Kiss and Tell Read Online Free Page B

archway into the old coaching yard she could see Hugo’s pack of dogs sunning themselves on the flagstones outside his office, but the door was wide open and the place deserted. Glancing left towards the biggest and oldest of the three stable yards she spotted Jenny, sporting a Team GB baseball cap, hosing one of the youngsters’ legs. Waving, she drove on past the big open barn that housed straw and hay and along the back drive to the house itself, passing the overgrown grass tennis court and croquet lawn, and the lichen-flecked walls of the kitchen gardens. Behind the house, by the peeling black-gloss back door to the boot room that absolutely everybody used when calling at the house, apart from Jehovah’s witnesses and travelling salesmen, a smart navy blue Golf was parked beside Hugo’s dusty Discovery.
    Tash let out a groan of recognition. It wasn’t her mother that had arrived unexpectedly to lunch. It was her step mother, Henrietta.
    On cue, she appeared at Tash’s own back door, the perfect hostess as opposed to a forgotten guest, all welcoming smiles and creamy blonde neatness in Berketex and pearls. Then a younger, pinker face topped with purple and green beaded dreadlocks appeared around the door behind her, and Tash realised that prodigal daughter and drug smuggler Beccy had come for lunch too.
    ‘Oh Christ,’ she covered her mouth in horrified recall.
    She had issued the invitation weeks ago, without thinking how close to the Olympic and baby countdowns it would be. It hadn’t been long after Beccy had finally made it back to the UK amid a spattering of press coverage and a huge wave of family relief. Tash had been so excited and pleased that all her father’s hard work to exonerate Beccy and ensure her pardon from her fifteen-year sentence had paid off that she had picked a date at random. She musthave forgotten to write it in the diary. Henrietta meanwhile – as organised a wife, mother and stepmother as she had been a PA to James all those years ago – had stuck faithfully to it, bringing Beccy, a basket of home-made jam and biscuits, a lift-the-flap book for Cora and a clutch of Babygros for the bump. She had even brought a lamb bone for Tash’s dog, Beetroot.
    ‘I never know what to do with them now that we don’t have the Labs any more,’ Henrietta apologised as she proffered the leg-bone wrapped in a Marks and Spencer bag, like a blood-encrusted caveman’s club. ‘It seems such a waste to throw them out.’
    ‘I’ve told her she should get another dog’ – Beccy resumed her position sitting at the kitchen table, poring over Horse & Hound – ‘but she says James won’t let her.’
    ‘Your father says dogs tie us to the house,’ Henrietta explained to Tash. ‘He no longer shoots, after all – it plays havoc with his tinnitus. Now that he’s retired and the girls have left home we do love to get away.’ James had taken to whisking Henrietta away for lengthy golfing holidays in South Africa in the years since the last of their long line of Labradors had passed away.
    ‘I’m back to house-sit now,’ Beccy pointed out idly as she flipped to the classified section to look at Dogs for Sale. ‘How about a Labradoodle?’
    ‘You know it’s not up for discussion, darling,’ Henrietta smiled stiffly as she continued waving the lamb bone around, suddenly looking sad. Tash knew that her stepmother desperately missed having dogs, her many generations of yellow Labrador ‘golden girls’. They had been her children, and even having her youngest daughter back was no match for the unconditional love of her Labs.
    ‘I’ll give this to Beetroot when the rest of the pack’s backs are turned,’ Tash promised, taking the bone before handing Cora to ‘Granny Hen’ for a cuddle. She then mixed them all Buck’s Fizzes from the champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice she’d just bought for her romantic evening with Hugo, before setting about transforming the rest of the ingredients