TEN

      Chloë’s day revolves around the horses and their needs. She is in the saddle for a couple of hours before and after lunch, interspersed with grooming, tack cleaning, rug mending and water-bucket replenishing. Mostly, she takes small, appreciative, pony-mad children out for a generally civilized hack (Desmond permitting). Sometimes, Gin sends her off for a ride to the woods, or down to the stream, or halfway up the hill.

      ‘Just to check,’ she tells Chloë, ‘on Things.’

      When she returns from such outings, Gin asks ‘How’s Things?’ to which Chloë has learnt to reply ‘Things is fine.’

      Initially, she tried a more detailed report about riverbanks and saplings but Gin’s glazed look told her quite clearly that she had missed the point.

      Today, with the loose-boxes mucked out and Chloë and Carl not quite recovered from a dung-slinging session on the muck heap (after which neither was remotely kissable), Gin has brought them a mug of tea apiece in the tack room and is telling them about the day ahead.

      ‘Do you mind popping into Abergavenny? It’s market day and a good opportunity for you, Carl, to see if there are any viable propositions in the camper-van trade, or in whatever wagon it is that you intend to traverse Europe. Chloë, I thought I might leave you to buy a few things from the tack shop for the gymkhana tomorrow. Bugger, tomorrow is Saturday, isn’t it? Must be, if today’s market day.’

      ‘You not going to join us?’ asks Carl.

      ‘No, it appears I’m going to have my headache today. I’m even going to banish Dai to the top field for the duration so I can truly have it in peace. Take the Land Rover. And for heaven’s sake, take JR too!’

      Dai is in the top field. Gin has exiled herself with her biannual headache. Carl and Chloë have been banished to Abergavenny. Just the two of them. Well, and JR but they are bribing him successfully with chocolate.

      Together, alone, at last.

      A trip to Abergavenny was not really a treat. To Monmouth maybe; to Aber, it was more of a chore. Today, though, Chloë and Carl were thankful for the usual traffic jams and bottlenecks and the unpredictable nature of the Land Rover, as it threw them together in close proximity for longer.

      ‘Yo! Looks like we’re going to stall again! Wait for it!’

      ‘Ready! Two, three – now!’

      ‘Way to go, JR! Take him off the dashboard, Chlo. Can’t see a thing!’

      Since the moment they left Skirrid End, they have been coaxing obedience out of JR with various brands of chocolate. The Jack Russell is now looking rather green and is refusing the final offering. It enables Chloë and Carl to discover that they both share a predilection for the common Mars bar. They are excessively thrilled at the coincidence.

      ‘I can’t believe that Mars bars are your favourite too! I’m not even a chocolatey person!’ chips Chloë.

      ‘Yih!’ drawls Carl, sucking glucose and goop from around his teeth. ‘I’m not really a choco fan either. But once in a while, a craving for a Mars bar hits me and I’m a gonner.’

      ‘Say it again,’ says Chloë, wriggling in her seat.

      ‘Huh?’ asks Carl, taking his eyes from the road.

      ‘It,’ stresses Chloë, grabbing the steering wheel to avoid the ditch, ‘the chocolate bar we both like!’

      ‘Mars bar?’

      ‘Yes, Mahz bah!’ mimics Chloë delighted.

      ‘Mars bar?’

      ‘Mahz bah!’

      ‘Shit Chlo,’ Carl smiled, ‘you’re kind of spooky but – Christ! the Land Rover’s going to stall again. Hold on to JR this time!’

      After they had circumnavigated Abergavenny twice looking for a free parking place, they fought their way into the Pay and Display, did both, and then split up to accomplish their individual tasks. Carl went in search of ‘combies’, as he called the camper-vans, inadvertently driving Chloë delirious; Chloë took JR and went to buy hoof picks, mane combs and other equine accoutrements suitable for gymkhana prizes.

      Needless to say, neither could keep their mind on the task in hand. After a lengthy discussion with a salesman who could have been promoting Brylcreem as much as second-hand cars, Carl made a decision.

      ‘I’m interested, mate. I’ll have a think about it. But first I’m going to kiss Chloë.’

      Humming away, Chloë was studying a vulcanite D-ring snaffle while filling her nostrils with the heavenly scent of a dressage saddle when she was suddenly grasped from behind and pirouetted. She did not notice the running martingales fall from their hook and bind themselves around JR, nor did she hear the clang of ten hoof picks as they hit the floor. She was oblivious to bridles slithering off the wall and was unaware that the dressage saddle was slowly slipping off its stand. All she knew was that Carl was kissing her and the world could wait. Heaven sent him, thank you, God. With her favourite smell of leather (‘Shit Chlo! Mine too!’) surrounding her, she was being expertly kissed by her chosen Adonis, surrounded by merchandise devoted to equitation. Heaven now had no mystique, for it could only be such a place.

      Pressed against the wall, dislodging an entire selection of clincher brow bands, Chloë gladly welcomes Carl’s leg between hers and rides him gently and subconsciously as she kisses him. She can feel his erection poking through his jeans, through hers, and just above her appendix and she says to herself that it can give her peritonitis for all she cares. Slipping her hand through his hair to the back of his neck, she can feel his skin prickle and dampen under her touch. It thrills her. She feels rather proud. Carl is making noises that Chloë has never heard a man make. Spontaneous gulps and groans stifled by the intensity of lip work. She can hear similar sounds an octave higher.

       It’s me!

      It’s involuntary.

      This girl can’t have been kissed for a good long while, thinks Carl as he thrusts his tongue up between Chloë’s cheek and teeth, but man, can she kiss good!