Jasmine’s heart sank. The mission was, without doubt, called Brittany Frobisher.
Two hours later, glowing from the sun despite larding herself with Factor 10, Jasmine negotiated the jumble of furniture in the beach hut and managed to shower, fall over things, and get changed into a pair of baggy combat trousers and a nicely accommodating T-shirt without waking Clara. Then, leaving a note suggesting that they should meet up in the Crumpled Horn later, Jasmine trudged up the cliff steps and headed for the stadium.
Here, chaos reigned supreme. Damon Puckett and his boys seemed to have conspired to create a bomb site. Jasmine winced at the continuing devastation. She’d last been here a couple of days ago and had hoped it would have started to show an improvement. It hadn’t. She was beginning to think that it would never, ever be all right again.
‘Hello, pet!’ Peg, in shirtwaister and Wellington boots, and with a construction worker’s hard hat rammed on top of the Doris Day bubble curls, tramped happily towards her. ‘Coming on a treat, isn’t it?’
Allan and Roger, picking their way more gingerly through the debris in Peg’s wake – also wearing hard hats and looking like the geriatric chapter of The Village People – were beaming too. It must be something to do with senility and copious amounts of Wincarnis, Jasmine thought, that gave them all such a rosy perspective on life.
‘Er – yes ... I suppose so. There still seems to be an awful lot left to do. When are they expecting to be finished?’
‘Another couple of weeks at least, Damon says.’
‘Two weeks!’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘That’ll mean they’ll have taken six weeks to do a fortnight’s work!’
‘You can’t hurry craftsmen.’ Peg looked shocked. ‘They’re creating a masterpiece here. Anyway, we want it to be absolutely perfect for the Frobisher’s thingy, don’t we?’
Jasmine groaned. There was still no way on earth that she could tell Peg that because Brittany Frobisher and Sebastian were an item, the Bixford stadium was going to get the Platinum Trophy – and that all the other applicants were merely window-dressing.
‘Oh – er – yes, I suppose so. Anyway, I’ve got some more good news.’
‘Really?’ Peg looked very animated. ‘Has Andrew tumbled over the cliff and been swept away on the neap tide never to be seen again?’
As Jasmine felt rather treacherous about Andrew at the moment she decided to make no comment. It was worrying to discover that the image of Andrew, buoyed by his own pomposity and an inflated polo shirt, bobbing out into the Solent, painted quite a pleasant picture. She concentrated instead on the demolition site.
The picture here was far from pleasant. Jasmine gazed at the scene with mounting horror. Damon’s boys, who, thanks to the Glastonbury trip, now looked like a tribe of Carlos Santanas, were just bringing down the stadium’s corrugated tin roof with all the enthusiasm of children pushing over sand castles. The whole thing made Jasmine feel rather sad. So many of her Benny-memories were being swept away with the rubble.
‘Isn’t there anywhere a bit – er – quieter? Your office?’
‘Went this morning,’ Peg shouted cheerfully above the sound of tearing tin and concrete. ‘We could hole up in the kennels area if you like. Damon’s finished over there. But you must wear a hard hat, pet, if you’re staying on site.’
Jasmine winced. The hard hat made her look like a boiled egg. However, as Peg was now wheedling one out of Damon and calling him poppet, she felt it would be churlish to refuse.
Once she was suitably hatted, and with Roger, Allan and Peg stumbling over the detritus in a rather unsteady Indian file, they made their way to the kennels, which was currently the only serene corner of the stadium.
Jasmine had to admit that if Damon tarted up the stadium to the same standard he’d employed on the kennels, then maybe things wouldn’t be too bad at all. The kennels had always been well-maintained, of course. Peg’s love of animals was even better documented in Ampney Crucis than her love of Doris Day. Now, the kennels and runs were larger, and there were more of them. There was also a little sort of office place for the owners and trainers to sit on navy-blue chairs, and a whole spaghetti bowl of wires poking through the rough-plastered walls.
‘Just the last cosmetic bits to do,’ Peg said. ‘A nice coat of candy pink – everyone loves pink, don’t they? And the electrics all connected up for the screen in here so that everyone can see what’s going on, and wireless transmission. Very high-tech, don’t you think? Oh, and, I meant to say to you – although Roger and Allan have agreed already so you’ve been outvoted if you don’t approve – on the night of the Frobisher Platinum, we’ll have some other bookies, big boys: Ladbrokes . . . Willie Hill . . .’
Jasmine nodded without saying anything. She knew that the new plans included the provision of half a dozen Tote windows. There was absolutely no point in protesting about multinational bookmakers being engaged for an event that certainly wasn’t going to happen.
‘So,’ Peg perched on one of the polythene-wrapped chairs, ‘what’s your news?’
Jasmine took a deep breath and rattled off the concept of the Saturday Six-Pack Nights. For ten pounds a head the punters would get admission to the stadium and free parking, a racecard, a meal – probably something and chips, which she’d thought Gilbert and Eddie Deebley could combine on – two pints of Old Ampney, a Tote voucher – and a free-admission ticket for a return visit.
‘And,’ she concluded, ‘because the GRA are keen to up the image of dog racing, this will make it available to so many people – families and so on – who might otherwise have thought a night at the dogs was beyond them, or not something they’d enjoy. I’ve already drafted adverts for the local press, and Clara is going to get Makings Paper to produce flyers and – ’
‘Absolutely brilliant!’ Peg hugged her. ‘Oh, pet – what a trooper! What with this and the Frobisher Trophy, we’ll really put the Benny Clegg Stadium on the map!’
‘Benny would have rightly been proud of you, my love,’ Roger said gruffly.
Allan twanged his braces. ‘A right little chip off the old block.’
Jasmine swallowed the lump in her throat. She still missed Benny so much. It was awful, to be surrounded by people who cared about her, all her friends, and still feel so lonely.
‘Excuse me.’ A voice echoed through from the kennels. ‘Ms Dunstable? Are you in here? The workman said I’d find you here.’
Bugger.’ Peg straightened her wig. ‘Another bloody rep. They swarm in like flies round a cowpat. Always trying to sell me something I don’t want.’ She turned towards the kennels. ‘Yes – I’m here. Come on through, but I’m not buying anything.’
That’s good,’ Sebastian smiled, appearing in the doorway and ducking beneath a particularly lethal bunch of loose wires, ‘because I’m not selling anything.’
Jasmine frantically tugged at the unflattering hard hat, but it appeared to have welded itself to her perspiring forehead.
Sebastian’s smile turned into a beam as he spotted her. ‘Oh, great. I’d hoped you’d be here. I’ve brought you some strawberry and cream doughnuts.’
‘Oh . . . really? Thank you . . . um . . .’ Jasmine gave up clutching at the hat and beamed back.
She only hoped the beam was steady, because suddenly the rest of her certainly wasn’t.
Jasmine’s next coherent thought was one of relief mingled with frustration. If Sebastian was here then so was Brittany: which was bad for her, but good for Clara, because it meant that whatever Ewan was doing in London, it obviously didn’t involve the fragrant Ms Frobisher.
‘I’ve left them in the car,’ Sebastian continued to smile at her. ‘The doughnuts, that is. In a cool box. I thought they’d go well with some of that beer.’
‘Oh, yes – they will ... I mean – thank you.’ Jasmine had another surreptitious go at easing off the hard hat without him noticing. It was difficult when he was looking at her and she was attempting to appear unfazed, and anyway it still refused to budge.
This was appalling – being face to face with the one man on earth who could make her legs wobble, with her head rammed into an upside-down po.
No, she thought as she did isometrics with her forehead, it was even worse than appalling. Because as well as the towering feeling of relief at knowing that Clara wasn’t being cheated on, Jasmine was also swamped by the awful realisation that she’d fallen in love.
She exhaled. She’d done some foolish tilings in her time, but falling in love with Sebastian Gillespie had to take the biscuit. She might as well have a badge pinned to the left-hand side of her T-shirt proclaiming. ‘Here’s my heart –now break it.’
‘It’s lovely to see you!’ Peg, who obviously had no problems about wearing her hat in Sebastian’s presence, was now batting the false eyelashes alarmingly. ‘We were just talking about you, weren’t we, Jasmine, pet?’
Jasmine, pretending not to be wrestling with the hat or her conscience, sketched a smile. ‘Um – yes, sort of . . . about the stadium and things . . . you know . . .’
Sebastian grinned again. Jasmine wished he wouldn’t keep doing it. She also wished she’d had far more practice at being overwhelmed by lust, love, or whatever this feeling thundering around inside her was. If she’d splurged sporadically in her teens, as Clara had suggested, then surely she’d have been much more adept at handling this situation. It was far, far too late now to start writing ‘I ♥ Sebastian Gillespie’ on her pencil case.
Love, for her, had been a timid visitor. As she’d only ever been in love with Andrew, and that simply out of habit, falling in love seemed to be something that Clara did every other month or so, and Ewan did all the time, and the heroines in her favourite Mills and Boon books did with unsuitable men who loved them madly, truly, deeply in return by the end of the novel. Falling in love surely took absolutely ages, after candlelit dinners, and romantic walks in the moonlight, and parties and – well,
knowing
someone. Falling in love didn’t happen like a thunderbolt out of the blue. And certainly not to her.
Peg, Roger and Allan were now clustered round Sebastian, their voices all trying to outdo one another as they told him about the Phoenix-like resurrection of the Stadium and Jasmine’s plans for the Six-Pack Saturday nights. Jasmine desperately wanted to throttle all of them, to silence them quickly, before they made complete fools of themselves. Seb, with his Bixford stadium connections, would surely be laughing himself silly. Well, no, maybe he wouldn’t. He was kind and compassionate, she knew that. But surely, surely, he’d stop them before they went too far?
Anyway, who was she kidding? Peg and Roger and Allan may well be making fools of themselves with Sebastian, but what about her? Wasn’t that exactly what she was about to do too? It was some comfort to know that in her letters at least, she’d given him no hint of how she felt about him. Her replies had been jokey and full of Ampney Crucis anecdotes; they hadn’t said anything personal at all. Then, of course, she didn’t know that she loved him when she was writing the letters, did she? She’d thought he was lovely, yes, and beautiful, and kind, and funny and – Oh, for God’s sake!
She tried to take herself in hand with a severe mental talking-to. People like her just didn’t fall in love with people like Sebastian Gillespie. Oh yes, but they did, she thought sadly. All the time. It just wasn’t reciprocated. The emotion remained a one-sided adulation. And that was exactly how it must stay. She mustn’t give Seb any idea at all about how she felt.
Finally managing to wriggle off the hard hat while he was otherwise engaged and lose it behind one of the shrink-wrapped chairs, Jasmine allowed herself the hedonistic and totally destructive pleasure of studying Sebastian at close quarters. Once Brittany – who was no doubt outside having a good giggle over Damon and his boys trying to drag the stadium into a pale Bixford comparison – arrived, the moment would be lost for ever. Wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, smiling interestedly as he listened to Peg, Seb was unbelievably gorgeous. Jasmine had to clamp her teeth together to prevent the groan of despair escaping. Her imagination and memory simply hadn’t done him justice. He was truly wonderful. She’d just bet that Brittany spent lazy Sunday mornings curled beneath Egyptian cotton sheets lovingly counting his freckles . . .
Fighting the sudden desire to see Brittany bobbing across to the Isle of Wight on the same inflated ego trip as Andrew, Jasmine tried instead to concentrate on what Sebastian was saying. It seemed to involve a lot of references to Frobishers, but then she supposed it would. He was probably inviting Peg to the It Girl wedding of the year at Westminster Abbey or wherever it was that It Girls could pack in the most celebrity crowds.
‘Oooh!’ Peg suddenly broke into the conversation. ‘Well! There’s a turn up!’
Roger and Allan were puffing out their chests and showing their gums.
‘Have I missed something?’ Jasmine had already arranged her face into its resigned acceptance mode. ‘Are congratulations in order?’
‘They are, pet!’ Peg hugged her. ‘What a splendiferous day!’
‘I was just explaining,’ Sebastian said, ‘that the short list for the Frobisher Platinum Trophy has been drawn up. There are four stadiums in contention – three near London, and yours.’
Jasmine blinked. ‘Mine? Ours? Here, do you mean?’
‘That’s exactly what he means.’ Peg was bouncing up and down independently of her wellingtons. ‘We’re going to be famous!’
‘We’re only shortlisted,’ Jasmine said gently, knowing they’d get no further. She’d bet the beach hut that Bixford was also amongst the finalists. ‘But it’s wonderful news, and it was very kind of Sebastian and Brittany to come down here to tell us.’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘Brittany isn’t with me. She’s telling the other stadiums the good news. As they were all quite close together it made sense to split up and do it this way. Anyway, I had a doughnut delivery to make.’
Jasmine’s shriek of laughter sounded horrendously phoney – even to her. She snapped her mouth shut so that the awful noise shouldn’t be repeated. And Brittany was in London – and so was Ewan. Oh, sod it.
Peg came to the rescue. ‘And the final decision will be taken when exactly, pet?’