the pull. Now she was twenty, she had become so much more mature and professional and was really getting her career together. She must spend more time in the gym so she was really fit to ride History Painting.
It was getting light outside. Hearing desperate sobbing as she passed ‘Alonso’, she found the door ajar and Trixie slumped on the bed, naked except for a white hotel dressing gown. There was sick all over the carpet and on the pillow. The room reeked of rotten alcohol.
‘Go away,’ wept Trixie, ‘I can’t talk. Leave me alone.’
Grabbing a box of tissues, soaking a towel, Amber cleaned up, threw the pillowcase on the bathroom floor and gave Trixie a glass of water.
‘Whatever happened?’
‘I can’t tell you, I promised not to.’
Amber sat on the bed, pushing Trixie’s damp hair back from her sweating forehead and feeling even more mature.
‘Tell me, babe, I won’t tell anyone.’
‘It’s Seth,’ howled Trixie. ‘I don’t know how it happened. I loved him so much. He pursued me and pursued me, ringing me at school, texting me the whole time, sending flowers. I didn’t want to know. I kept asking him if he had any attractive grandsons. Gradually I got hooked.’
‘Hardly surprising, he’s well fit.’
‘He was so loving when he was coaching me, then he backed off, didn’t answer my calls or texts, all over that vile Bonny. Last night he totally blanked me, but when I came out of my room he was waiting. He kissed me so lovingly and led me back into what I thought was his room and it was Bonny’s.’
Trixie was crying so much, Amber could hardly distinguish what she was saying.
‘B-b-bonny was on the bed starkers, Seth made her shag me. It was hideous, she kept smacking and pinching me and laughing at me for being crap in bed, then Seth joined in. Oh God, I feel so dirty.’ She blew her nose on the duvet cover.
‘Not your fault, babe.’ Amber felt more mature by the minute as she stroked Trixie’s hair. ‘Threesome’s nothing. Loads of grown-ups do it. Like jumping on everyone else’s horses at the end of Pony Club camp. Bloody Seth shouldn’t have forced you, even if he was drunk.’
‘It was a foursome,’ whispered Trixie, ‘Rogue was there too.’
‘Rogue,’ screamed Amber, ‘Rogue! The bastard, how dare he, the bastard.’
‘He was laughing his head off and very drunk. Bonny kept ticking him off for not concentrating,’ confessed Trixie. ‘He was always into group sex when he lived in Willowwood.’
Amber couldn’t speak for fury, so Trixie carried on.
‘Bonny was drunk too. She doesn’t drink normally. She showed off terribly, proving how brilliant she was at blow jobs and things, oh yuck.’
‘The bitch,’ whispered Amber. ‘The bitch, how dare she.’
‘Please, please don’t tell anyone.’ Trixie looked terrified. ‘Granny would die if it got out. She thinks the world of Seth. And Uncle Martin and Romy would be so censorious. Mummy’d kill me, she doesn’t understand love, and Daddy’s so wrapped up in Tilda Flood.’ The desolation in Trixie’s voice for a moment distracted Amber from her own misery.
‘Rogue ought to be shot.’
‘Please don’t say anything to him, or Seth says he’ll never see me again. How can one hate someone so much and still adore them?’
Seth last night had been slightly disconcerted, on reaching ‘Ferdinand’, to be greeted by a sleepily replete Corinna:
‘Darling, thank you for the best fuck I have ever had.’
But he cheered up when he read his reviews on a hotel laptop. For once they compared very favourably with Corinna’s, which were so good she wouldn’t give a stuff who’d been shagging who last night.
Bonny was not so sanguine. After her first furious text, Seth had ordered a fry-up and shut himself in the bathroom to call her.
‘Have you seen the internet, such fantastic notices … How are you, Bon-Bon, you looked ravishing last night – fun, wasn’t it?’
‘How could you let that happen?’ shrieked Bonny. ‘What in hell did you slip in my drink? It could constitute rape, that little tramp is sure to tell Dora and it’ll be all over the papers. When I think of the efforts I’ve made to safeguard my reputation … And I can’t see Rogue staying shtum either. How could you?’
‘I’ll square Trixie,’ reassured Seth.
‘And I’ve had an email from Martin Bancroft, who wants me to be the War on Obesity icon. If word gets out, they’ll pull the plug.’
Seth had had enough. ‘Oh shut up,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a headache. That’s room