a park. He had been there, and that was all that mattered.
Amanda missed him. She missed his confidence, missed the way he bellowed for more sugar in his tea, despite the fact that the sugar bowl had been a matter of inches from his cup, missed the fact that he looked after her in his loud, brash way, like a father.
She was being stupid.
Amanda just sometimes longed for convenience, for a meaningless chat about the latest fashion. She didn’t understand most of the people here, apart from Pippa. She picked up her mobile, paused for a moment with the contact list open. A flash of yellow down by the yard caught her eye, and the tall slim figure caught her attention even more firmly. Whoever had been visiting Billy Brinkley was far different to the normal, scruffy, bow-legged characters, and the car was enough to make her feel her prayers had been answered. She hadn’t realised until now just how much she’d started to loathe the sight of 4X4s and long for leather and sleek. She needed a distraction, and she needed one now. Before she made the biggest mistake of her life.
She pressed the call button. Forget fashion, Pippa knew everything. Pippa would know just who the visitor was. And Pippa would know exactly how to fix the nightmare that the funeral was just about to turn into.
‘You can’t go like that.’
Rory shrugged, the boyish grin spreading over his features. ‘Why not? It’s my best jacket.’ Infectious, but oh so wrong.
‘It’s a hunting jacket, and we’re going to a funeral. Remember?’ Lottie, who had been under strict instructions (via her invite, if you called it an invite where funerals where concerned) not to wear black, and had been on the verge of rebelling out of a sense of decorum, had found it hard enough to find something suitable for herself. But Rory was going too far. And they were running out of time. And she was about to start giggling, which was so wrong. ‘It’s a bit disrespectful, I know the invite said not to wear black, but…’ She bit down on her lip, to stop the smile that Rory was doing his best to draw out of her.
‘It’s what he wanted, look.’ Rory dug his own card out from the pile of papers on the table and waved it roughly in her direction.
‘I don’t want to look. I know what it says, but it feels wrong.’ One of the dogs, which had taken Rory’s dig through the paperwork as an invite to jump on the table, put her paws up on Lottie’s chest and grinned a terrier grin, tongue lolling. ‘Don’t you dare lick me.’ It sank down on its haunches, paws leaving a snagged trail down her best satin shirt as sharp nails dragged from her boobs down to her stomach. ‘Oh, Christ.’ She already felt a mess. The dog yapped and she was very tempted to pick it up, sit on the sofa and bury herself, not Marcus, for the rest of the day. She rubbed absentmindedly at the scratch mark instead, hoping it would go away. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Maybe he’s having a last laugh at the country yokels. Well, it will be a laugh with your dad as pall-bearer at one end of his bloody coffin, and me and Dom at the other. He’ll be sliding from one end of the other coffin to the other.’ The grin had broadened. ‘Knock some bloody sense into him.’
Lottie shut her eyes against the image of the lopsided coffin and bit the inside of her cheek harder, to stop the hysteria bubbling out. It was true. Rory and Dom had to be at least eight inches taller apiece than Billy. ‘Maybe it was a joke, I mean he didn’t expect to drop dead did he? He must have written it when he was drunk and meant to change it when he was expecting—’
‘To die? He must have been well pissed, well it’s his own bloody fault then. And if this is his last request, well, who are we to deny the man?’
‘You’re enjoying this.’
‘I bloody am. Look, why should we all be in black and miserable as sin just because he’s pegged it?’
‘Well, Dad is.’ She suddenly remembered just what Marcus’s death could mean, did mean. ‘Miserable I mean.’ The equestrian centre had never been like a real family home to her, no more than the place she rented now (which she was never in long enough to add any homely touches to). She had no particular attachment to either place, but it was her father’s livelihood. And it was more. After her mother had died, he’d initially moved out of the farmhouse, which had only been rented, and moved in to the impersonal environment of the groom’s quarters above the stables at Folly Lake equestrian centre, which suited him perfectly. During his waking hours he could shut out the pain and immerse himself in his horses, with every need on tap. But as the nightmares had softened he’d realised that his daughter needed more. They had moved back in to the house that bordered the yard, but his work obsession hadn’t eased. And so Lottie’s early childhood had been spent surrounded by horses and riders, grooms who could keep an eye on her, and on-off nannies who loved horses and dogs. And riders. Not that she had ever thought it unconventional, or herself hard done by. But nor had it given her any roots. Which, Elizabeth was sure, was why she still had the urge to wander. To find what she was missing.
Now, if the centre was sold, Billy could find the refuge he had buried himself in following Alexa’s death dragged from his grasp. And Lottie was old and wise enough to be scared. For both of them. If he lost that, what was left?
‘At least one of us will keep a straight face then. I rely on you, darling.’ Rory blew her a kiss, and raised an eyebrow in his best devil-may-care manner. ‘Do you reckon he’d want me to take the hunting horn?’ He picked up the horn, which she hadn’t spotted, and gave an experimental blow, which sent the terrier, startled, into her arms, scrabbling long red weals down her chest.
‘Shit.’ The muscled-up body of the little dog went over her shoulder and hit the floor running. ‘Don’t you dare, Rory Steel. Go away Tilly, in your bed.’ Instead, the little dog started haring around the kitchen like a minor whirlwind, barking excitedly, sending papers flying from the table in her flight over and under everything that was sat in her way. Lottie knew better than to move. ‘The invite definitely didn’t mention hunting horns.’
‘It did say hunting jacket though, so, like it or not, that’s what I’m wearing.’
‘Without the breeches?’ She looked at his legs pointedly, and wondered, not for the first time, why even the sexiest legs in the world had knobbly knees in the middle.
‘Bugger. It’s your fault for knocking when I was half dressed.’ Rory strode out of the kitchen, all three dogs at his heels, shirt tails sadly covering his well-muscled, but decidedly naked, thighs. ‘Just polish my boots, will you?’
Lottie stared at the boots, still decorated with mud from his last ride out. The smell of leather pricked at her nostrils as she picked one up and wondered whether it would be quicker to drop it in the sink, or scrub it with a brush.
***
It was colder inside the church than out. Lottie wondered if that was a tactical thing to make you feel sad and remorseful. Or just a lack of money. Or stinginess. The church, like her gran, had been around a long time and knew how to spend its pennies on what it wanted and not what the rest of the world might appreciate.
Elizabeth had embraced the theme of the funeral in her normal fashion. Wearing black, because it was what she considered right and proper, and to hell with what the bereaved or deceased might want. ‘Great Expectations’ was the first thought that hit Lottie, followed quickly by ‘Addams Family’ when she saw the dramatic make-up
