Kiss and Tell Read online

  ‘I am not Tash,’ she muttered to herself now, fiddling with a dreadlock.

  She still had a great love and passion for horses, although she wasn’t sure if she wanted to ride competitively any more, remembering only too well how much it had meant to her once and how painful it had been to lose. She liked to think that her life on the global road had taken the competitive edge from her, making her far more spiritually aware.

  The reason for agreeing to her mother’s suggestion that she resurrect her apprentice career with horses (of which Henrietta had deeply disapproved at the time, trying to steer her towards secretarial college instead) was simple. She needed her mother off her back. She needed James off her back. She needed somewhere to live.

  And she was in love with Hugo Beauchamp. She had been since the day she first met him, when she was fifteen, long before he became a member of the family.

  Tash used to joke that she’d had a fierce crush on Hugo as a teenager and had gone on to marry him. Beccy wanted to go one better.

  Just as her mother had taken James from Tash’s mother, Beccy had every intention of taking Hugo from Tash. That would ensure that Beccy was out of her stepsister’s shadow and into the sunset all of her own making once and for all.

  Far to the west, high on the Berkshire downs, Tash’s romantic meal was back on track.

  Having moved the feast inside while Hugo was taking a call from Team GB’s three day event chef d’equipe, Brian Sedgewick, Tash’s pudding of improvised and expanded Eton Mess was far more successful than the rich venison that had preceded it. Combining the last of the lunch strawberries with a smashed up Pavlova base from the larder, a vat of whipping cream, gooseberries and wild strawberries from the garden and a splattering of chopped mint, drizzled honey and a squeeze of lime was inspired. Hugo lapped it up.

  His mood had been completely transformed by Brian’s call, which had refocused him on the competition ahead and reminded him that Tash was providing essential back-up and expertise on the ground, not just domestic distractions.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ he told her as he helped himself to thirds and then started spooning it into her mouth as well as his own, ‘I will keep an eye out for a rider to be based here. There’s a couple of Brazilians I really rated at the World Games, plus new members of the Italian squad that have been taking the European CCIs by storm this year. And there’s always Lough Strachan.’

  ‘You’ll never get Lough Strachan to come here.’

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘Look what happened when you tried before.’ She headed to the stereo to put on the new Dillon Rafferty CD that she’d bought while shopping, skipping the tracks forward to find ‘Two Souls’. ‘He turned you down flat.’

  ‘So? I’ll try again.’

  Lough Strachan, current World Champion and the man universally hailed as the best rider across country since Mark Todd, was a notoriously reclusive bugger. Still based in New Zealand, he would undoubtedly be Hugo’s greatest rival if he were to relocate to Europe, a move that seemed increasingly inevitable given the sport’s predominance there. If he were to be based at Haydown and competing alongside the Beauchamps he would be a huge asset, creating a formidable team.

  ‘He hardly ever leaves New Zealand or the Southern Hemisphere,’ Tash pointed out, having read a long feature about Lough in Eventing only last month. ‘He says it’s the Maori in him.’

  ‘He’s very far from home now,’ he cocked his head and listened as the familiar track got into its swing. The song – number one for over fifteen weeks and heading towards the record books – was a tour de force of gut-clawing, chest-pumping emotion. It never failed to grab listeners by the heart and head, even cynics like Hugo.

  ‘Only because his country needs him to bring back a gold medal,’ Tash was saying. ‘They’d have thrown him off the North Island if he’d refused to compete at these Games – he’s leagues ahead of all his team-mates on the points tables, and those are some of the best UK-based riders in the world.’

  Home-loving Lough’s reluctance to compete in Europe was well documented. Still practising as a vet until very recently, he had a reputation for bloody-mindedness as well as a preference for his own and equine company. Self-made, self-taught, hugely independent and someone who nurtured his home-bred horses and rarely sold them on, he was a man whom Hugo longed to work alongside and learn from. He would be a perfect resident rider at Haydown, renting a part of the yard and working and training with Hugo while they competed on the European circuit, pooling knowledge and resources. But every time Hugo had made an approach Lough had turned him down without explanation.

  ‘I’ll get him this time,’ he promised as he kissed meringue crumbs from her lip. ‘I’ll take on the world, Tash my darling, and bring you back gold and the Kiwi.’ He sounded like a knight about to go on a crusade.

  ‘You do that,’ she laughed, kissing cream from his lips.

  The haunting Dillon Rafferty song was still filling the room, sweeping Tash and Hugo up in its sexy slipstream.

  Nine months pregnant, with swollen ankles, numb fingers, a weak bladder and backache, Tash wasn’t feeling at her most seductive these days, but she felt surprisingly horny tonight. She felt ravishing, in fact. And Hugo found her immensely desirable. With breasts as vast and buoyant as two hot air balloons rising from her jaunty turquoise maternity bra, her long legs wrapped around his hips and her face pink with exertion and naughtiness, she pleasured him on the small button-back chair in the corner of the oak-panelled snug room, lit only by the dim picture light that was always illuminated over the grandiose Millais portrait of Hugo’s great-uncle Horace, and watched by a pack of interested dogs lined up obediently on the mud rug by the door.

  Later that evening, while Hugo was out doing his routine and much-loathed night-check around the stable yards, Tash picked up the phone on a whim. Physically exhausted yet still curiously charged from a day of childcare, relatives, late pregnancy, domesticity and lovemaking, she needed to assuage the flood of post-coital affection that was raging through her. She longed to share, to radiate tenderness and to hear a soothing, cheering voice in return for a quick-fix catch up.

  But her mother, top of her wish list, was still firmly incommunicado, the answer phones switched on both at her Parisian apartment and the Loire Valley house, her mobile switched off. So Tash called the next best thing. Zoe.

  ‘Tash! At last! I was giving up hope.’ That voice – as reassuring as comfort-eating Nutella on hot buttered muffins – was bliss. ‘Darling one, we were just talking about you!’ There was a babble of conversation in the background. ‘Don’t say it’s happening already?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ Tash could hear laughter and music. At least she needn’t have worried about disturbing the O’Shaughnessys in bed. ‘If I’m interrupting I’ll call back.’

  ‘No, no, just some house guests.’ Zoe’s dulcet tones contorted as she clearly reached to close a door. The next moment her voice was clearer and captured in glorious isolation. ‘They can wait – a few old and new friends of Niall’s.’

  She made them sound very unimportant, whereas Tash would happily lay a bet that at least two of them would be A-list Hollywood, much as Niall himself was nowadays. The O’Shaughnessys lived variously between London, LA and Ireland, where they were now, spending every summer en famille with their six-year-old twins, Cian and Maeve. Rufus and India, Zoe’s grown-up children from her first marriage, were usually there for at least a part of the time. The O’Shaughnessys’ Irish base was a gloriously laid-back retreat, counter-balancing a picture-postcard stone house with acres of overgrown meadows and woodland to the front and a backdrop of cliffs and ocean to the rear, plus a hidden tunnel straight from the cellars down to the beach.

  Tash had spent a hugely enjoyable week there with baby Cora the previous summer, although Hugo had ducked out of the majority of their long-promised stay and dashed around Ireland looking at horses. He had only spent one night at Ballyhoon, and that was somewhat un
der duress. He complained that the presence of Tash’s brother Matty and his quarrelsome, free-range family set his teeth on edge, but the truth was more sensitive. Although he adored Zoe, and got on like a house on fire with Niall, especially when drunk, he found it difficult reconciling himself to the fact that Niall and Tash had once been lovers.

  This issue – and the time differences that increasingly yawned between them – had badly affected Tash’s great friendship with Zoe. Although the latter was fourteen years older, the two women had a natural affinity and were instinctive, deep-set friends.

  Tash called Zoe less often these days, but when she did, as now, the two fell immediately into an affectionate, intimate chat that required no small talk.

  ‘I am so glad you called,’ Zoe’s voice spoke of smiles and warmth – and rather a lot of good red wine. ‘You must be so fed up hauling that little passenger around, and desperate to meet him. I bet you’re still working far too hard and putting your feet up too little.’

  ‘I’m not working at all, and I can’t see my feet any more,’ Tash pointed out.

  Zoe tutted fondly. ‘I remember how fed up and uncomfortable I got, especially the second time around. India was terribly late – then as now. Tell Hugo I insist that he pampers you like mad in these last weeks.’

  ‘He hasn’t time with the Games coming up.’

  ‘Do I take it that he’s horribly distracted?’

  ‘I wish I could be there for him more.’

  ‘Don’t you mean you wish he could be there for you more?’

  Tash was grateful that Zoe knew her so well. ‘Maybe a bit of both.’

  ‘You need his support now, Tash.’

  ‘He can’t help it. Running the yard and competing every week is all-consuming; I should know. It’s hard for him to understand that I’m up to my eyes in hormones.’

  ‘Some men find it very hard to engage with pregnancy. It’s such an alien process for them.’

  ‘Niall spent every day telling you how your babies were developing,’ Tash remembered, ‘when they could hear and see and had begun to grow nails and hair.’

  ‘That was Niall’s way of connecting, of feeling a part of the action.’

  Tash found herself blurting: ‘And Hugo’s is to sneak into Waitrose each week to buy expensive flowers.’

  ‘Well that’s very romantic.’ Zoe’s voice was joined again by babbling talk and laughter as someone opened the door behind her.

  ‘The flowers aren’t for me.’

  But Tash had lost her audience.

  ‘What? Is he? Okay,’ Zoe was talking away from the handset. Her voice came hurriedly back. ‘I have to go for a moment, darling. Cian is awake and needs settling. He’s been having bad dreams. Here, talk to Niall. Tash was just saying how romantic Hugo’s being …’

  Within seconds Tash found the melodic and world-famous deep tones of her ex, Niall, purring in her ear.

  ‘How are you, angel? Bountiful as a ripe pear, I’ll wonder. I remember Zoe was so amazingly beautiful at nine months that I just couldn’t keep my hands off her. No wonder Hugo is so loved up now. I’d never have had him down as a romantic, but there you go! What fatherhood does to a man, eh?’

  ‘Yes. Quite.’ Tash tried not to dwell on the early, sulky stages of her romantic dinner, followed by the rampant seduction that was entirely of her own making, although Hugo had been a willing participant. She was equally reluctant to admit just how much her horniness was down to hormones, Dillon Rafferty’s song and – alarmingly – table talk of Lough Strachan, and how little the result of anything Hugo had actually said or done himself. ‘Of course, the baby could be better timed given it’s Olympics month.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Hugo’s on the British team, Niall.’

  ‘Is he now? Ah, that’s great. Say good luck from us.’

  Tash laughed with incredulous delight. The thing around which her entire life was revolving – more than having a second child, trying to keep the house running, worrying about their livelihood – was barely of passing interest to Niall.

  ‘In that case we must watch him on TV,’ he was saying vaguely. ‘India is here next week; she’ll be keen to see it. Still has horses in her blood after all those years grooming for Penny and Gus. Now, are you going for a home birth?’ he asked cluckily, more fascinated by delivery suites than medal podiums.

  ‘Not after last time – it’s not encouraged.’

  ‘Of course, you had an emergency C-section just like Zoe. A malpresentation, was it not? Always makes me think of perfume girls demonstrating beauty ranges in shopping centres.’

  She giggled. Niall was incredibly clued up about childbirth, having taken an active interest in that of his twins, whereas Hugo equated it all to horses and would have been more comfortable if Tash could be confined in a foaling box for the final weeks with a deep straw bed, CCTV and a sweat-activated alarm.

  ‘Little Cora didn’t want to come out, and who can blame her?’ Niall was saying now, his voice laced with that hypnotic laugh. ‘I remember feeling much the same way with you once.’ His delighted laughter rang out.

  He had obviously had even more wine than his wife. A recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon more often than a faulty cart wheel, Niall considered his summers in Ireland to be time out from AA, pointing out that his hard-drinking Irish family would disown him if he stuck to orange juice.

  ‘Yes, well, I really ought to—’ Tash started.

  But once he was on a roll Niall was unstoppable. Unbeknown to Tash, when Zoe had handed him the phone a few moments earlier she had mouthed Cheer her up, and that was what Niall intended to do in the best way he knew: full-throttle flirtation.

  ‘You are a gorgeous girl, Tash French,’ he crooned, using her maiden name as he had so often in the past, ‘and I’m glad to hear that Beauchamp fellow appreciates what he’s got in you.’

  ‘Mmm. Quite.’ Tash’s eyes flashed as she heard Hugo come loudly in through the back door accompanied by his dogs.

  Niall was thoroughly enjoying himself, revisiting a favourite old haunt. Zoe, who was accustomed to his wild flirtations and the fact that he remained quite hopelessly in love with every woman he had ever wooed, thankfully none more so than his wife, was quoted as saying that being married to a dedicated method actor and renowned playboy was like being in love with dozen different men, at least a few of which would always be in love with somebody else.

  ‘Sure I know I was a fool to let you go,’ he was purring now. ‘You have such an exquisite soul. Not to mention those magnificent legs. Best set of legs I’ve ever set eyes on. I’ll bet that gorgeous arse of yours is just as shapely and firm as it ever was, pregnancy or no.’

  Only half listening because Hugo had marched up behind her and was demanding to know who was on the phone ‘at this bloody hour’, Tash felt her haemorrhoids throb.

  ‘It’s – um – Niall,’ she managed to mutter over her shoulder, so flustered that she accidentally pressed speakerphone.

  ‘… loved staring at your pins, angel …’ Niall was still reminiscing, his voice now booming around the room at top volume. ‘Sure, I remember making you walk around in nothing but frilly knickers when we shared that chilly fleapit – d’you not recall? I wanted to kiss each and every one of your goose bumps …’

  Behind her, Hugo’s eyebrows shot up and he hissed, ‘What the fuck does he want?’

  Tash fumbled to mute the call. ‘I called him.’

  Hugo cocked his head at this.

  Not realising that her explanation was open to interpretation, she pressed a few more buttons but only succeeded in turning up the speaker volume even more, while now also digitally recording Niall’s words.

  ‘… remember when I had you all to myself to play the naughtiest games …’ He was recounting with an enchanted laugh, his warm brogue so familiar that he could be on the battered little work-top television telling Jonathan Ross one of his hilarious anecdotes about filming on location. Instead he w
as on the kitchen phone remembering making love with Tash ‘… that day the heavens opened so hard that the ceiling fell in and we just carried on fornicating in the plaster dust and rainwater, watching the forked lightning overhead …’

  Eyebrows cranking higher, Hugo stalked off to feed the dogs.

  Tash finally pressed a button that cut off Niall’s voice and treated them both to a tinny version of ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’.

  She turned to watch Hugo, always struck by the way that the dogs lined up in von Trapp order as they awaited their food – apart from rebellious Beetroot the mongrel who, in her dotage, liked to lie down belly-up in her checked bed when awaiting food.

  The Haydown pack was large but incredibly well-mannered and disciplined, with all its members given a specific job to do. Beetroot was the genteel and ageing lady’s companion, the only dog allowed up the stairs, on the sofas or the bed. The Bitches of Eastwick were three Labradors that Hugo had trained to the gun. The Roadies were two big Rhodesian ridgeback brothers who guarded the yard and helpfully rounded up stray livestock and children as required. Finally, the Rat Pack were three snappy little hunt-terrier bitches that kept the Haydown rat and rabbit population down and were named variously after Hugo’s ex girlfriends and/or female adversaries.

  They all adored him because he treated them fairly but firmly and was top dog. By contrast they walked all over Tash, who bribed them, spoiled them and alternately hugged them all close or shooed them away from Cora. Only Beetroot remained her ally, although the pretty little biscuit-coloured bitch with her black envelope-flap ears and long, feathered lash of a tail joined the rest in sucking up to the pack leader at mealtimes.

  Tash watched the food bowls clatter down on the quarry tiles in the boot room in specific order and listened to the appreciative chomps of a large pack eating dried dog food as competitively as hounds thrown a haunch.

  ‘I didn’t call Niall,’ she explained, still holding the phone as it tinkled out Mozart. ‘I called Zoe but she had to go to one of the twins and—’