One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’

  The question was whispered, half-mockingly. If she’d been in any doubt that Santiago was attracted to her, a quick glance at his bulging jeans reassured her.

  Following her gaze, Santiago stood up and walked to the window. ‘Not right now,’ he mumbled. ‘No.’

  He wasn’t sure why he was turning her down. Here was a sexy, single, patently available model, offering herself to him on a plate. And yet something about Emma felt off. Beneath her self-assurance, her veneer of sexual confidence, he sensed a desperate neediness. It reminded him of something in himself, something of which he did not wish to be reminded.

  Emma, however, seemed unperturbed by his rejection. ‘Suit yourself.’ She yawned, stretching her arms dramatically, like a cat. ‘Just bear in mind that the clock’s ticking. I’ll be heading back to London on Sunday.’

  Walking up behind Santiago, she slipped her arms around his waist, pressing her impossibly lithe, teenage body against his taut, rigid back.

  ‘If you change your mind before then – when you change your mind – you know where to find me,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  Santiago waited to exhale until he heard his front door close.

  What the hell just happened?

  In all his years as a player, both of cricket and of women, he didn’t think he had ever been so forcefully propositioned by a girl. Never mind such a young girl, a stranger. And in his own kitchen! In the middle of the day! He ought to have felt elated. And yet …

  No. It wasn’t right. As gorgeous as Emma Harwich was, she frightened him. He could well imagine what a tigress she would be in bed. But if he bedded her, then what? Would that be the end? Would she see it through with the chutzpah and dump him mercilessly after a one-night stand? Or would she go to the opposite extreme and stalk him for the rest of his days? Santiago could envisage both scenarios, and neither made him feel comfortable.

  Maybe I’m losing my touch?

  *****

  ‘Whoa. Whoa! Take it easy.’

  Penny Harwich tried to relax as Sparky, her barrel-chested grey mare, danced and bridled beneath her. Usually the horse was deeply docile and placid – the name had been one of Paul Harwich’s little jokes when he’d bought her as a thirtieth-birthday present for his wife. But today Penny’s own anxieties seemed to be transmitting themselves down through her saddle, and Sparky was behaving as if she had electrodes attached to her knees.

  Riding had long been one of Penny’s great pleasures in life. It had been a blow after the divorce when she could no longer afford to keep horses, and had had to sell Sparky back to the local riding stables. Luckily, Mrs Nunn, the stables’ owner, was a kind soul and fellow divorcee, who had readily agreed to let Penny ride her old mare whenever she felt like it. Cantering over the fields and through the bluebell woods at the back of Woodside Hall was usually an enormous stress-reliever. Today, however, Sparky’s antics were doing little to take her mind off Emma.

  Emma had set off in search of Santiago de la Cruz at lunch time, in what looked like a deliberate attempt to rile her little brother and to hurt poor, lovesick Will Nutley. That was bad enough. But then she’d returned an hour and a half later with a beaming grin on her face, reeking of alcohol and laughing to herself in a manner that strongly suggested she’d not only found Sussex’s newest cricket star but had already succeeded in her mission to seduce him. Penelope had felt a burning need to escape her house and children and ride her troubles away. Sparky’s tantrum wasn’t helping.

  ‘Back up.’ Penny spoke firmly, jabbing her left heel into the mare’s side as she reached down and unhooked the gate that led from the fields onto Foxhole Lane, the main Brockhurst-to-Fittlescombe road. Reluctantly, Sparky took a step backwards, expressing her displeasure with a loud fart as the gate swung inwards.

  ‘Well that’s not very polite, is it?’ chided Penny, as horse and rider emerged onto the lane. Seconds later, leaning forward to pull the gate closed behind them, she let out an almighty scream. A silver Maserati sports car had rounded the corner just at that moment, sending the grey into a frenzy of panic. Sparky reared up, her forelegs pedalling wildly in the air, just millimetres from the metal bars of the gate. It was a miracle that Penny managed to cling onto her mane, rather than plunge headfirst back into the field.

  A squealing of brakes prompted a second, wild rear, before at last the horse was calmed. Penny was angry enough before she saw the driver. But when Santiago de la Cruz came sauntering towards her, resplendent and dazzling in full cricket whites, she completely blew a gasket.

  ‘You bloody idiot! You could have killed me.’ Gingerly vaulting down from the mare’s back, Penny tied her firmly to the gatepost before storming up to Santiago. ‘This isn’t downtown sodding Buenos Aires, you know. What speed were you doing?’

  ‘About thirty,’ Santiago said, deadpan. ‘If that.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  He’d been coming over to apologize and check if the rider was all right. But, now that this woman was being so rude and entitled, he felt all his goodwill ebbing away. ‘It is a road, you know. Last time I checked, those were designed for cars as well as horses.’

  ‘It’s a country lane, not a race track,’ snapped Penny. ‘You were out of control.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Santiago bit back. ‘The only thing out of control was your animal. If you don’t know how to ride, you should stick to the riding school. I’ve never seen such a fat horse rear that high,’ he added nastily.

  ‘How dare you insult Sparky!’ Aware she sounded faintly ridiculous, defending the honour of a badly behaved, clapped-out old mare that was, indeed, fat, Penny found herself getting angrier than ever. ‘It’s bad enough that you turn up here to spoil our traditions and … and … seduce our daughters!’

  ‘Seduce your … what? I’m not seducing anyone’s daughters.’

  ‘Ha! Not much,’ said Penny.

  Santiago looked the skinny woman in front of him up and down. In tight, threadbare jodhpurs, with a mud-splattered blue shirt coming untucked at the waist, and long, sweat-curled tendrils of hair escaping from beneath her hard hat, he couldn’t quite decide whether she looked wanton or deranged. She had a pretty, angular face, flushed now from anger and exertion, and long arms and legs that she seemed at a loss to know exactly what to do with, like a puppet with tangled strings.

  ‘Perhaps we should start again,’ said Santiago, extending his hand. ‘I am Santiago de la Cruz.’

  ‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said Penny crossly, shaking hands as briefly and perfunctorily as possible.

  ‘This is the part where you tell me your name,’ said Santiago patiently.

  ‘Penelope Harwich. I believe you met my daughter earlier today. Emma. The one you claim not to have seduced?’

  Santiago’s eyes widened as the penny dropped. ‘That was your daughter? But you look so young—’

  ‘Please.’ Penny bristled with hostility. ‘You needn’t bother trying to flatter me, Mr de la Cruz. I’m old enough to see right through the likes of you, believe me. Even if my daughter isn’t.’

  Suddenly, Santiago lost his temper. First Emma Harwich turns up on his doorstep uninvited and all but rapes him in his own kitchen. And now her lunatic mother almost kills him on his way to his first Brockhurst training session, and instead of apologizing starts laying into his morals, not to mention his driving.

  ‘The “likes of” me?’ he shouted at her. ‘What the hell does that mean? You know, you might want to take a look at yourself before you start throwing stones at others.’

  ‘Oh might I, indeed?’ thundered Penny.

  ‘Yes. You might. You can’t control your horse and you can’t control your daughter.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Penny spluttered. But Santiago was on a roll.

  ‘I stopped to see if you needed help, but three crazy mares in one afternoon is too much even for me. I suggest you get your fat horse back to her stable before y
ou kill somebody. Good afternoon.’

  He jumped back into his spotless sports car and sped away, leaving Penny staring after him, open-mouthed.

  ‘Of all the arrogant, obnoxious, hypocritical …’ she muttered darkly as the Maserati pulled out of sight. Sparky, calmly chewing dandelions by the gate, farted loudly for a second time.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Penny.

  She hoped more than ever that Fittlescombe proved the doom-mongers wrong and trounced Brockhurst on Saturday. Something told her that Mr de la Cruz was not used to losing. And that a spot of very public humiliation might do him the world of good.

  *****

  At the Fittlescombe nets, next to the bowling green, Will Nutley was playing appallingly.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ said Gabe Baxter. ‘But you’re batting like a blind chimp with advanced-stage Parkinson’s. What the fuck?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Will shielded his eyes against the long rays of the sinking, reddening sun. Going down in a ball of burning flame. Like my hopes for getting back with Emma.

  On the other side of the bowling green he saw the stooped figure of Harry Hotham, his old headmaster from primary school, heading back towards the village. Harry was retiring next term after twenty years at St Hilda’s, to be replaced by some hotshot from a Hampshire prep school, apparently.

  Would Will be replaced by another ‘hotshot’ in Emma’s heart?

  It was no good. Everything came back to Emma.

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’ Gabe’s irritated voice dragged him back to reality. ‘Be less shit. If I can get you out LBW on the third ball, de la Cruz can do it on his first with his eyes shut. You do want to beat the shit out of Brockhurst?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Will, stung.

  George Blythe, Dylan Pritchard Jones, Lionel Green, Tim Wright and the rest of them had paired up in the remaining six sets of cricket nets. As Fittlescombe’s best bowler and batsman respectively, Gabe and Will had been practising together. But it was clear that Will’s thoughts were elsewhere. It wouldn’t take Einstein to figure out where.

  ‘Seb!’ Gabe called out across the green to where Seb Harwich, the odd man out, was waiting his turn in the shade of a crab-apple tree. ‘Bowl a couple of overs at muppet here, would you, mate? See if you can take his mind off your bloody sister for half a minute. Because I can’t.’

  Seb ran over, looking about as happy as a fourteen-year-old boy could. He loved it when Gabe Baxter spoke to him like one of the men; when he called him ‘mate’ and referred to Will Nutley, one of Seb’s all-time heroes, as a ‘muppet’.

  Taking the red leather ball from Gabe, Seb eyed Will wordlessly from the bowlers’ end. At school, they joked around all the time during practice, but not here. The Fittlescombe team took things seriously, and silently. Seb acted accordingly.

  Rubbing the ball up and down the length of his thigh, until a pale pink stain marked the white cotton of his trousers, he launched into a short, fast run and bowled as straight as he could to Will’s middle wicket. Raising a languorous right arm, Will blocked the shot with ease.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Gabe. ‘Well done, Seb. You two keep going. I’m off to the pub.’

  Once Gabe sloped off, it wasn’t long before the others began to follow him. The light was failing, and most of them had been practising solidly for most of the afternoon, anyway. Before long, Seb and Will were the last two men standing.

  Will gazed out past the bowling green to the outskirts of the village. The steeple of St Hilda’s Church rose up from the rooftops, and Will and Seb both stopped and listened as its ancient bell tolled six times. It was a lovely sound, timeless and peaceful, as much a part of country life as the soft, cooing call of the woodpigeon or the smell of freshly mown grass on the green on a summer’s morning. But tonight it made Will sad.

  ‘She’s not coming, is she?’

  Seb frowned. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I suppose not. She said she’d try to come, that’s all. When I saw her this morning. I was sort of expecting her.’

  ‘Emma says a lot of things she doesn’t mean,’ said Seb, adding kindly, if not entirely truthfully, ‘Look, I’m sure it’s not you. You guys are still friends, right?’

  Friends. The word sent a shiver down Will’s spine.

  ‘Cricket practice isn’t exactly Emma’s idea of a riveting evening, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s mine, either,’ Will sighed. All of a sudden, the beer garden at The Fox had an appealing ring to it. If he hurried, he could catch the others before George got in the first round. ‘Anyway, you’re right: what does it matter?’ he reassured himself, smiling at Seb. ‘She’s coming to the match on Saturday. That’s the main thing.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, she’s coming all right,’ grumbled Seb. ‘The question is, who will she be cheering for?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, ever since she heard about you-know-who playing for Brockhurst, she’s had stars in her eyes like you wouldn’t believe. She went over to his house this afternoon, you know.’

  Will looked ashen. ‘To de la Cruz’s house?’

  ‘I know,’ said Seb, mistaking Will’s expression for disapproval. ‘It’s embarrassing. Like some sort of groupie. Anyway, come on.’ He threw the cricket ball high in the air and caught it one-handed. ‘We came here to practise. Let’s practise.’

  As tempting as it was to slope off to The Fox and drown his sorrows, Will Nutley pulled the visor down on his helmet, a look of grim determination settling over his usually placid features.

  ‘Fine,’ he said to Seb. ‘Give it your best shot.’

  There was only one thing for it now.

  He was simply going to have to annihilate Santiago de la Cruz.

  THURSDAY

  Penny Harwich checked her reflection in the mirror of the ladies’ loo at Capo, the swanky new Italian restaurant in Lewes, feeling faintly absurd.

  For one thing she was on a ‘date’, a ridiculous enough idea in itself at her age and after twenty years of marriage. For another, her date was with Piers Renton-Chambers, a man who, if possible, felt even more awkward in romantic situations than she did. And for a third it was only six o’clock in the evening. The only people Penny knew who knowingly ate their dinner at six o’clock were either children under eight or what her son Seb rather unkindly referred to as ‘Reaper-cheaters’, i.e. those so elderly and infirm they had to be wheeled to their beds each night before sunset.

  In a long, slightly hippyish dark-green dress, with matching dangly jade earrings, Penny had made an effort with her appearance tonight, something else that added to her embarrassment. After her ill-fated run-in with that vile man Santiago de la Cruz yesterday, she’d returned home and dashed straight to the loo for a pee. There she’d looked in the mirror and almost screamed at the red-faced, sweat-smeared, bedraggled harridan she’d seen staring back at her. No wonder Santiago had thought she’d lost her marbles. With her flaky skin and deeply shadowed eyes, weighed down with more bags than Mariah Carey setting off on tour, she looked as if she were about to turn sixty, not forty. Piers had telephoned moments later to ask her out to dinner. Still in shock, Penny had said yes, thereby plunging herself into a second, even deeper layer of panic. She’d spent the rest of the night washing, conditioning, trimming, exfoliating, moisturizing, deep-cleansing and Veeting any hair that had the temerity to appear anywhere on her body, until her skin glowed red and raw and her gums bled from excessive brushing. Then this morning, only marginally calmer, she’d driven herself into Chichester for a haircut and blow-dry that she absolutely couldn’t afford, and some new make-up from Bourjois that she’d once read in a magazine was the same stuff as Chanel, just in cheaper packaging.

  But now that she was here, looking primped and pretty and with Piers waiting at their painfully early table, she felt foolish and deflated.

  This is Piers.

  This is me and Piers, eating some spaghetti I could have cooked at
home and pretending we’re … what? Teenagers? Lovers?

  Bloody Santiago de la Cruz. Penny blamed him for all of it. She felt a headache coming on, and wished to goodness she were curled up on the sofa at home in front of the telly.

  Back at the table, Piers stood up and pulled out her chair as she approached.

  ‘You’re back.’ He smiled. ‘Thank heavens. I started to wonder if you’d done a bunk. I was picturing you shimmying out of the ladies’ room window and legging it down Lewes High Street like Zola Budd.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Penny immediately felt guilty. She really didn’t know why she was making such a big deal out of one simple dinner with Piers, especially after he’d been so kind and made such an effort. It wasn’t easy to get a table at Capo at short notice.

  Unfortunately, her headache was getting worse. She clutched at her temples.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Piers asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Penny groaned.

  ‘Is it me?’

  ‘No! God, no,’ said Penny. ‘You mustn’t think that. To be honest with you, it’s Emma. I know I should let it go, but she just seems to be getting more and more out of control and further and further out of my reach.’

  ‘Do you not think most parents of teenagers feel the same way?’ Piers asked kindly.

  ‘Not like this,’ said Penny. ‘And most eighteen-year-olds aren’t earning six-figure salaries and being told how bloody marvellous they are on a daily basis. It doesn’t help.’

  ‘No.’ Piers nodded understandingly.

  ‘Nor does Santiago de la Cruz.’

  They ordered food. Penny’s headache persisted, but she did her best to ignore it. Over a large glass of Chianti and a delicious calamari salad, she slowly started to relax and to pour out her anxieties about Emma. How utterly devastated she’d been by her father’s defection. And how this had taken the twin forms of intense insecurity, particularly regarding men and sex, and burning anger towards her mother.