Page 35 of The Black Trilogy

“You’re coming,” Susie informed me. “I’ll get you a ticket and lend you a dress. I’ve got hundreds. Something will fit.”

Hayley’s head bobbed in agreement. “She’s not kidding about the dresses. Her closet’s bigger than the lounge in the cottage. I just wish we were the same size.”

While Hayley was a career groom who’d been at the stables since she left school two years ago, Susie had a different motive for working there. She’d completed two years of a three-year maths degree, she told me over a glass of wine one evening, before concluding that she hated the subject.

“I walked out right before the exams. I’d have failed them anyway, but Daddy was furious. He said if I didn’t go back to uni or get a job, he’d cut off my allowance.”

So, Susie had applied for the first job she happened to see, the position of groom advertised on a card in the window of the post office. Her father wasn’t happy about her career choice, but she’d done what he said, so he had no choice but to keep forking over the cash. That allowed her to satisfy her designer shoe habit and drive a BMW. And it also meant I knew Hayley was telling the truth about her outfits.

But I still didn’t want to go to the ball.

“Someone should stay here and do the late check on the horses.”

“George’ll do it,” Hayley said. “He doesn’t mind occasionally. Please say you’ll come?”

Rats. The problem with having no social life was that I didn’t have any excuses either.

“Fine.” Perhaps I could fake an illness? “Okay, I’ll come.”

If I did end up going, at least it would get me out of the trailer for an evening, away from the microwave and, more importantly, away from my thoughts. Who knows? It might be interesting to meet more folks from around here. People-watching was always entertaining, especially when everyone else was drunk.

A week of rain was made more miserable by Hayley’s mood, and that mood was caused by a fad diet she’d found in a magazine. Eating only chicken, raw broccoli, carrots, and watermelon would be enough to dull anyone’s sparkle, as Bradley would say. Hayley swore she’d lost weight, but the only difference I could see was in her level of grumpiness.

On Friday, Susie invited me to her family home, or rather, their mansion to try on dresses. Hayley came too, smiling for the first time this week despite the bag of carrot sticks she’d brought for company.

“Isn’t this amazing?” she breathed when Susie flung open the door to her walk-in closet.

I stifled a groan. The rows of dresses might have been a socialite’s dream, but I hated trying on clothes. Bradley had been buying mine for so many years he knew instinctively what fitted me, so usually I avoided the horrors of the fitting room.

“How about this?” Susie asked, holding up something pink and frothy. “Or the red one?”

I tried not to grimace as Susie handed me a rainbow of outfits and sent me into the bathroom to change. We might have been the same size, but all that colour and her flouncy style wasn’t me at all. I was wondering how to tell her this when Hayley handed me something black and slippery, perfectly matched to my soul.

Please, let this one fit.

The slinky halterneck had a thigh-high split, and I definitely wouldn’t be wearing a bra with it. Or knickers either, since it came dangerously low over my behind.

“That’s the one,” Hayley shrieked as I emerged into the bedroom.

“Are you sure?” Susie asked. “It’s a designer sample my cousin gave me, but I’ve never been keen on it.”

“Definitely.”

“Yeah, I like it,” I said. It was the lesser of the evils lurking on the rails.

Hayley clapped her hands. “Yay! Now you’ve found a dress, we can relax in the Jacuzzi.”

Hurrah. I’d never been a fan of sitting around until I went wrinkly.

“Or there’s a pool if you prefer, Ash?” Susie said.

A pool wouldn’t be so bad. When I’d first moved to the States, my husband and a merry band of former special forces trainers had taught me to swim like a fish. Being in the water was as natural to me as walking now, and I missed it.

“Can I borrow a swimsuit?”

She tossed me a bikini. “Here you go.”

While I swam lengths of the pool, the other two shared a bottle of champagne in the spa. So much for their diet. By the time we left, I was exhausted and they were pickled.

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