Country Rivals

‘Right? But they are, aren’t they? I thought you were happy. Is it you that’s getting bored?’

‘Don’t be daft. I didn’t mean between us in that way. I meant money-wise, this place. Nobody is making bookings for next year, they’re all too worried it won’t be fixed.’

‘It’ll be fixed.’ He said it with the type of conviction he knew she needed to hear. ‘Come on, gorgeous,’ he pulled her to her feet and drew her in close so that he could look straight into the big green eyes he loved so much. She still looked the same old Lottie, his Lottie. The money thing was obviously worrying her more than she let on, that was the trouble – she was just too good at coping sometimes. ‘Let’s see the year in with some baby-making practice. You don’t want me to forget how to do it, do you?’ He winked. ‘Just in case.’

Chapter 5 (#ulink_947dbe20-b8dc-56e8-83df-54a08b288647)

‘What are you doing here, Andy? Up to no good, I bet.’ Sam grinned at the slightly overweight middle-aged man, then transferred her attention to Lottie. ‘Everything okay, babe?’

‘You know each other?’ Lottie raised an eyebrow. The man standing on her doorstep had just announced that he had an appointment with Lady Tipping, then had smiled reassuringly at her as though she was ten years old, although she probably did look like a kid in her scruffy breeches, old fleece, and spotty socks. A very big kid, though.

Quite honestly everything wasn’t okay. She was fed up of fending off property developers and trying to be nice to insurance investigators. This one hadn’t even bothered to do his homework properly. There was no such person as Lady Tipping (well, not to her knowledge, and certainly not in Tippermere). There was Lady Elizabeth Stanthorpe and there was her, Charlotte Steel.

‘Course we do. We go way back.’ Sam winked. ‘This bugger ran a full-page spread about me and my Davey when he played in the World Cup, didn’t you, darling? Called us girls plastic fantastic.’

‘Spread? So he’s a journalist?’

Andy ignored Lottie’s interruption. ‘Well to be fair, Sam …’

‘There was nothing fair about that, babe.’ She waved a stern finger. ‘Martina was well pissed off with you telling everybody how much her nose job cost. She’d told her Frankie that it cost half that. Made him out to be a right dickhead, you did. And you know the boys don’t like to look stupid in front of the rest of the team.’

Lottie, who had been trying to work out how to slam the front door in the stranger’s face in a polite way, looked from Sam, who was a vision in skin-tight maroon leather trousers, matching jacket and brown thigh-high boots, to the guy and back again.

‘And you said I’d been to that dodgy London geezer for my new boobs. Davey wasn’t pleased at all when he’d arranged it all special for me. I mean, look at them.’ She opened her leather jacket with a flourish and cupped her generous breasts in both hands. ‘They’re perfect. There’s nothing cheap about my Dave. No way would he let just anybody mess with my body.’ She jiggled them about. ‘These are as real as fake ones get, you know. Look.’ He was looking. ‘And they’re quite squeezy – not solid at all like those cheap ones.’ She flexed her fingers. ‘You have to look dead close to see the scar. Davey was really insulted when you said that.’

‘Sorry, no er insult intended.’

He didn’t look sorry, thought Lottie, more like transfixed.

‘So you don’t have an appointment?’ She took the opportunity, while the pair of them were engrossed with Sam’s boobs, to get a word in.

‘You’ve made an appointment?’ Sam let go of her boobs and said the word in such a tone of astonishment that Lottie giggled.

‘Well not an actual appointment, more like an arrangement. Give her the first chance to comment on this.’ He shoved a newspaper in Sam’s direction, tapping a finger on the headline. ‘Only fair to get her side of the story, isn’t it? In the interests of fair play and all that.’

‘Fair play?’ Sam guffawed. ‘You’re a cheeky bugger, you are.’ She grabbed hold of the paper before Lottie could and took a swipe at the man’s head with it. ‘You don’t want to look at that, babe, it’s a real load of bollocks. That’s why I came. They’ve not got it right at all, have they, babe?’ She waved it in the air so that Lottie had to bob her head up and down to try and catch a glimpse, although she wasn’t quite sure now if Sam was telling her she should or she shouldn’t read it.

Lottie had never thought any of the headlines associated with the Tipping House Estate and her family could be called ‘right’, though.

The ‘Billy-the-Bonk’ headlines about her father (while she was still at school) had made her cringe, the more recent ‘Flaming Family Pile’ one had nearly made her cry, as had the ‘Lady Elizabeth’s Ashes’, which was just plain cruel. Then there had been the ‘Wizard of Oz’ one, when her Australian ex-lover had arrived unexpectedly in the village, which had made her laugh and the ‘Tippingly-Good Theme Park’, which she’d actually torn up and was going to use as loo paper until Rory pointed out that the ink would leave her with a black bum.

But this one, flashing before her eyes as Sam waved it like a flag, brought a sharp pain to her chest. ‘Upstairs Heiress Rips Off Down-town Bride.’ She opened her mouth to object and got a warning look.

‘Don’t you say anything while he’s here listening, Lottie,’ Sam glanced at the journalist, ‘cos he’ll write it down, won’t you?’

‘Well that is my job.’ He looked affronted. ‘Some of us have got to earn a living, we can’t all be lords and ladies, you know.’

‘I’m surprised at you, Andy, I really am.’

For a brief moment Sam sounded just like her daughter Roxy, Lottie thought.

‘Not my headline, darling, I’m just here for a quote. So you’re Lady Lottie?’ He raised an eyebrow and gave Lottie a once-over from head to toe.

‘I’m not a Lady.’ She said it automatically and folded her arms, trying her best to look like a somewhat affronted Lady rather than an angry kid. ‘That’s why you came round, Sam?’

‘Come on, let’s get inside, babe. And you,’ she blew a kiss at the journalist, who looked like he was intent on following them inside Tipping House, ‘can bugger off back to Fleet Street or wherever it is you come from.’ The man looked unsure whether to make a bolt for the door with them, but Sam waggled a very long (which Lottie thought probably qualified as a lethal weapon) glittery-bronze fingernail at him.

‘So, it’s no comment then?’ He had one hand raised, as though to ward off the inevitable.

‘You can write the truth about my boobs instead. Move your fingers, babe, you don’t want them getting squashed, do you?’ And with that Lottie found herself pushed firmly back into Tipping House and the door slammed behind them.

Lottie glanced worriedly at her watch. She really had to muck out the horses before Rory got back from the gallops, and she’d had a summons from her gran, Elizabeth, which she really couldn’t afford to ignore or her life wouldn’t be worth living. ‘You came to show me the latest headlines, then?’

‘And my new extensions, babe. What do you think?’ Sam flicked her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Do you think they look natural?’

‘Well,’ Lottie paused, how natural could that particular shade of bleached blond look?

‘Never thought I’d need them, but my hair has been a right state since I had Roxy. I mean, at first it was really thick, you know?’ Lottie didn’t. ‘I mean that happens when you’re preggers, doesn’t it?’ She didn’t pause for an answer. ‘But then it started coming out in handfuls. I mean, we’re going to have loads more kids, so I suppose it will get thick again,’ she looked doubtfully down at her handful of hair, ‘but I can’t wait, can I, babe? I mean, it has to look right for Davey every day, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s lovely,’ said Lottie truthfully. It was. Sam always had a full head of perfectly tamed hair, even if the colour wasn’t always a shade that nature intended. Unlike her own hair, which tended to resemble something a bird would make a nest in, and was a kind of very natural brownish shade. Like bark. The same colour and not far off the texture when she got out of bed in the mornings.

‘Aww thank you, babe. I know you always say it as it is. Mandy said it suited my personality, isn’t she the sweetest?’

‘Very. Er, where’s Roxy?’

‘She’s in the car, babe. Scruffy is looking after her.’

‘He’s a dog.’

‘I know that, but he’s dead protective, wouldn’t let anybody harm a hair on her head.’

Lottie, who had been worrying more about what Roxy might be doing to the dog and the car (she had what Sam called an ‘inquisitive nature’) let it go.

‘Don’t worry, babe, I’ve got the key this time.’ Sam waved it in the air; leaving it in the ignition one time had led to the roof being put down, which was quite handy seeing as Roxy had managed to lock all the doors and was howling as she’d then shoved the keys down the back of the seat and got her fingers trapped trying to get them out again. Heaven only knew, Lottie thought, what she’d be like by the time she was four years old. ‘She was good as gold when I left her, promised to stay in her seat with the seatbelt done up and everything, bless her.’

‘That’s, er, good.’

Sam beamed, totally confident in her role as mother. ‘Well, it was little Aggie told me.’

‘Aggie?’

‘My new au-pair. She arrived the other day and she’s such a sweetie. That other one decided to stay in Croatia, said me having little Roxy had reminded her how important family is and she was homesick. Isn’t that sweet?’

Lottie had a feeling that generous and lovely as Sam and her family were, trying to cope with them would remind anybody how much they treasured their own.

‘So, anyway, Aggie said had I seen the paper? She never stops reading stuff, was asking where my library was the other day.’ Sam giggled. ‘She’s a right card. I gave her a pile of mags, but she seems to prefer to go and get her own from the village, says it’s no trouble and she wouldn’t dream of taking mine. Anyhow, she brought this back.’ Sam opened the newspaper out. ‘Makes you out to be a right cow, and we all know you’re not. You didn’t do that though, babe, did you?’ She frowned. ‘Says here that you wouldn’t give this poor girl any money back or let her have her special day here and she’s skint, can’t afford to get married at all now.’

Lottie sighed and sank down into a chair next to the Aga as she studied the picture of the distraught bride-to-be. ‘I never said she couldn’t get married here.’ The problem was there had been so many cancellations lately she was struggling to remember exactly what she’d said to this one. ‘But, I wouldn’t have given her a deposit back, cos you don’t do you? That’s the point of a deposit, isn’t it?’ She chewed the side of her thumb.