Kiss and Tell (77 page)

Riding the bike made him feel better about the Nell situation, but it didn’t make it go away. He was reliably informed through his loyal PA mafia that his publicity team was now gearing up to take control of their biggest artiste’s love life. If Dillon slipped any further into an antisocial depression because his current relationship was well past being on the rocks and was now washed up, bloated and decomposing on the foreshore, they would step in like eco-warriors to replace it with a sunset scene. It was like being a panda in a zoo. If
he dumped her, he knew he’d be prey to every publicity-hungry PR team with a matching mate. At least having Nell around gave him protection from that, even if he could hardly bear to be in the same room as her. This week, she’d taken herself off to Amsterdam to visit her ex, Milo. It was obvious she was trying to make Dillon jealous. He only wished he cared more.

He was sweating heavily under his leathers, which felt constricting and uncomfortable. Braking briefly, he unzipped the top half and pulled it down, the rugby shirt beneath clinging wetly to his arms and chest. He’d put on weight lately, a sure sign that he was unhappy. His record label was on his case to shift it, and shave off his winter beard, blaming his slipshod image for slipping sales. To show willing, Dillon had installed a range of state-of-the-art gym equipment in the newly converted milking parlours. Yet he hadn’t even taken the plastic wrapping off the treadmill, bench press and weights, unlike the scramble bike that he put to work as soon as it came out of the delivery truck. Its angry engine was the perfect accompaniment to his thudding head as he sped around his farm and beyond, high above the valley. It was the closest thing to riding a horse that he had found, and he loved it.

He pushed the throttle as far as it would go, skidding and skittering over potholes and through puddles and he climbed the track, shooting around a dog-leg and then, far too late, seeing a woman and a child riding towards him.

The back wheel slid away and, despite the breakneck speed, in that strange, suspended snatch of time just before impact Dillon had time to spot his landing on stony ground, to curse the fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet and that his leathers were dangling around his waist, and to register that he definitely knew the woman and her child. Then he hit the ground at such speed that he started sliding, rolling and turning over like a rag doll toward a blur of horse legs.

The air was knocked from his already stinging body with an almighty punch as something landed on him. He heard hooves pounding away. The weight was still pressing down on him. His bike engine was ticking over nearby, its sedate 250cc putter strangely incongruous after such high drama.

Groggy but conscious, with a mouthful of mud and blood, he took a while to realise that the woman who had been riding had landed on top of him. She was now calling out at the girl in a foreign
language, seemingly telling her to stay calm, that she was okay, that she would help her down. But she was tangled up in Dillon’s loose leathers, one slim ankle having slipped into the armoured sleeve and jammed so that when she went to stand up, she collapsed back down on him.

‘Ow!’ he wailed. That hurt more than falling off the bike.

A little voice called out: ‘
No, mama. Je mu! Je to šlovek. Sylva je princ! On je princ!
’

Hooves were suddenly banging about close to Dillon’s head again.

‘No, Zuzi, no!’ the woman cried.

He peered up in time to see a set of mud-splattered pony legs nearby and then, to his surprise, a little girl fell very gracefully from the saddle and landed in a heap alongside them, her pretty eyes fluttering shut with what he could almost have sworn was a giggle.

‘Zuzi! Zuzi!’ The woman was shrieking and crying out in panic, starting to flail about and inadvertently kicking Dillon in the kidneys and ribs.

‘Woah, woah – steady on!’ He quickly unzipped the waist of his leathers so that the jacket came free and she could scramble away to pull out her leg. Then, in a blur of flying dark hair and red Puffa jacket, she rushed to the girl, who opened her eyes and smiled. Gathering her into her arms, the woman burst into tears.

‘Hana?’ Dillon struggled upright, recognising Sylva’s sister at last.

She started spitting something incomprehensible at him in Slovak.

She had a nasty gash on her forehead and lip, he noticed, but landing on him seemed to have cushioned her from serious injury. Little Zuzi, meanwhile, was sitting up happily and watching her mother shout at Dillon with interest. She looked terribly pleased with herself for some reason.

Despite her recent protestations, Mama was secretly starting to harbour doubts about her marriage plans for Sylva. For all his soft cheese, Dillon Rafferty was a hard target. She had even begun to leaf through her Husbands file for alternative ideas.

But then, like a miracle, he appeared through her daughter’s electric gates in a huge Land Rover with Hana and Zuzi bouncing
around beside him as the car sped over the cattlegrid to park directly in front of Le Petit Château.

Mama hastily dragged Sylva away from executing fifty ab flexes with her personal trainer just as Hana marched in, covered in cuts and bruises, and brushed past them without a word, carrying Zuzi in her arms. The little girl, who was smiling widely, gave her aunt a big thumbs-up.

Mama thrust Sylva outside to corral Dillon.

‘You must come in,’ she offered half-heartedly, aware that she was covered in sweat, had no make-up on and was wearing an unflattering Lycra workout suit.

‘I can’t.’ He backed off nervously. ‘I’m due to pick up my daughters at Birmingham airport in an hour.’

‘Even better!’ Sylva responded to Mama’s sharp prod from behind. ‘Why not bring them here to play with Zuzi and the boys this week?’

‘They all got on
so
well last time,’ Mama droned behind her like an eager bumble bee.

‘Sure, the girls would love to see Zuzi. But you must come to West Oddfield this time.’ Dillon headed towards his car. ‘They can all splash in the indoor pool. Bring the family – Hana, too. Just no cameras, okay?’

‘Sure. Great!’ Sylva waved him away casually.

Behind her, Mama waited until his car was out of sight before letting out an excited shriek and punching the air. ‘Go upstairs and get out all your bikinis,’ she ordered Sylva. ‘We will choose something together.’

Sylva trailed upstairs, leaving Mama looking up to the sky and thanking the saints.

‘You have done a very good thing,’ she told Hana when she went back into the house. ‘He will be your brother-in-law soon.’

Hana gaped at her. ‘No! He is not at all right for
ma
i
ka
.’

‘He
is
, and your opinion is not wanted on the subject. Now shoo.’

Hana shook her sore head as Mama bustled her away. Dillon was a very good man, but not the one to make their pretty kitten happy. She could hear the
boom-boom
of music upstairs in Sylva’s dressing room, and then raised voices as mother and daughter argued about what she was going to wear to ensnare Dillon Rafferty. Hana was suddenly reminded of their family apartment in Bratislava; Mama
and Sylva had been like this then, so close yet forever scrapping. And even the music had been the same – the band that her step-father had loved, with its sexy, grinding rock anthems and bad-boy reputation. Mask, she remembered. The band had been called Mask.

Nell retied the scarf around Giselle’s neck and kissed her daughter on the nose, pointing out a windmill as their boat chugged from Volendam to Marken, an antiquated Dutch fishing village where, Milo promised, some of the inhabitants still wore traditional costume.

‘We can even visit one of the few remaining cheese farms,’ Milo told her.

‘Oh please let’s not,’ she shuddered. ‘No cheese.’

Milo laughed, putting his arm around her. But then, as Giselle ducked down to play with the little Dutch dolls that he had given her that morning, he lowered his voice and turned to Nell. ‘You must end this silly affair.’

She took his gloved hand and felt to the hard band around his third finger through the leather. ‘And if I do, will you leave your wife?’

‘You know that won’t happen.’

She stared murderously out at the grey sea. No matter how many times she had asked him that question over the years, he gave her the same answer.

‘I will never stop loving you,’ he offered truthfully.

‘Love has no security.’ She turned to look at Giselle, so full of sweetness, not twisted and spoiled by disappointment like her mother.

‘Leave him,’ Milo urged. ‘He’s made you so unhappy, my darling. He’ll be losing the most beautiful girl in the world, but that’s just his hard cheese.’

She nodded and let a small, sweet smile drift on to her lips. ‘He’ll be very cheesed off.’

‘You’ll have to go Caerphilly.

She nodded. ‘He probably Camembert it.’

They stole a long, giggling kiss while Giselle played at their feet.

Sylva knew that her chosen bikini was a sure-fire winner – baby blue
and sheer with a halter neck that emphasised her magnificent chest and shapely shoulders, and tie-sided micro shorts that skimmed her buttocks at just the right height to tantalise with two peachy curves. The tiny triangle tops and Brazilian-cut tanga bottoms all stayed firmly in her drawer, vetoed as too unflattering while she was so thin, although she did lend some to Hana who didn’t have a swimsuit. Hana stayed submerged to her chin at all times, mortified.

But nothing could look as silly as Mama’s outsize bathing dress and bright pink flower-petal hat.

Sylva, who had allowed herself to start eating again and whose body was consequently zinging with energy, was still so svelte that she made everyone else look like goliaths, even the children with their puppy fat and round, happy faces.

Dillon, in baggy knee-length surf trunks and a fortnight’s beard was far from the lean, buff, gym-fit star that had recorded the sexy ‘Two Souls’ video a year earlier, and today he had made no effort whatsoever, compared to the hours of work that had gone into getting Sylva ready for this casual family play-date. She’d waxed and bleached and epilated, she’d exfoliated and moisturised and fake-baked, she’d manicured and pedicured, wrapped and face-masked.

Sylva and Mama had planned the day like a military operation, well aware that this was their best and possibly only chance of a romantic coup. With Nell away visiting a friend, they had an open target.

Pom, Berry and Zuzi were having a ball, overseen by Hana, while two of the nanny army looked after the boys and Mama prepared to launch her floating offensive like huge pink war ship, cutting off Dillon and Sylva from vital supplies.

‘Let’s have a game of water polo!’ Mama clapped her hands above her head, bingo wings flapping. ‘The little ones, Bozka and Dalena will join me as one team, and Hana and the girls are the other team. Sylva and Dillon can find prizes for the winners and runners-up, and Bohemian champagne for us all.’

Nobody ever questioned Mama, such was her self-assured tyranny, and so a somewhat puzzled Dillon led Sylva along the glass-roofed corridor that ran through one side of the smallest kitchen garden and linked the pool complex to the main house.

‘What plants are these?’ She pointed to fruit trees trained to
neatly espalier their budding branches along the old south-facing wall beside them.

‘Apricots.’

‘They must produce amazing fruits under glass like this.’

‘Not bad, but you should see the old Victorian hothouses. They’re something else. Cost a fortune to renovate, but it’s like a tropical climate. We already have grapes ripening in there.’

Hearing Mama’s imaginary cry of ‘go’ in her ears, Sylva knew that she had her cue.

‘Show me!’ she urged.

‘We’d have to go outside.’ He looked down at his wet trunks, paired with just the open shirt and Crocs he’d thrown on to walk to the house. She was still in only her bikini and white flip-flops. It was barely above freezing beyond the glass.

‘Oh, let’s go!’ Sylva purred, her nipples already standing to attention at the thought of the cold air. ‘That can be the water-polo prize – home-grown bunches of grapes. How perfect is that?’