Well Groomed (49 page)

‘But I thought Matty was going to be your best man?’ Tash tackled him after Henrietta left.

They were heating up an M and S ready-meal in the little kitchen and had been arguing so animatedly that both had failed to notice that the microwave wasn’t plugged in.

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I’ve asked him, yes. But he wasn’t very keen.’

‘What do you mean, not keen?’ Tash laughed, turning her back on him to get the meal out of the microwave. ‘He’s my brother.’

Niall cleared his throat uncomfortably, suddenly putting his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder so that she seemed to have four hands grappling at the rock-hard meal.

‘Not keen means he refused point blank.’ Niall nuzzled her neck, eager for the row to be curtailed. ‘He says he won’t be seen to condone a marriage which he doesn’t believe will work.’

‘He what?’ Tash put the plastic tray of food on to a work surface and, with Niall still draped over her shoulders like a shawl, started to try to hack the still-frozen contents apart, too abstracted to notice.

‘It’s what he said.’ Niall’s lips were eating up her neck now. ‘I’m going to stay up there a couple of days next week. I’ll try to bring him round, huh?’

Tash chiselled a piece of frozen courgette out of the tray with a knife.

‘In order to do that,’ she said hollowly, ‘you’ll have to knock him out first.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Niall slid his hands over hers and pulled them away from her frosty forage. ‘Let’s go to bed. I’m determined that today, at least, you are going to ride me more often than your damned horses.’

As the pressure of the early starts got to him, he spent several nights a week staying with Matty and Sally in Richmond, which meant the driver could collect him an hour later each day. Whenever he returned home to the forge afterwards, Tash found him distanced and tetchy. It took several hours before he was back to normal. She blamed it on the pressure of work, and having to adjust from the pampering on set to the do-it-yourself relaxation of the village. It never occurred to her that the reason he seemed detached was as a result of talking to her own brother.

SALLY WAS NOT GETTING on at all well with Matty. She had tried to ease his load by enrolling Tor in a local nursery for three afternoons a week and arranging for a neighbour to look after Linus most mornings, but Matty remained sullen and uncommunicative.

He thoroughly disapproved of her renewed friendship with Lisette and made no secret of the fact. As she devoted more and more time to mugging up on the film industry and helping Lisette set up the first May shoot for Four Poster Bed, he had become increasingly detached and sulky, burying himself in work. That was not in itself a bad thing as he’d done precious little of it in previous months, coasting along on the odd bit of project consultation without getting a good new film of his own underway.

But with work came the age-old, brooding resentment that he was still trapped producing low-budget commissions from satellite channels and, if he was lucky, Network television, whereas Lisette was now whooping it up within the luxurious echelons of the film industry.

‘The British film industry is a charity, Matty,’ Sally protested, stealing a line that Lisette was always using.

‘Not if it’s co-produced with Americans, it isn’t,’ he sneered, ‘which is where Lisette’s little piece of porno trash is coming from.’ He liked to refer to the film as some sort of blue movie because, stealing a look at the script when he thought Sally wasn’t looking, the only bit he had managed to read was a rampant sex scene between Niall and an as yet uncast actress whom Lisette wanted to be American but the casting director and director, David Wheaton, wanted to be a Brit.

‘And what exactly is your job on this film?’ he wanted to know.

‘I’m assisting Lisette.’

‘So you’re the production assistant? That’s quite a responsible role.’

‘No, not that. I’m just sort of helping out.’ She wished she knew herself, Lisette was being infuriatingly vague about it, just promising lots of fun and a fat salary. So far all Sally had done was sit around Sleeping Partners’ plush Marylebone office, gossiping and getting in the way.

‘You spend more time lunching with her than working with her.’ Matty was deliberately scathing.

‘I came up with that publicity idea,’ she pointed out hotly.

‘Which Lisette hasn’t taken up, thank God.’

‘She’s working on it!’ Sally protested furiously. ‘We’re drawing up a proposal.’ She thought that sounded sufficiently grand. Emboldened, she added, ‘And I’m doing a lot of PR liaising for her.’

‘But why does she need you on location?’ he persisted, still sceptical. ‘She won’t need to be there much.’

‘She’s the producer, of course she will – she’ll need to see the, er, rushes and dailies and things,’ Sally blustered, trying to remember the lingo. ‘And talk to all the, um, different directors and stuff.’

‘Rubbish. That’s the production manager’s job – Flavia Watson. Lisette’s role is much more hands-off than that.’ Matty’s eyes sparked suspiciously. ‘If she wants to be hanging around the location shoot so much, she’s up to something.’

Finally Sally caved in. ‘She’s after Hugo Beauchamp.’

‘Ah,’ he laughed delightedly. ‘Now that does make sense. Didn’t I tell you that Lisette had a nose-job for trouble? And Hugo’s definitely trouble. It couldn’t happen to a nastier chap.’

Sally avoided arguing with him about Lisette wherever possible.

She made valiant attempts to keep the friendship distanced from the marriage but this just infuriated Matty even more, as he convinced himself that she was being deliberately elusive to hide her secret life from him.

He still had odd bouts of explosive fury. When he found out that she was planning to stay in the crew hotel for the duration of the Berkshire location shoot, he went so far through the roof that he could have fixed the guttering on his way up.

‘We need the money, Matty – you can’t deny it,’ she pleaded. ‘And it means I’ll be near Niall and Tash. I can even keep an eye on things in case Lisette winds them up.’

‘And what are you planning to do with the kids while you’re earning all this cash and acting as guardian angel?’ he hissed. ‘Shall we have them put into care?’

‘Don’t be facetious,’ she snapped. ‘My parents have said they’ll have Linus and Tor to stay with them. And you can look after Tom until half-term when he’ll go down and join them. The shoot is only a couple of weeks long. We’ll just have to coast the last few days. I can look for a temporary child-minder if you want.’

‘Some stranger looking after our kids? I’d rather take time off and do it myself,’ he said to make himself look martyred.

‘Oh, would you?’ she beamed. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’

Which it wasn’t. Life became even more unsettled after these brief confrontations, especially when Niall started to use their house as a hotel. He had a flat of his own in London, but it currently had sitting tenants whom he was too kind to boot out, and he found the hotel that the BBC put him up in too professional and soulless to suit him – it was full of salesmen on conferences and American tourists who recognised him at breakfast and came rushing over to ask him to autograph napkins. As most of the other actors in the project lived in London and went straight to work from home, he lacked company. The only actors who stayed at the hotel were those in minor roles who were only called for a couple of days’ work before leaving, thus giving them the transitory feel of the businessmen whose faces changed as often as the restaurant menus.

Sally was only too happy to have Niall to stay at first, hoping that he would cheer up Matty and ease some of the pressure off their marriage. But she was anxious how Lisette would react to news of their temporary lodger. When she broke it to her, Lisette was delighted, her rasping voice dropping excitedly over the phone line.

‘Oh, would you have a talk with him about your fucking brilliant event horse idea, Sally hon? I’ve tried to set up a meeting through Bob, but Niall’s been away on location most of this month. Don’t push him hard – if he thinks it’s a bad idea we’ll forget all about it. Is Matty out at the moment?’

‘Yes. He’s sloped off to Manchester for an overnight recce researching some project.’

‘Then I’ll fax you the proposal.’

Sally was over the moon that her idea was being taken seriously. With Matty away, she couldn’t wait to put it to Niall. Having plied him with wine later that evening, she discovered that he had forgotten he even owned Snob.

‘He’s Tash’s horse, so he is,’ he shrugged, not understanding what Sally was suggesting. ‘She’d never sell him.’

Sally bit her lip. ‘She already has. You bought him, remember? To get him imported?’

‘So I did!’ Niall’s face lit up and he cackled, rubbing his Huntingdon sideburns theatrically. ‘Christ, my money troubles are over. I’ll sell him straight away and pay the tax man. He’s worth at least half a million. I can buy Tash and myself a house with what’s left over.’

Sally stared at him in amazed delight. ‘Do you mean that?’

He cocked his head. ‘What d’you think, angel? Tash would murder me. She dotes on that animal. Like I say, he’s her horse – whether it’s my name on his papers or not makes no difference.’

‘Ah, but it does . . .’ Sally looked at him excitedly.

Ten minutes later and Niall was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, his reaction to the news surprisingly muted. ‘You say Lisette definitely isn’t interested in selling off her half?’

‘Not at all,’ Sally shook her head earnestly. ‘Although I’d keep quiet about his being worth half a million if I were you. She thinks all nags bar racehorses are bought and sold for cat food. She just wants the publicity for Four Poster Bed.’

‘But she’s already got the
Cheers!
deal,’ said Niall, shifting uncomfortably at the thought.

‘This was my own idea, actually.’ Sally bit her lip, unable to hide her pride. ‘I originally suggested that the film company buy Tash a horse to compete on this year. Lisette was as surprised as you to discover from Hugo that she owned half of Snob already, so we just worked out a way to capitalise on that instead. Lisette wants to lease your half-share from you. It’s just until the film is released – we could draw up a contract if you’re worried. She’s offering to cover all the horse’s costs for the remainder of this year in return for the publicity, and then at the end of the year’s lease, she signs her share over to Tash.’

‘Won’t she want half his value?’

Sally shook her head happily.

Niall enveloped his neck in his long, bony hands and mulled this over. ‘Tash will kill me when she finds out Lisette technically owns half of her horse.’

‘She’ll be a lot happier if you tell her Lisette is signing over her share for nothing in eight months’ time,’ Sally said logically, refilling their wine glasses. ‘And it’s not as though Lisette is being difficult about it. She’s more or less offering to sponsor Tash and Snob for a year then give her share back for free. And, as Tash doesn’t have a sponsor right now, I think she’ll jump at the offer.’

He rubbed his head anxiously. ‘Are you sure she’s right about this? About being entitled to half?’

‘Apparently it’s all there on the settlement papers. Her solicitor checked them over last week.’

‘Jesus, I never even read the things – just handed them over to my accountant,’ he groaned.

‘Listen, Lisette says she’ll forget all about it if you think the idea will upset Tash,’ Sally said reluctantly, longing for him to agree. ‘She’s happy to leave things as they stand. There’s no pressure. But she’s willing to pay the Moncrieffs a hefty fee for his year’s keep, and I gather they need all the help they can get at the moment.’

‘True,’ Niall agreed, remembering both Zoe and Tash telling him how broke the Moncrieffs were. ‘How much exactly?’

When Sally told him – upping Lisette’s offer by twenty percent in her desperation – he chewed his lip pensively. ‘I’ll think about it, angel.’

‘Will you talk to Tash?’

He shrugged.

Yet when Niall returned from a weekend in Berkshire and Sally eagerly asked what Tash thought about the proposal, he claimed he hadn’t had time to mention it.

‘Do you two speak at all?’ she laughed.

Niall looked awkward. ‘She was away competing. We’re both working flat out at the moment – I’m trapped here in London all this week. I’ll try to talk to her next weekend, angel.’

Which was not at all satisfactory. Particularly as, when Lisette called for an up-date the following morning, Matty picked up the call and was blisteringly rude to her.

‘Couldn’t you bring yourself to be civil, at least?’ Sally implored when he hung up on her as though she was a pest caller. ‘After all, they’ve been divorced for nearly two years, and Niall’s about to get married to a girl he truly loves. She’s trying to build bridges now – Christ, she’s just got him one of the best roles of his career.’

‘The only bridges Lisette builds are new ones for her nose.’

‘Will you shut up about her bloody nose-job!’ Sally wailed. ‘Christ, I wish I’d never told you about it now.’ She was relieved that she’d kept quiet about the boobs; Matty would never let it drop – rather like Lisette with her bust-line.

‘She was unspeakably cruel to Niall, as you well remember.’ He stomped around slamming kitchen cupboard doors as he searched for a clean mug. ‘He went completely derailed when she pushed off.’

‘And now he’s happily connected to Alexandra and your step-mother’s runaway bridal train, and too madly in love with Tash to care,’ Sally sighed dreamily. ‘Can’t you see that now is the perfect time for Lisette and he to make friends again?’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

‘He wouldn’t have taken the role if he was still cut up about Lisette, Matts,’ she persisted. ‘He just wants to move on and forget it all.’