Well Groomed (41 page)

‘Er, good point.’ She swallowed, not liking the menacing glint that had returned to his eyes. There was no mistaking this expression. It was pure evil, and she was suddenly certain that he was pacing in order to determine which form of punishment would be most satisfactory to make up for her vandalism that night.

‘Just getting my boot,’ she yelped, diving into the bathroom and almost crowning herself on the bath as she slithered over the wet floor.

As she picked her boot out of the money plant and hastily sat on the loo to pull it on, she noticed that half a bottle of whisky was standing on the cistern. She was certain it hadn’t been there before. Nor had the newspaper which was open at the sports pages and now sucking up water from the floor.

Tugging up the zip of her sodden boot, it dawned on her that Hugo had been sitting alone in a distant bathroom at his own party, swigging whisky, compelled by some deep well of unhappiness to seek solitude and drunkenness. She suddenly felt a great wave of pity for him.

Wandering back out again, however, she found that he had gone. So had the two photographs which had fallen from the card when she had tried to rip it.

The party was raging at full throttle now. Squelching back downstairs, Tash was faced with the sight of two of the country’s top event riders re-enacting the show-jumping final of last year’s Badminton in the hall. Using a mixture of pot-plants, umbrellas and walking sticks as fences, one rode piggy back on the other as they stumbled and toppled their way into each ‘jump’, spreading plant, soil, leaves and laughter throughout the room.

Sliding around the walls behind everyone’s backs, Tash crept into the room where Niall had been talking to Lisette and Zoe earlier.

They were no longer there but, disastrously, Hugo was, sitting in amongst a noisy group which included Sophia and Ben, Stefan, the Lime Tree mob and Sally, who hailed Tash like a long-lost friend stumbling off a ship in port.

‘Honey!’ she whooped. ‘Over here! We’re playing truth or dare, like a bunch of teeny boppers. I’m trying to persuade Hugo here to spin the bottle.’

‘Christ!’ Tash muttered under her breath before shaking her head with as big a smile as she could crack open. ‘I’m just going to find Niall – see what time he wants to leave.’ She peered quickly at Hugo to see what sort of mood he was in after the loo fiasco, but he was staring bleakly into his glass of scotch, a fingernail broodily tapping its rim.

‘He’s gone already.’ Sally waggled her hand to coax Tash towards them. ‘Zoe found Rufus wrapped around one of the downstairs loos and needed a hand getting him home. He said to tell you he’ll try to get a cab back here as soon as they’ve put him to bed. Zoe’s whacked, so she’s not planning to come back. Here – have some champagne.’ She held up the bottle as Tash shuffled within reach, her boots quacking like ducks as wet skin sucked against wet leather with each step.

Sitting as far away from Hugo as possible and determinedly not looking at him, she squashed herself between Sally and Ben, who was absolutely plastered – his usual state at parties. Sophia, as sober as a school bus driver and thoroughly disapproving, narrowed her eyes as Tash, who had lost her glass, took a quick swig straight from the bottle.

‘Isn’t that a little unhygienic?’

‘No – it’s very sexy,’ Stefan butted in on Tash’s behalf, taking the bottle and swigging from it himself.

‘I can’t believe how many people gave you booze for your birthday, Hugo,’ Sally giggled, regarding a vast stack of bottles to one side of them. ‘It’s like a millionaire’s cellar in here.’

‘I always get bottles for my birthday.’ Hugo shrugged, his face guarded and sulky. ‘I should just lodge a list with Majestic. I’ll probably chuck most of it up later – talk about many happy returns.’

‘I suppose it’s the obvious gift for the man who has everything but a drinking problem.’ Sally swigged from her glass, her face pink from overindulgence. ‘I’m sorry mine was just some old plonk. Did you and Niall get Hugo booze too, Tash?’ she looked across with slightly unfocused eyes.

She was about to say yes when Hugo muttered icily, ‘Tash and Niall didn’t, so far as I know, bring anything but their fame and glamour – although Tash seems quite keen on toasting the birthday boy and lighting up the candles on his cake.’

Flustered, she muttered something about leaving it at home.

‘I thought I told you to leave Niall there too,’ Hugo said suddenly, his tone deliberately light and flip.

Looking at him, Tash found his eyes boring into hers and was totally thrown. ‘Er, I’ll get a drink,’ she muttered.

‘Take your pick,’ Stefan laughed, starting to rifle through Hugo’s clanking gifts, his long legs stretched to either side of the cache. ‘There’s Bollinger, Moët, Taittinger, Lanson – Christ there’s even a couple of Krugs here. Or if you want something stronger there’s—’

‘Ben and I gave Hugo a Trollope first edition,’ murmured Sophia, who had recently taken to giving ‘cultural’ presents. Tash had received a very odd compact disc of a trendy modern composer for Christmas; one minute of it was enough to evict Niall to the pub and cause Beetroot to try and hide in the coal cupboard. Twenty minutes later it had still sounded as though the orchestra was tuning up.

‘I’d rather have just had a trollop.’ Hugo smiled malevolently, and looked up. ‘Talk of the she-devil . . .’

‘Hi, guys.’ Red-faced Richie grinned over them, dwarfing them in large, square shadow. ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’

Hugo winced at the cliché and shot Kirsty a dirty look before shrugging. ‘Why not? After all they let anybody in these days, according to my mother.’

‘In where?’ Richie looked confused, square forehead creasing.

‘In Kirst—’

‘Why don’t you sit down next to me!’ Tash beamed brightly up at Richie, aware that Hugo was at a pitch of drunkenness that was dangerous when whetted.

Hovering behind her gargantuan fiancé, Kirsty was clearly gibbering with nerves, but far too eager to keep Hugo in view to be subtle about it. She perched on a foot stool opposite him, eyes darting towards his face as often as a darts player checking the scoreboard. Even sitting on the floor beside Tash, Richie towered above most of the assembled company, red face grinning inanely. She decided she rather liked him.

‘Actually we were playing a game of truth or dare.’ Penny was pulling the foil from another champagne bottle, her feet hooked up on to Gus’s knees. ‘You can join in. It was Tash’s turn, wasn’t it?’

She wanted to dare herself to tell the truth for once and announce that she refused to play, but she was feeling far too gutless, aware that Hugo was taking brief breaks from shooting Kirsty evil looks to shoot them at her.

‘I’ll do a dare,’ she croaked.

Gus rubbed his hands together with delight. ‘Now we should be able to think up something really juicy. Particularly as Niall has bunked off early.’

A quarter of the way down a fresh bottle of scotch, Hugo glanced up, eyes glinting as never before. ‘I think,’ he drawled, letting the words roll slowly from his pink tongue, ‘that she should ride my new toy to the bottom of Twenty Acres and back.’

‘Christ – you’d trust her with your bike?’ Ted was wide-eyed with amazement and jealousy. ‘You only dared me to pinch your mother’s bum!’

‘That,’ Hugo smiled, ‘was far more dangerous.’

Looking at Tash’s white face, he watched her flinch as Penny’s champagne cork flew out, jumping almost six feet into the air. Catching him watching her, Tash stared defiantly back at him.

‘Haven’t you got livestock in there?’ Ben asked, a hiccup coursing up his throat so that he sounded as though he was speaking with a gob-stopper in each cheek.

‘Nope.’ Hugo continued staring straight at Tash.

She didn’t dare look away. He was challenging her loud and clear. This was her punishment.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Penny protested, sucking froth from the top of a Bollinger bottle. ‘It’s pitch dark out there.’

‘Don’t do it, Tash.’ Sophia was, for once, genuinely concerned. ‘You could kill yourself.

‘I’ll do it.’ Tash lifted her chin and stared Hugo out.

‘Good girl.’ He grinned. ‘Let’s go.’

A LARGE CROWD ASSEMBLED out on the gravel driveway. Many of Hugo’s guests had already left, but of those still there, none headed for their cars as they filed out into the cool, damp March night. Hot breath clouded and mingled in front of flushed faces as a nightjar chattered in the garden and Hugo’s two guard dogs barked from the yard.

Twenty Acres was a large, claggy field that sloped at an acute angle down from the house towards the valley below. It was perilously steep and pitted, and useless for anything other than rough grazing as the sheer incline was too acute for most farm vehicles. One or two timber and tyre fences were dotted sporadically around it, which Hugo used to train his horses over. It was also host to several small coppices and a couple of deep ponds where the heavy clay soil held on to water in the damper months. In the past, Tash’s heart had caught in her throat just cantering at half-pace down it. The prospect of racing down it on a large motorbike was making her feel physically sick.

Laughing and chatting with the milling party guests, Hugo was extremely drunk but still walking and talking fairly normally. Only his glinting eyes gave him away. When he tossed Tash the ignition keys, they landed plum in her hands.

She was trembling with cold now, her teeth chattering like a rattling window, her back tightening like a drum skin where her dress was gaping open at the top.

It took her several moments to figure out how to turn on the bike’s ignition. Tash had spent a considerable amount of time the previous summer rattling around the fields of the Moncrieffs’ farm on board an old scramble bike that had belonged to one of the part-time grooms. She was fairly familiar with staying on board over rough terrain – even in the dark. But Hugo’s bike was far bigger and more powerful than the scrambler. She could barely touch the ground with her damp, booted feet as she pushed it off the rest and switched on the lights.

The next moment, she let out the throttle and it roared into life like a minotaur chasing a piece of string.

As a whooping Ted opened the gate which led straight on to the drive, the bright halogen headlight slashed through the dark, highlighting churned up mud in the gateway, the crystal tips of the dewy grass, and the top of a distant tree. The field wasn’t even visible as it sloped out of sight within metres, disappearing into a darkened chasm.

Tash caught her breath. It would be like riding off a cliff.

‘Tell her not to do it, Gus.’ Penny was trying to galvanise some help to stop the dare. But Gus stood stock still, arms crossed against the cold, and simply shrugged, enjoying the show.

‘I think thish could be rather rash, Tash old thing.’ Ben approached her, smoothing his messy hair and lurching drunkenly where he was being prodded by Sophia from behind. ‘Think how ghastly it would be if you hurt yourself all over a shilly game.’

But Tash was revving the engine and didn’t hear him. All she could think was how much this would tick off Hugo. He’d clearly expected her to wimp out, and she hadn’t even complained.

Those party guests lining up by the fence to watch were swigging from bottles and cans as they giggled and gossiped and chatted, seeing this as an entertaining side-show, numbed by drunkenness to the idiocy of it.

Sally had drunk far more than usual too, but suddenly felt horribly sober. As she dashed towards the puttering bike, she crashed into Lisette who had wandered outside to watch, swathed in a long velvet coat, glass in hand.

‘What’s going on?’ Lisette took in her panic-stricken expression.

‘I’ve got to stop this,’ wailed Sally. ‘Tash is planning to ride round that bloody field like some sort of teenage joy-rider. It’s Hugo’s fault. I’m going to kill him.’

Lisette’s warm hand entrapped her wrist and held it tight. ‘Don’t. Let her get on with it.’

Sally tried to wrench her arm away, but Lisette clung on tightly.

‘You may want Niall back,’ Sally hissed, ‘but letting Tash try and kill herself isn’t the best method, believe me.’

Lisette’s huge, painted eyes glittered in the steely light and she tightened her grip so much that Sally winced.

‘I don’t want Niall back,’ she whispered. ‘But if I did, Tash is certainly helping me all the fucking way. Why d’you think Niall was drinking for England, Ireland and the States tonight and looking as though he’d had teeth pulled with every drink, huh?’

Only half listening, Sally was craning around to see Tash talking to Gus and Stefan, trying desperately hard to laugh even though she was shivering madly and pasty white with fear. She had lost so much weight that she looked like a fragile, leggy bird perched on the great bike with her ridiculously flimsy party dress rucked up to show a lot of slim, pale thigh. Sally wanted to throttle Hugo who was standing alone a short way off, bottle to his chest as he tugged sporadically on a cigarette, its long red end sparking in the dark.

‘Tash is in love with
him
.’ Lisette jerked her head towards the solitary figure. ‘Not Niall. That’s why he’s miserable, why he’s fucking around with actresses, drinking himself to death and clinging to the apron strings of that ageing mummy tonight. Don’t feel sorry for Tash – feel sorry for Niall.’

Not bothering to respond, Sally finally broke free just as Tash rolled the bike into the field entrance to yells and claps of excited encouragement. She raced up to Hugo, whose own teeth appeared to be chattering like mad now as he tried to swig from his whisky bottle and spilled most of it.

‘Stop her, you bastard!’ yelled Sally. ‘You’d never ride down that fucking field yourself at this time of night. Stop her!’

Hugo seemed on the brink of telling her to get lost, but then he looked across at Tash, who was borrowing a pair of gloves from Stefan. They were far too big for her and made her look like a member of the audience at Gladiators waving great rubber fists around.