Kiss And Tell

by Fiona Walker

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

With tight breeches and loose morals, the horse trials circuit is a hell for leather chase across the magnificent parkland of England's finest country estates. Flirtation is compulsory sport; love is a professional hazard. Silver-tongued charmer Rory Midwinter is quite at home in this hedge-jumping, bed-hopping world of competitive weekend house parties. Having been born into the saddle, and with a rock star owner as patron, he has no intention of settling down. Only his long-term groom Faith has other ideas. Tash and Hugo Beauchamp are the undisputed golden couple of British three-day-eventing, but their mettle is put to the test by the arrival of The Devil on Horseback, brooding Kiwi rider, Lough Strachan. Lough holds the key to Hugo's darkest secret, and he intends to use it to access his greatest rival's beautiful wife.

Release date: March 31, 2011

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 890

Sample

Eventful Lives – and Dirty Weekends

You have to be an optimist to want to gallop half a ton of super-fit horse over fences shaped like saw-mills, shotgun cartridges,
boats, animals and houses. Brave, tough and incredibly upbeat, the event rider is a breed apart and quite the sexiest of all
horsemen and women which, in a very sexy pastime indeed, makes them irresistible …


Eventing is an equestrian sport originating from the cavalry Militaire, and is now hugely popular worldwide. Comprising three disciplines – dressage, cross-country and show-jumping – eventing
is the definitive test of both horse and rider, requiring immense stamina, skill, versatility, finesse, dedication and, above
all, guts. On a competitive level, riding across country is one of the greatest adrenalin fixes known to man, woman and horse;
on a social level, it’s like attending a country house party every weekend with your closest chums all around you, gaining
access to the most stunning estates in the country and partying in the park every night.


By day, combinations are set three tasks to show their supremacy, like knights and their steeds at a medieval tournament.
First they must perform a courtly dance, gymnastic floor exercises set out in a precise pattern, leaping and twirling exactly
on the allotted marks and lines while judges all around narrow their eyes and look for faults; this is dressage. Then they
must run a gruelling assault course within a given time, leaping huge obstacles, crossing gullies and risking life and limb;
that’s the cross-country phase. Finally, exhausted now, they enter a gladiatorial arena filled with flimsy jumps to vault
over accurately while the clock ticks down – the show-jumping phase. The prize money in eventing may vary dramatically – at
some competitions winning barely covering fuel costs, at others the victor gets many tens of thousands – but glory is always
magnificent, and the perks are sublime.


Governed by British Eventing in the UK and the FEI (Fédération Equestre Internationale) internationally, affiliated horse
trials are graded in difficulty from entry level (BE90 and BE100), through novice and intermediate to advanced. A CIC (Concours
International Combiné) is a one- or two-day event ranging from one star (novice) to three star (advanced), and the stages
are run as dressage, show-jumping and then finally cross-country. A CCI (Concours Complet International) is a three day event
also of one, two and three stars, with the exclusive additional four-star level being the most difficult; the phases are run
on successive days in the order of dressage, then cross-country, with show-jumping last. In actual fact, dressage often runs
over two days, thus making it a four-day event, but that’s typical of eventers, who always give that little bit extra.


Despite a reputation for upper-class elitism, it’s a refreshingly egalitarian sport in which men and women of all ages compete
equally on horses of unique bravery and talent, in which princes and paupers ride side by side, where intense rivalries are
matched by lifelong friendships, camaraderie and old-fashioned sportsmanship that’s rare in the modern world. Set against
idyllic backdrops of grand country houses, ancient parkland and rich farmland, sunshine and mud, tight breeches and loose
morals, dogs and wellies, toffs, farmers and tradesmen, silver spoons and shoestrings, horsepower and four-wheel drives, it’s
the ultimate countryside fix at home and abroad with competitions held all over Europe, the States, Canada, Australasia and
beyond.


Here, it’s as British as a Range Rover full of black Labradors, a Pimm’s picnic on a checked blanket and sunshine and rain
in June, with gung-ho galore and plenty of naughtiness behind the scenes …


The UK horse trials season runs from March until October, with some international trials and special events taking place year
round. Many event riders and their grooms spend much of the competitive season on the road, with their horseboxes acting as
second homes, some luxuriously complete with wet rooms, flat-screen televisions, king-sized beds in slide-out pods and even
wine coolers. Others offer little more than a sleeping bag on straw bales. Horses are often stalled at events in temporary
stabling, much like a military encampment, harking back to the sport’s beginnings, although with up-to-date security and state-of-the-art
care.


Despite its traditional roots, eventing is a thoroughly modern sport, employing a vast array of groundbreaking expertise,
research and ever-more stringent rules. As in any high-risk sport, like skiing or motor racing, fatalities are regrettably
inevitable, and much has been changed by the governing bodies to increase safety, from breakable cross-country fences to the
introduction of inflatable body protectors for riders. Everything possible is done to make it safe, but nothing can take away
from the sheer thrill of riding at speed across solid timber on a super-fit horse that can also perform a balletic dressage
test and jump an obedient round over coloured poles.


Event riders have a reputation for living fast, partying hard and making merry, along with their owners, supporters and trials
organisers. The horses can be pretty badly behaved too – but what else can one expect from a sport that demands that extra
red-blooded sparkle of genius?


Hugo and Tash Beauchamp – the eventing world’s premier couple, based at Haydown in West Berkshire with their young family

Alicia Beauchamp – Hugo’s mother, living on gin and Rothmans in the Dower House


Beccy Sergeant – Tash’s stepsister, an inveterate drifter, just back from finding herself


James and Henrietta French – Tash’s golf and gardening mad father and stepmother, enjoying retirement in Surrey


Em and Tim – Henrietta’s older daughter and her husband, living with many young children and much stress in South London


Faith Brakespear – a talented young dressage rider


Anke and Graham Brakespear – Faith’s mother, a former Olympic rider turned bookshop owner and her haulier husband, living in the pretty Cotswolds village
of Oddlode


Magnus and Dilly – Faith’s brother and his girlfriend, rising musicians now living in Hackney


Chad – Faith’s little brother, going through a permanent difficult phase


Kurt and Graeme – Faith’s ‘gayfathers’, the dressage world’s premier couple, living in Essex


Fearghal Moore – Faith’s birth father, an Irish horse dealer based in County Mayo


Ingmar Olensen – Faith’s batty maternal grandfather


Rory Midwinter – pewter-eyed young event rider and hell-raiser, proprietor of Overlodes Equestrian Centre


Truffle Dacre-Hopkinson – his dilettante mother, currently between husbands


Diana and Amos Gates – Rory’s sister and her husband, custodians of the Gunning Estate


Spurs and Ellen Belling – Rory’s cousin and his wife, busy making babies


Nell Cottrell – scourge of the young Lodes set, mother to baby Gigi, now dating Dillon Rafferty


Milo – Nell’s long-term lover, impossibly married to his wife and career in Amsterdam


Pete and Indigo Rafferty – the music industry’s legendary Rockfather and his young model wife, who is addicted to adopting orphans


Dillon Rafferty – Pete’s son, a singer-songwriter turned Cotswolds organic farmer, currently enjoying a hugely successful comeback. Owns several
event horses


Pom and Berry – Dillon’s daughters, who live with ex-wife Fawn Johnston in the States


Jules – a long-standing music industry friend, Sapphic muse and horse lover


Sylva Frost – self-publicising pop-singing WAG turned Britain’s favourite single mum, constantly reinventing her fame


Koloman and Hain – her two young sons


Mama Szubiak – Sylva’s super-ambitious Slovak mother


Hana and Zuzi – Sylva’s halfsister and her daughter


Rodney Dunnet – long-suffering producer of Sylva’s reality TV show


Lough Strachan – sexy New Zealand event rider, known as the Devil on Horseback


Lemon – his head groom, a jokey failed jockey


Alexandra and Pascal d’Eblouir, Polly – Tash’s mother, her French husband and their daughter, living in bohemian decrepitude between Paris and the Loire Valley


Sophia and Ben Meredith, Lottie, Josh and Henry – Tash’s ex-model sister and her husband, the Earl of Malvern, and their family


Matty and Sally French, Tom, Tor and Linus – Tash’s older brother, an earnest documentary maker, his bubbly wife and their children


The Vs – The Beauchamps’ uncommunicative Czech au pairs, Vasilly and Veruschka


Jenny – the Beauchamps’ cheerful head girl


Franny – Hugo’s irascible former groom


The Bells and the Carrolls – the Haydown tenant farmers


Alf Vanner – Haydown’s woodland manager


The Seatons and the Bucklands – owners of some of the Haydown event horses


Penny and Gus Moncrieff – old eventing cronies of the Beauchamps, based in nearby Lime Tree Farm, perennially bickering and broke


Angelo and Denise – landlords of The Olive Branch in Fosbourne Ducis


Niall and Zoe O’Shaughnessy – Penny’s sister and her actor husband, parents of young twins


India and Rufus Goldsmith – Zoe’s children from her first marriage


Marie-Clair ‘MC’ Tucson – France’s first lady of eventing, living part-time in the States with her wealthy husband


Stefan and Kirsty Johanssen – Swedish event rider and his Scottish wife, based in the States


Lucy Field – the UK’s top-ranking female event rider, a flirty blonde


Brian Sedgewick – Team GB’s three day event chef d’équipe


Julia Ditton – ex event rider turned BBC commentator


Venetia Gundry – Haydown’s most lascivious livery


Gin and Tony Seaton – keen event followers and erstwhile owners


The Bitches of Eastwick – the Beauchamps’ lazy Labradors


The Rat Pack – Hugo’s terriers


The Roadies – the Haydown guard dogs


Beetroot – Tash’s ancient, eccentric mongrel


Event horses Sir Galahad and gutsy Oil Tanker, plus home-bred siblings The Fox, Cub and Vixen, Tash’s kind-hearted mare Deep
River, fearless Cœur d’Or, beautiful stallion Rio, faithful old White Lies, the brilliant Humpty, and far too many others
to mention …


Melbourne Three Day Event, five years earlier

The mare was not the easiest of rides. She pulled hard, skewed left over fences and spooked away from the crowds. It was like
riding a small, charging rhinoceros.


In Melbourne as part of a whistle-stop tour to promote their training manual, Be Champions the Beauchamp Way, Tash and her husband Hugo had taken up Australian rider Sandy Hunter’s offer of rides at Victoria’s legendary three day
event, the second oldest in the world. Sandy had been sidelined by injury at the last minute and her horses, fit and ready
to run, were at the Beauchamps’ disposal. It was an irresistible offer; a top-ten result would be great for publicity. Hugo
loved the challenge of chance rides, but Tash far preferred piloting her own horses, whom she knew and trusted after years
working together.


Snort, snort, snort, thump, thumpety, thump – jump! The little mare was a rubber ball that bounced around before take-off and never landed the same way twice, but boy could
she jump. She ballooned a fairly inconsequential ditch and wheeled left, leaving Tash dangling for a moment, all her weight
off centre before those famously long, grippy lower legs and those iron-girder stomach muscles set her right and she kicked
on towards the big crowds around the water.


Riding high on adrenalin and positive energy was familiar territory to Tash. She and Hugo had been on the crest of a wave
all year, and today was no exception. As soon as she had finished riding across country they were booked for radio interviews,
a lecture demonstration and then a sponsors’ dinner, at which they would speak. Tomorrow morning they would sign copies of
their book before the final show-jumping stage of the competition. As soon as that was over they were flying out to Perth
to continue their book tour on the west coast. Garnering publicity was still an alien concept to Tash. This was what she knew
best.


Snort, snort, snort. Snatch snatch snatch. Head flying up, duck, dart, crouch.


Utterly focused, contained between leg and hand, the mare prepared to take off at the big log in front of the water. Then,
at the last minute, she spotted the wet expanse beyond and seemed to hang in the air, momentum dropping away from her, reluctant
to get her feet wet.


With an almighty combination of willpower, voice and inner prayers, Tash propelled the black mare far enough forwards to tip
her athletic body into the drink and through it in several sloshing strides until they were out the other side, skewing over
a narrow log that would have unseated a lesser rider.


The spectators gave an appreciative roar and whooped applause at the sight of such good horsemanship.

Tash, who loved the Australian eventing crowd – so raucous yet knowledgeable – patted the mare on the neck and then held up
her hand in gratitude to the banks of cheering faces just a few feet away, flying past as she galloped away.


A girl ran out of the crowd, the press later reported. A pretty girl: blonde, dressed in a vest, skirt and flip-flops, not
the normal hardy spectator on a brisk June day. She ran straight in front of the mare.


All Tash could remember was a blur of blonde hair and pale skin in her path. She heard her own cries of warning, the crowd
gasping and shouting, and felt the wrench of the rein in one hand as she pulled the mare sharply left and the contradictory
twist of half a ton of muscle, momentum and power beneath her as the mare swerved right. The girl was almost underneath them,
so close that she must have felt the heat of the horse’s skin and breath. The mare stumbled, flailed on her knees and struggled
to stay upright.


A man in an All Blacks hoodie hurled himself from the crowd just in time to grapple the blonde girl to the ground and pull
her away from the mare’s dancing legs, the two of them rolling across the muddy turf to safety.


Thrown off balance, Tash was only stopped from falling over the horse’s left shoulder by her solid black neck swinging suddenly
upwards and smacking her firmly on the crown, knocking her back into the saddle as the mare scrambled to her feet. Disoriented,
yet still moving forwards in a lurching canter, they carried on towards the next fence while the girl and her dark saviour disappeared into the throng as quickly as they had appeared. Soon another
competitor was splashing through the water to distract the crowd.


Somehow Tash managed to get the mare around the rest of the course, but she had no memory of it. Amazingly she finished within
the time and retained her top-ten position on the overnight leader board.


Her head injury wasn’t spotted for almost twenty-four hours. She could walk, talk and function fairly normally, and insisted
she was okay despite a screaming headache and increasing nausea, both of which she put down to the stress of their schedule
and the early days of pregnancy. She didn’t complain because she didn’t want to let anybody down.


The radio interviews had passed in a blur, the demo even more so, but Hugo naturally took control and helped her out when
she was tongue-tied, which was often the case in public, despite her private gregariousness.


He had also carried her through their after-dinner speech; he had always been the raconteur, his audience in stitches as he
regaled them with scurrilous tales from ten years at the top of the sport. Nevertheless, immediately afterwards he took his
wife to one side, blue eyes anxious, and said they must call a doctor. He’d never seen her so grey.


‘No!’ Tash was adamant, great yawns racking through her. ‘I just need to go to bed.’

The next morning she felt as though she’d been drugged. Her contact lenses wobbled in her eyes and she couldn’t see straight.
There was a foul taste in her mouth. Her swollen breasts ached in sympathy with her pounding, pounding skull.


Schooling the little black mare before breakfast, she had to get off to throw up three times. She felt increasingly spaced
out and couldn’t purely blame it on morning sickness and nerves. She disliked being the focus of so much attention, not all
of it positive. Talk at Werribee Park was all of the ‘Melbourne Martyr’ and who she might be, a blurred photo of the man in
the hoodie pulling the blonde from under the mare’s hooves was on the front of every newspaper sports section, his identity
as mysterious as the girl whose life he had saved. The media were hasty to draw comparisons with suffragette Emily Wilding
Davison, who had run out in front of a Derby field, yet nobody knew what, if anything, this girl had been protesting about. In the gossip-loving lorry park, malicious tongues had
already started wagging, suggesting that the blonde might be a spurned mistress of Hugo’s.


Any rumours certainly didn’t put off the crowds that flocked to the trade stands later that morning, eager to meet the sport’s
golden couple, the legendary ‘Beauchampions’.


‘I’m such a dolt, I can’t even spell my own name right,’ Tash joked as she battled nausea throughout the book signing, painful
cramps starting to claw at her belly.


‘Remember me?’ one buyer asked as he thrust his book towards her.

His face swam in front of Tash’s eyes. Lovely face. Big, dark eyes – very honest and appealing, like a young Robert Downey
Junior, she thought vaguely as she took the book and wielded her pen.


‘Who shall I sign this to?’ Her own voice was getting smaller and smaller in her head.

She couldn’t hear his reply at all.

‘I’m sorry? Who did you say?’

‘Like the Scottish loch, only spelt the Irish way.’

‘The Scottish loch … how lovely …’ She smiled up at him, pen twirling and eyes crossing.

Then she uncrossed her eyes with great effort. ‘I know you.’

He nodded, the beautiful brown eyes so molten they could be fresh from a Lavazza machine.

The espresso eyes and Scottish lochs started swirling again.

She remembered nothing beyond that.

A few hours later the medical team broke it to Hugo that, as well as mild concussion, his wife had suffered a miscarriage.

Tash would dream of lochs quite a lot in coming weeks. In her childhood, when her parents had still been together, the French
family had taken a house on the banks of Loch Fyne every August, where they had walked, talked, guzzled oysters and entertained
vast groups of friends. Years later she and Niall – her ex – had once had a disastrous attempt at rapprochement on the edge
of a loch. Most recently Hugo had taken her salmon fishing near Loch Lomond, and she had loved it with an unexpected passion
– from the long walks along river banks, to delicious picnics, to the tweeds and kinky rubber waders, to the endless lovemaking during long
evenings in the croft. Their baby had been conceived there.


She coped with the loss with what others took to be characteristic common sense, but in fact hid great well of sadness and
self-blame.


She said all the right things if asked. She knew that almost all miscarriages were nature’s way of preventing a wretched life.
She knew that it was probably always going to happen with this particular pregnancy; it was nothing to do with carrying on
competing and maintaining a hectic work schedule, it was just fate taking control. Yet still Tash secretly felt that it was
her fault.


She lost a great deal of weight, became listless and withdrawn, stopped phoning friends or painting, and her riding became
so unfocused and slapdash that Hugo banned her from top competitions for the rest of the season after a succession of three
crashing falls at advanced events.


‘We lost the first life we created.’ He took her in his arms six weeks after Melbourne, as he did night after night, and enfolded
her beneath the angle of his jaw. ‘I loved that little shared bit of us, just as I love every bit of you. And I will fight
for all of us more now, for you and for our children. We will have children, Tash.’


Tash wanted to believe him so badly, and his words did help enormously, but some scales had fallen irretrievably from her
eyes with that lost child and, with each barren month that passed after Melbourne, she mourned motherhood a little more.


The stray girl from the crowd and that moment of chance, of near-fatality, haunted her for years to come. She played what
very little of it she remembered over and over again in her head but she could never remember enough to paint a full picture.
As pregnancy continued to elude her she felt she was being punished for not stopping that day. She threw herself back into
her riding, reaching the top-ten in the FEI world rankings for the first time and joining Hugo on the national squad. Her
top horse and prolific stallion, The Foxy Snob, became the highest point-scoring horse in history and, to Hugo’s mild pique,
got more fan mail than any of them. Yet her lost chance at motherhood was never far from her mind, however momentous the highs,
affectionate the support and prolific the accolades.


Almost three years later she received an anonymous letter, postmarked the Solomon Islands. Written on woven, hand-made paper,
in a beautiful indigo script, it simply read:


A heart was lost in Melbourne; it will always be lost. So many locks and not enough keys; it’s easier to be lost than found.
But I will make amends. Pax nobiscum.


When he read it Hugo was all for calling in a private detective, believing his wife to be stalked. Tash told him not to be
so silly and tucked the letter among her keepsakes in a shell-studded box she kept at the bottom of her wardrobe.


Just days after receiving it she conceived Cora.

When a small puddle suddenly appeared beneath her in the Waitrose queue, Tash Beauchamp thought that her waters had broken
a fortnight before her due date.


It was only after her checkout lane had been closed, the in-store janitor and duty manager called, and half the neighbouring
staff and customers alerted to the prospect of a live birth in aisle five, that the true cause of the ever-expanding pool
beneath Tash’s trolley was discovered.


Her fresh deli pork and sage kebab sticks had broken through their wrapping and speared a carton of pineapple juice, which
was splashing everywhere. The smell was unmistakeable.


‘Shame,’ the manager lamented as Tash, eighteen-month-old Cora and their shopping were relocated to another till. ‘We’ve never
had a birth here – a couple of deaths, several proposals and a nasty case of ABH in the freezer section just last month, but
no babies. You could have called it Rose if it was a girl. Imagine the ambulance arriving while you’re in the last stages
of labour, desperate to get to hospital – “Not yet, baby Rose. Wait. Wait, Rose!”; Waitrose. Getit?’


Tash flashed a weak smile. ‘Actually, it’s a boy.’

‘Oh, lovely,’ the manager beamed at little Cora, who had a finger rammed in each nostril, her tongue poking out between pudgy
thumbs. ‘One of each. When’s he due?’


Tash started heaving her canvas shopping bags in to the trolley, longing to sit down. ‘First week of August.’

‘Here – let me,’ the manager took over. ‘So he’ll be an Olympic baby. You could name him after a gold medallist.’

‘His father would certainly like that.’

‘We’ve got a local hopeful here – lives up on the downs. Hugo something … Beaumont or Butcher? Comes in here quite a lot.
Everyone says he’ll bring back gold this year. Rides horses, I gather – not really my thing. I’m allergic, and I always think
the poor horse does most of the work, don’t you? They should get the medals! This bloke’s a right toff and a bit of an arrogant sod, to be honest, but you forget that when national pride’s at stake, don’t
you?’


‘You certainly try.’

‘So do you have any names lined up?’

‘His father wants to call him Hugo.’

‘Does he? What a coincidence!’

‘I’ve steered him towards Amery.’

‘What?’

‘Amery – it’s a Beauchamp family name.’

‘Beauchamp, you say?’ The manager started to grow pale.

‘Cora’s daddy is Hugo Beauchamp, isn’t he darling?’ Tash smiled at her little girl and then laughed as she excitedly lisped:
‘Daddy winth gold! Daddy winth gold!’ as Hugo had taught her, although she didn’t understand what it meant. Along with ‘star’,
‘pig’, ‘hug’ and ‘dog’, these were the only words she could say. To Tash’s continual concern she had yet to say anything close
to ‘Mummy’.


The store manager was still blustering with embarrassment as she lifted the last of the shopping into the trolley. ‘I’m sure
he’s not at all arrogant at home – busy man like him hasn’t much time for pleasantries in a supermarket.’


‘He’s supremely arrogant at home.’ Tash sighed fondly, eyeing the green bag that was spilling with ingredients for the intimate
Olympic send-off meal she was planning for that evening.


‘But romantic.’ The manager was eyeing the groceries too – the clichéd champagne, truffles, smoked salmon and strawberries.
‘You’re a lucky couple. Once we had kids, the husband and I were lucky if we managed half an hour together to sit down in
front of EastEnders, let alone fresh flowers every week and romantic candle-lit meals.’


Tash removed the candles from Cora’s sticky grip, as she was using them to smack the manager on the bottom. ‘What flowers?’

‘The ones your husband buys here every week,’ she beamed cheerfully.

Tash swallowed, trying very hard to beam back.

Hugo never bought her flowers.

‘His father was just the same,’ Alicia sniffed disparagingly when Tash called in to drop off her fags and gin. ‘He started taking mistresses as
soon as I had the boys.’


Tash gaped at her mother-in-law, who was already pouring two vast gin and Its, even though it was barely midday.

‘I’ll stick to tea, thanks.’ She headed for the kettle, waving away Alicia’s offer of a Rothmans.

‘You girls today!’ She sparked up, but in a conciliatory gesture reached behind her to open a window. ‘I smoked all the way
through both my pregnancies and look at Hugo and Charles. Both marvellous specimens.’


‘Hmm.’ Tash topped up Cora’s beaker of juice with water from the tap and handed it down to her, where she was playing with
Granny Lish’s elderly pug, Beefeater. Unlike his predecessor, Gordons – known universally as ‘Thug the pug’ – Beefy was as
long-suffering and gentle as he was sad-eyed, creased and curly-tailed. He and Cora adored one another.


‘The secret to stopping him straying is to get your figure back as soon as you’ve had the baby,’ Alicia commanded grandly,
draining the first gin and It and starting on the second.


‘Really?’ Tash looked over her shoulder worriedly as she put a teabag into a chipped bone-china cup.

‘Absolutely!’ Alicia avowed, Spode-blue eyes briefly appearing through their curtains of pale, crepey skin as they stretched
wide in Tash’s direction and then cast their critical way down to her bottom. ‘Men can’t stand the great fat Hausfraus most
women become after childbirth. I existed on gin, cigarettes and sultanas for six months after Charles.’


‘You still do,’ Tash muttered, having as usual filled her mother-inlaw’s fridge with ready meals that she knew would get thrown
out by the char at the end of the week, when