Kiss and Tell (52 page)

Coming to the Cotswolds had been a waste of time. She wished she had never agreed to host an intimate Christmas here. Despite the fact that her mother and the boys arrived tomorrow, and Hana and Zuzi were on their way, Sylva was tearful and dispirited. Even the sight of her fourteen-page Christmas
Cheers!
shoot, published that day, hadn’t cheered her up because she was convinced her Botox was wearing off and, with her pet beauty technician in the
Bahamas until New Year, it was too late to get a top up for the festive parties ahead.

She wearily retied her designer scarf around her neck, climbed a stile to her right and changed direction, cutting across a field once used for strip farming that rippled up and down like a fluffy green slide.

She couldn’t even go and see Jules to offload because the paps were all over the village and they were playing down their friendship since the exposé. Mama had been incandescent with rage about that particular story, even though it was such fantastic publicity – Sylva had been IFOJ for weeks now. The paparazzi had certainly got a lensful earlier, when Sylva set out on a stroll in the sodden countryside looking lonely and sad. The public would love it: their very own Dorothy, blown out of Kansas, lost and lonely and looking for her yellow brick road, perfectly timed for the customary Christmas screening of
The Wizard of Oz
. She
was
lonely; now even the paps had retreated back to their cars, their trainers heavy with water and mud, eager to email the first shots to their agencies for the scoop, and then to follow her by car or motorbike. This far off-road, however, she was totally alone.

The official path hooked to the right, running around the edge of a big private wood belonging to the old Fox Oddfield Abbey estate before climbing back up towards the Springlodes. But Sylva stealthily clambered over a gate marked ‘Private – Keep Out’ and dived into the gloom.

It was sheltered and peaceful in among the trees. The wood was a commercial plantation of Scotch firs looming up as regularly as girders in a warehouse, the tracks between rows as wide and straight as American intersections. After ten minutes of trudging, she found herself passing between big game enclosures with high, chain-link fences like prison exercise yards. She could hear guns in the distance, at least half a mile away, going off with the regularity – and the accompanying whistles – that indicated a well-organised driven shoot, no doubt suits from London.

Cynical locals believed that the Abbey estate was running as a money-making theme park for City boys to play at being country squires. They said that Pete Rafferty had no intention of ever setting foot there, which disappointed Sylva.

She moved past the game pens to a section of old, broad-leafed
wood where the ground rose steeply up in front of her like a huge leaf-scaled tidal wave. She turned to walk alongside it, reluctant to climb and now quite eager to find a spot to take a pee.

On the edge of the woods she crouched down behind a holly bush, keeping a safe distance from its prickles, and dropped her trousers.

A loud whistle shrilled immediately behind her. Moments later male voices rose up in catcalls and gruff whoops, sticks crashed against tree trunks and through bracken.

The beaters were making their way along the ridge above her head, sending up pheasants to the guns in the field just beyond the sparse hedgerow in front of her. She was slap, bang between guns and game.

The first shot rang out, so close by that she was momentarily deafened.

With a shriek, barely pulling her trousers beyond her knees, she dived under the holly bush and not a moment too soon. As guns exploded all around her, she was showered with shot and feathers. A twitching, blasted bird landed with a thump by her face, hot and bloodied, another ricocheted off her foot.

An eager black Labrador was the first to unearth her, with a cold wet nose on her shot-pecked, part-exposed buttock. Then a picker-up with a rasping Cockney accent shouted: ‘Dead woman, dead woman, dead woman – murdered, raped, dead!’ before running away.

Hastily trying to extract herself from the holly bush, Sylva found that her scarf had got caught up in its prickly leaves, tying her there. The more she fought to unknot it, the closer she came to asphyxiation.

‘Here.’ A leathery hand reached down towards her and Sylva let out a shriek as she saw the glint of a fierce-looking hunter’s knife.

The man calmly sliced through the silk scarf and freed her so that she could scrabble to her feet and pull up her trousers.

With a bleat, Sylva found herself looking into the ferocious, untamed eyes of Castigates the gamekeeper.

‘You okay, missus?’

‘Fine.’

‘Something happened to you?’ He looked her up and down, taking in the dishevelled appearance.

She hastily did up her belt, shaking her head. ‘Just … got a bit lost.’

Castigates narrowed his eyes. He never forgot a face. ‘I’ve told you off for trespassing before.’

‘Sorry. I will go.’ She turned to run.

‘Stay there!’ he ordered, turning back to his beaters and pickers-up, who were hanging around longing to see more of the pert tanned buttocks in a purple g-string that had been glimpsed through the foliage. ‘I’ll drive you back to a public path once these men have got back in the trailers. The guns are breaking for lunch now, so at least you haven’t interrupted sport.’

There followed a lot of shouting and ordering about, which Sylva watched with mounting delight. Close up, Castigates was an impressive stamp of a man. Wide-shouldered, bullish and taciturn, he reminded her of the Slovak pentathletes from her younger days. He was younger than she’d first thought, perhaps in his late thirties, with a fantastically chiselled jaw, straight dark brows and classic Grecian nose. Most excitingly, as he lifted off his flat cap to readjust it he revealed a mane of dark curls. He looked just like the bronze copy of the Apollo Belvedere that had pride of place in her Amersham hallway.

So when he finally led her to his pick-up truck, she laid on the charm, thickening her accent.

‘Vy do they call you Castigates?’

‘None of your business, missus.’

‘C’mon, it’s not your real name.’

He had climbed in, started the engine and began to drive before he answered. ‘That’s Mr Gates.’

The big pick-up bounced along the wet, rutted tracks.

She studied his wonderful profile again. He was really very rugged and manly. She adored old-fashioned machismo.

‘You can get out here,’ he ordered, pulling up at a road gate. ‘If you walk left along the lane you’ll get to the Oddlode to Springlode road.’

Sylva stayed put.

‘Is the Rockfather here for Christmas?’ she asked casually. He pulled his cap lower over his eyes and lit a small cigar.

‘That’s his lot shooting today.’

‘Pete Rafferty is among the guns?’

‘He was the one what found you, missus.’

‘Oh,’ she felt a deliciously shameful body blush course through her.

‘He doesn’t shoot no more. Says his hands shake too much after all the boozing years. Likes to pick up.’

‘Women mostly, I hear,’ she said lightly. His marriage to Indigo was again rumoured to be on the rocks after he’d been photographed leaving a Dublin nightclub with a Russian call-girl.

Castigates picked a strand of tobacco from his teeth with amazingly strong, calloused fingers. ‘A lot of pretty girls here this weekend, right enough, and a lot of men old enough to know better.’ His loyalty was clearly being stretched.

‘Anyone I know?’

He reeled off a list of half the members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, many of whom Sylva had assumed died from overdoses years ago.

‘Wow. That must be amazing.’

‘Not when you see them shooting. Pete’s got the hands of a surgeon compared to half of that bunch of old rockers with delirium tremens. You’re lucky you’re alive, missus.’

‘My name’s Sylva.’ She thrust out her hand.

‘I know who you are.’ He didn’t shake it, instead leaning across her to open the passenger door.

Close to, he smelt of cigar smoke, peat, wet tweed and gunpowder, a combination that spirited her back to childhood so unexpectedly and violently she felt faint with longing.

‘So the Rafferty family are all here for Christmas?’

‘If you don’t mind, I need to get on.’ He nodded towards the door.

She grabbed his arm. ‘I must thank you for saving me, at least. Are you free for a drink later?’

He regarded her from beneath his cap. Make-up free, platinum extensions hidden beneath a khaki boonie hat, now minus her garish scarf and camouflaged by her waxed cotton and moleskin layers, Sylva looked fresh-faced, earthy and incredibly pretty.

‘I usually taker the beaters for a pint.’

She rested a hand on his tweed thigh and encountered very exciting muscles.

‘Tell them something’s come up.’ She slid the hand higher, feeling
that drumroll of anticipation start to thrum between her legs. ‘And I can feel it coming up as we speak.’

Once she had hopped over the gate to the lane Sylva called her driver, forgetting that he was half way to Stansted airport to collect her older sister and niece.

‘Okay, carry on – but take them to Buckinghamshire,’ she instructed Olaf in Slovakian. ‘Tell Mama there’s been a change of plan. Christmas is delayed.’

‘Delayed?’ He was shocked.

‘That’s right. They must all stay away until
Št
dr
ve
er
. They can come here for the
velija
.’

‘That is Christmas Eve,’ he protested.

‘Yes. I must have time to … change my menus.’ Sylva felt marvellous. Uncovering a wild game dish was far more exciting than waiting for cheese to ripen.

At Stansted, Hana embraced her cousin Olaf.

She had spent a tiring journey with Zuzi. Their entire baggage allowance was taken up with Christmas presents for all the family, most important of which was the one for her sister. She had thought long and hard about what to get Sylva that would be significant, that would help convey the many emotions she had exploding within her in recent weeks. Convinced that Sylva wanted her quite simply to hand over her daughter, she knew that she had to remain strong and resolute, and keep control.

Earlier that week, she and Zuzi had travelled into Bratislava to sit for a photographer in a studio near the castle. After striking poses that had made them giggle as they rolled around the floor, played piggy-back and touched noses, they had come away with a folder full of images of mother and daughter, the invincible double act. Zuzi then chose an arty frame in a quirky gift shop in the Old Town before they stopped for lunch in a café where Hana started to quietly explain the truth about the little girl’s heritage. Afterwards, they had walked along the banks of the Danube and talked more.

Zuzi was amazingly calm, Hana thought proudly, so wise and stoic. Just like her aunt.

‘You will always be my
bábätko
,’ she told her.

Her daughter held on to her hand and nodded. ‘You will always be
mami
ka
.’