Kiss and Tell (81 page)

‘I’ll meet the flight if you like,’ she offered as casually as she could.

‘Would you?’ Beccy looked relieved. ‘Lem and I want to see the new Percy Jackson film tonight.’ Then she cast a look at her watch. ‘You’ll have to get a move on, though. The flight lands at five.’

Faith cantered all the way back along the cross-country route to Lime Tree Farm to fetch her own car, jumping hedges and ditches, grateful that Whitey was so trustworthy and easy to handle, unlike his master.

She wished she could tart herself up, but by the time she had washed off Whitey, skipped out her charges, made up haynets and feeds, and persuaded Gus to let her finish an hour early, she could do no more than clean her teeth and cram in her chicken fillets.

As it was, she was almost an hour late, and Hugo and Rory were waiting in the arrivals hall, as fantastically lean and bronze as two adventurers after a far-flung expedition. Both were surprised to find
Faith welcoming them home in muddy breeches, hay poking from her frizzy hair and a strong horse pong drawing sideways glances from the private-hire drivers around her, some of whom discreetly lifted their name boards over their noses.

‘Where’s Tash?’ asked Hugo, striding forwards first.

‘Waiting at home,’ Faith told him. ‘She said something about the children being in bed? I volunteered.’ She was trying not to stare too conspicuously at Rory.

He’d arrived back in the UK like an avenging angel to unrequited love, far more intimidating that she had anticipated. He seemed suddenly very grown up, and for the first time she felt the ten-year age gap between them. He seemed gratifyingly pleased to see her and kissed her sweetly on the cheek, making it sting with longing. Then he thrust a bag of Duty Free scent at her, which was generous, but made her feel like he was making some sort of point about her lack of femininity.

Hugo was certainly not pleased by Tash’s non-appearance, and his black mood worsened when he found himself crammed in the back of a bright yellow Volkswagen that reeked of perfume, and sharing the seat with a dementedly excited Jack Russell.

‘You brought Twitch!’ Rory was close to tears, which would have pleased Faith had it not been for the fact he’d greeted her with such comparative cool. She realised sadly that he meant she rated lower than the dog.

As they drove through the Heathrow underpass towards the M4, Hugo closed his eyes on the back seat and feigned sleep. He felt profoundly hurt that Tash hadn’t come to collect him. What’s more, Rory was suddenly behaving very oddly indeed.

Faith had imagined this drive home all afternoon, rehearsing all the things she would tell Rory about life at Lime Tree Farm, Whitey, the start to the season – and planning all the questions she would ask him about Florida, the lecture tour, the competition and training.

Instead her tongue was tightly knotted and there was an awkward silence as she digested the fact that there was something totally different about Rory. It wasn’t just the tan, the sun-bleached hair or the fabulous waft of spicy aftershave. Nor was it the great clothes – the suede jeans matched with a cowboy boots, the faded denim shirt and scuffed leather jacket that made him look like he’d just walked off the set of one of Dillon’s pop videos. The most noticeable thing about him was the silence. He had yet to say a word.

It took him until they were past Reading Services to speak.

‘Your horse is well.’

‘So’s yours,’ she managed to splutter, abandoning plans to give him a fence by fence description of their cross-country round at Tweseldown.

‘Stefan and Kirsty promise to take good care of him.’

It took her a moment to register what he was saying. Then her tongue gratefully unravelled itself from its knot faster than a cobra lunging.

‘You
left
Rio in America?’ she cried with a familiar burst of anger.

Tash let the brush stroke her skin with quivers of anticipation as she imagined Hugo’s eyes on her new, taut canvas. She added a curl to her thigh and a butterfly to her navel. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she marvelled at the artistry.

She reached for her wine glass and realised it was empty. When she reached to top it up, she found the bottle was empty too. But instead of feeling pleasantly tipsy she felt dizzy and sick with nerves. She’d been painting for a long time and had a crick in her neck from craning round to add flowers and horses on her buttocks. When she’d had to go to the loo earlier, several roses had transformed into something that looked like nappy rash. She had carefully wiped them clean and repainted them, and now she was standing naked with her legs splayed and arms out, praying that no yard crisis brought Jenny or Lemon to the door before Hugo got home.

She was grateful the children had gone to sleep so easily that night. Amery’s pink cheeks forewarned teething or a cold, but the monitor remained silent and she’d had plenty of time to perfect her creation.

But now she looked at her reflection one final time and panicked.

Imagining Hugo’s eyes on her again, she suddenly doubted what she’d done. She looked like one of those freakish women at tattoo conventions, inked from collar to ankle. She wasn’t sure it was Hugo’s thing at all, returning after more than a month away to find his wife shuffling towards him plastered with paint. She should have stuck to a sea-bass supper.

She contemplated rushing upstairs for a bath but, looking in the mirror, she wavered. Her handiwork was too beautiful to waste. She’d painted with such love and attention; it had taken her so long.

She decided to open another bottle of wine.

But just as she was taking wide-legged steps out of the study, she heard the buzzer go in the kitchen to indicate that the main electric gates were opening. He was home.

Waiting for the Haydown gates to swing apart, Faith willed them to slow down so that she had more time to climb off her metaphorical high horse and tell Rory that he was forgiven for leaving her real horse in the States, but her heart was still crashing so violently in her chest she couldn’t speak.

She’d overreacted to the news, as she so often did, the adrenalin-pumped excitement at seeing him again combusting alongside her anger that he’d so obviously changed and was even further beyond her reach. She wanted the old Rory back, dishevelled and chaotic, not this cool, calm demi-god posing as a young Robert Redford who’d proudly announced that they’d left Rio behind because Hugo wanted the duo to compete at Kentucky next month. Even though that was a dream come true for both her horse and her greatest love, Faith felt left out and furious that the decision had been made without her. She understood they’d left the stallion with the Johanssens, along with Hugo’s Kentucky hope Oil Tanker, in the belief that it would be better to have them fine-tuned by Stefan than fly them back and forth across the Atlantic. That all made sense. But Rory suddenly sounding horribly mature and sensible, like her mother,
didn’t
make sense. She’d ended up reacting much as she did during any confrontation with her mother, shouting so much that Rory had shut up, and they’d spent the past half-hour in stony silence. Now, as the Haydown gates opened, with the Roadies barking at her headlights like Cerberus, she knew she had to make concessions.

‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’ she asked in an undertone, punching the VW into gear and kangaroo-hopping through the gates.

‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’ His voice was flat with disappointment, having clearly believed the news would wow any owner. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. Rio’s enjoying five-star care and even has a webcam in his stable so you can keep an eye on him. I know how you fret.’

Which made Faith feel like a maiden aunt stressing over her cats. As she pulled up behind the main house Rory fished out a postcard
from his pocket and thrust it at her. ‘Here – I wrote down the URL for you.’

Faith briefly studied the single line of indecipherable scrawl before flipping it over. The card featured a photograph of a cowboy with a saddle slung over one shoulder.

‘I was going to write something personal and post this to you,’ he explained sheepishly, ‘but you never read my cards, so I figured it was best to say it.’

Before Faith could ask him what he was talking about he turned around to wake Hugo, whose feigned sleep had rapidly dropped through the trapdoor to real, deep slumber, with Twitch curled in his lap. ‘We’re home on the range.’ Rory shook his shoulder.

Hugo straightened up, taking in his familiar surroundings. ‘At last.’

Inside the house, Tash waddled hastily back to the study to repair any the damage and check her reflection from all angles. Now she heard doors bang and voices call.

She crept to the central passageway in the house, shaking like a leaf.

She could hear Hugo’s voice. He was clearly trying to persuade Rory to come inside.

She froze.

His voice grew closer and there were footsteps through the kitchen. ‘Come and say hi to Tash. Where is she? I thought she’d at least be outside. Tash?
Tash
? Look in the study will you, Rory, and I’ll check upstairs.’

With a yelp Tash dived back into the study and dragged on her dressing gown just in time as Rory wandered in, looking amazingly blond and tanned.

‘Oh, there you are luvvie,’ he yawned, walking up to give her a kiss on the cheek and then a friendly, tight hug that made her want to cry as the towelling robe rubbed against the artwork beneath; he gave her shoulders and extra squeeze and arms an affectionate pat for good measure. ‘You been having a nap?’

‘Sort of.’ She trailed behind him out into the main hallway. ‘Good flight?’

‘Bloody awful. Hugo! Found her!’

He bounded down the stairs two at a time, which matched Tash’s
missed heartbeats as she looked up to see those long legs for the first time in ten weeks, followed by that long body and beautiful face with its laser-sharp gaze burning with love and indignation.

Without thinking, Tash engaged Meg Ryan’s
Top Gun
run. Like a reflex, it was always her first reaction after separation. She burst forward, arms flung as wide as her smile, but then she suddenly remembered her beautiful body paint, all ready to be admired. Forced to re-think at the last minute, she slid to a halt directly in front of him and, momentum still propelling her onward, performing a high kick to either side of him.

Hugo was visibly shaken. ‘Don’t tell me Lough’s been teaching you the haka while I’ve been away?’

Not waiting for an answer, he gathered her into a kiss that she was certain would melt the floor beneath her feet and cause the ceiling above her head to fall down. Her body sizzled like a hot plate, the paintwork sliding fast. When he pulled back to look at her he suddenly noticed the dressing gown. ‘What are you wearing that for? Are you ill?’

Despite being exhausted and feeling the first temple-biting symptoms of jet lag, Hugo and Rory were in that state of travelling camaraderie that doesn’t want the adventure to end, so they dragged out the last hours of their expedition over vast mugs of longed-for PG Tips, telling Tash all about Stefan and Kirsty and MC and Janet Madsen, about the adventures and the training sessions, about the competitions and the seminars, until she was the one fighting sleep. Then, suddenly, they both seemed to empty out. Rory yawned so widely his eyes almost rolled back into his head. It was all he could manage to kiss Tash on the cheek and stagger out towards his cottage.

Hugo was practically on his knees going upstairs.

He crashed, fully dressed, into bed with a rapturous Beetroot on his chest, both looking blearily across the room at her.

Tash dared unknot her belt and let her dressing gown drop.

‘Bloody hell.’ He blinked a couple of times to make sure he was seeing straight. ‘You’re filthy. Better have a bath. How d’you end up in that sta—’ and he was asleep.

Tash went into the bathroom and looked at her body under the harsh, critical light of the neon strip above the mirror.

She had painted it so carefully – the horses leaping across her
breasts and belly, the lush meadow grass on her hips, the flowers and butterflies and blue sky and soft clouds adorning her shoulders. All were now smudged and rubbed beyond recognition. Hugo was right; she just looked like she’d been rolling around in the mud. Wearily, she ran herself a hot bath, grateful at least that it might soak away the aches that were corkscrewing through her shoulders and lower back from twisting around in front of a mirror to paint daisies and buttercups on her bottom.

Chapter 53

From the moment he arrived home, Hugo had a mountain of commitments both on the yard and the estate. For all Tash’s determination to get married life back on track with a big bang, he seemed equally eager to simply slot her in for a quick service.

On his second evening home, when she popped into the bedroom to fetch another layer, he emerged from the shower fully cocked, talking on his mobile in the seemingly never-ending succession of calls that had started the moment he landed.

‘Yes, darling – he’s fit and raring to go, I can assure you. Quite understood. Uh ha …’

He held up his hand to make Tash wait, blowing her a kiss which made it clear what was on his mind. As she loitered, she grew uncomfortably aware that he was talking to Venetia Gundry which, given his impressive hard-on, served only to arouse her suspicions rather than her libido.

‘Yes, Ven … totally … okay …’

Hand and erection still aloft, he indicated with his eyes for her to get on the bed.

‘What?’ she mouthed. She hadn’t started cooking supper. Cora was still awake in her cot with her beaker of milk.

‘That’s right, Ven. Burnham Market, then Badminton.’ He covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘Take off your clothes.’

Tash gaped at him. Along the landing Amery, who was cutting a tooth, had started to cry. She went out to settle him.

Having finished his call with Venetia, Hugo wrapped a towel
around his hips and followed her, shouldering the door, a silhouette against the light of the landing as Tash straightened up from dabbing Anbesol on their son’s red little gums.