the public address as it estimated that Hugo was the closest to the time yet.

‘If he goes inside he could take the lead.’ India jumped up and down excitedly.

Consulting her scribbled-over programme, Penny scrunched up her face as she did some hasty mental arithmetic. ‘I think he would, you know. But only if he makes the time.’

‘I shouldn’t think there’s much chance of that,’ Tash laughed. ‘But he should be in with the chance of an overnight place.’

Behind them, Julia Ditton had at last got Gus in a talkative mood and was asking him about his round.

‘Fucking awful going, to say the least – we were bloody swimming out there. Thank God he had great big buggery studs in or we’d’ve been shafted by this eff-awful weather.’

Julia waved at the camera-man to stop.

‘Could you not swear, Gus?’ she asked politely. ‘Thankfully this isn’t going out live as they’re broadcasting the three-fortyfive from Doncaster at the moment.’

‘Oh – right.’ Gus grinned. ‘Well, Julia,’ he nodded feverishly as they shot again, ‘it was a great round – just great. The horse was simply great.’

‘And how did it feel to triumph over the weather?’

‘Great, basically.’

‘Any sticky moments?’

‘Gratefully no – he did a great job.’

‘Thank you, Gus Moncrieff. Now back to Mike and Lorna in the commentary box.’ She turned to give Gus a kiss. ‘That was crap, but thanks.’ Winking at Penny, she wandered off to interview Brian Sedgewick, who had just weighed in, his prop-forward’s face red with an endorphin high, and currently lying in third place on Foreign Agent – one behind Gus. The fast New Zealander was still in the lead.

Tash bounced around in an agitated state as she listened to the public address describing Hugo and Snob’s rather reckless jumps over the Huntsman’s Hangover complex and the windfalls in the coppice that preceded their appearing in view.

‘There they are!’ Penny shrieked as they came pelting out of the wood and galloped towards the Lamb’s Creek, demolishing most of the top of it.

‘Jesus, they’re going fast.’ Gus held his breath.

‘That horse is so bloody fit.’ Jenny stood beside Tash. ‘What d’you feed him on – kerosene?’

‘And sex.’ Tash watched them pelting towards the last, with Snob at last seeming to ease off a little as he allowed Hugo to change his legs and balance him.

Tash felt her heart puff with pride as she watched them work together like a couple of slick old pros, pounding up to the finish – Snob with his ears pricked and eyes shining, Hugo with his stopwatch held in front of his nose and his legs urging to the line.

As ever, Snob took ages to pull up, almost flattening the finishing steward who welcomed them home with his bowler hat aloft.

‘Was I inside?’ Hugo panted as he finally walked Snob back to his support team.

‘Think so,’ Penny told him, peering at the timing clock. ‘Maybe a couple of seconds over.’

Hardly seeming to take this in, Hugo was staring down at Tash as she took Snob’s head and loosened his crossed noseband, her hands shaking.

‘That,’ he told her, laughing delightedly, ‘was one of the most exciting quarter of an hour’s of my life – and I’m including the three minutes before the start.’

Heart hammering, Tash buried an unstoppable smile in Snob’s cheek.

As he jumped off and started to ungirth, the course vets rushed in once again to take Snob’s heartbeat and temperature, and Hugo was instantly cornered by the finishing steward who went through the usual routine of asking him whether he’d incurred any penalties out on the course, waiting for him to gather up the saddle so that he could lead him off to the weighing-in tent.

Moving to Snob’s off-side to help, Tash unbuckled the second breast-plate strap, catching her fingers against Hugo’s gloved ones across Snob’s withers as she helped heave off the saddle. For a moment he gripped them tight, but he was almost instantly swept away to the weighing-in tent, his progress being filmed eagerly by the scurfy roaming camera-man.

In the finishing area, congratulations rained down on Hugo and he was pounced upon by Julia and her TV team as soon as he emerged from the weighing-in tent, still completely breathless from his round and clutching Snob’s saddle to his number-bibbed chest.

‘We make you in the lead right now by one tenth of a penalty, Hugo.’ Julia blocked his path before he could head back to his team. ‘How d’you feel about that?’

‘Well, pretty pleased, obviously, although my arms ache like an Oxford rower’s after the boat race.’ His eyes searched the crowd of faces around him.

He suddenly reached out and pulled a horrified Tash into shot, rival jacket label flashing madly.

‘Here’s the girl you should be congratulating,’ he said with startling generosity. ‘She put in all the hard work on him.’

‘Are you pleased, Tash?’ Julia asked as the furry microphone loomed large.

‘We’re both puffed to chieces – I mean, chuffed to pieces,’ she managed to gulp.

‘And is this the wedding present you wanted?’ Julia winked.

Tash looked momentarily lost, glancing from Hugo to Snob, already being sponged down by India and Penny.

‘We’ll have to wait for tomorrow to see about that,’ Hugo said firmly.

WATCHING THE LIVE BADMINTON transmission on the huge, high-tech television which the film crew had rigged up in the temporary Haydown green room, Lisette chewed her lip anxiously.

‘Did I miss much?’ Sally asked as she wandered back in with a fresh jug of water to refill the coffee filter.

‘Nothing important.’ Lisette watched her as she poured, slopping most of it over one of Hugo’s very grand, very ring-marked side dressers. She’d really let herself go that week, and was suddenly reverting back to the scruffy hair and old leggings look Lisette despised. She also kept talking boringly about her children and sloping off to telephone them at her parents’ house just as Lisette wanted her to do something.

‘Who’s in the lead at the moment?’

Lisette gritted her teeth. ‘Hugo.’

‘But that’s wonderful!’ Sally spilled the rest of the water as she spun round.

‘Isn’t it?’ Lisette stared fixedly at the screen where Julia Ditton had cornered a mud-splattered Lucy Field.

‘It’s a shame my idea didn’t work out, really,’ Sally sighed. ‘Just think of the publicity you’d be getting now if Tash’s horse was called Four Poster Bed.’

‘Your sister-in-law isn’t even riding the horse, Sally,’ Lisette snapped. ‘It was a hopeless idea in the first place. There was never any publicity mileage in it.’

Sally looked at her in alarm, her usually merry eyes wide with hurt. ‘That’s what Matty said,’ she whispered.

‘Well, I’m afraid he was right.’ Lisette’s voice softened as she realised how harsh she had sounded. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I was so angry with him when he told me that, I sprinkled a beef stock cube on his pizza when he wasn’t looking,’ Sally remembered in horror.

‘Well, I’d think long and hard before you force-feed him the fatted calf after last Friday’s fiasco,’ Lisette muttered.

Sally closed her eyes and turned back to the filter machine.

‘So have you decided whether you’re going to divorce him yet?’ Lisette asked bluntly.

‘I haven’t made up my mind.’

‘But he humiliated you in front of everyone last Friday night,’ Lisette pointed out. ‘I couldn’t believe my ears when he asked Zoe Goldsmith whether she remembered the night they got off together in the larder. I thought he was talking about some teenage necking session in a cheap Russian motorcar for a moment, and then I realised that he meant right there at the fucking farm, while you were in London, barefoot and pregnant with Linus.’

‘That’s hardly grounds for divorce,’ Sally muttered, her face colouring with humiliation. She was terrified someone would overhear. They were working with a skeleton crew that day to save on money, but Flavia Watson – Lisette’s super-efficient production manager – was only in the next room chatting on the phone, and several of the cast were milling around the house, awaiting the start of the last scene of the day which was delayed because Niall had not yet returned from lunch.

‘Maybe not.’ Lisette muted the television as the coverage moved on to golf and turned to face her. ‘If you think you can forgive him the infidelity, that is.’

‘He only kissed her!’ Sally banged down the jug. ‘I seem to recall you did a hell of a lot more than just kiss someone at a party before Niall divorced you. You went to parties back then where you’d slept with practically every man in the room more recently than you’d slept with Niall.’

‘I’m a good mixer,’ said Lisette smoothly. ‘And we’re not talking about Niall here, besides which I was the one who divorced him. We’re talking about Matty. He deliberately made a fool of you at that dinner party.’

‘Perhaps I deserved it.’ Sally searched through cardboard boxes for a fresh packet of filter papers. ‘I was behaving really childishly – I only invited him to come so that I could show him how well I was getting on without him, how easy it would be for me to start a new life. He genuinely wanted to tell me the truth. And I know it was an awful way to do it, but I think he was at his wits’ end. It was Zoe Goldsmith I really felt sorry for. Her children were there.’

‘They seemed to find it highly amusing.’ Lisette’s eyes flickered at the mention of Zoe Goldsmith.

‘They’re great kids,’ Sally sighed. ‘I hope my lot grow up to be as level-headed and open about everything.’

Lisette clenched her teeth, praying that Sally wasn’t going to start talking about her children again. But thankfully Niall walked in before she could. He’d come straight from make-up and still had tissues sticking out of his shirt collar like a tatty Elizabethan ruffle.

‘Has Tash been round yet?’ he asked, peering at the muted television. ‘Jesus, there are people walking all over the cross-country course with steel bars, so there are. Do you think they’re animal rights protesters?’

‘It’s golf, Niall,’ Lisette said witheringly. ‘And Tash pulled out of the competition hours ago. Where have you been? Flavia’s been going ape trying to track you down for the past hour. We’ve had to hold filming again, and we’re already two days behind schedule which is largely your fault. If we go any more overbudget on this thing, I’ll sue you.’

‘You what?’ he gulped.

‘It was a joke.’

‘I can’t believe you didn’t know Tash has pulled out of the competition, Niall.’ Sally shook her head and laughed. ‘You’re getting married in a week.’

‘I know.’ He caught Lisette staring at him and suddenly flashed his big, disarming smile. ‘And there’s still a hell of a lot to organise, so there is. It’s why I’m late. I was just dropping off my grandmammy’s wedding ring at the jeweller’s to be altered.’

‘This wedding had better go smoothly,’ Lisette told him, eyes narrowing. ‘I’m banking on it being fucking spectacular – Sally tells me her mother-in-law has spared no expense. And
Cheers!
want their money’s worth.’

‘And they’ll get it, angel.’ His eyes crinkled. ‘Every last penny. I think we can safely say the wedding will go ahead without a hitch.’

After Hugo’s spectacular round, Tash found the afternoon passed in a blur. Sophia and Ben nipped back to their car and brought a couple of bottles of champagne over to the Lime Tree Farm lorry where Hugo and Gus were talking about their rounds non-stop. Soon the place was heaving as Tash’s family crammed inside, along with Stefan’s lofty Swedish parents who spoke no English and looked confused throughout. Kirsty and Penny were quaffing away too, joining in the spirit of it all. It was like playing a very damp, boozy game of sardines. Only Jenny, Ted and India stayed at the yard where they were keeping a close eye on the horses, walking them out regularly to check for any signs of stiffness or injury.

There were so many people and such a lot of noise that Alexandra and her pressure group had considerable difficulty in cornering Tash, who was herself finding it almost impossible to get close enough to Hugo to see his face. She had hardly had a chance even to congratulate him yet as they’d been swept along by the eager Lime Tree team, continually parted like two swans on a squally river. After two glasses of champagne, she was almost beside herself with the bubble-popping, nose-fizzing urge to fling her arms around him and tell him she loved him. But she had a plan.