Kiss and Tell (15 page)

‘This place stinks,’ the Kiwi said, pushing his free cocktail aside. ‘They want to fleece us, and I wouldn’t touch that,’ he nodded his head towards the glass that Hugo was lifting to his lips again.

He laughed, draining half its contents. ‘Surely you don’t think they’ve used a bad vintage in these?’ He pulled a face. ‘You do have a point, though. Definitely not Krug.’

‘On your head be it.’ Lough leaned across the table, dropping his voice. ‘I lied about who we are because they want to know how much they can take us for. You might have brought me here to tell me you’re going to shop me, Hugo, but believe me, these guys will strip your wallet bare of credit before you can get to the till. They know you’re a one-off, and your wedding ring is hard currency here.’

‘The bar came highly recommended.’ Hugo looked momentarily affronted before laughing uproariously. ‘You’re right. It’s bloody awful. I must apologise. But I assure you that I’m not going to shop you. I loathe shopping – just ask my wife.’

Lough’s eyes flashed. ‘Does your wife know you come to bars like this?’

‘She’s the reason we’re here.’

‘
Tash
recommended this place?’

‘She wants me to bring you back to Haydown.’ Hugo raised his glass. His eyes crossed for a moment.

‘Isn’t she about to have a baby?’

‘That’s not why she wants you in Berkshire. We have a midwife for that,’ he ran a hand through his hair as he often habitually did. ‘Nor do we need you to dope any horses.’ He tried to fix Lough with a serious look, but his eyes crossed again and he blinked hard.

Lough said nothing, watching Hugo sit back in his chair, blue gaze increasingly unfocused as he squinted at the burlesque dancer who had got up on the stage and was doing extraordinary things with a top hat and opera cane. Then his eyes lifted to the ceiling and his jaw fell open. ‘Call me sexist, but in this particular case I seriously hope those women don’t break through the glass ceiling.’

Lough didn’t laugh. ‘Your wife must be a very forgiving woman.’

‘She’d see the funny side.’ Hugo looked down, pressing his hands on the table edge to steady himself as blood rushed to his brain. ‘She’s very level-headed, Tash – unlike me – phew.’ He shook his head. ‘This cocktail is bloody strong.’ He laughed, glancing at Lough again. ‘She wants you at Haydown because you’re a sensational rider and we could all benefit. God knows when she’ll be back in the saddle. Babies do strange things to women.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Lough said carefully.

‘Don’t you be in any hurry to find that out.’ Hugo’s voice was slurring as he fought to make sense. ‘The British event scene is fantastic for high-end totty, with the only strings attached being the horses.’

‘That a fact?’ Lough gave nothing away.

‘You’ll have a different girl in your box every weekend.’

‘I’m not like that, Hugo.’

‘All event riders are like that.’ Hugo insisted.

‘I guess you should know.’

‘Face it, Lough, my wife’s right: you would be much better off based in Europe.’ Hugo was struggling to follow the thread of the conversation now, and feeling more and more light-headed, as though he was floating out of his body and up towards the naked bodies spreadeagled above his head.

‘I like New Zealand,’ Lough muttered.

‘Ah, but will the motherland forgive you when she finds out what her sporting hero’s been up to behind her back?’ Hugo closed one eye at the tongue-twisting effort of saying this.

Lough glared at him. ‘Rather like a wife forgiving a husband when he drinks in bars like this. I guess it’s worthwhile if she gets what she wants out of it, too.’

‘Got to give the wife what she wants,’ he rambled. ‘Keep her sweet.’

‘And she wants me?’ Lough asked idly, testing how wired Hugo was. ‘More fool her.’

Hugo didn’t appear to be listening, talking in staccato bursts as he fought to hold together unravelling thoughts. ‘Tash
is
sweet. Puts up with my shit, for a start. Not sure she’ll ever ride the way she did, though. More into kids now. Dreadful shame.’

‘She’s very beautiful.’ Lough had seen her compete many times on the international circuit.

‘Fuck off. She’s mine.’ Hugo’s brain was too addled to say much more. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Christ I feel odd.’

Lough watched him with fascination. Whatever they had spiked his drink with was fast-acting and potent, morphing the Brit’s usual sarcastic wit into belligerent confusion. Winding him up was all too easy. ‘So it’s okay for you to buy a high-class hostess for the night, but Tash can’t look at another man?’

‘She can look all she likes, but she can’t touch. Jesus!’ Hugo opened and closed his crossing eyes. ‘Besides which, I’m not going to “buy” a hostess.’

‘There’s a Maori saying, “Only the foolish visit the land of the cannibals”.’

‘Don’t worry, I should think most of the girls in here are on strict diets.’

‘Maori men treat their wives pretty badly too.’

‘Maori in haste, repent at leisure,’ Hugo joked in a slurred voice. ‘I do
not
treat Tash badly.’

Lough glared at him. For a great horseman he rode over people too easily; Tash had been a much-missed face among the event riders at the Games.

‘If I had a wife as beautiful as yours maybe I’d keep her safely under lock and key at home.’

‘Lough and key,’ Hugo started to laugh at the pun. ‘A lock is better than suspicion, nanny used to say, but I have no reason to suspect darling Tash. And anyway, she has free will like me. If she falls for another man and wants to bugger off, she’s welcome.’

Lough had seen the effects of drugs often enough to know that
he shouldn’t necessarily mistake the arrogant bravado for Hugo talking from the heart, but his sense of indignation still flared.

‘So you’d be happy for her to spend a night with a gigolo in a bar like this then?’

‘Gigolo.’ Hugo laughed at the old-fashioned word. ‘Had a horse named that once. Bloody misnomer if ever I knew one; we were convinced he was gay.’ He swayed in his chair before righting himself and staring groggily at Lough. ‘Are you offering your services?’

Lough shrugged.

‘She wouldn’t have you.’ Hugo let out a derisive snort.

‘Want to bet?’

Lough knew men who would throw a punch for less than that, but Hugo was looking really spaced out, his eyelids heavy and movements cumbersome. When he tried to run his fingers through his hair it took several attempts for his hand to find its target, so that he looked like he was waving his arm around in a strange country dance. His voice was increasingly slow and slurred, but what he said next took Lough completely by surprise: ‘If she’d be willing to spend a night with you, you’re welcome to her.’

Lough stared at him. ‘You don’t mean that?’

‘I’d like to see you try. I know my own wife.’ He shrugged, hair on end now, looking away, eyes half focusing as two sensational-looking women approached their table, the Angelina Jolie lookalike waitress bringing backup in the form of a curvaceous, cloud-haired Beyoncé.

Lough drummed the table irritably as the hostesses closed in like sexual big-game hunters, now certain their medal-winning prey had been suitably tranquillised.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ Angelina purred at Hugo, not realising that his handsome face was the one all over the tabloids that day, but scenting rich pickings nonetheless.

Laughing at the absurdity of the situation so much he almost fell off his chair, Hugo put up no resistance as the hostesses joined the table, his sense of reality now totally abstract, his need for entertainment and sexual gratification stripped down as his brain slowed to basic instincts. He offered to buy them champagne. ‘We’re celebrating gold and silver, you know. Never thought I’d be in a place like this to do that, but when in Rome …’

‘The Rome Olympics were in nineteen-sixty, Hugo,’ Lough stood
up and walked around the table to pull him to his feet, nodding curtly to the women. ‘Excuse my friend here, he has amnesia. Always forgets what a dick he is. I’ll take him outside for some air.’ But as he headed for the entrance, he heard the women squawk something about not paying their bill and saw his way blocked by a couple of heavies. At the same time, Hugo started to sag into his arms and he realised the man was about to pass out.

Doing an about turn, Lough dragged Hugo’s dead weight through the door marked Private and along a wide corridor that resembled that of a five-star hotel, complete with potted ferns in urns and reproduction Chippendale chairs positioned to either side of console tables with copies of
Mayfair
fanned along their tops.

The third door along was open and Lough could see the room was empty. He dragged Hugo inside and dropped him on a vast bed draped with fake fur before quickly removing the key from the inside of the door and locking him in.

‘A lock is better than suspicion, as nanny used to say,’ he muttered. He was back through the door to the club before the heavies could even register what was happening. Moments later, they and the hostesses were distracted by an influx of Russian businessmen and Hugo forgotten.

Lough settled at the bar with a beer, yawns ripping at his jaws. He knew he could just leave the Brit there, sleeping it off – God knows he probably deserved it – but a curious sense of loyalty kept him on guard. He couldn’t help thinking about Hugo’s beautiful wife waiting pregnant at home while her husband cavorted about with all the responsibility of Tiger Woods celebrating another Masters win. She didn’t deserve this.

In the early hours the bar staff changed shifts and one of the new workers brought in the early edition newspapers to hang from wooden poles at the end of the bar. A tabloid headline caught Lough’s eye.

‘Jesus!’ He leaned forward to read the article. Hugo needed to be taught a serious lesson.

The printing presses had started to roll while Tash walked around Haydown, willing the contractions to settle into a rhythm; the first editions were being arranged on the newsstands as she had another bath; and the tabloid containing Debbie’s exclusive interview was
on sale in the hospital newsagents by the time Beccy took Tash again.

The contractions still weren’t regular but the pain was getting impossible to bear, Tash told the midwife team almost apologetically.

‘I rode round Badminton with a broken collarbone once – that was nothing compared to this,’ she gasped.

‘Welcome to childbirth,’ laughed a cheery midwife, sharing a knowing glance with her assistant.

‘I’ve had one already,’ Tash reminded them anxiously. ‘She was a malpresentation. The same thing won’t happen again will it?’

‘Very unlikely,’ they patted her arms reassuringly.

After they had put Tash on a slow drip to accelerate dilation, with gas and air at the ready, Beccy left her and went to buy chocolate. The streaker pictures were, yet again, in most of the day’s redtops, who knew Debbie Double-G was good for sales, but one had the story splashed all over its front page, with more ‘exclusive’ shots of the hotel foyer drink and an interview with GG inside.
‘Hugold Love Rat!’
shouted the headline.
‘It’s all a Cunning (Publicity) Stunt.’

Beccy read it quickly in the corridor outside the delivery room, in which Tash was intermittently groaning and screaming. Even though they’d got half the details wrong – they called Hugo a show-jumper and said that he was the son of a Baron – Beccy couldn’t help believing there had to be some truth in Debbie’s hints that her streak was pre-planned with Hugo’s blessing. To her shame, she found the description of him flirting with Debbie at a polo match (‘
he fixed me with those gorgeous blue eyes and said “I want to see a LOT more of you”
’) made her jealous. The reporter insinuated that Hugo was well known on the eventing circuit for living dangerously, both in his riding and his marriage. Beccy couldn’t help hoping that was true. The thought of seeing him again made her light-headed.

She forced herself to bin the paper, buying another bar of chocolate, her cheeks burning with discomfort. It was just too surreal to be reading of Hugo’s bad behaviour while, yards away, Tash struggled to bring his son into the world.

‘Any news of that husband of mine?’ Tash asked when she wandered back in. She looked ghastly, her face pale and sweaty, with dark rings beneath her eyes.

Beccy’s red cheeks flamed even brighter. She shook her head.

‘He’s got plenty of time,’ the midwife assured them as she
checked the print-out on the monitor. ‘This baby’s in no hurry. You might as well go home for a few hours and get some sleep,’ she told Beccy.

Hugo woke up completely disoriented, half-dreaming that he’d slept with a dead man’s corpse on top of him. Then he realised his own arm was slung across his face, totally numb and suffocating him. His body ached all over, his head pounded and his throat and mouth were bone dry. He had no idea where he was.

He fumbled around the strange room in search of a light switch, knocking into furniture and blinking blindly as he crashed into walls. The only dim light source seemed to come from a red light winking in one high corner. At last he almost fell over a lamp and groped around for the switch.

‘Jesus.’

It certainly wasn’t the Olympic village. He sat heavily on the bed and pressed his head in his hands, shaking it this way and that, trying to fill it with some facts and details, but it was a blank.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He stood up unsteadily and headed towards what looked to be a bathroom, desperate for a drink of water. He glanced up as he passed the corner where the red light had been flashing and froze. There was a camera up there, discreetly tucked behind a curve of antique cornicing.

Hugo spun round, taking in the fake-fur counterpanes, the mirrors and props. He felt for his pockets and realised that his wallet had gone.

He was in a brothel. And he’d been caught on camera. Somebody out there knew what he’d been up to, even if he had no memory of it whatsoever.

At that moment he heard a key in the door and closed his eyes briefly, praying for salvation. To his amazement, it came in the form of Lough Strachan, throwing open the door and hissing at him to hurry up.