Well Groomed (11 page)

The Doc Martens might have given her a great grip, but the undone laces tripped her up three times. Tash landed twice on her bottom in deep snow and once nose down in a hedge. She sat in the middle of the lane, her wet backside soaking up yet more icy dampness, and hastily criss-crossed the laces around her ankles, her frozen fingers slowing her down to a hopeless fumble. Then, slipping her way upright again, she felt her buttocks clench against the cold air as she slithered and tripped towards the farm gates.

She arrived just as they were about to count down the hour.

‘Thirty seconds to go!’ came a scream from the sitting room to the left.

‘Everyone into the sitting room – double quick,’ called Gus.

For a moment, Tash was swept on a tide of familiar faces towards the huge, candle-lit room. Despite its size, however, it simply could not accommodate all of Gus’s and Penny’s guests and Tash was stranded with a dozen or so others in the hall, unable to squeeze inside. Amongst them was Kirsty Judd, balancing her long, curvy legs on the two strappy shoes Tash had spotted through the cat-flap earlier. She looked sensational – her freckled skin tanned in the Australian sun to a tawny gold, her fox-red hair freshly cut into a feathered urchin bob, her magnificent cleavage balancing like two rust-dusted golden globes on the wired corset of her tight little cocktail dress.

Looking down at her own inside-out and wrongly buttoned checked shirt – the same shirt that she had mucked out in a week earlier – Tash realised that she was in unflattering contrast on the looks front. Her thick, woolly tights, Doc Martens and frayed denim hotpants were too grunge student for words, her hair was a damp, chilly bird’s nest of tangles, her nose a glowing beacon, her eyes as pink and puffy as two snapdragons. She looked unbelievably rough. The only kiss she was likely to get in the next minute was the kiss of life.

As the huge crowd in the sitting room started counting backwards from ten, Tash slunk towards the shadow of the stairs and tried to blend into the vast pile of coats slung over the banisters.

‘Hi, Tash – so you made it after all,’ purred that slinky little voice, as mellifluous as maple syrup sinking through a waffle. Kirsty would make Jean Brodie sound like a Glaswegian welder.

The counting had just reached seven.

Grabbing an abandoned half-full glass of red wine from a nearby bookshelf, Tash managed a very stiff half-smile aimed in the general direction of Kirsty’s vast cleavage.

‘Must find Hugo.’ Kirsty melted away towards the sitting-room door just as he emerged from the kitchen, yawning widely and carrying a bottle of duty-free champagne.

Swinging her narrow-eyed gaze from Kirsty’s enviously schoolboy bottom to Hugo’s tall shadow, Tash drew in a sharp breath as she clocked his tan – as dark and smooth as chocolate praline. With his tortoiseshell flop of wavy hair, straight, straight nose and Barclaycard-blue eyes, he looked like a photofit of every schoolgirl’s dream man. Tash’s teeth gritted with hatred.

The count was now at five.

Hugo looked up from tugging at the champagne foil and, catching Tash watching him, smiled nastily before moving lazily towards her. ‘So you made it after all?’

‘She’s gone that way.’ Tash jerked her head towards Kirsty’s retreating freckled back as the count reached two.

‘Really?’ he said flatly, standing opposite her now.

‘One . . . Happy New Year!’ came the shrieks from the sitting room as the sounds of greetings, kisses, popping champagne corks and whoops drowned out Big Ben on the radio.

Hugo hadn’t moved a muscle. He barely seemed to notice that the year had turned at all.

Tash backed slightly away into the stairwell, alarmed by his uncharacteristic attention. He was smiling broadly and watching her with condescending interest, as a scientist watches a white mouse which he has just injected with a deadly virus.

The next moment she almost passed out as there was a loud bang inches in front of her. Suddenly, she was aware of icy, wet froth hitting her hot, breathless chest.

Laughing at her, Hugo lifted the bottle of champagne to his lips, lapping at the foaming rim before taking it in his mouth and swallowing a lengthy mouthful.

‘Did I give you a fright?’ he mocked, passing the bottle to her. ‘Happy New Year.’

Holding up her chin, determined not to rise to his teasing, Tash took a hasty swig and thrust it back at him.

But Hugo was now gazing up at the ceiling.

‘How extraordinarily inappropriate,’ he murmured, cocking his head so that his tortoiseshell forelock flopped from left to right.

Following his gaze, Tash blushed crimson with mortification as she realised they were standing directly under Zoe’s fat bunch of mistletoe which now bore only two pearl berries.

When she looked back at Hugo, he was smiling his most mocking smile, a curious look of concentration on his face.

Clutching tightly on to the bottle for support, Tash realised to her horror that he was moving even closer to her. For a terrifying moment his breath traced her cheek and she thought that he was going to kiss her. But he merely stretched up a hand and removed something from her hair.

‘I shouldn’t think this’ll improve your chances, darling,’ he said, dropping a pearl into the champagne bottle before turning away. ‘Kirsty, darling! There you are! Now, I know you’re practically a married woman, but humour an envious bastard with a New Year’s kiss.’

In front of most of the eventing circle, none of whom could guess at their steamy affair, he drew Kirsty into his arms and planted a very respectable, if rather too long, closed-mouth kiss on her plump lips. Over his shoulder, Tash was appalled to see one of Kirsty’s glittering blueberry eyes winking at her.

‘Happy New Year, Tash!’ Rufus lurched up, absolutely bombed out of his mind on vodka, his yellow shirt covered with pieces of quiche and party streamers.

Before Tash could respond, he had landed a huge, wet kiss on her gaping mouth and, even worse, inserted a warm, fat tongue into her mouth.

‘You’re a fucking great shnogger, Tash,’ he hiccuped, backing away and reeling towards the downstairs lavatory from which, seconds later, came the unmistakable sound of retching.

Suddenly it was Auld Lang Syne time. Grabbed by Gus – with a far more warm and welcome New Year’s peck on the mouth – Tash was propelled into the throng in the sitting room to link arms and sing. But luck was still not on her side as she found herself crossing her arms and clutching on to the small, manicured paw of Kirsty on one side and the damp, sweaty pudginess of Ted’s fingerlock on the other. His gelled hair was all over the place now.

‘Been looking for you all night,’ he hissed into her ear as she tried to sing along with the out-of-time, out-of-tune rabble. ‘Hear Niall’s gone away again – give me a call if you need a plug re-wiring.’

Tash rolled her eyes and tipped her head as far away from his stale breath as she could manage. Unfortunately this necessitated practically necking with Kirsty.

‘No Niall tonight then?’ she asked rather regretfully.

Still wrestling with ‘sip a drink of kindness yet’, Tash shook her head with another of her stiff little smiles. They were coming in remarkably handy tonight.

At last no one could remember any more words and Tash, released from her double half-nelson, escaped back to the hall, which was practically deserted. She found Hugo’s bottle of champagne still sitting on the bookshelf where she had left it and, grabbing it by the neck, snuggled up by the familiar coats for a long, bolstering swig.

‘You all right, darling?’ Zoe asked as she swept from sitting room to kitchen, weighed down by trays. ‘Happy New Year.’

‘Blast!’ Penny was following her with fingers full of glasses to be refilled. ‘I forgot to post bloody Hugo outside to bring in the coal and the coins. I bet you the first stranger across the threshold will be that faggot Godfrey Pelham, and he’s blue-rinsed, not dark. Plus he’s so mean he never brings booze or grub with him.’

When the doorbell rang, everyone ignored it. No one who was welcome inside Lime Tree Farm would ever think to ring the doorbell. There was an unwritten rule at the farm that the doorbell was the domain of the VAT man and the bailiffs, giving Penny and Gus enough warning to hide. Everyone else just walked in.

‘Happy New Year, sweetheart.’ An eventing mate kissed Tash on the cheek. ‘Perhaps this is the year you’ll be capped, huh?’ He drifted away towards the sitting room.

Tash was halfway down the bottle and perking up. She was just contemplating nipping upstairs to borrow an outfit from Penny and steal a bit of Zoe’s make-up when Hugo the Cruel stalked malevolently up to reclaim his champagne.

Saying nothing to him, Tash thrust the bottle into his hand and moved away, but Hugo put up an arm to block her.

‘Listen, I’m sorry I was a bit heavy earlier,’ he said, not sounding particularly sorry at all. ‘Penny’s just told me about Niall’s abrupt departure. Had no idea that was why you didn’t want to come out. In fact, I’d not realised he’d been in England at all.’

‘We
did
spend Christmas together.’ Tash sighed. Sometimes Hugo could be ruthlessly self-centred; it was possible he’d even forgotten that she and Niall were still an item.

‘Did you?’ Hugo looked bored.

Realising that this was as much of an apology as she was likely to receive, and bearing in mind the ticking off Zoe had given her, Tash mustered yet another stiff smile. Any minute now and the wind would change, leaving her looking like Virginia Bottomley on Question Time for the rest of her life.

The doorbell was ringing again, and once again it was ignored.

‘Have a good Christmas?’ Tash humoured him, taking in the deepness of the tan again and deciding it looked a bit patchy and flaking. He was so vain, she was surprised he didn’t use moisturiser.

‘Pretty horrific.’ Hugo’s blue eyes narrowed tiredly at the memory. ‘I stayed with Jim and Gail Reebok in their yard in New South Wales. Their little brats run around the stables like rats. No bloody discipline.’

‘See much of Kirsty?’ Tash asked casually, trying not to smile.

The blue eyes – even more searing when framed by golden-brown skin – crinkled at the corners for a moment before going dead-pan.

‘A bit,’ he answered, just as casually, then took a long swig of champagne.

The doorbell was ringing non-stop now.

‘All right, all right! We surrender! I’m coming!’ Penny yelled wandering into the hall still clutching a bottle of cheap plonk.

‘Well, I’d better mingle.’ Tash, feeling she had done her duty for Zoe’s sake, looked around for a handy group to chat to.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ Hugo was still barring her way with a long arm, his green sweater pushed up to the elbow to show a lot of muscular, conker-brown arm.

‘Forgotten wha—?’ Before she could finish, his mouth closed on hers.

It was a brief, not entirely friendly kiss, but its effect still took both of them by surprise.

And Niall caught every second.

Framed in the doorway wearing a vast quilted coat, his nose puce from the cold, shoulders and hair dusted with snow, he looked both dishevelled and unspeakably handsome. His hands were full of Toblerone bars, claret bottles, loose change and lumps of coal stolen from one of the outhouses.

‘Flights from Heathrow have all been cancelled because of the snow,’ he announced with a big, unsteady grin. ‘They kept us waiting hours at check-in then told us to go home. Happy New Year!’

‘Niall!’ Tash bounded across the hall, long legs flying as she leaped ecstatically into his arms.

Niall found he couldn’t bring himself to look at Hugo.

It wasn’t the kiss he minded. Everyone kissed everyone else on New Year’s Eve. No, it was the guilty way Tash had snatched herself away when she’d caught sight of him, the gleaming blaze of something midway between fear and lust in her eyes.

Even as she surged forward, almost weeping with delighted excitement at his unexpected return, Niall’s heart barely lifted. She was wearing unspeakable clothes, her hair was all over the place, her tights laddered and full of road grit. But her cheeks glowed, her eyes shone and she looked utterly beautiful. And, deep within his heart, he suspected that her radiance was not the result of his return.

HENRIETTA, CONTRARY TO ALEXANDRA’S hype, was not wildly keen on the idea of orchestrating Tash’s wedding from her side of the Channel. She had enough of a task keeping her own two daughters’ lives within her grasp, without the added pressure of dabbling in the rather unconventional one of her step-daughter’s. It wasn’t as if Tash was a daughter that James had any particular time for. Tash was ludicrously close to her mother, and Henrietta sensed that James was somewhat intimidated by the link. In truth, she herself was too. Both she and James found it far easier to accommodate Sophia, who was glamorous, great to show off at parties and led a far more conventional life. Sophia, it had to be noted, also had far less time for her mother’s bohemian antics than Tash.

Six years earlier, newly married to her former boss, Henrietta had willingly involved herself in the marriage of James’s elder daughter to the rather raffish and supremely eligible Ben Meredith, now Viscount Guarlford. It had been one of those stressful but rewarding labours of love that the second wife feels obliged and gratified to take on. In those days Henrietta had a lot to prove to the back-biting gossips who hinted that James had only married his secretary in order to offset her against tax. The prospect of arranging Sophia’s jet-set society wedding had terrified her, but thanks to weeks of sleepless nights and triple-checking, the whole thing had come off marvellously, ensuring her Sophia’s devotion ever since. The fact that Alexandra – herself just remarried and wrapped up in her young toddler – had been involved to only the scantiest degree smoothed Henrietta’s passage immeasurably. But Tash’s marriage was a different matter.