Bloodline

2

I was at Haxted Mill on time at eight and I chose a quiet corner table inside the restaurant, although they were still serving dinner on the terrace alongside the River Eden. The day may have been unseasonably warm for September but the temperature was dropping fast with the setting sun.

Clare arrived at ten past in faded blue denim jeans and a pink polo shirt.

‘Sorry I’m late, Marky,’ she said, sitting down opposite me.

‘No problem. What would you like to drink?’

‘Fizzy water.’

‘You can have a bed for the night if you want to drink.’

‘No, thanks,’ she replied. ‘I have to get back. I’m riding work in the morning, then racing.’

‘Newmarket?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ve got three rides including one in the Cesarewitch Trial.’

‘I’ll be at Newbury so I’ll watch you on the television.’

A waitress arrived with the menus and I ordered a large bottle of sparkling mineral water.

‘Don’t let me stop you having something stronger,’ Clare said.

‘You won’t. I’ll have some wine with my dinner.’

We perused the menus in silence for a while.

‘How are Mum and Dad?’ I asked.

‘Oh, God awful, as always. They’re getting so old.’

The waitress returned with the water and poured two glasses.

‘Are you ready to order?’ she asked.

‘Just the haddock for me,’ Clare said. ‘And without the mash.’

‘No starter?’ I asked.

‘No, thanks. I’ve got to do seven stone thirteen tomorrow.’

‘Wow!’ I said. ‘That is light.’

‘Too bloody light.’

‘I’ll have the steak,’ I said to the patient waitress. ‘Medium rare, but no chips.’ I could hardly eat chips with Clare watching enviously. ‘And a glass of the red Bordeaux please.’

The waitress took our menus and left us.

‘I found it really depressing, going home,’ Clare said.

‘Why?’

‘Dad’s lost all his sparkle, and Mum’s not much better. I swear Dad gets more grumpy every day.’

‘But, as you said, they’re getting old. Dad will be seventy-eight next month and Mum’s only a couple of years behind him.’

Both our parents had been in their mid forties when we had unexpectedly come along. We had three much older siblings.

‘Getting old’s a real bugger,’ Clare said. ‘I’ve decided I’m never getting old.’

‘It’s better than the alternative.’

‘Is it?’ Clare replied. ‘I can’t imagine a time when I couldn’t ride any more. I wouldn’t want to go on living.’

‘Lester Piggott was nearly sixty when he stopped riding.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘And Scobie Breasley was fifty-two when he won the Derby for the second time. I looked it up.’

My, I thought, she really was worried about retirement, and she was only thirty-one. In my experience when jockeys started thinking about retiring they usually did so pretty quickly. Lots of them say they will retire in five years and then they stop in about five months, some in five weeks, or even less.

The waitress brought me my glass of wine and offered us bread, which we both declined.

‘And the house is looking old too,’ Clare said.

‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it?’ I said. According to the datestone on one of the gables, it had been built in 1607.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘It needs some TLC.’

‘A lick of paint on the windows,’ I agreed, nodding. ‘But Dad’s a bit too old to do that himself. He may be quite fit but I don’t think ladders are a good idea any more, not at his age.’

‘I think they should move,’ she said decisively. ‘Into somewhere smaller, or into an old folks’ home. I told them so.’

‘I bet that didn’t go down too well.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Dad was angry — as usual. But they have to be practical. That house is too big. I think they should go into a home now, while they still can.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘They don’t need to yet. And where would they put all their stuff?’

‘What worries me is what the other one will do when one of them dies. That place is far too big for both of them, let alone one. They’ll have to move then.’

‘I hope that’ll be years away. Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

‘That’s typical of you,’ Clare said, pointing her slender left forefinger at my chest. ‘Always burying your head in the sand and doing nothing.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I said.

‘Yes it is,’ she said defiantly. ‘You always put things off. That’s why you still live in that dreadful rented flat in Edenbridge.’

‘You liked it once,’ I whined.

‘I did when I was nineteen, but life moves on. You should have bought yourself a house years ago. You must be earning enough by now.’

She was right. She usually was.

Our meals arrived and we sat for a while in silence, eating.

‘How’s your love life?’ Clare asked finally.

‘None of your business,’ I replied, laughing. ‘How’s yours?’

‘Absolutely wonderful. I have a new man. Three months now. What a lover!’ She grinned and then laughed. He clearly made her happy.

‘Who is it?’ I asked, leaning forward.

‘Now that’s none of your business,’ she said.

‘Come on, Clare. Who is it?’

‘I’m not saying,’ she said seriously, drawing a finger across her mouth as if zipping it shut. She opened it, however, to pop in a piece of her haddock. ‘Are you still seeing Sarah?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She looked down at her plate and shook her head.

‘And what’s that meant to mean?’ I asked.

‘Mark, it’s high time you had a proper girlfriend.’

‘I do.’

‘Sarah is not a proper girlfriend. She’s someone else’s wife.’

‘She’s working on it,’ I said defensively.

‘She’s been working on it for five years. When are you going to realize she won’t ever leave Mitchell? She can’t afford to.’

‘Give her time.’

‘God, Mark, you’re so weak. For once, do something about it. Tell her it’s now or never and you’re fed up waiting. You’re wasting your life.’

‘You can talk,’ I said. ‘Your love life has hardly been Mills and Boon.’ Clare had dated a string of what my father had rather generously called ‘unsuitable young men’, and not all of them had been that young either. ‘Which misfit is it you’re seeing now, anyway?’

‘I told you, that’s none of your bloody business,’ she replied curtly and without the humour that had been there earlier. ‘But at least I’m not living a lie.’

‘Aren’t you?’ I said.

‘And what is that meant to mean?’ she asked belligerently.

‘Oh, nothing.’

We ate again in silence.

Why did we always seem to fight these days? When we were kids, we had been so close that we didn’t even need to speak to know what the other was thinking. But recently our twin-intuition had waned and faded away, at least in my direction. I wondered if she could still read my mind. If so, she probably wouldn’t like it.

The waitress reappeared to collect our plates.

‘Dessert?’ she asked.

‘Just coffee,’ Clare said. ‘Black.’

‘Same for me, please.’

The waitress went away and we sat there once more in awkward silence.

‘Good win on Scusami,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Clare replied, keeping her eyes on the table.

‘Do you think he’ll win the Guineas?’

‘I doubt it. That Peter Williams colt, Reading Glass, he’ll take a lot of beating. But Scusi’s good, and it would be nice to be the first lady jockey to win a Classic.’ She looked upwards wistfully. ‘One year, anyway.’

‘But you’ll ride him?’

‘Maybe,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘That’ll be up to Geoff.’ Scusami was trained by Geoffrey Grubb in Newmarket.

The coffee arrived.

‘Shame about Bangkok Flyer,’ I said.

Clare sat in silence and looked down at her cup.

‘Don’t you think?’ I prompted.

‘I’d forgotten you were commentating.’

‘You don’t deny it, then?’ I asked.

More silence.

‘Why, Clare?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘How can it be complicated?’ I asked incredulously. ‘You fixed the bloody race.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, looking up quickly. ‘I didn’t fix it, I just didn’t win it.’

‘Don’t split hairs with me,’ I said sharply.

‘Ooh! Look at you, getting on your high horse.’

‘Be serious.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because it’s a serious matter,’ I said. ‘You could lose your licence, and your livelihood.’

‘Only if I get caught.’

‘I caught you.’

‘Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?’

I sat and watched her. I could tell that she already knew the answer.

‘Nothing. But someone else will be bound to notice if you do it again.’

‘No one has done so far.’

I looked at her in disbelief.

‘Are you saying this wasn’t the first time you’ve done this?’

She smiled at me. ‘Of course not.’

‘Clare!’

The couple on a table nearby both looked over at us. I lowered my voice but not my anger.

‘Are you telling me that you regularly don’t win races you should?’

‘I wouldn’t say regularly,’ she said. ‘But I have done.’

‘How often?’

She pursed her lips.

‘Three or four times, maybe five.’

‘But why?’

‘I told you. It’s complicated.’

I didn’t know what to say. She was so matter-of-fact about it all. If the British Horseracing Authority knew she had ‘stopped’ horses three, four or five times they would probably have taken away her licence for good and banned her from all racecourses for life.

And she didn’t seem bothered.

‘Well, don’t ever do it again,’ I said in my most domineering tone.

‘And what will you do about it if I do?’ She was mocking me.

‘Clare, please. Don’t do this. Don’t you understand. I love you and I don’t want to see you destroy all that you’ve built up.’

I glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

‘Don’t be so patronizing,’ Clare said.

I sat there stunned.

‘I’ve had to claw my way up in this business,’ she said with feeling, leaning forward across the table. ‘No one gives you an inch. Lady jockey — ha! Don’t make me laugh. Half of those in racing think we’re no bloody good and should leave it all to the men, while the other half are a bunch of dirty old men who fantasize about us wearing tight breeches with whips in our hands. I’ve had to bow and scrape to them all, and to sweat blood to get where I am today, and now, at last, it’s me who’s in control of them.’

‘Is that it, then?’ I asked. ‘Is this all about control?’

‘You bet. Control over the bloody trainers, and the owners.’

Control, I thought, could be a powerful force. What was that old adage? — Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power and unbridled control over others had led to the Nazis, and a world war had been needed to wrest the control from their dead fingers. Control over others was a dangerous concept.

‘I thought I knew you,’ I said slowly. ‘But I don’t.’

‘I’ve changed,’ she said, ‘and I’ve been hardened. I’ve had to climb the slippery pole while others kicked me in the teeth. Success didn’t just fall into my lap by chance.’

We both knew what she meant.

I had been in the right place at the right time.

It was now eight years since that day at Fontwell Park races when the paddock presenter for RacingTV had been taken seriously ill with a heart attack just before he was due to go on air. The back-up presenter, the much respected wife of an up-and-coming young trainer, turned out to be the main presenter’s mistress and she had insisted on going with him to hospital in the ambulance.

I was only there as a guest to watch because I’d carelessly put my hand up at a charity auction to spend a day with the RacingTV team. But I found myself putting up my hand again and volunteering to stand in.

‘Do you know the horses?’ the agitated producer had demanded while pulling out clumps of his already-thinning hair.

‘Yes,’ I’d replied.

And I had. As my sister had so correctly pointed out, I tended to drift rather a lot and I hadn’t actually acquired a proper job since returning from my brief sojourn in Lambourn two years before. Rather, I’d decided to earn my living as a professional gambler and had consequently spent most of my time studying the form. I knew the horses very well.

‘Only for the first race, then,’ the producer had said. ‘I’ve sent for a replacement but he won’t be here until two o’clock.’

I had talked easily to the camera about each horse in the first race and had even tipped the winner. When the replacement had arrived, he’d just sat and watched me all afternoon as I’d tipped the winner in three other races as well.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ the producer had asked as they were packing up.

‘Nothing,’ I’d replied honestly.

‘We’re at Wincanton. Fancy a job?’

Since that day I had never looked back, spreading into commentating again by accident when the race caller at Windsor had been held up by a big crash on the motorway and I had been asked to stand in.

Nowadays I split my time three ways — commentating at the racecourses, paddock presenting for RacingTV, and also hosting the TV coverage on Channel 4, the terrestrial broadcaster of horseracing in Britain.

But Clare firmly believed that I still didn’t have a ‘proper’ job, and that I would soon drift off into something else.

Maybe she was right.

‘I much preferred the old you,’ I said to her.

‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘Don’t start all that again. I live in a competitive world. I have a competitive job. I have to compete. Otherwise I’d be trampled on.’

‘Do you have to compete on everything?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I just feel that, whenever we have a conversation these days, it’s a points scoring exercise.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

I wasn’t going to argue with her. There was no sense in it. For whatever I might say, she would have a riposte. Losing was not an option for her, except clearly, of course, when she lost on purpose.

I paid the bill and we went out together to the car park.

‘Is there anything I can say that would stop you doing it again?’

She turned to me. ‘Probably not.’

‘I might report you to the authorities.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Don’t bank on it,’ I said.

‘Mark, don’t be such a prat. You know perfectly well that you won’t tell anyone. For a start, it would reflect badly on you. So just keep your eyes and mouth shut.’

‘I can hardly do that in my job.’

‘Then you’ll have to turn a blind eye instead.’

‘Clare, seriously, if you do that once more when I’m commentating, I’ll never speak to you again.’

She opened the door of her silver Audi TT.

‘Your loss, not mine.’

She climbed into the sports car and slammed the door shut.

Again, I was stunned. Maybe it had been a careless thing to say, but I hadn’t expected such a brusque answer.

What had happened to my lovely twin sister?

She gunned the engine and spun the rear wheels on the gravel as she shot off without a wave, without even a glance.

As I arrived back at my flat, the phone in the hallway was ringing and the caller ID readout on the handset showed me that it was Clare calling from her mobile.

I wondered what else she had to say to hurt me some more. Maybe she had thought up another barbed comment to thrust into my heart.

I let the phone go on ringing.

Eventually the answerphone picked it up and I stood there in the dark listening for any message. There wasn’t one. Clare had hung up.

My own mobile started vibrating in my pocket but I also let that go to voicemail.

I didn’t want to talk to her. I was hurting enough already. Even if she was ringing to apologize, which I doubted, she could wait. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel guilty for a while.

I flicked on the light and looked at my watch. It was still only nine twenty. Far from enjoying a leisurely dinner with my loving twin sister to mull over our news and catch up on family gossip, I was back home less than an hour and a half after leaving.

I felt wretched, and cheated.

I walked into my sitting-room-cum-kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-office.

Perhaps Clare was right about my flat. Maybe it was time to move on.

We had initially found the place through a student-accommodation company and, looking at it now, I had to admit that it certainly still had a ‘student’ feel about it.

Once I had talked the landlord into redecorating, but that had been about eight years ago, and the cheap paint he had used had faded and cracked. I knew I should ask him to do it again but I didn’t relish all the upheaval it would produce in moving my stuff. Better to live with a few marks on the walls and a slowly yellowing ceiling.

I sat down at my table and opened my laptop computer. I logged onto the Racing Post website and looked through the cards for the following day’s racing at Newbury, where I would be presenting for Channel 4.

As hard as I tried to concentrate on the horses, looking up their form and making notes, my mind kept drifting back to Clare and our conversation over dinner.

How could she be so stupid? And for what? Did I really believe she was stopping horses from winning just to play some weird game of control over trainers and owners? There had to be more to it than that. Surely there had to be some financial implications.

‘It’s complicated,’ she had said.

It sure was.

My phone rang again and I went on ignoring it. I was sure it was Clare but I was angry and upset, and I wouldn’t speak to her. It stopped ringing and, as before, there was no message.

I forced myself back to the horses running at Newbury the following day and spent the next hour going through all eight races in detail. Only three of the eight were due to be shown live on Channel 4 but, as I still tried to supplement my income with some winnings, I was looking for horses that I believed showed especially good value in the prices currently offered on the internet betting sites.

One particular horse, Raised Heartbeat, running in the third race, was quoted at decimal odds of 7.5; in other words, if I placed a bet of one hundred pounds I would get seven hundred and fifty back altogether, including my hundred pound stake. That was equivalent to fractional odds of thirteen-to-two. I felt sure that the horse would actually start at maybe six-to-one or even five-to-one. If I placed a bet now at the longer price and then ‘layed’ the horse at shorter odds tomorrow, I would effectively have a bet to nothing. If it won I would win a little, but if it lost then I wouldn’t lose anything.

It was a technique I had employed for some time with considerable success. But the system wasn’t foolproof. The horse could drift in the market, making my bet seem rather undervalued. I could then still lay the horse to limit my exposure but that would guarantee a financial loss whether it won the race or not.

However, due to my job, I watched the same horses run day by day, week by week, even year by year, and I knew them as well as anyone. Experience had proved that I was more often right over the way the odds would change.

I logged into my account and made my bet on Raised Heartbeat — a hundred pounds stake to make six hundred and fifty profit.

If I was right and the price shortened to, say, five-to-one, I would then lay it, that is I’d take a hundred pound bet from someone else for them to win five hundred. Now, if the horse won, I would win six hundred and fifty on my bet and pay out the five hundred on the bet from someone else, giving me a profit of a hundred and fifty pounds. If the horse lost then I would lose my hundred pound stake but I’d also keep the hundred from someone else, leaving me even. Whereas it wasn’t quite win/win, at least it was win/not-lose.

The phone rang once more. I looked at my watch. It was ten past eleven. I was tempted to answer it but I was still smarting from earlier and I didn’t want another row. I would speak to her in the morning when we had both cooled off a little.

I closed the lid of my computer and went along the corridor to bed.

The only significant change I had made when Clare had moved out to go to Newmarket was to transfer from the smaller bedroom into the larger one. Now I lay awake on the double bed in the darkness and thought back to those months we had spent here together.

Undoubtedly it had been the happiest time of my life. We had escaped the nightmare of living in a house where our father had become so prescriptive of what we could and couldn’t do that he had refused permission for us to go out to a friend’s New Year’s Eve party in spite of the fact that we were over eighteen. When we had defied him and gone anyway, we had found the house locked and bolted on our return. We had rung the bell and battered on the door but he wouldn’t let us in, so we had spent the night shivering in Clare’s Mini and planned our getaway.

This flat had seemed like a palace — somewhere we could leave the lights on without being shouted at, and where we didn’t have to account for our every waking minute.

How I longed for a return to those halcyon days.

Perhaps I should call Clare after all.

I turned on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock. It was a quarter to midnight. Was it too late to call? It was a good half hour since she had last tried me. Would she be asleep?

I tried her anyway, figuring that she could always turn her mobile off if she didn’t want to be disturbed.

It went straight to voicemail.

‘Clare, it’s Mark,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry this evening was such a disaster. Call me in the morning. Love you. Bye.’

I hung up and then turned my phone off. I needed to sleep and didn’t want her calling me again tonight.

I woke to the sound of someone hammering on my front door.

My bedside clock showed me that it was just past three o’clock in the morning.

The hammering went on.

I turned on the bedside light and collected my dressing gown from the back of my bedroom door.

‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ I shouted as I walked down the corridor.

Bloody Clare, I thought. Go home.

I opened the front door, but it wasn’t Clare. Someone shone a torch right into my face so I couldn’t see anything.

‘Mr Shillingford?’ said a voice in an official tone. ‘Mr Mark Shillingford?’

‘Yes,’ I said, holding my hand up and trying to see past the light. ‘What is it?’

‘Kent Police, sir,’ said the voice. ‘Constable Davis.’ He held out his warrant card.

My skin went cold. Personal police calls at this time of night were never good news.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I have some very bad news for you,’ the constable went on. ‘It’s your sister, Miss Clare Shillingford.’ He paused. ‘She’s dead.’