Hitched! (9 page)

FIVE

I went to smooth my hair behind my ears and found it
was already there. ‘Pretending to be a couple feels like a lie,’ I said. ‘I’m
not sure how comfortable I’d be deceiving your grandmother.’

‘But you’re comfortable deceiving your sister?’

‘That feels different somehow. Saffron doesn’t really care if
you and I are really a couple. She only cares about her seating plan.’

‘And you’d be taking me along because you care about
her
,’ said George, leaning back against the
photocopier and folding his arms. ‘Sure, you can insist on being completely
truthful. You could tell her that you’re proud of your independence, that you’re
happy to go to her wedding on your own, and to hell with her seating plan, but
you won’t, will you?’

My eyes slid away from his. I wouldn’t, and he knew it.

‘I could tell Letitia that my future was none of her business
and that I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go and play happy families with
my parents, but that would hurt her, and I don’t want to do that, any more than
you want to hurt Saffron.

‘So yes,’ he said, ‘it would be a pretence, and it would be a
kind of lying, but would it be so terrible?’

He straightened from the photocopier before I had a chance to
answer.

‘Why don’t you think about it?’ he said. ‘But don’t feel under
any pressure. If you don’t want to come to our happy family reunion, I certainly
wouldn’t blame you!’ He was putting on his boots, reaching for his jacket. ‘I’m
happy to pretend to be your boyfriend at Saffron’s wedding anyway,’ he promised.
‘I’m not going to turn down the chance to be with a sex kitten like you!’

Sex kitten. It was the first time I’d ever been called one of
those! I tried to imagine what it would be like if George weren’t joking, if he
really did want to be with me because he couldn’t keep his hands off me, and was
embarrassed to find that a disquieting thrill snaked down my spine at the idea.
Sensible I might be, but I still rather liked the thought of being too hot to
handle, although I knew I’d never in a million years be able to pull it off.

‘I prefer to think of myself as a tiger rather than a kitten,’
I said with dignity, just in case he was afraid I was taking him seriously. I
bared my teeth at him to make the point. ‘Grrr.’

George grinned as he reached for the door, and I nearly forgot
my sandwich. ‘Thank you for lunch,’ I said before he could close it behind
him.

‘You’re welcome.’ He put his head back round the door. ‘Let me
know what you decide.’

* * *

Would
it be so terrible? I
thought about George’s question all that night.

It wasn’t as if either of us had a partner who would be upset
by the pretence. Quite the opposite, in fact, at least in my case. There was no
use pretending that Saffron’s wedding wouldn’t be a lot more fun with George at
my side.

I was proud of my independence, just as he had said, but in the
small hours I couldn’t deny the fact that I hadn’t been looking forward to being
the lone singleton at Saffron’s wedding. All Saffron’s friends thought I was
weird enough as it was. The thought of their faces when I turned up with a man
like George on my arm was pleasing, it had to be admitted.

And it wasn’t just her friends. The world and his wife had been
invited to the wedding as far as I could make out. Exclusive rights to the
photos had been sold to
Glitz
, the celebrity
magazine. Did I really want to be identified as Saffron Taylor’s lonely
sister?

George had said that he would come to the wedding anyway, but
fair was fair. He was right. What harm could it do to keep an old lady happy? I
was thinking about George, too, much as it went against the grain. Whatever he
had done to alienate his family, it wasn’t going to be easy for him to face them
again.

He wouldn’t ask for it outright, but it seemed to me he could
do with some support. I was twitchy enough about facing my father, and that
would be at a wedding where there would be plenty of other people around to
defuse the tension. There would be no avoiding George’s parents and brother at
his grandmother’s party. I suspected George would feel very alone if he went on
his own.

I don’t know why it was that thought that made up my mind more
than any other, but it did.

* * *

I wanted to tell George that I had made a decision
before I lost my nerve. When I rang him, he said he was at the stables, so I
drove over there when the men broke for lunch. I parked Audrey outside the
handsome stable block, and went under an arch into the yard. Jasper had his
handsome head over a stable door. He rolled his eyes at me as I gave him a wide
berth, remembering my dream.

I found George in a stable where he was brushing down a
chestnut mare. The horse stared at me curiously, and George straightened with a
smile.

‘Come and say hello to Mabel.’

‘Er, hello, Mabel,’ I said from the door, breathing in the
distinctive smell of straw and horse.

George raised a brow. ‘You’re not frightened of horses, are
you, Frith?’

‘No...at least... They’re very
big
,
aren’t they? I like to admire them from a distance.’

‘Can you believe her?’ George told the horse, who whickered and
blew softly in his ear. ‘Frith’s afraid of a big softy like you.’

No doubt Annabel would have been skipping over to the horse
without a moment’s hesitation.

I put up my chin. ‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Then come closer.’

When I hesitated, he scratched Mabel’s jaw, and the horse
responded by nuzzling into him and blowing down his neck.

‘Mabel used to be nervous too,’ he said. ‘When I first saw her
she was in a terrible state. She’d been so badly treated, she would lash out if
anyone came near her, but she learnt how to trust. If she can, you can.’

Well, I wasn’t going to be outdone by a horse, especially not
one that was
flirting
with him. There was no other
word for it.

I marched across the stable, whipped out my hand, touched her
nose and snatched my hand back to tuck it safely under my armpit.

Mabel looked puzzled.

‘No, I don’t call that a stroke either, Mabel,’ said George.
‘Come here,’ he added to me.

‘Really, I—’

I broke off with a gasp as George took hold of my waist and
swung me into the shelter of his body, trapping me between him and Mabel’s huge
yellow teeth.

There was no choice. Flustered, I pressed back against him,
excruciatingly aware of the solid length of George behind me.

‘That’s better,’ he said. Keeping one arm around my waist, he
tugged one of my hands out from the safety of my armpit and spread my fingers
wide. Then, very slowly, he drew my palm down Mabel’s nose. I was so close that
I could see ridiculously long lashes over her liquid brown eyes. Her coat was
stiff but smooth at the same time, and there were little grey hairs flecked
between her eyes and towards the end of her nose where her nostrils flared.

She had long whiskers over velvety lips, and when I felt her
warm breath on my palm, I felt something shift inside me.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ George’s voice in my ear
made me remember that I was still held cosily within the circle of his
arms, and I made myself step away.

My back was tingling where I had been pressed against him, and
I didn’t know what to do with my hands all at once. I tried them in various
positions before settling on hugging my arms together.

I cleared my throat. ‘Is she yours?’

‘Mabel prefers to think that I’m hers,’ said George. ‘Letitia
gave us to each other when I was sixteen. The best present I ever had,’ he
remembered, his voice warm with affection. ‘That was nearly sixteen years ago,
so she’s an old lady now.’

‘You said she was mistreated.’ Looking at the sleek coat and
trusting eyes, it was hard to believe. ‘How could anyone do that?’

‘I don’t know, Frith. Luckily, they found her in time and
brought her to Letitia. My grandmother’s an amazing woman. She’s got a magic
touch for horses. They used to call her the Wiltshire Whisperer locally, and any
horse with a behavioural problem would find its way to her eventually. The local
vets knew what she could do, and they were the ones who brought Mabel in.’

He tugged affectionately at Mabel’s wiry fringe, but his face
darkened at the memory. ‘She’d been rescued from the most appalling conditions,
and she was so skittish, it took a week before she’d let me close enough to
touch her.’

‘Poor thing.’ I tried to imagine the horse butting her nose so
trustingly against George as traumatised but it was hard to do.

‘I was there with Letitia when they brought her in,’ George
went on. ‘I don’t really remember why. I’d probably been chucked out of school.
That happened at fairly regular intervals. I’ve got a feeling I was angry about
something, anyway. But as soon as I saw Mabel, I knew she was special.’

He shook his head, unable to explain. ‘I don’t know why, but
there was a kind of connection between us, and when Letitia saw that she let me
work with Mabel all summer. I spent hours and hours with her.’

‘You must have had to be very patient,’ I said. To be honest, I
was having trouble picturing it. To me, George always seemed to make the air
around him snap and crackle with energy and I couldn’t see him as a steady
sixteen-year-old.

‘It took a long time, but winning Mabel’s trust was the best
thing I ever did,’ said George. He was gathering up bits of tack and hanging
them over the stall. ‘At the end of the summer, my grandmother said that I could
keep her, but of course there was no way I could take her to London, so she
stayed in Wiltshire and I rode her whenever I went down to see Letitia.

‘She’s still in the same house—says she’s going to be carried
out in a box—but even she had to admit that the horses had got too much for her
to manage a couple of years ago. She sold all of them, except Mabel, of course.
Luckily, Roly had these stables, so I could bring her north with me.’

‘I saw lots of other horses in the stables,’ I said. ‘Are they
yours too?’

‘Nope, Mabel’s all I’ve got in the world,’ said George, giving
her a final affectionate slap on the rump and following me out into the yard.
‘Some were old Lord Whellerby’s hunters,’ he said, shutting Mabel’s door behind
him. ‘We’ve got a couple of retired racehorses too, and some that are
recuperating after accidents or illnesses.’

He stopped to pat the neck of a bay who had its nose over its
door and was flickering its ears. ‘Toby here was hit by a car last year, and now
he’s too nervous to be ridden. I’m working with him to get over the trauma, but
it’s a slow process.’

‘How did his owners know to bring him here?’ I asked curiously
and George shrugged.

‘Word gets around. I’d really like to expand the stables so I
can work with horses with other behavioural problems,’ he said. ‘There’s so much
I could do if we had more space and if—’ He stopped with a self-conscious laugh.
‘Well, they’re just ideas.’

‘It sounds like you’ve got a plan too,’ I teased him.

‘A very long-term one. There are lots of other things to do on
the estate first, and Roly doesn’t ride so the stables aren’t a priority for
him. I’m just taking on a few horses at the moment in my spare time.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Have you had lunch?’

‘No, but—’

‘You can share my sandwich,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go and wash my
hands.’

‘You can’t keep feeding me,’ I protested weakly when he
reappeared with a foil packet and we settled ourselves on the stable block.

‘Mrs Simms feeds me,’ said George, ‘so I’m just passing it on.
I’ll ask her to make an extra sandwich next week.’

‘Oh, you can’t do that!’

‘She’d love to. Nothing makes her happier than feeding everyone
up.’ George unwrapped the foil and looked inside. ‘Cheese and salad OK with
you?’

‘Lovely,’ I said, succumbing to temptation. I was hungry.

He took out half of the sandwich and passed the foil to me.
‘Have you asked Mrs Simms about Saffron’s party yet?’

‘No, I must do that. I might go up to the Hall this afternoon
and see if I can have a word with her then.’

‘Time it right, and she’ll have made a cake for tea.’

For a while we ate our sandwich in companionable silence. When
I’d finished, I brushed the crumbs from my trousers.

‘I came to tell you that I made a decision about your
grandmother’s party,’ I said.

‘And?’

‘I’ll do it,’ I said, and saw the relief that sprang into the
blue eyes. That made me feel better about it. ‘But,’ I added firmly, ‘we need a
plan.’

‘Now, why does that not surprise me? Frith, it’ll be fine,’ he
said.

‘I’m serious.’

I had been thinking about it ever since he had first suggested
that I take my stupid joke to Saffron seriously. It was all very well for George
to say that it would all be fine. Some of us had imaginations and could think
about all the things that might not be fine at all.

Some of us were spending altogether too much time imagining
what it would be like to be George’s girlfriend, in fact. There was a jumpy,
jittery feeling underneath my skin even when I wasn’t thinking about it, and I’d
endured another restless night as a result. How had I got myself into this mess?
This was what happened when you diverged from your plan.

‘We didn’t think it through,’ I insisted. ‘It all seemed easy
yesterday. Saffron’s wedding, your grandmother’s party, that was it. But it’s
not it, is it? Saffron is coming up to talk about the party soon, and then
there’s the party itself...’

I was pleating the foil neatly. ‘We’ll have to get our stories
straight so we don’t give ourselves away,’ I pointed out. ‘And what about Roly?
Do we tell him what’s going on? It’s all going to get complicated!’