Well Groomed (83 page)

That night was the Badminton Ball, a huge post-enduranceday party held in the riders’ marquees that was an exercise in endurance itself as it usually consisted of a large number of over-fit, over-sexed eventers on the razzle – either high from their day’s successes and celebrating, or low from their failures and trying to drown their sorrows. Even with another day of competition ahead, it had a reputation as a party to behold. It was the perfect setting, she decided, to corner Hugo and tell him how she felt about him. There was nothing, according to her mother, as intimate as a large party. And Tash was bursting with the need to get extremely intimate indeed.

The champagne was very quickly replaced by cheap Bulgarian Chardonnay but no one seemed to mind as they downed several glasses each and took turns to race back and forth to the course to check the last few finishers’ scores. At the close of the endurance day, Hugo was still in the lead with Gus third, Brian Sedgewick fourth and Kirsty now back in twenty-eighth.

Stefan and Tash, who had both failed to finish, consoled themselves with a huge box of chocolates that a female fan had given Hugo that morning to wish him luck.

‘Save me a soft centre.’ Kirsty swam through the tight gaggle of revellers and joined them where they stood crushed up against the little kitchen oven. Hugo, still sitting at the packed table at the opposite end of the box with Gus, was out of view.

‘Stefan and I think,’ she gave Tash a beady look as she selected a strawberry cream, ‘that you should make up your mind who you want – Niall or Hugo.’

Tash gulped. Sophia, who was just behind her and chattering away to Stefan’s uncomprehending six-foot mother about Holdham, suddenly went quiet.

‘You have to choose, Tash,’ Stefan whispered, eyes raking her face. ‘You can’t keep stringing him along like this. You’re a week away from being Mrs Niall O’Shaughnessy, and you keep looking at Hugo as though he’s the one who’s going to be waiting at the top of the aisle.’

The back of Sophia’s head was almost on Tash’s shoulder.

‘Hugo must be in one hell of a mess right now, Tash.’ Kirsty chomped on her strawberry cream.

‘We think all those phone-calls he’s been making over the past couple of days are to the Samaritans.’ Stefan selected a nougat and looked at Tash earnestly.

She gulped in horror, a lump of hazelnut whirl sliding down her wind pipe and almost choking her. ‘Really? He seems so together today.’

‘All front.’ Kirsty shook her head. ‘You know how proud he is.’

‘Poor Hugo,’ Tash whispered.

She was horrified when, minutes later, Alexandra offered to take them all out to dinner that night.

‘But it’s the ball!’ she wailed.

‘Oh, we never go to that,’ Penny said dismissively. ‘And this would be far more fun. Anyway you said yesterday you didn’t want to go to it.’

‘Yes, come on, darling.’ Alexandra gave her an unusually stern look. Squashed together nearby, Henrietta and James joined in. They should be holding up placards, Tash thought weakly.

She escaped from the heaving, airless box to see the horses for a few minutes, checking Hunk first, who was wearing a cold poultice on his weak tendon and pulling faces, greedy for Polos. She then headed across the yard to check Snob over. His legs, now scraped free of their cross-country grease, were miraculously cool and unmarred and, even though he was tired from the day’s exertions, he was still boisterous enough to head-butt her a couple of times in the ribs before settling down to snatch at his net. Tash pressed her forehead to his shoulder, breathing in the warmth of his neck and the sweet scent of his highly banked alfalfa bedding.

‘Give me an excuse not to go,’ she moaned, turning back to lean against him. ‘Give me an excuse to stay here and keep Hugo here too. Can’t you put on a fake limp for a bit?’

But he merely offered silent support, pressing a warm muzzle to her shoulder and blowing out in a long, languid sigh. He was feeling extremely smug.

As was Hugo. When they walked to the cars they were all sharing that night, he fell into pace beside Tash and caught her arm in his. ‘You haven’t congratulated me yet.’

Tash looked up into those eager, laughing blue eyes and rippled all over with excitement. Then a booming chortle behind them made her jump out of her skin.

‘You haven’t won yet, Hugs.’ Ben lolloped up beside them companionably. ‘Listen, Sophia and I are going to push off home and skip this dinner thing. Kids are getting a bit fractious and the nanny appears to be throwing some sort of wobbly and crying non-stop. Damned inconvenient. Good luck tomorrow, Hugs.’

‘Thanks.’ Hugo was still looking at Tash.

Ben slapped them both cheerfully on the back. ‘I suppose the next time we’ll see you two is at the wedding?’ He carried on walking beside them towards the car park, humming flatly.

Seeing Hugo’s eyes harden, Tash wanted to scream.

After that, Hugo stomped broodily off to travel to the restaurant with Penny and Gus in the only taxi. Desperate to avoid a grilling by the pressure group, Tash leaped into the back of Stefan’s parents’ hire car, cramming herself alongside Kirsty and the tall Swede.

‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in there?’ Kirsty nodded towards James’s Jaguar.

‘No, no – this is very cosy,’ Tash squeaked, slamming the door shut and watching Hugo’s set profile slide away as the taxi beside them drove off.

Niall, as ever, chose the most theatrical moment to get in touch. They were just settling down in a very grand restaurant near Bath, toasting the day, when Gus’s mobile telephone shrilled into life, causing a lot of the other diners to tut disapprovingly. Tash cowered when he said who it was. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Hugo, who yet again had been swept away from her and was sitting at the far end of the long, narrow table.

She took the phone with a shaking hand and glanced around for somewhere to escape with it in private, but she was hemmed in against a wall with two people to either side of her. Short of diving under the table, she had no choice but to stay put.

‘Angel, can we talk?’ breathed Niall down a crackly line. ‘Are you alone?’

Tash gazed around her at almost a dozen fascinated faces and swallowed. ‘Not exactly, no.’

Opposite her, Alexandra was mouthing ‘Is that Niall?’ like mad and Penny was nearly burning her hair off in the candle flame as she leaned forward to hear better over the restaurant chatter.

‘Oh – I see.’ His voice kept cutting out on the line. ‘I hea . . . you had to pull out of the . . . mpetition, angel. I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks.’ Tash shifted in her seat. The connection was appalling. She could only catch snatches of what he was saying. ‘I’m . . . orry I haven’t been in touch . . . rlier, but this we . . . been . . . urder.’

‘What? Murder?’ Tash craned back in her chair to get a better reception. In front of her, the pressure group craned forward to listen in, eyes widening.

The line was breaking up even more badly now. ‘Angel, the film’s . . . hind sched . . . and over budget. I honestly think that if I break our news at the party to . . . row night it will fin . . . . . . ette off.’

‘Did you say finish Lisette off?’ Tash found that the aerial was now caught up with an elaborate metal sconce behind her head, making reception even worse.

Niall sounded as though he was talking through a kazoo.

‘Yes–we’re carry . . . onfilmingat . . . down foranex . . . two days. I’ve only just this minute got back from . . . sh . . . myself.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ Tash was battling to get the aerial out of the sconce. ‘What yourself?’

‘I’ve just this minute got back from the shoot, angel.’ His voice returned to normal as she freed herself from the sconce although the line was still crackling like a crisp packet in a jogger’s bum-bag.

‘Oh,
shoot
,’ Tash nodded.

‘Lisette seems to have guessed that something’s up,’ he went on. ‘In her current state she might do something silly.’

‘What do you mean, do something silly?’ Tash asked, ignoring her mother’s frantic hand signals.

The line was now coming and going as though he was swinging the phone receiver around his head by the cord. ‘Listen, we have to meet up tomorrow evening,’ he said urgently. ‘Before Lisette’s party. At the forge. I need to ask a monumental favour of you. I ’clare, it’s pretty bloody gargantuan, and you might well refuse. But my future happiness is riding on it.’ He sounded wildly excited and almost, Tash realised in amazement, joyful.

‘Oh, yes?’ Tash noticed that everyone at the table was gaping at her in appalled silence. She tried to flash them a ‘just having a chat’ smile.

There was a long pause and for a moment Tash worried that the line had cut out completely, but at last Niall spoke, his voice meltingly soft and persuasive. ‘Angel, I want the wedding to go ahead.’

‘You what?’ Tash yelped.

‘It was Zoe’s idea,’ he confessed.

‘Did you say Zoe?’

Opposite her, Henrietta elbowed Tash’s mother so hard in the ribs that she almost landed on James’s lap.

There was another long pause, punctuated by Gus’s phone letting out a sharp beep to warn that the battery was running low. When Niall finally started talking again, his voice was deep and laced with apologies.

‘I love Zoe, Tash. I’m sorry, angel, but I have to be honest. She’s the one person who’s held me together through this. I adore her – she’s so strong and good and clever. If she believes in me enough to let me risk it rather than go bankrupt, I think I have to be the luckiest, most undeserving sod on this earth.’ Suddenly she could hear him laughing his lovely, abandoned, raucous laugh.

‘Risk what?’

The line started breaking up badly again. ‘Zoe thinks the idea of giving
Cheers!
a huge surprise next Saturday is wonderful, so she does. She says she’s always believed rearranged marriages last the longest.’

Tash wondered if Zoe had been joining him on his drinking binges.

‘What are you suggesting here?’ She was having to tip right back in her chair to keep the connection.

‘I suppose Bob Hudson should take all the credit.’ Niall’s laugh was fragmented by crackling interference, making it sound alarmingly manic. ‘After all, staging an altar-native wedding was his idea in . . . first pl . . . I just wish I could tell him, but he . . . ight blow the whole th . . .’ The line disappeared for a moment.

‘Niall?’ Tash waggled the phone. ‘Niall?’

‘. . . if Lisette found out at this stage, it would be suicide,’ his voice came back.

‘Suicide! Niall, if you’re suggesting—’ Tash was about to say that if he believed she would really agree to go ahead with Bob’s ridiculous tears-at-the altar stage-show, then that would be suicide too, but the pressure group was practically lying over the table now.

‘Believe me, Tash, we’ve talked and talked about it,’ Niall urged. ‘And I swear to you that, if you help me pull this thing off, I’ll make it up to your family one day, I promise I will.’

The phone let out another urgent beep.

‘Niall, the battery’s about to cut out,’ Tash said hopelessly.

‘I have to talk to you tomorrow night, angel,’ he begged. ‘I have to convince you this thing might work. Promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone until then?’ he pleaded.

‘Okay.’ Tash glanced at Hugo and then looked quickly away again, unable to bear seeing that beautiful, guarded face which almost certainly hid a seething well of anger and hurt.

‘Thank you, angel!’ Niall sounded like an overexcited small boy. ‘If you agree to do this, we might even be able to stop Hugo getting his hands on Snob.’

‘What?’ She froze, looking at him once more. He was glaring at her murderously. Perhaps he wasn’t so hurt after all . . .

‘I overheard Lisette talking to him on the phone today, angel. I’m not sure, but I think she’s agreed to sell the horse to Hugo if we call the wedding off. She was talking about their “deal”.’

The phone was letting out a beep every few seconds now, obliterating a lot of what he was saying. Tash was terrified the line would go before she had a chance to find out anymore.

‘What exactly did she say?’

She was astonished to hear Niall laughing once more.

‘Tash, it doesn’t matter. Wait till tomorrow night. Zoe’s convinced that all you have to do is tell Hugo—’ The line finally died with one last trill.

There was an ominous, expectant hush at the table. Tash took a deep breath and, tipping forward on her chair again, flipped the cover of the phone shut.

‘That was Niall,’ she said shakily.

‘So we gathered,’ her father snapped.

‘What’s happening, darling?’ Alexandra’s eyes were huge with concern. ‘He’s not threatening to do something awful to himself, is he?’

‘No, Mummy,’ she muttered. Not to himself, she wanted to scream. Just to me. ‘He was extremely cheerful, in fact.’

‘So is the wedding still going ahead?’ Henrietta asked nervously.

Not trusting herself to speak, Tash nodded.

Then, as though worked by a ventriloquist’s hand at her back, her eyes slithered involuntarily towards Hugo. He was lighting a cigarette with shaking hands but his face registered nothing but utter contempt, blue eyes searing into hers with such scorn that she almost flew back against the wall. She looked away in despair.

UP AT DAWN THE following morning because the others were thumping around the lorry so loudly that Tash at first thought they were hitting her over the head, she stumbled around with a crashing hangover, hardly focusing as she crawled to the yard to watch Snob being trotted out along with the other Lime Tree Farm horses to check they hadn’t stiffened up in the night. Having just held her heaving stomach in check long enough to see that Snob was looking far better than she was, she bolted off to be sick.

‘I think her nerves are getting to her,’ India said with concern. ‘She’s really worried for Hugo and Snob, really wants them to win. That’s so selfless.’