Free Riders by Jilly Cooper Page B

the way to the lavatory and on the way back, struck by conscience, asked her to dance. She liked Billy; everyone did; she liked his turned-down eyes and his broken nose and his air of life being a little bit too much for him. But everything was spoilt when Rupert and Melanie got onto the floor: Rupert, his blue eyes glittering, swinging Melanie’s boa round like the pantomime cat’s tail, had danced around behind Tory’s back, pulling faces and puffing out his cheeks to look fat like Tory and make Billy laugh.
    Tory escaped to the loo, shaking. She found her dinner party hostess’s daughter repairing her makeup and chuntering with a couple of friends over the effrontery of Melanie Potter.
    “Her mother did it on purpose. What chance have any of us got against a suntan like that? She turned up at the Patelys’ drinks’ party wearing jeans. Lady Surrey was absolutely livid.”
    At that moment Melanie Potter walked in and went over to the mirror, where she examined a huge love bite on her shoulder and tried to cover it with powder.
    “You haven’t got anything stronger, have you?” she asked Tory.
    Humbly, Tory passed her a stick of Erace.
    “Oh, how marvelous; that’s amazingly kind. You were on Rupert’s other side at dinner, weren’t you?” she added, wincing as she blotted out the red oval of tooth marks. “Isn’t he a sod? I’ve just emptied a bucket of ice over him for biting me.”
    She handed back the Erace to Tory and combed her platinum blond hair more seductively over one eye. “He and Billy are taking me to Tramps now; why don’t you come too? David Bailey’s going to be there. Rupe wants him to photograph me.”
    And when Tory refused, insisting she was going home now because she had a headache, she only just persuaded Melanie not to make Rupert give her a lift home.
    Unfortunately, Tory found a taxi all too easily. When she got back to the flat, which Molly Maxwell had borrowed from a friend for the summer, it was only eleven-thirty. She found her mother and the colonel on the sofa. The colonel was wearing a lot more lipstick than her mother.
    Tory went to her room and as quietly as possible cried herself to sleep. She woke, as she had on the last four mornings, with a terrible sense of unease—that her mother would find out about Africa.
    She came home in the evening to babysit and went up to her room to change and have a bath. It was still ludicrously hot.
    “Don’t use all the water,” called out her mother. Through the crack in the door Tory could see her lying on her peach chintz counterpane, rigid under a face pack.
    Tory was undressed down to her bra and panties, and hoping, as she’d hardly eaten since her evening with Jake, that she might have lost a bit of weight, when she heard the telephone ring and her mother answering it in a self-consciously seductive voice: “Hello.” Then, more matter-of-fact, “Oh hello, Mrs. Wilton, how are you?”
    There was a long pause, then Molly said, “No, it couldn’t possibly be her. Tory’s terrified of horses. Maxwell’s quite a common name, you know. Well, just wait while I shut the door.”
    Tory felt as though icy water was being dripped slowly down her spine. She was tempted to climb out of the window down the clematis; instead she got into bed, pulled the duvet over her head, and started to shake.
    Five minutes later her mother barged in, ripping the bedclothes off the bed. She was still wearing her face pack like some malignant mime of catastrophe. At first she was so angry she couldn’t get the words out.
    “Did you or did you not ring up Bobby Cotterel on Sunday and buy Africa?” she sputtered.
    “I don’t know what you mean,” mumbled Tory.
    “Don’t lie to me; who put you up to it?”
    “No one. It’s my money. Why shouldn’t I buy a horse if I want to?”
    “And I can’t afford to buy little Fen a little pony.” Molly spat out the “little.” “Get up, you fat lump.” She reached forward and tugged Tory to her