Country Lovers Read online

‘Morning!’ the riders greeted brightly.

  The quartet weren’t the only ones pounding along the local tracks and lanes on a January detox campaign. Almost a week into the new year, the Cotswold fitness tribe had regrouped – creased jogging bottoms, cycling shorts, leotards and trainers had been pulled out of the backs of wardrobes; iPod playlists filled heads with motivational beats; the recycling bins showed a noticeable drop in wine bottles.

  This morning, with the local children starting back at school, the village was positively thrumming with recalibrated Fitbits. Spotting another kitbag on a passing car’s passenger seat, Bridge sensed the Broadbourne gym might at least be too busy for mutual ogling with Ash Turner, the past week a gauntlet-run of sweaty eye-meets in mirrors.

  ‘How’s the job hunt going, Bridge?’ Gill called over her shoulder.

  ‘Sure, I’m taking my time to find the right fit.’

  ‘To fit round coffee shopping and the running machine, you mean?’ said Petra, and Gill laughed, making Bridge smart, especially when Gill added, ‘Oh, to be a yummy mummy!’

  ‘I am not a yummy mummy – which incidentally is TOTALLY last decade. I’m a flexi-tasking mammie seeking lifestyle balance.’

  ‘You’ll land your dream job, Ms “Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Office Manager of the Year 2015”,’ Petra pep-talked.

  Bridge knew it had been a mistake to ask a novelist to look through her CV – which now contained fifteen adverbs and a lot of semi-colons.

  Craic barged sideways past a desiccating Norwegian Fir dumped on the pavement outside Duck Pond Cottage ahead of Twelfth Night, its needles still sparkling with foil strands.

  ‘Ride him forwards, love!’ Mo urged.

  ‘I never fecking look back, me.’ Bridge maintained her sangfroid, stomach secretly churning.

  What neither Petra nor Gill knew was that, later today, Bridge had an interview for the role of part-time office administrator at the village primary school. She’d sworn Mo to secrecy, anxious that she might be as overqualified for this as she’d been overeager for the last. For Job Interview Reloaded, Bridge would have to keep a cool professional head. Her mistake had been trying to run back up the career ladder instead of taking it one naughty step at a time.

  As they trotted on up the short, sloped drag of Back Lane, she glanced across at her empty cottage, long since de-Christmassed, the blood-rush of relief to be outside in the fresh air wiping out the twitch of guilt that she’d dumped the kids with her sister-in-law.

  ‘Sous Vide fired her first team of builders, apparently.’ Petra pointed her whip at the village pub as they turned left. ‘I hear they’re so behind, the big opening might have to be candlelit. You had a lucky escape there.’

  ‘Sure, I told Zuckerberg and Musk as much when they were fighting over my payroll skills.’ Bridge held on tight as Craic took the scenic route in protest at the loud sound of power drills coming from The Jugged Hare.

  The Bags made their way through the open gate to the set-aside field that ran alongside the Plumb Run orchards between Compton Magna and Bagot, and Bridge was grateful for the fast canter around the big strip of headland there, the wind loud in her ears, conversation impossible as she enjoyed Craic’s thundering attempt to catch the bigger and faster horses ahead.

  Not telling the Bags about the interview conflicted her. She felt a degree of shame she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t snobbery, she told herself, even though the job would be a significant step down professionally. The Bags would think no differently of her whether she ran the office of Unilever or Compton Magna C of E Primary. The problem was more that Bridge was, totally unexpectedly, nervous as hell. None of her friends or family knew how much her disastrous Suzy David interview had dashed her confidence; she might have turned it into a dine-off-it comedy experience, but it was one she threw up in secret afterwards.

  The only person she’d told this to was Carly, their fledgling friendship another secret she was keeping from the Bags.

  Go for it! Carly had messaged first thing, adding, Unleash hell! She was a big Gladiator fan, her life a Roman battle in domestic miniature. Carly understood how Bridge was feeling, that fulfilment was measured out in smaller scoops when life had shrunk into isolation behind the front door of a testy marriage and tiny children. And Carly was a pro at brushing away her own disappointment, claiming to be unbothered that she’d heard nothing back from Ronnie Ledwell at the stud. ‘I don’t work for nothing. Strength and honour, Bridge. I love doing it, but I’m not doing it for love.’

  Bridge felt the weight of their enchanted New Year pact all the heavier. If only she’d cast the right spell. They needed jobs, not new love and orgasmic rainbows.

  Conscience at her heels, she kicked Craic on, overtaking a surprised-looking Petra. She just hoped Carly didn’t plan vengeance in this life and the next if she ever discovered her husband’s starring role in the purple patch that had pepped up the Mazurs’ sex life gloriously of late. Since Aleš’s return from Krakow, Fantasy Ash had never been far from the master bedroom in the little cottage on Back Lane.

  They’d made love every night, and twice on Sunday, a lusty record not seen since becoming parents. Now putty in his wife’s hands, Aleš enthusiastically supported her quest to abandon her family for employment, loudly insisting that she need look no further than the village primary school and quoting one of his mother’s favourite sayings: ‘He who chases two rabbits catches none!’ Despite going at it like rabbits all week, Bridge feared another Babcia Mazur adage was more accurate: Jak sobie pościelesz, tak się wyśpisz – you made your bed, now lie in it.

  Aleš’s customary post-Christmas homesickness for Krakow had been all too quickly joined by martyrdom now that he was back to working long hours on site, which meant more bear roars and backache snores. Last night’s lovemaking had been noticeably one-sided. Half-awake afterwards, twisting the bedclothes between hot, guilty dreams about the village’s war hero and nightmares about school headmistress Auriol ‘Battleaxe’ Bullock, Bridge had found herself making a pact with her inner devil – get this job and she would redraw the pentacle on the sitting room floor and kill Fantasy Ash.

  *

  Luca’s bathroom had no shower, just an ancient tap mixer over its peach-coloured bath with perished rubber grips that kept blowing off, the water pressure intense this high up in the house, its temperature never more than lukewarm. Having managed a perfunctory wash before it turned ice-cold, then dragged on his riding gear, he pounded back down the rear stairs, munching on a stale breakfast muffin and swigging cold instant coffee as he went. Ronnie never seemed to need to stop to eat, mealtimes something she waited out for other people’s sake, impatient to get on.

  This morning, she wanted Luca to ride Beck. He’d argued that the horse wasn’t ready, certain they’d have serious protests as soon as they left his comfort zone. Worked in hand, the grey stallion hadn’t put a hoof wrong all week, already calmer on the yard and in the round pen, the stud’s herd more familiar. Luca trusted his bravery, but it was asking the world of him to trust a man on his back again.

  He hoped Ronnie would stick to her word and hold back at least another month from any public announcements about the stallion standing. For now, it felt as though the rest of the world was outside this place’s bubble time warp, and Mishaal with it, but he had no way of knowing how long for. Whenever Luca’s mobile phone was in signal, it registered multiple missed calls, although that wasn’t unusual. His outgoing voicemail message remained deliberately vague. The stud’s landline rang rarely, and almost inevitably for Pax. The debris of her exploding marriage was everywhere – the phone arguments, comings and goings, hastily wiped tears, and Ronnie’s perpetual distraction.

  As he hurried outside, the familiar klaxon was sounding again. Spotting Pax hurtling under the first stable arch, grey puppy and the old man’s dog in her wake, he hung back in the courtyard behind the main house, watching the long legs sprinting across the arrivals yard in just a few dee
rlike bounds before she disappeared into the cottage.

  The klaxon stopped with a rattling ping.

  Hearing a growl behind him, he realised one of Ronnie’s dogs had his boot heel in her teeth, eyes playful and white-rimmed, backside gyrating. The other, older one appeared a moment later and laid into his other boot.

  He waited for Ronnie to follow. When she didn’t appear, he headed back inside, small dogs growling at each foot.

  She was in the kitchen, coat half on, phone pressed to her ear, blue eyes brimming. Hushing the dogs furiously, she hung up. He’d never seen Ronnie blush before, as unexpected as a wink in a royal portrait.

  ‘Pax must have picked it up at the same time.’ She adopted an indignant power pose. ‘That ghastly man is so pompous. You know he—’ She stopped herself. ‘NOYB. Sorry.’

  ‘Go on if it helps.’ He was growing accustomed to life in the eye of Pax’s marital storm.

  ‘Mack’s using his parents to—’ She stopped herself again. ‘No, it’s not fair to involve you, Luca. Let’s take that handsome chap of mine for a hack, shall we? Blow off the cobwebs.’ She whisked past him, dogs trotting behind like ladies in waiting.

  *

  The Saddle Bags had pulled up at the opposite end of the set-aside field, where a second gate opened onto a grass track that led back past the old manor’s garden walls to the Plum Run, Mo dismounting to undo the twine tying it shut, puffing heavily from her gallop.

  ‘That’ll have got your blood up for your interview, Bridge, love!’ She beamed as Bridge passed.

  Bridge big-eyed back: What fecking interview?

  Thankfully Gill was in full flow, grumbling that Compton Magna Manor – just visible beyond its high honey stone walls beside them – was still lying empty a year after going on the market because no buyer was willing to pay several millions for a mouldering, impractical piece of history. ‘Madly overpriced, with no land, listed up to its medieval oak-framed eaves – you’d think it would be perfect for some foolish celeb or banker.’

  ‘Don’t forget it’s haunted,’ Mo panted cheerfully as she wrestled the gate over thistles. ‘The Woman Bricked Up in The Walls howls all night, every night, between Hunter’s Moon and Frost Moon, they say.’

  ‘I know how she feels,’ Petra groaned, also breathless from the canter. ‘Cabin fever is pure hell. I don’t know how I’ll survive the next few weeks, trying to keep the Gunns fully loaded while I stay locked in the garden shed.’

  Petra wrote a historical trilogy a year, customarily retreating from village life between deadlines. The chestnut mare was having her shoes off later today and would be taking a sabbatical with her pony pals so that her mistress could devote herself to the second instalment of a Civil War epic.

  ‘You need a mother’s help,’ Bridge said, an idea forming.

  ‘Mum lives near Leeds.’

  ‘Not your own mother’s help, a Mother’s Help. A Girl Friday who tidies the teenagers’ pits and mucks out the horses, maybe does some school runs so you can work uninterrupted a couple of days a week.’

  ‘That sounds heaven, but we can’t afford it.’

  Behind them, Mo clanged the gate shut, still chatting to Gill about village ghosts.

  ‘A few hours a week is cheaper than you think,’ Bridge told Petra, a chalk pentacle forming in her mind. ‘Imagine writing uninterrupted, without worrying about changing the beds or washing skips full of sports kits. Imagine someone there to order the heating oil if it’s low and make packed lunches, walk the dog and take over driving hundreds of miles taxiing Charlie and the children around?’

  ‘Far too ruddy self-indulgent.’ She was doing her chippy northerner thing.

  ‘C’mon, Petra, you’re trying to fit a full-time job around four children with no concessions.’ Mo kicked alongside while Gill walked out ahead. ‘Mo! Tell Petra she needs a Mother’s Help.’

  ‘Bloody good idea,’ panted their red-faced friend. ‘Especially with another little one on the way.’

  ‘Whaaat?’ Bridge gaped at her. Petra already had four and had to be mid-forties.

  Petra pointed down at her chestnut mare. ‘Gill scanned her yesterday: baby on board.’

  ‘She’s in foal,’ Mo clarified.

  ‘Why am I always the last to know these things?’ demanded Bridge. ‘Are you going to sue?’

  When the notoriously hormonal mare had come unseasonally into season just before Christmas, Ronnie’s hot-headed stallion had found her irresistible, the resulting public display of affection one the village would take a long time to forget.

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Petra patted her mare’s neck. ‘It’s equi-yoga and wellness all the way for my girl. This foal is going to be worth a fortune.’

  ‘In that case you can definitely afford a Mother’s Help.’ Bridge refused to be deflected. ‘Like Mo says, you need one.’

  ‘Charlie already accuses me of being lazy.’ Petra’s apology smiled over her shoulder.

  ‘Bollocks to that!’ Bridge stood up in her stirrups. ‘Charlie’s never here; you say yourself that he treats the London flat like an Airbnb. You’re an amazing cook, you manage the household budget, keep that huge garden under control, look after all your neddies, plus a delinquent dog and God knows how many chickens and even find time to listen to your mother calling to discuss The Archers for hours on end – don’t deny it, you always fecking complain – and you’ve been hoodwinked into sitting on every charitable committee within a ten-mile radius.’

  Mo backed her up: ‘and lending a sympathetic ear to friends near and far.’

  ‘Only because I nick your best stories for books,’ Petra joked, but Bridge could see she was buying into it.

  ‘How can you be expected to keep on top of it all whilst working flat out? You need help at home – you deserve help, you can’t live without help.’

  Petra’s big brown eyes softened. ‘Are you asking me for a job, Bridge?’

  ‘Not me!’ Bridge prickled with offended pride. ‘I want you to give Carly Turner a job. Author’s assistant, groom, domestic goddess, PA, occasional healer.’

  ‘Oh, I like Carly. The house is ten times cleaner since she joined Janine’s team.’

  ‘So cut out the middleman!’ she said triumphantly.

  ‘Doesn’t do to cross Janine…’ Mo sucked in air through her teeth and tutted.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Bridge dismissed airily. ‘Carly’s been looking for something new for ages, Janine knows that. She does extra bits and bobs for you already, doesn’t she, Petra?’

  ‘Well, she’s holding the ponies for Flynn today.’

  ‘There you go!’

  Mo chuckled. ‘You sure you don’t want to be a Girl Friday yourself, Bridge? We all know you’d love to hold something for Flynn.’

  ‘As long as she can still be Aleš’s girl Sundays through to Thursdays,’ Petra laughed.

  Already crabby, Bridge snapped, ‘I’m my own fecking woman, thanks.’ She ignored the phone in her pocket sounding off with her husband’s custom message notification, a power drill that had once seemed funny, but now set her teeth on edge.

  *

  Carly’s day had got off to a bad start, lack of sleep and an unwanted guest conspiring to fray her temper. Last night, while she’d been bathing the kids, Ash had shouted upstairs that he was off out with Skully, the door banging before she could reply. He’d come back in the early hours, his dead weight crashing into bed beside her, sleeping through every alarm a few hours later, even the Green Day track on Carly’s phone that normally had him springing up as if under air attack.

  Getting a fractious Ellis organised for his first day back at school, she’d found Skully asleep on their sofa, equally out for the count despite Pricey, the bull lurcher, clambering up to join him and Ellis prodding him with his ’Splorer Stick.

  Now, having walked Ellis to school, left the other two with their nan and rushed back to the house to drop off Pricey ahead of her cleaning shift, Carly found Ash banging about in the kitchen lo
oking for carbs and Skully still out cold.

  ‘Where d’you two get to last night?’ Keeping her tone light, she tidied up the kitchen surfaces as he covered them with breadcrumbs. However mad she was with Ash, she’d learned to always test his mood.

  ‘Out Micklecote Way.’ He was all yawns and seductively drowsy eyes, still puffy with sleep. ‘Seeing a man about some labouring work.’

  ‘Not till that late.’ She fetched him a plate and knife, voice raised to be heard over the boiling kettle.

  ‘We went to the Old Swan afterwards, then to some caravan up the other side of Drover’s Woods with mates of Skull’s. Played Fortnite. I messaged you, bae.’

  She checked her phone now, last night’s messages from him all bearing the same time stamp. ‘At two in the morning?’

  ‘There can’t have been any reception up there.’ He yawned again, pulling every jar out of the cupboard in search of the peanut butter.

  She relented a little, realising his messages must have all been queued until they set off home. She put the jars back, then reached for teabags to put in mugs.

  ‘You at college today?’ She didn’t like the idea of leaving Skully in her house while she cleaned Petra Gunn’s house.

  ‘Starts next week,’ he was deep in the fridge now, ‘if I go back.’

  ‘You’re thinking of giving it up?’

  ‘Too many fitness trainers round here already.’ Straightening up, he managed a crooked smile over the door, eyes heavy-lidded. ‘I can earn cash now.’

  ‘You’ve got to think long-term though, haven’t you? Have a trade.’

  ‘I trade these.’ He held up his hands then slapped his biceps. ‘Skully’s got the contacts.’

  ‘Is packing in college his idea?’

  ‘Mine.’ He swung the door shut and pulled her into a kiss that tasted of orange juice, only breaking away when his toast popped.

  ‘I don’t want you to pack it in, Ash. Not without a safety net.’ Making the tea, she took a mug through to Skully, dumping it on the coffee table and shaking one skull-covered arm.

  ‘Mm?’ He didn’t open his eyes. The reek of stale cigarette smoke, sweat and booze made her step back.