Kiss and Tell (123 page)

‘Is it possible,’ Pascal spoke carefully now, not wanting his bad English to confuse his meaning, ‘that Beccy may have mistaken someone else for Hugo?’

‘Impossible. He said his name.’

‘I say my name, Pascal, but I am not the only one
en France
,’ he pointed out. ‘At a party, there are many of us I think and in a darkened room a pretty girl could find ’erself confused,
non
?’

Henrietta shook her head. ‘You are unique to those who love you – the way you smell and feel and touch.’

‘Beccy, she loves Hugo?’ He was starting to understand the situation better, although he wished it were otherwise.

‘A crush,’ Henrietta nodded, ‘but a very long-lived one.’

‘That is the effect Hugo has on women.’ He puffed out his cheeks in bewilderment, utterly failing to see the attraction these arrogant, sporty upper-class Brits had when their passionate, wine-loving Gallic counterparts were so much more rewarding.

Glancing discreetly at his watch and again hoping Lough would arrive soon, Pascal tactfully changed the subject to her beautiful garden, and before he knew it they were having a warm and animated discussion on slug control for nasturtiums. Ten minutes later, she was giving him a torch-lit guided tour of her herbaceous borders.

Beccy could hear their voices outside her open bedroom windows, ghastly old-fogey droning about aphids. She wanted to hurl something out of the gaping sash, but the only things to hand were her iPhone and her laptop, both of which provided vital communication with the outside world. Not that she was communicating yet, but she was keeping tabs.

The pain was searing again. She longed to ring the emergency bell Henrietta had placed on her bedside table, but couldn’t face her mother lecturing her on reducing her analgesia again, and anyway she was set on pretending to be asleep until the French detective went away. She’d stashed a few of the really potent knock-out pills under her pillow. She dug one out now, and tucked it under her tongue. There were now just three left so she must have taken a lot more than she was meant to.

She drifted off to sleep, but woke up with pain searing through her pelvis, her hips full of razorblades. She felt dry-mouthed and sick so drank water, taking two more pills but not caring. It hurt too much.

Beccy closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. There was a droning, snarling noise in her head now, like maddened insects.

She must have dropped off again because she had a dream that Lough was in her room, standing over her and saying her name.

‘Beccy – Beccy, wake up.’

‘Hi.’ She smiled up at him groggily.

Those turbulent, dark eyes came in and out of focus. He had a strange red stripe across his forehead.

‘Is that a Maori thing?’

‘Huh?’

She had to say it several times to be understood, her words slurring horribly.

‘No, I borrowed Gus’s bike off the yard and the helmet’s too tight,’ he explained and then he started talking about something, but she couldn’t keep up. He was spinning around her.

She tried to remember how many pills she had taken. More than ten? Surely not. Then again … She started to tip over the cliff into lovely blackness.

Her eyes snapped open. Lough had his fingers laced through hers. How bizarre. How beautifully bizarre.

‘… cousin called Hugo,’ he was saying ‘… admits it all … just fifteen … carried away … terrified he’s done wrong … got to sort this out … both your sakes …’

She closed her eyes and listened to his Kiwi drawl. She remembered flirting with him on the phone all those months ago, the giddy sense of sexual attraction, a world away from sucking salty stale underpants in a stables loft in Berkshire.

These painkillers were the best.

‘This was Tash’s bedroom as a kid,’ she told him. ‘You love her, don’t you? Just imagine her lying in this bed at fifteen, dreaming about getting carried away in a hay barn, writhing away right here where I am.’

‘Shut up.’

She opened one eye but five Loughs were spinning around so she closed it again, and waited to tumble over the cliff edge. At least the pain had gone, even if the dreams were weird. How many pills had she swallowed today? Ten? Twelve? Maybe more …

She’d stolen rather a lot of the pills in recent days, several little foil trays sneaked away when her mother wasn’t looking. Could it be as many as sixteen?

Now, suddenly, through the soup of analgesia, Beccy started to panic. But her body was so sluggish and her mind so muddled, she had no familiar adrenalin spike of fear and fight.

Lough was talking again, that lovely voice: ‘Beccy, this is serious. The man you were with on New Year’s Eve wasn’t Hugo Beauchamp.’

She started to feel as though she was floating up above her own body.

He took her hand. It was clammy and cold. ‘Hugo
Moncrieff
is Gus’s nephew. He’s fifteen. He was the one you were alone with that night.’

‘What a coincidence,’ she murmured, her voice sounding miles away in her head. ‘Life is full of them, don’t you find?’

‘Do you understand what I’m say—’

‘I went to the Melbourne Horse Trials once,’ she said dreamily, cutting him off mid-flow. ‘The three day event. You were there. So was Tash. That’s a coincidence.’

‘Beccy, we have to talk about—’

‘I ran out in front of my stepsister’s horse. You saved my life.’

Lough shut up abruptly, a flutter running through his regular heart beat.

‘Crazy thing to do.’ Her voice was increasingly distant, especially to her own ears. ‘But I just wanted to be gone. And you kept me alive. You kept me safe for just a little bit …’

Lough looked at her pale face, trying to recognise something familiar in the features, in the wide cheeks, rosebud lips and little snub nose. He’d relived that moment again and again over the years.

‘I’m scared, Lough.’ Her gaze was unfocused now, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘The pain was just so bad, I wanted it to stop.’ Her voice slurred and she closed her eyes.

‘It was a long time ago.’ He squeezed her hand, which was limp in his.

‘No.’ Her fingers twitched as she fought sleep. ‘You don’t understand. I never could count very well … taken too many … kill the pain … feel so scared. Please don’t let me die, Lough.’

‘I’m here,’ he soothed distractedly, guessing she was overtired.

He glanced around the room, Tash’s old room, dating back to a childhood he knew nothing about, a woman he knew nothing about and, if he admitted the truth, a fantasy built from one fateful day. There were framed photographs of Beccy on horses all over the walls now, little personal knick-knacks on the dressing table and windowsills, china horses and old trophies. It smelled deliciously of sweet peas, cocoa butter and clean hair. It smelled of Beccy.

It took over a minute for Lough to realise that she hadn’t fallen asleep again. Her eyes had rolled back and her breathing was so shallow it was almost gone.

Then it seemed to stop entirely.

With a bellow for help, he pulled back the covers and checked her airways, breathing and pulse before starting to perform CPR.

‘Call an ambulance – I think it’s an overdose!’ he shouted at Henrietta as soon as she ran into the room.

The heel of his hand in the middle of Beccy’s chest, fingers interlaced with those of his other hand, he compressed at regular intervals, counting down from thirty.

Then he tipped back her chin and pinched her nose, closing his mouth around hers – oh what a first kiss – breathing until her lungs filled. Once. Twice.

He started compressing her chest again. ‘Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight …’

When Beccy began to splutter and cough, clearly about to vomit, he pulled her torso upright and supported her, careful not to put any more stress on her broken pelvis than he had to. He rubbed her back, soft and pale between her shoulder blades where her little camisole revealed skin tens of shades lighter than the outdoor glow around her neckline and arms. As he stroked her, his fingers crisscrossed a small tattoo on one pearl-white shoulder. A mermaid smiled up at him.

He could hear the Melbourne Tannoy in his ears, announcing that Tash was at the lake. He saw the girl climb the barriers in front of him, so close her bag caught on his elbow, pulling it clean off her arm like a thief. She hadn’t even looked back. He remembered her fear, her eyes as wild as an animal’s, her body all bones and baggy clothes. She’d smelled of stale digs and the city, a world away from anything that comforted him or inspired him. She had smelled of his childhood.

Now her warm skin was sweet and moreish; she smelled of life as she hiccupped and gasped and groaned, fighting her way back.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to do it. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t you go away,’ he breathed in her ear, ‘I know who you are. I’ve taken long time to find you.’ And, holding her tight, he dropped his lips to kiss the mermaid, stunned by the electric shock that rocketed right through him.

Then Beccy vomited.

As moments go, it wasn’t the most romantic, but in that moment Lough changed indelibly. Even as she was wrenched away from him, spirited off in an ambulance by paramedics who insisted she must go to hospital, he knew he’d bet his heart on the wrong horse a long time ago.

Stomach pumped and pain relief strictly controlled, Beccy was monitored overnight before undergoing a psychiatric assessment in the morning.

It took Lough over an hour to pluck up the courage to call her mobile that afternoon, intending to leave a message. He didn’t imagine for a moment that she would answer it in person, but she did.

‘You saved my life,’ she breathed.

He couldn’t think what to say.

‘Again.’ She laughed tearfully.

‘How are you?’ he managed to ask eventually.

‘Under observation, apparently, although no longer a suicide risk, which is nice.’ Her nerves were making her babble. ‘They do at least see that I took too many painkillers to try to kill the pain, not myself, and now I’m on the most fantastic new stuff that means I’m not in constant agony. They’ve spent all day assessing me. It seems I’m not considered a threat to myself or others. They obviously haven’t seen me ride across country.’

He smiled, amazed at how upbeat she sounded. ‘So when do you get out?’

‘Any time now. I might even be going to France tonight, if the hospital will discharge me. Pascal thinks I should talk to Tash in person.’

‘Can’t you just phone?’

‘I need to tell her the truth face to face.’

‘And what is the truth?’ he asked carefully.

Beccy breathed in deeply, the truth of it still hurting a lot. ‘I was horribly drunk. I never saw him properly – just heard the voice and smelled the aftershave. And I so
wanted
it to be my Hugo – Tash’s Hugo – even though it was so awful. I’ve had this crazy hang-up about him for years, you see. I’ve been a bit obsessed really.’

‘“Every woman needs a little madness in her life.”’

She recognised the quote with a sharp intake of breath.
Cyrano de Bergerac
. ‘Oh, God, don’t! I’m so ashamed that I pretended to be Tash all those weeks just to talk to you.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ He let out that rare, hot-spring laugh. ‘Are you really going to France tonight?’

‘If the consultant agrees. James was absolutely livid when he got back from St Andrews. You should have heard him: “But she has a broken pelvis, for God’s sake!”’ she impersonated her stepfather’s bark. ‘And Pascal just stood his ground: “Tash, she has a broken heart. That is much more fragile to travel. I will hire a private ambulance and a nurse.”’ Her French accent was superb. Lough fought a crazy urge to ask her to keep talking in it, but she was speaking again:

‘I’m being wheeled over the Channel to say my piece. D’you want me to bring you back some Rosé d’Anjou? Send your love to Tash?’

There was an awkward pause.

‘Sorry. Unforgiveable.’ She said in a small voice. ‘One psychiatrist asked me today if I self harm, which I don’t, but I forgot to point out to her that I’ve been cutting off my nose to spite my face all my life.’

Hearing her speak with that rushed, nervous humour reminded Lough of the calls they’d shared before. He still struggled to separate Beccy from Tash during those early weeks, yet the more he thought about it, the more clearly he could hear the real Beccy speaking, with her playful, restless mind and her quick-wittedness.

‘I was thinking of coming to visit you,’ he admitted. In fact, he’d spent all morning grappling with his motorbike to get it roadworthy, running through what he was going to say in his head, while Gus loudly complained that his horses were going unridden.

‘You still can,’ Beccy said now.

‘But you’re going to France.’

‘I am – the Loire Valley. It’s not Bergerac, I know, but it’s less far for you to drive,’ she teased. Then, when there was a stunned silence at the other end of the line, she hastily added, ‘Forget it. Stupid idea. Total fantasy.’

Still Lough said nothing and Beccy winced at her end of the line, her face now so red it was threatening to melt the fascia of her iPhone.

‘Maybe we’re both fantasists,’ he said eventually.

Beccy caught her breath. ‘They should lock us up.’

‘They did once, remember? You in a Singapore jail, and me in a cell in Auckland.’

Suddenly they both burst into laughter, a magical release that rendered them both breathless. It was like a first kiss.

‘I’ll see you in France then, shall I?’ he asked, clearly still uncertain if she was joking.

Gripped by fright, Beccy found the fact Lough had called at all surreal, and a paranoid voice in her head still insisted that he was using her to get closer to Tash. Like a child with a box of matches, she couldn’t resist sending up sparks.

‘If Tash and Hugo really have separated, there’s nothing to stop you now. You’re bound to want to talk to her. Le Manoir’s really romantic, from what I’ve heard. Don’t worry, I won’t stand in your way. Can’t stand up right now anyway.’

There was another yawning silence and Beccy closed her eyes, knowing she’d just totally blown it, the matches catching the few fragile silk threads that tied her and Lough together and burning them clean away. Her thumb was already fingering the End Call button.