Kiss and Tell Read Online Free
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‘Can’t manage sultanas nowadays – not with these teeth,’ Alicia veiled her clever blue eyes behind their creases once more and bared her teeth instead – very expensive but ill-fitting bridgework in pale cream marbled with old gold nicotine stains, like antique ivory.
Tash made her tea and then settled at the kitchen table to watch Cora play, her back aching.
‘When do your new couple arrive?’ Alicia had noticed how muchTash was struggling in late pregnancy, although she hadn’t offered to help at all. Since writing off her car when flying rather high on gin and winnings on the way back from a bridge night at Busty de Meeth’s Wiltshire pile, Alicia had been in no hurry to replace it. Having relied upon a personal driver up until the age of fifty-three, she had loathed taking the wheel in recent years and was enjoying the return to delivered groceries, chauffeured transport and more visitors, even if that did put rather a lot of pressure on her already over-stretched and heavily pregnant daughter-in-law. Nor was Alicia keen to help out with childcare; having relied entirely upon nurses, nannies, housekeepers and cooks when bringing up her own sons, she had no real working knowledge of babies whatsoever, although she was pretty useful with foundling lambs, whelping dogs and foaling mares.
‘The Czechs can’t start until the end of August,’ Tash sighed. ‘The agency couldn’t come up with anybody sooner. Radka and Todor really left us in the lurch.’ The Bulgarian couple that had been working for Tash as au pairs for almost a year had done a moonlight flit a fortnight earlier, to go vegetable packing in Lincolnshire for three times the money.
‘I thought they were called Ratty and Toad?’ Alicia flicked her fag ash into the sink.
‘That’s what Hugo called them. No wonder they left. They came here to improve their English, poor things, and as soon as they learned enough to find out what we were calling them they buggered off.’
Tash felt absurdly hurt by the defection, having thought herself very close to Radka, who adored Cora and who shared a very giggly sense of humour with Tash. She and the easy-going but money-obsessed Todor had become like family, and now Tash felt as though a younger sister had run away from home. Added to which, she was really struggling to manage the house and riotous garden at Haydown with just the family’s pensionable retainers Gwenda and Ron for help.
Totally wrapped up in the Olympic build-up, Hugo barely registered the Bulgarians’ absence, whereas Tash mourned them like missing limbs.
‘Isn’t your mother supposed to be staying with you for the Olympics?’
‘She cried off. Something came up and she can’t get away – to do with Polly, I think.’
Tash’s mother Alexandra lived in France with her second husband, Pascal, and their eighteen-year-old daughter Polly, who had deferred her place to study fashion at a Parisian college and was currently causing her parents a great many sleepless nights as she spent the year backpacking with a group of friends.
‘Beautiful child.’ Alicia was a great admirer of aesthetics and Polly was very aesthetic indeed, if completely untamed. ‘Bound to be kidnapped by slave traders or suchlike.’
‘God, don’t say that!’ Tash gulped, stooping awkwardly to gather Cora protectively to her bump. ‘After what Daddy and Henrietta went through over Beccy, Mummy is fretting all the time.’
‘Your stepsister? Wasn’t she banged up for drug smuggling?’
‘It was awful. Daddy had to fly out to Singapore four or five times. Poor Henrietta had sworn she’d never go there again – her first husband died out there, you see. She must think the place is cursed.’
‘Rubbish. I adored Singapore. Henry and I were regulars. So much more evolved than Hong Kong, I found. The Martini bar at Raffles mixes a very game gin sling.’ She reached for her drink with a nostalgic sigh.
The conversation had triggered a
‘Can’t manage sultanas nowadays – not with these teeth,’ Alicia veiled her clever blue eyes behind their creases once more and bared her teeth instead – very expensive but ill-fitting bridgework in pale cream marbled with old gold nicotine stains, like antique ivory.
Tash made her tea and then settled at the kitchen table to watch Cora play, her back aching.
‘When do your new couple arrive?’ Alicia had noticed how muchTash was struggling in late pregnancy, although she hadn’t offered to help at all. Since writing off her car when flying rather high on gin and winnings on the way back from a bridge night at Busty de Meeth’s Wiltshire pile, Alicia had been in no hurry to replace it. Having relied upon a personal driver up until the age of fifty-three, she had loathed taking the wheel in recent years and was enjoying the return to delivered groceries, chauffeured transport and more visitors, even if that did put rather a lot of pressure on her already over-stretched and heavily pregnant daughter-in-law. Nor was Alicia keen to help out with childcare; having relied entirely upon nurses, nannies, housekeepers and cooks when bringing up her own sons, she had no real working knowledge of babies whatsoever, although she was pretty useful with foundling lambs, whelping dogs and foaling mares.
‘The Czechs can’t start until the end of August,’ Tash sighed. ‘The agency couldn’t come up with anybody sooner. Radka and Todor really left us in the lurch.’ The Bulgarian couple that had been working for Tash as au pairs for almost a year had done a moonlight flit a fortnight earlier, to go vegetable packing in Lincolnshire for three times the money.
‘I thought they were called Ratty and Toad?’ Alicia flicked her fag ash into the sink.
‘That’s what Hugo called them. No wonder they left. They came here to improve their English, poor things, and as soon as they learned enough to find out what we were calling them they buggered off.’
Tash felt absurdly hurt by the defection, having thought herself very close to Radka, who adored Cora and who shared a very giggly sense of humour with Tash. She and the easy-going but money-obsessed Todor had become like family, and now Tash felt as though a younger sister had run away from home. Added to which, she was really struggling to manage the house and riotous garden at Haydown with just the family’s pensionable retainers Gwenda and Ron for help.
Totally wrapped up in the Olympic build-up, Hugo barely registered the Bulgarians’ absence, whereas Tash mourned them like missing limbs.
‘Isn’t your mother supposed to be staying with you for the Olympics?’
‘She cried off. Something came up and she can’t get away – to do with Polly, I think.’
Tash’s mother Alexandra lived in France with her second husband, Pascal, and their eighteen-year-old daughter Polly, who had deferred her place to study fashion at a Parisian college and was currently causing her parents a great many sleepless nights as she spent the year backpacking with a group of friends.
‘Beautiful child.’ Alicia was a great admirer of aesthetics and Polly was very aesthetic indeed, if completely untamed. ‘Bound to be kidnapped by slave traders or suchlike.’
‘God, don’t say that!’ Tash gulped, stooping awkwardly to gather Cora protectively to her bump. ‘After what Daddy and Henrietta went through over Beccy, Mummy is fretting all the time.’
‘Your stepsister? Wasn’t she banged up for drug smuggling?’
‘It was awful. Daddy had to fly out to Singapore four or five times. Poor Henrietta had sworn she’d never go there again – her first husband died out there, you see. She must think the place is cursed.’
‘Rubbish. I adored Singapore. Henry and I were regulars. So much more evolved than Hong Kong, I found. The Martini bar at Raffles mixes a very game gin sling.’ She reached for her drink with a nostalgic sigh.
The conversation had triggered a
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