Nothing to Lose (21 page)

‘You pay her?’ Andrew jerked upright. ‘Christ, Jas, you really have no financial sense at all, have you?’

Jasmine gritted her teeth. The ‘I’m a real bookie’ high was rapidly deflating. ‘I’ve got all the sense I need – financial or otherwise, thank you. And if you’re going to have a go at me about Clara, or the stadium, or anything else for that matter, can it wait until I’ve got some more alcohol inside me?’

She’d thought that Andrew might spring up at that point, blustering apologies, and, like a proper fiancé, offer to walk along the cliff path to the Crumpled Horn with her, as it was late, and dark, and she might get mugged. But of course, he didn’t.

Now, she thought, scrambling back up the steps, her fingers sliding easily on the handrail that had been polished smooth by generations of beachgoers: do it now. Each trudging step said the same thing. Do it now. Tonight. Break off the engagement.

Hauling herself to the top of the steps, to where the shale and scrubby grass pretended to be a car park, she looked back down at the row of huts as she walked, their roofs zigzagged in the darkness like a dinosaur’s tail. She still honestly couldn’t see herself married to Andrew, but neither could she imagine a time when he wouldn’t be there, around, in her life. It was just that she really would like to share that life with someone special: not just the joy of making a damn good fist of being a bookie, but also the fears she had about her parents’ relationship, and the plans to put Ampney Crucis on the map that were bubbling away inside her head. All that, she thought as she passed splurging couples on the shadowy cliff top benches, and so much more. Things like jokes, and dreams, and sadness, and the stupid little things of life . . . She stopped and sighed. All the things, in fact, that she’d shared with her grandfather.

She reached the Crumpled Horn without the merest threat of being mugged; but then, this was Ampney Crucis. A mugging would have brought the village to a standstill – the local paper had run headlines on the story of the mysterious disappearance of KitKats from the 8 til Late for three consecutive weeks.

‘Jas! Over here!’ Clara, perched skewwhiff on a bar stool shared with Ewan, waved wildly over the heads of the last-orders crowd. ‘What happened?’

Jasmine, shoving her way through a mass of Crimplened shoulders, fetched up just beside Ewan’s thighs. Ignoring them, and pushing a couple of twenty-pound notes into Clara’s hand, she refused Ewan’s offer of a drink.

‘No, thanks, really. I’m just going to get some bottles to take back to the hut.’ A sense of self-preservation prevented her from saying that Andrew had finished off the supplies. ‘And yes, I can afford to pay you. The gamble worked well, and that’s your percentage. Oh, yes – four bottles of Old Ampney please, to take out,’ she leaned across the bar, ‘and four packets of smoky bacon. And a pickled egg.’

Clara laughed. ‘I see you’re still sticking to the healthy-eating plan, then?’

‘Of course,’ Jasmine raised her voice above ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, which was belting out from the juke box. It was one of the newest records on the Crumpled Horn’s Wurlitzer, and therefore got a considerable share of airplay time. ‘I’m no great shakes on the gas ring – and Eddie Deebley’s fish suppers and the Crow’s Nest’s doughnuts manage to supply everything I need.’

‘Not everything, surely?’ Ewan raised a piratical eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t Andrew provide something?’

‘Not much, believe me.’ Jasmine hauled the carrier bag off the top of the bar. ‘And possibly not even that for very much longer . . .’

The veranda was empty. So was the hut. Happily, Jasmine clicked off the top of a bottle of Old Ampney, opened two packets of crisps, and as a sop to gentility, quartered the pickled egg on a saucer. Then, slumping in one of the canvas chairs and propping her feet up on the veranda rail, she gave a sigh of contentment.

She was just dabbing up the last of the crisp crumbs with a vinegary forefinger when Andrew’s head appeared at the top of the beach steps. The rest of him soon followed and he looked at the midnight feast with some disgust. ‘Haven’t you saved me any?’

‘Nope. Sorry. I thought you’d gone.’

He collapsed into the chair beside her. ‘I went for a walk along the beach. I needed to do some serious thinking.’

Jasmine swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘And have you?’

‘I have. I may have been a little hasty earlier. While you were out, I – um – took the liberty of counting your takings for this evening . . . No, let me finish. Not a particularly good night, was it? But even so, you’ve made a profit. And the nights that you make a profit outweigh the ones when you don’t.’

‘Yes, so?’ Jasmine was coldly furious that he’d ferreted around in the bedside drawers. Still, it was her own fault. She should be more careful.

‘So, even if you’re investing your inheritance money in the stadium, that will make you a shareholder. Which, in turn, will bring in some sort of income. Even if you haven’t enough capital left to invest in the dealership, your financial status will be considerably enhanced by your annual profit margin, and–’

‘Andrew! For God’s sake stop talking like
The Money Programme
and cut to the chase.’ The lights from Eddie Deebley’s Fish Bar bounced across the black sea; the scent of frying and vinegar wafted on the air. Despite the crisps and pickled egg, Jasmine’s stomach rumbled. ‘What exactly are you trying to tell me?’

He leaned forward, the moonlight making his cropped fair hair look prematurely grey. ‘That I think we should look for a house now. Together. With the preservation order on these huts, you could make a small fortune if you sold – and I’ve got my savings. We could definitely afford something on the Chewton Estate.’

‘Dear God!’ Jasmine rocked forward. ‘I’ve only just managed to escape from there! Do you honestly think I want to entomb myself back in the Peyton Place of Ampney Crucis?’

Andrew blinked. ‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘My mother and father don’t sleep together! My mother is having an affair – something I thought you might know about, seeing as you spend far more time there than I do!’

Andrew, strangely, Jasmine thought, began to laugh. ‘Your mother? Oh, God, Jas! No way!’

‘She is! I’m sure she is! And don’t forget, you said everyone at the damn dealership thought she was top totty or something disgusting!’ Jasmine sucked in her breath. This was appalling. She’d honestly thought she’d break off the engagement tonight and now Andrew was trying to weigh her down by tying her ankles to bricks and mortar. She clutched at the final straw. ‘And I can’t possibly think about marrying you – or anyone – not while my mother is –’

‘Yvonne,’ Andrew interrupted, ‘isn’t the guilty party, Jasmine. Oh, dear me, no. I can’t believe that you think – look, I never wanted to say this, but everyone else in Ampney Crucis knows what’s going on with your parents’ marriage. I can’t believe that you don’t.’

‘We’re all going on a summer holiday . . . la-la-la!’ Daff trilled, her face covered by a head scarf, as Jix and April bundled her out of the door of number 51 and shoved her into the back of the hired Toyota people carrier.

Cair Paravel and Bee were already installed, along with carrier bags full of food, Thermos flasks of iced water, all the beach toys that the charity shop could provide, several changes of clothing, bathing costumes, large towels, and a map of the Dorset coast.

They’d argued the toss over the driving duties, and eventually decided that Jix should take the wheel there, while April did the return trip. It would be impossible, April reckoned, as she leaned over, checking everyone’s seat belts and door locks, to gauge which of them was the most excited.

Just as Jix started the engine, Joel and Rusty appeared hand in hand on the doorstep and waved them away, and, despite it being ridiculously early in the morning, Sofia and Tonio, in some very glam nightwear, leaned from the upstairs window of the Pasta Place and called their good luck greetings. Waving like mad, knowing that she’d hold her breath until they’d left the High Street, and the stadium, and the grey parts of Bixford behind,

April couldn’t believe that they were, at last, on their way.

Cair Paravel, obviously experiencing an emotional dilemma, thumped his tail ecstatically while at the same time emitting low rumbling growls at the back of Daff’s head. This however, left Jix’s mum unfazed: even before they’d cleared Bixford South, she was handing out egg sandwiches, and Beatrice-Eugenie, with Cair Paravel now sprawled on top of her, had her nose pressed excitedly to the window, claiming to be able to see the sea. With a huge sigh of relief, April leaned back in her seat and finally exhaled.

Jix, moving the car through the early morning traffic of East London, looked across at her and grinned. ‘Never thought we’d do it, did you?’

‘No. I must admit I’ve had kittens for days, just waiting for something to go wrong.’

‘Martina was the worst.’ Jix indicated to leave the city. ‘I thought she’d sussed something.’

‘Me too. God, I still can’t believe the paddy she threw when I asked for a couple of days off. You’d think there was no one else in the country who could shake a bloody cocktail.’

That, April reckoned, was actually an understatement. Martina had screamed and threatened and blustered, and finally, when April had calmly pointed out that she was entitled to twenty-two days leave a year and had so far only taken ten of them and she’d take it to the union, caved in. As April had never belonged to a union in her life, this had been a bit of a wild card, but Martina had obviously had unpleasant dealings with unions in her past, and went pleasingly white-lipped at the threat.

Jix said he’d had similar problems with Oliver, but surprisingly Sebastian had intervened on his behalf, and said that Jix should certainly take some time off because he’d worked diligently for the family for so long – and how would they ever replace him if he decided to go?

Sebastian had been particularly annoying about the whole thing and, having discovered from the Gillespie Stadium office wall chart that Jix and April were having the same time off, had jumped to all manner of erroneous conclusions. He’d made some very uncool remarks regarding romantic liaisons, which of course they had both strenuously denied, claiming that the days off were simply a coincidence.

April still found Sebastian’s
volte face
a little disconcerting. He’d been continually friendly, sitting at the Copacabana’s bar and telling April about his days – and nights out with Brittany. Jix said he’d been much the same with him. They were convinced that he knew about Bee and Cair Paravel and was simply lulling them into a false sense of security. They knew they couldn’t trust him. As April had said, Sebby was a Gillespie, and everyone knew that the Gillespies were all born untrustworthy.

Anyway, despite everything the Gillespies had thrown at them, they were off, on their way to Ampney Crucis, for Cair Paravel’s first public performance. For ages, ever since they’d decided to enter him for the race, it had been difficult to explain to Daff what they were doing. Naturally, neither of them had wanted to leave her behind, but they had both felt that the agoraphobia would only be exacerbated by the trip.

Jix had looked very doubtful when April had suggested the possibility of fetching her along too. ‘I don’t know what’d happen to her with all that vast expanse – you know, sea and sky and beach and stuff. I honestly don’t think she’ll be able to cope.’

But Daff had said as long as they could park the car somewhere near the sea, and she kept her seat belt on while she gazed through the windscreen, she felt that she’d have a whale of a time. They’d explained that the race meeting was at night, and therefore she might be left alone for hours, but again, Daff had maintained that with something to eat and drink, a fairish supply of word-puzzle books and the car radio for company, she’d think she was in heaven.

The journey was taking far longer than they’d anticipated, mainly because Bee, Daff and Cair Paravel all seemed constantly to want to go to the loo. April grinned to herself as Jix resignedly pulled into the fifth set of motorway services; and while she went through the rigmarole of seeing to Bee and Daff – who had to be guided into the Ladies with the scarf over her head, which meant that they miraculously jumped the queues of bladder-bursting holidaymakers who obviously all thought she had something contagious – Jix led Cair Paravel round and round identical ornamental flowerbeds.

It certainly wasn’t, April thought as once more they all fastened themselves back into the people carrier, the way the racing greyhounds arrived at Bixford. They, the elite of the doggy world, travelled in kennelled and cushioned luxury, at exactly the right temperature, with precisely the correct amount of meat and vitamins inside them. Cair Paravel, merrily chomping on egg sandwiches and desperately trying to worry the life out of the back of Daff’s head, was panting like a steam train and had become feverishly excited.

With Jix in his faded jeans and tie-dye vest and bangles and scarves, and her in her skimpy denim dress and the pink sandals, April was also well aware that they looked nothing like the bejewelled upper echelons of the game, who arrived at the Gillespie Stadium in matching designer bomber jackets with the name of their dog embroidered in neon threads across the back. She and Jix, Daff and Bee looked for all the world like the Raggle-Taggle Gypsies-O about to go mad at the seaside.

April and Jix had spent the last week teaching Bee the route by rote, and since they’d left London she’d been chanting, ‘M25, M3, M27 to Cadnam roundabout, A31 through New Forest, then look for a signpost.’ By the time they reached Basingstoke, it had started to get a bit wearing.

‘Oh, my!’ Daff, mercifully interrupting Bee and, ignoring Cair Paravel’s teeth which were bared in a manic grin against the back of her neck, leaned forward as they purred through the New Forest. ‘This is wonderful! So many trees! All enclosed! Oh, I could live here!’

Jix and April looked at each other in delight. It
was
wonderful, April thought, simply to see Daff so enjoying herself. The escape, albeit a brief one, from Bixford – even if Cair Paravel made a complete ass of himself on the race track – had done them all the power of good. And supposing, just supposing, that he behaved himself, and ran properly, this could be just the start of days out such as this. They could pile into whatever transport they could find, and travel the country. And after next month, April thought blissfully, when she’d been to the Corner Gallery at Swaffield and told Noah about his daughter, then he could join them too.