Well Groomed (68 page)

‘He told me about the AA meeting,’ Tash said cautiously.

‘I’m glad.’ Zoe didn’t look at her. ‘I told him to, but he was too ashamed.’

Tash listened as the dogs, hearing a car engine, scuttled through the house from the sitting room to perform their door duty.

‘You’re so good to him.’ Tash swallowed, her throat suddenly bone dry as though she’d had an emergency tracheotomy.

‘Not especially.’ Zoe was looking more and more uneasy, her whisk rotating madly. ‘I’ve just been around when he needs a chat – I’d do the same for you, darling.’

Tash shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Of course I would!’ She looked up from the bowl, blue eyes worried. ‘I love you, Tash, – you’re one of the family to me.’

The dogs were barking like mad in the hall now as Hugo reversed his car loudly out of the courtyard, which was already too full of cars to park in.

Tash took a deep breath, knowing she had just a little borrowed time while Hugo parked in the lane. She had to speak to Zoe before he came in, was determined to get at least a part of her messy life sorted out before she saw him.

‘This might sound strange, but you two look like a couple.’

‘What?’ Zoe jumped nervously, glancing towards the window where the Range Rover was reversing at a frantic pelt down the muddy drive.

‘You do,’ Tash insisted. ‘I keep noticing it recently. You and Niall, you look – act – like a couple who’ve been together for years.’

Blonde hair tickling her eyes, Zoe barely dared move, her whisk slowed to a stop, the bowl held at an angle under the crook of her arm.

‘Really?’

Tash nodded, listening to the car engine cut out in the lane, and Ma, having just been warned of Hugo’s imminent arrival, booming, ‘Not that Godforsaken man!’ from the sitting room.

‘You know we’re washed up, don’t you?’ said Tash in a low, urgent rush.

Zoe nodded, her clever blue eyes softening.

‘H-how long have you known?’ Tash asked.

She shrugged. ‘Officially, a few days, I suppose. Since you got back from France. Niall was in an awful state before you went away. But I’ve guessed for weeks – maybe longer.’

‘He didn’t used to phone the farm to speak to me, did he?’ Tash watched her face, hearing car doors banging in the lane now, followed by the electronic chirrup of an alarm being activated. ‘I mean, maybe at first, but he calls here all the time now, and you can’t pretend it’s to get hold of me any more.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Are you – I mean, have you—’

Zoe shook her head violently. ‘No! Not at all. We’re friends, Tash, no more. I swear the most secretive thing we’ve done all week is have a couple of lunches to talk about how hellish he feels about what’s happened with you – and a furtive trip to an AA meeting. It’s hardly a whirlwind affair.’

Figures were moving along the drive now. Tash could hear Lisette’s rasping, sexy voice raised in anger as she complained about Hugo’s driving. She wanted to lean out of the window and scream at them to wait a few minutes, longing desperately to resolve a situation in which she felt she was slowly suffocating to death.

‘He won’t let me tell anyone,’ she muttered hoarsely, hearing Hugo’s voice floating in from the courtyard now, soft and drawling as ever. ‘I want to say something tonight, but he won’t let me. He’s convinced we should keep it quiet for another week.’

Zoe turned away, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘I’ve talked to him until I’m blue in the face, Tash. It’s like his drinking – telling him to stop won’t help. You have to take hold of his hand and keep holding it until he knows for certain you’re not going to let it go, not going to let him down.’

‘I’ve already let him down,’ Tash whispered bleakly.

‘And he’s covering up,’ Zoe went on urgently. ‘He’s tucking away the truth in the same way he hides countless bottles around the forge, thinking you won’t notice. He’s terrified that you’ll never forgive him once he tells you what this mess he’s got himself into might cost you. I’m sorry, darling, but it’s going to tear you apart when you find out.’

‘I know,’ Tash muttered, finding that tears were starting to leak from her eyes and slip warmly down her cheeks. ‘I know I’ll lose Snob. And if that’s what it takes to straighten him out, I’ll do it. Niall will just have to sell him.’

‘Is that what you think?’ Zoe gasped. ‘That Niall is planning to sell him?’

‘Isn’t he going to have to?’ Tash asked in confusion. ‘To get the money to buy himself out of the
Cheers!
deal?’

‘Darling, he’d never do that to you, even if he could. He knows how hard you’ve worked on that horse. That’s why he’s desperate for you two to go to Badminton without the tabloids on your back, sniffing around for a cheap quote, hounding you endlessly, putting you off while you’re working the horses, shattering your concentration – because that’s what will happen when this news breaks, believe me. It will be simply awful for you. Can’t you see that’s why he’s keeping up this act for you both?’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Oh, Tash! I simply don’t know.’

Slamming the bowl down on a surface, Zoe turned and raced across the kitchen to give her a hug. Letting out a stifled sob, Tash breathed in her lovely, cool scent and felt Zoe’s strength and warmth seeping into her, giving her a tremendous, almost drug-like boost.

The dogs were barking like mad once more. Hugo and his coterie were moving through the parked cars outside, taking their time as they paused to look at Zoe’s ancient Mercedes, but almost at the door.

‘You have to help me, Zoe,’ said Tash desperately. ‘You have to be completely honest with me. Do you love Niall?’

Zoe pulled back to look at her, blue eyes suddenly guarded. ‘Of course I do – I love both of you.’

‘Not like that,’ Tash gabbled her words to get them out. ‘Do you love him? I mean love, love. Because I’m almost certain he loves you. Is in love with you – over, under and upside down with love for you.’

Zoe froze, stiffening in her arms. ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she scoffed dismissively.

‘Oh, I know Niall.’ Tash laughed through her tears. ‘And I know what a cretin he is about telling someone how he feels for them at first, how terrified he is of rejection – we’re both exactly the same, it’s why we’re so hopeless together. You have to do it for him, Zoe. If you feel the same way, you have to hold his hand like you said. Because he won’t let go of mine until you do.’

Zoe stared at her in silence and Tash was suddenly terrified that she’d got it wrong.

‘You d-do love him, don’t you?’ she stammered.

Zoe smiled – that warm, luscious smile that melted the beautiful, glacier-smooth face into warmth and sympathy, her blue eyes glistening with tears.

‘I think I’m starting to.’ She nodded, giving Tash a tight squeeze. ‘I think one day very soon I could find myself loving him almost as much as you love Hugo.’

Tash bleated in shock.

‘Oh, darling, it’s patently obvious you adore him,’ Zoe laughed through her tears. ‘It always has been.’

A sharp rapping on the yard door separated them, and Zoe reached for a tea towel to swab her eyes. Tash searched desperately for something absorbent too, but she was too late. Hugo and Lisette were already entering the room with bottles of champagne and yet another extra guest as David Wheaton – tall, leather-faced and frighteningly cerebral – followed behind them wearing a comfortingly old-looking pair of cords and exactly the same checked Marks & Spencer shirt that Gus had on that night.

‘Sorry we’re late, darling.’ Hugo moved across to give Zoe a kiss. ‘Hope you don’t mind David coming too – I said you’re always blissfully informal about these things. You haven’t done individual
boeuf en croûte
or anything?’

‘No, no – it’s a whole salmon, we’re fine,’ Zoe said rather weakly.

‘Hi, Tash – still dewy-eyed, I see.’ Hugo turned to her with a caustic smile.

Saying nothing, her chest absolutely exploding with emotion, Tash headed for the cutlery drawer to grab another place setting, turning her back to him. Why was he always so killingly cruel? She was acutely aware of what Zoe had just said, and consequently paranoid that she’d been wandering around for ages making it patently obvious that she adored Hugo. Quite what exactly had made it so patently obvious was a mystery. She was pretty certain that she’d never mooned around gawping at him with her tongue hanging out, but she was almost doubting her memory on that one. She realised that she’d have to keep a closer guard on her emotions in future.

Ever the smooth social engineer, Lisette was introducing David to Zoe, telling him loudly about Zoe’s former fame as a top-ranking features journalist. She seemed to know a remarkable amount about it.

‘I really wasn’t around for very long,’ Zoe said modestly, picking up her congealing dill mayonnaise. ‘And I wrote an absolutely appalling column for the
Sunday Telegraph
which pretty much killed my career off.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Lisette said easily.

Tash stiffened as she felt Hugo move in behind her. Suddenly a hand reached around and stopped hers from scrabbling loudly in the cutlery drawer. Very slowly and carefully, he removed her fingers from their kamikaze blade-rummage and pulled her round to face him.

‘What’s wrong?’ he muttered, not altogether gently, his cool blue eyes raking her face. ‘Because that’s a bloody silly way to cut your wrists.’

Wearing an old rugby shirt and black jeans, he seemed to have made even less of an effort than Niall had. Tash noticed that he had hay all over one sleeve and he’d slipped his watch on the wrong way round – probably after a hasty shower. She longed to reach out and put it right for him.

‘What’s wrong Tash?’ he repeated, backing off a couple of feet as though worried she might do just that.

Not really thinking, she mouthed, ‘You are!’ and headed through to the dining room to lay yet another place and search for a spare chair strong enough to hold Ma.

She felt tearful and childish. The titanic conversation with Zoe had absolutely drained her and yet, she realised, she was not really much further on than she had been at the start of the evening, except that she was no longer so sure that Niall was planning to sell Snob. She just wished she knew quite what he was planning to do, other than wait for Lisette’s party to stage something dramatic. This evening, he seemed hell-bent on convincing everyone that the marriage was very much on – especially if he carried on drinking and adopted his garrulous, compulsive-lying character from the film, which he was certain to do with such a large audience to play to.

Tash wasn’t sure she could get through the night ahead, let alone another week of pretending like this. Hugo was obviously setting out to stalk around her, hissing and snarling, when all she longed for him to do was throw her over his shoulders in a completely brutish, Neanderthal way and whisk her back to Maccombe to ravish her and tell her that he loved her and would sort her life out for her. She knew it wasn’t a very politically correct, feminist fantasy, but she was feeling far too exhausted and stressed to throw him over her shoulder and sort her life out for herself.

It was hot, sticky evening, and Tash’s jeans became more and more clammy as she circulated the sitting room before dinner distributing wine. The room was full of strange cross-currents of which no one was oblivious. The talk before they ate was, predictably, all about films and weddings. Far too much about weddings for Tash, who hardly spoke for fear of screaming.

Desperately avoiding looking anywhere near Hugo, she found that she was catching Niall’s eye over and over again as he drank too much on an empty stomach and played the dutiful fiancé. Yet throughout his utterly convincing act, he continually kept tags on Zoe, eyes glancing towards her when she moved or laughed, always offering to help when she was buckling under a tray of drinks or trying to open a door with a platter of hors d’oeuvres in her hand. It was so obvious that they were attached by invisible strings to one another now that Tash wondered why no one else commented on it. Yet to the rest of the party, who spoke of little else than the doomed wedding, it seemed that the forthcoming nuptials was a dream match.

As they chatted in the sitting room before going through to eat, Niall became more and more convincing in his role, seeming to revel in his skill.

‘Tash and I aren’t doing a stag night, hen night thing,’ he told his avid audience. ‘Instead we’re both having a huge final fling with one another at the location wrap party next weekend.’

‘A chicken night,’ Tash muttered, but no one was listening.

‘How romantic,’ Sally giggled, still trying to wind up Matty. ‘I had my final fling with a red-haired bar-man called Jerry. I only got off with him because I was absolutely plastered from running up to the bar every ten minutes, saying, “I want a gin, Jerry, and make it a stiff one,” to amuse my girlfriends.’

‘Which says a lot for her girlfriends,’ Matty said witheringly, shooting Lisette an evil look which she ignored.

‘What hymns are you having, son?’ Ma boomed. Having worked her way almost single-handed through all the crisps, she was now halfway through Zoe’s tray of rather odd hors d’oeuvres which consisted of a piece of raw vegetable draped with a whole anchovy.

‘We’re not having hymns, Mother.’ Niall’s dark eyes glittered. ‘We’re having a specially commissioned concerto from a mate of mine who writes film scores.’

‘I ’clare, that sounds a bloody awful idea, so it does.’ Ma chomped her way through an anchovy-draped carrot stick. ‘You had some lovely hymns at your wedding to that skinny woman. What was her name?’

‘Lisette,’ said Lisette huffily.

‘That’s the one!’ Ma took a slurp of scotch – she’d had at least three now – and eyed Lisette thoughtfully. ‘Actually, d’you know, she looked a little like you, child. She had a bigger nose, though, and a chest like a slip of a boy.’