Rupert beat the chill factor by taking Taggie, Xav and Bianca skiing. Tab ground her teeth over their photographs in the paper.
Fighting hangovers, and sickness, she still staggered up to do The Engineer every morning because she couldn’t bear him to get closer to one of Rannaldini’s grooms than herself. Then she returned to the vodka, which she found increasingly difficult to buy because she had no money. Several of her Christmas cheques bounced, before she discovered Rannaldini had stopped her allowance as well.
Isa doled her out pocket money for housekeeping, but grudgingly. It would be much more sensible, he said, for her to wheedle some serious dosh out of Rannaldini, which was why she had accepted the invitation to Riverdance on Isa’s birthday in January. At the last moment, Isa had cried off in a rage. Tab had a maddening habit of always borrowing his jackets. Grabbing his Puffa from the back of the bedroom door, he had found all the Christmas cards to his owners unstamped and unposted in the pocket.
Which was why Tab had a lone evening with an amused but utterly unyielding Rannaldini.
‘Isa is a successful jockey. You have a charming, free cottage, and if you bothered to check, you ungrateful child, you’d discover the Sèvres vase I gave you for Christmas was worth a few bob. Young people should make their own way.’
He wouldn’t even lend her a grand or two to appease Isa and the bank manager.
The coupling of an alcoholic and a workaholic is not a happy one. As Isa worked endlessly to keep the show on the road and compensate for lack of support from Tab, he had less and less time to spend with her, which lowered her confidence and made her drink more out of loneliness.
Isa was so cool he fell asleep in the middle of a row, and she could never tell, behind that expressionless face, what he was thinking. In fact, throughout that long, hard, cruel winter, Peppy Koala, the chestnut colt, so charming, so idle, so uncompetitive, had never been far from his thoughts.
He was just making plans in late February to fly out to Australia when Mr Brown, Peppy Koala’s owner, suddenly called him. He was in England, taking over some Bristol electronics firm. Was Isa free tomorrow evening?
Mr Brown also wanted to see Jake’s yard, and having read about Isa’s wedding in Hello!, said he’d sure like to shake hands with the new Mrs Lovell, who looked a beaut, so perhaps they could have dinner at Isa’s place.
Switching off his mobile, Isa looked round at Magpie Cottage. God, it was a tip! The ravishing little chest of drawers Taggie had given them for a wedding present was already covered in drink rings, like a pond in a rainstorm.
Knowing there was no way he could bring Mr Brown back here in its present state, Isa swallowed his pride and a large whisky and rang Helen. Could he borrow Mrs Brimscombe, Betty and Sally tomorrow morning to blitz the place? Then all Tab had to do was collect some precooked food from Waitrose and make herself look beautiful.
As luck would have it, in lieu of payment, one of Isa’s owners had given him a brand-new Jaguar XK8, which was being delivered to the cottage that afternoon. If money ran out he could flog it. For the meantime it would impress Mr Brown.
The three-month ban on sex was now up, but the cold war seemed to have set in too hard for Isa to placate Tab by making a move on her that night. Tab had stopped being sick, but instead when she opened her mouth a stream of resentment came out.
On the morning of Mr Brown’s visit, however, she was full of good intentions: no booze, and wifely behaviour. By midday a tight-lipped Mrs Brimscombe and a giggling Betty and Sally had made the cottage look wonderful and set the table.
‘Why don’t you buy some daffies for that lovely blue vase?’ suggested Betty.
Tab had been just off to Waitrose when she went to Isa’s chest of drawers to borrow a pair of socks. Rooting round under the lining paper she found a lovely laughing picture of Martie, his Australian girlfriend. He’s still in love with her, she thought in terror, he’s going to leave me.
When the telephone woke her, it was dark. Isa wanted to know if everything was on course. Mr Brown had been impressed with Jake’s yard. They’d be back around six thirty.
‘What have you bought for supper?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ bleated Tab.
‘Shall I get red or white?’
‘Both, I should think. See you later.’
Whimpering with panic, Tab looked around her. How could she have made such a mess? An empty vodka bottle and fragments of the royal blue and gold vase Rannaldini had given her for Christmas littered the floor. She’d better go and buy the food for dinner; then she could tidy the place and herself while it was heating up.
Her car was out of petrol, so she borrowed Isa’s new Jaguar. God, it was bliss to drive. In no time she had reached Waitrose, and loaded up with a smoked-salmon mousse, three packets of Coronation Chicken, new potatoes, ready-made dressing and a pretty red and green bag of salad. Adding banana and yoghurt ice cream, a brown loaf and runny Brie, she was off to the checkout counter, piling on Pedigree Chum and Whiskas on the way. Catering was so easy if you knew how. She even ignored a great glacier of vodka bottles. Hurrah for Tabitha the coper.
Her undoing was a white tablecloth covered in glasses, and a beaming salesman with a special offer of Chilean Chardonnay.
‘Might as well have a slurp,’ muttered Tab, as her trolley developed a mind of its own and veered booze-wards.
A man in a flat cap and a green Husky had had the same idea, and was soon swilling away, waggling his nose back and forth in the glass like a windscreen wiper.
‘Remarkably good,’ he said to Tab.
‘It is,’ she agreed, smiling back at the salesman, ‘and a terrific bargain. Could I have another glass just to make sure?’
‘What a lovely little hidey-hole,’ said Mr Brown, as Isa drew up outside Magpie Cottage. ‘Look at those primroses. I’m dying for a leak.’
Isa’s first thought was that his Jaguar had been stolen, the second that his mobile was ringing. Ignoring it, he ran into the house. Chaos met his eyes. Charging into the downstairs loo, he found no bog paper and no towel. Fuck Tab!
The best he could do was a box of tissues from the kitchen, which was also a tip, with no sign of dinner and no flowers. A fire was laid in the grate but unlit. Littering the floor were fragments of the Sèvres vase and Martie’s torn-up photograph. He had better answer his mobile.
‘Are you the owner of car P704 HHA?’
Isa had to think twice.
‘Yes. It’s been stolen?’
‘We’re not sure, sir. It’s been abandoned across the gangway in Waitrose’s car park, obstructing the flow of traffic, and the alarm is causing a disturbance. No-one can get inside the vehicle.’
Coming out of the lavatory, flapping his hands, Mr Brown was rather amused by the news.
‘My spouse is always locking herself out of her car, and my teenage daughters never lift a finger in the house.’
He was very happy to give Isa a lift to Waitrose. He’d seen photographs of Tab in OK magazine on the flight over and was looking forward to meeting her even more.
They found Tab and the man in the flat cap sitting in a little café half-way down a second bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. Not having driven Isa’s car before, she had no idea that it was his number being paged with increasing urgency.
‘This is Hugh Murray-Scott,’ she announced happily. ‘He’s a friend of Daddy’s.’
‘Where are my car keys?’ snarled Isa.
‘Car keys?’ As Tab rootled through the pockets of her jeans, Mr Brown and Mr Murray-Scott admired her slender hips. ‘Here they are. Now, where did I put my trolley?’
The final straw was when Isa found his lovely new Jaguar had been rammed by another car with a furious owner.