Well Groomed (22 page)

Two days before Henry’s christening, Gus came raging into the kitchen clutching a letter that he’d finally got around to reading, several days after it had arrived.

‘Those bastards at Drover Clothing have pulled out of the sponsorship deal!’ he howled. ‘I can’t believe it – it was worth thirty grand a year. They say the corporate image wasn’t right. They’re planning to sponsor some Welsh golfer this year.’

‘Christ, I’m sorry.’ Zoe, who had been gossiping with Tash about Ted stealing Rufus’s girlfriends, turned to him in horror. ‘Do they own any of the horses?’

‘Thankfully, no.’ Gus threw the letter on the table and stalked over to the damp larder to forage for biscuits which, knowing Gus, would constitute his lunch. ‘But they subsidised a hell of a lot of food and their bloody coats kept Pen and me dry last year. Shit!’ He took his anger out on a packet of Maryland cookies which split open and landed at a delighted Wally’s feet.

‘What are you going to do?’ Tash looked up from
Horse and Hound
, which she had been slyly checking through to see if Mickey was advertised, which he wasn’t. Four other of the yard’s hopefuls were, however, including Groupie.

‘Lord knows,’ he sighed. ‘I’m still waiting to hear from a couple of firms, but it’s getting pretty late to expect anyone to come forward with a big wad of cash to get us through this season. I just don’t know how in hell we’re going to cope.’

‘We’ll have to win a lot – that’s all.’ She smiled with far more confidence than she felt.

‘Don’t be fucking facetious!’ Gus snapped. ‘How can we win anything when we can’t afford the diesel money to get us to the competitions in the first place?’ He stalked out of the room, crunching biscuits underfoot.

Tash winced. Although she and Gus got on well at a superficial level, she was always the first in the line of fire when he was uptight, confirming a niggling little fear she kept to herself that he was not really very keen on her. It also came out when he was pissed; he would pick on her and mob her up ceaselessly, delighting in her discomfort and fear of confrontation. She sometimes felt he resented her, although she had no idea why.

‘Don’t worry – he’ll calm down soon.’ Zoe rubbed her shoulder encouragingly. ‘You know what he’s like: so combative and grouchy about money.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Tash guiltily sloped back to work.

What she also knew only too well was that she was the most expendable member of the team. So far she had won relatively little compared to Gus, Penny and Kirsty and had no international experience at all, having bypassed the junior and young rider ranks by coming to the sport so late. She brought them in valuable stud fees through Snob, and was getting a fairly high-profile following in the sport – largely thanks to Hugo’s early support and, latterly, her romance with Niall as reported in the national press – but these were superficial plus points compared to the day-in, day-out earning potential of a professional event rider. Gus was a seasoned international who coached as well as evented, added to which he designed courses, wrote books and rode horses for private owners. Penny, once a star in her own right, was the true horse-trainer who was invaluable in spotting talented youngsters, breaking them and bringing them on; she also ran the livery side of the business practically single-handed. And Kirsty was not only a high-ranking team member and long-standing professional, she was now the only rider in the yard with sponsorship – all three of her advanced horses were owned and supported by a City investment bank.

It was only a matter of time, Tash reasoned, before she was asked to leave and she, Snob and Hunk, were out on ten limbs. For now, she remained on tenterhooks.

Working very late into the night in the floodlit menage to gain Brownie points, she fell into bed without a second thought for the impending family gathering.

She had little time to plan what to wear to Henry’s christening, although she knew she owed it to Sophia to smarten up for once. Sophia had bestowed the ultimate compliment upon them by asking Niall to be a godfather, along with one of her old modelling cronies.

Niall, who was filming late into the night on the Friday again, had agreed to fly to Birmingham airport on Saturday morning and meet Tash at the tiny church in Holdham village, which fell within the estate’s grounds.

Leaving it as late as possible, Tash raced around the shops before her Flab-busters session, hawking her buys with her to the United Reform Church Hall.

‘Two pounds – congratulations!’ Theresa was beside herself to find someone among her regulars who had actually lost weight. This week, one of her motivational ploys was to pin a large star-shaped paper badge to each of her slimmers, emblazoned with the amount that they had lost over the past seven days.

Later that night, Tash pinned her glittery ‘2’ to the fireguard beside the melted fridge magnet and wondered whether her life would really be as hunky-dory as Theresa promised if she were slim.

She scrunched her eyes closed and tried to imagine herself as a slinky size eight in the Lisette Norton mould, but superimposing her head on that consumptive-whippet figure just made her think of a character on a Cluedo playing card – all big, menacing face and tiny, matchstick body. The happiest, most level-headed and certainly the most sexy woman Tash knew was Zoe, and she was an elegant, voluptuous size fourteen with curves that a car designer could only dream of for a new prototype.

‘The problem with me isn’t weight,’ she told a fascinated Beetroot, ‘it’s waiting. I spend my entire life at the moment waiting for Niall. If he was here more often it would be a wait off my bloody shoulders.’

Beetroot nudged her delightedly with her wiry muzzle, brown eyes glued devotedly to Tash’s face.

‘Niall used to look at me like that,’ she sighed. ‘You know, Root, I’ve started to think I’m weight-watching in vain.’

SHE BORROWED TED’S RICKETY Renault 5 to drive to Worcestershire, as Gus needed the Land-Rover to tow the trailer, delivering one of the youngsters he had just sold to a new owner for a much-needed four-figure sum. The Land-Rover was cheaper to run than the box, which was uneconomical for transporting just one horse.

‘The clutch is a bit iffy,’ Ted warned Tash as she fought her way inside past a lot of dangling football paraphernalia and found herself sitting on several tape boxes and an old, gucky packet of fruit Polos. ‘And she tends to cut out over seventy. Plus the accelerator cable has been known to snap, so be gentle. There’s a coathanger in the boot in case you need to mend it.’

She nodded worriedly.

Ted rubbed his growing-out crew cut as he watched her. With his bullish neck and broken nose, the stubbly hairdo made him look like a squaddie. He claimed it had improved his pulling no end, but Tash thought he looked terrifying, and far more likely to pull a trigger than a woman.

‘Are you seriously wearing that?’ He regarded her outfit doubtfully.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Oh, nothing – it’s pretty wild, that’s all.’ He gave her one of his seedy winks. ‘You’re looking well choice. See you later – take care of my baby.’

*  *  *

Trying hard not to go above sixty all the way to Worcestershire, and treating the accelerator pedal like a sewing-machine control during some delicate embroidery, Tash arrived at the sleepy Holdham village chapel ten minutes late.

It was immediately apparent that her outfit was not one of her best. The first person she encountered in the car park was Sally. Backing out of the Audi’s passenger door, she burst out laughing.

‘Christ – Sophia will go ape!’ She looked Tash up and down. ‘Not that she isn’t already. One of the godfathers is already stoned, and the other one – your dear intended – hasn’t turned up yet. She’s spitting. Ben is trying to pacify her in the vestry, but Henry has just puked everywhere and the vicar says he’s got a wedding at midday and can’t hold things up any longer than twenty-past.’

Tash, still shaking from her nerve-racking journey, tried to take this in.

Sally was looking very merry and pink-faced in a lilac angora top and deep heather-coloured silk skirt. Her wispy blonde hair had recently been cut into a smart layered bob and was today topped by a squashy fake fur hat.

‘You’re looking fantastic,’ Tash said admiringly.

‘New friends and lots of influence at the hair salon.’ Sally hooked her arm through Tash’s and led her under the lych-gate. ‘I just came out to fetch some teething gel for Linus – actually he doesn’t really need it anymore, but he’s addicted to the stuff, the little junky, and he’s wailing so much in sympathy with horrible Henry that I thought it would shut him up. Perhaps I should squirt some at your sister.’

‘Oh God, I hope Niall gets here.’ Tash looked fretfully over her shoulder towards the car park, but amongst the flashy Mercs, BMWs and Discoverys, nothing stirred. She suddenly recognised Hugo’s racy little green sportscar and winced. Why her stomach flip-flopped quite so much every time she spotted it she had no idea – she supposed it must be because she had once had a lift in it and almost thrown up at the speed he had driven.

‘Is Hugo here?’ she asked, even though she knew.

‘Chatting up your mother,’ Sally said dreamily. ‘God, he’s so good-looking it’s unfair – when he walked in I almost died with desire until I realised who it was, the bastard! Matty has ’flu, by the way, so don’t kiss him. Have you lost weight?’

‘Some.’ Tash felt slightly bucked, but Sally didn’t pursue the topic enough to bolster her confidence further.

‘Isn’t this place heavenly? I’d quite forgotten,’ she was babbling on as she admired the fat yew trees and crumbling graves that fronted the little flint chapel. ‘Look at all those daffs coming out – Wordsworth would erect crowd barriers. They match your outfit.’

Yellow had never been one of Tash’s best colours – it tended to make her look bleached out and pink-eyed; the only colour it brought out in her was that of her teeth. But she had been in a hurry in Marlbury, which only had one decent clothes shop. Having found nothing in there above a size eight, she had resorted to one of the cheap but cheerful bargain stores that littered Marlbury’s unsuccessful shopping mall – shops that lasted just a few months before they sold off their stock cheap and were replaced by a bargain book store. The assistant in Frock Off and Die had been incredibly flattering, and Tash had been so amazed that she could once again get into a size twelve that she’d bought the little sixties-style suit without question, racing next door to buy some trashy but trendy footwear.

The latest fashion was for knee-length patent leather boots. Even more hardened fashion victims were wearing snakeskin ones. The shop in questionable taste had possessed a pair of snakeskin bunion-squeezers in Tash’s size and another eager assistant had raved on about the fact that most people’s legs were too short and fat to get away with them. Tash – who had long, gangly legs – had been absurdly pleased. What the assistant hadn’t pointed out was the fact that knees as bruised as a prep school bully’s were not a becoming addition to the look, or that they were desperate to get rid of the boots because they were a size eight. Coupled with her too-short, too-shiny and far too yellow suit, Tash was dressed more for a tarts and vicars party than a christening among the landed gentry. She was wearing two pairs of opaque tights to hide the bruises, and had added her black dressage top hat wrapped in a checked silk scarf to detract from the ghastly suit, but was nevertheless acutely aware of looking on the unflattering side of disgusting.

One glance at Ben Meredith’s stuffy relations confirmed that it would be impossible to melt into the background today. Her glaring outfit stood out amongst the muted beiges and navy blues of the congregation like a Post-it note stuck to Monet’s winter study of Rouen Cathedral. As she wobbled on the unfamiliar high heels into the dusty chill of religious worship, she received a lot of dumbfounded stares and one or two titters.

In the second pew from the front, Alexandra looked up from discreetly reading about the Princess of Wales’s skiing holiday in
Cheers!
magazine and hailed her daughter enthusiastically. Beside her a familiar, Laughing Cavalier’s face sneered from beneath a mop of tortoiseshell hair, a beautifully straight nose wrinkling with distaste, two swimming-pool blue eyes as chilly as the chapel thermostat.

‘Tash darling – you look radiant, and so slim!’ Alexandra gushed far too loudly. ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you. Come over here, sweetheart, and squeeze in between me and Hugo.’

Tash cringed at the prospect, catching Hugo’s horrified expression. But the looks from the rest of the congregation were so grim, she couldn’t face the prospect of trying to cram herself in anywhere else. She grabbed an order sheet from a harassed-looking younger Meredith and shuffled towards her mother.

‘Where is that rotten man of yours?’ Alexandra was in the aisle now, waiting for Tash to squeeze past her. As slim and elegant as a Borzoi, she was the picture of sophisticated grandmotherly chic in a soft brown wool wraparound dress with her slim legs tapering to understated court shoes. Tash was aware that her snakeskin knee-high boots were attracting unflattering guffaws and comments from all sides and her top pair of tights had already snagged on the jagged interior of Ted’s car.

‘Talk about snakes and ladders.’ Hugo too was enjoying a good look.

Tash gave him a withering glare, failing dismally to think up a witty crack about asp-holes.

‘I do hope you’ll wear those in competitions, Tash,’ he muttered as she slid in beside him, trying hard not to let any part of her body make contact with his. ‘They’d be far more effective than spurs – one glimpse of those from the corner of his eyes, and that chestnut of yours would accelerate like a Ferrari in a ram raid.’

‘Have you spoken to him today?’ Alexandra hadn’t heard this and was settling in beside Tash, a squashy black coat across her slender knees.