High Stakes

11

London was cold enough to encourage emigration. I arrived back early Tuesday morning with sand in my shoes and sympathy for Eskimos, and Owen collected me with a face pinched and blue.

‘We’ve had snow and sleet and the railways are on strike’ he said, putting my suitcase in the hired Cortina. ‘Also the mild steel you ordered hasn’t come and there’s a cobra loose somewhere in Regent’s Park.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A Mr. Kennet rang from Newmarket to say Hermes has broken down. And... sir...’

‘What?” I prompted, trying to dredge up resignation.

‘Did you order a load of manure, sir?’

‘Of course not.’

The total garden in front of my house consisted of three tubs of fuchsia, an old walnut tree and several square yards of paving slabs. At the rear, nothing but workshop.

‘Some has been delivered, sir.’

‘How much?’

‘I can’t see the dustmen moving it.’

He drove steadily from Heathrow to home, and I dozed from the jet-lag feeling that it was midnight. When we stopped it was not in the driveway but out on the road, because the driveway was completely blocked by a dunghill five feet high.

It was even impossible to walk round it without it sticking to one’s shoes. I crabbed sideways with my suitcase to the door, and Owen drove off to find somewhere else to park.

Inside, on the mat, I found the delivery note. A postcard handwritten in ball point capitals, short and unsweet.

Charming little gesture. Hardly original, but disturbing all the same, because it spoke so eloquently of the hatred prompting it.

Felicity, I wondered?

There was something remarkably familiar about the consistency of the load. A closer look revealed half rotted horse droppings mixed with a little straw and a lot of sawdust. Straight from a stable muck heap, not from a garden supplier: and if it looked exactly like Jody’s own familiar muck heap, that wasn’t in itself conclusive. I dared say one vintage was much like another.

Owen came trudging back and stared at the smelly obstruction in disgust.

‘If I hadn’t been using the car to go home, like you said, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the garage this morning to fetch you.’

‘When was it dumped?’

‘I was here yesterday morning, sir. Keeping an eye on things. Then this morning I called round to switch on the central heating, and there it was.’

I showed him the card. He looked, read, wrinkled his nose in distaste, but didn’t touch.

‘There’ll be fingerprints on that, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Do you think it’s worth telling the police?’ I asked dubiously.

‘Might as well, sir. You never know, this nutter might do something else. I mean, whoever went to all this trouble is pretty sick.’

‘You’re very sensible, Owen.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

We went indoors and I summoned the constabulary, who came in the afternoon, saw the funny side of it, and took away the card in polythene.

‘What are we going to do with the bloody stuff?’ said Owen morosely. ‘No one will want it on their flower beds, it’s bung full of undigested hay seeds and that means weeds.’

‘We’ll shift it tomorrow.’

‘There must be a ton of it.’ He frowned gloomily.

‘I didn’t mean spadeful by spadeful,’ I said. ‘Not you and I. We’ll hire a grab.’

Hiring things took the rest of the day. Extraordinary what one could hire if one tried. The grab proved to be one of the easiest on a long list.

At about the time merchant bankers could reasonably be expected to be reaching for their hats, I telephoned to Charlie.

‘Are you going straight home?’ I asked.

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Care for a drink?’

‘On my way,’ he said.

When he arrived, Owen took his Rover to park it and Charlie stood staring at the muck heap, which looked no more beautiful under the street lights and was moreover beginning to ooze round the edges.

‘Someone doesn’t love me,’ I said with a grin. ‘Come on in and wipe your feet rather thoroughly on the mat.’

‘What a stink.’

‘Lavatory humour,’ I agreed.

He left his shoes alongside mine on the tray of newspaper Owen had prudently positioned near the front door and followed me upstairs in his socks.

‘Who?’ he said, shaping up to a large scotch.

‘A shit is what Jody’s wife Felicity called me after Sandown.’

‘Do you think she did it?’

‘Heaven knows. She’s a capable girl.’

‘Didn’t anyone see the... er... delivery?’

‘Owen asked the neighbours. No one saw a thing. No one ever does, in London. All he discovered was that the muck wasn’t there at seven yesterday evening when the man from two doors along let his labrador make use of my fuchsia tubs.’

He drank his whisky and asked what I’d done in Miami. I couldn’t stop the smile coming. ‘Besides that,’ he said.

‘I bought a horse.’

‘You’re a glutton for punishment.’

‘An understudy,’ I said, ‘for Energise.’

‘Tell all to your Uncle Charlie.’

I told, if not all, most.

‘The trouble is though, that although we must be ready for Saturday at Stratford, he might choose Nottingham on Monday or Lingfield on Wednesday,’ I said.

‘Or none of them.’

‘And it might freeze.’

‘How soon would we know?’ Charlie asked.

‘He’ll have to declare the horse to run four days before the race, but he then has three days to change his mind and take him out again. We wouldn’t know for sure until the runners are published in the evening papers the day before. And even then we need the nod from Bert Huggerneck.’

He chuckled. ‘Bert doesn’t like the indoor life. He’s itching to get back on the racecourse.’

‘I hope he’ll stick to the shop.’

‘My dear fellow!’ Charlie lit a cigar and waved the match. ‘Bert’s a great scrapper by nature and if you could cut him in on the real action he’d be a lot happier. He’s taken a strong dislike to Ganser Mays, and he says that for a capitalist you didn’t seem half bad. He knows there’s something afoot and he said if there’s a chance of anyone punching Ganser Mays on the long bleeding nose he would like it to be him.’

I smiled at the verbatim reporting. ‘All right. If he really feels like that, I do indeed have a job for him.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Directing the traffic.’

He puffed at the cigar. ‘Do you know what your plan reminds me of?’ he said. ‘Your own Rola toys. There you are, turning the single handle, and all the little pieces will rotate on their spindles and go through their allotted acts’.

‘You’re no toy,’ I said.

‘Of course I am. But at least I know it. The real trick will be programming the ones who don’t.’

‘Do you think it will all work?’

He regarded me seriously. ‘Given ordinary luck, I don’t see why not.’

‘And you don’t have moral misgivings?’

His sudden huge smile warmed like a fire. ‘Didn’t you know that merchant bankers are pirates under the skin?’

Charlie took Wednesday off and we spent the whole day prospecting the terrain. We drove from London to New-bury, from Newbury to Stratford on Avon, from Stratford to Nottingham, and from Nottingham back to Newbury. By that time the bars were open, and we repaired to the Chequers for revivers.

‘There’s only the one perfect place,’ Charlie said, ‘and it will do for both Stratford and Nottingham.’

I nodded. ‘By the fruit stall.’

‘Settle on that, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if he isn’t down to run at either of those courses we spend Sunday surveying the road to Lingfield?’

‘Right.’

He smiled vividly. ‘I haven’t felt so alive since my stint in the army. However this turns out, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

His enthusiasm was infectious and we drove back to London in good spirits.

Things had noticeably improved in the garden. The muck heap had gone and Owen had sloshed to some effect with buckets of water, though without obliterating the smell. He had also stayed late, waiting for my return. All three of us left our shoes in the hall and went upstairs.

‘Too Japanese for words,’ Charlie said.

‘I stayed, sir,’ Owen said, ‘because a call came from America.’

‘Miss Ward?’ I said hopefully.

‘No, sir. About a horse. It was a shipping firm. They said a horse consigned to you would be on a flight to Gatwick Airport tonight as arranged. Probable time of arrival, ten a.m. tomorrow morning. I wrote it down.’ He pointed to the pad beside the telephone. ‘But I thought I would stay in case you didn’t see it. They said you would need to engage transport to have the horse met.’

‘You,’ I said, ‘will be meeting it.’

‘Very good, sir,’ he said calmly.

‘Owen,’ Charlie said, ‘if he ever kicks you out, come to me.’

We all sat for a while discussing the various arrangements and Owen’s part in them. He was as eager as Charlie to make the plan work, and he too seemed to be plugged into some inner source of excitement.

‘I’ll enjoy it, sir,’ he said, and Charlie nodded in agreement. I had never thought of either of them as being basically adventurous and I had been wrong.

I was wrong also about Bert Huggerneck, and even in a way about Allie, for they too proved to have more fire than reservations.

Charlie brought Bert with him after work on Thursday and we sat round the kitchen table poring over a large scale map.

‘That’s the A34,’ I said, pointing with a pencil to a red line running south to north. ‘It goes all the way from Newbury to Stratford. For Nottingham, you branch off just north of Oxford. The place we’ve chosen is some way south of that. Just here...’ I marked it with the pencil. ‘About a mile before you reach the Abingdon bypass.’

‘I know that bleeding road,’ Bert said. ‘Goes past the Harwell atomic.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah. I’ll find that. Easy as dolly-birds.’

‘There’s a roadside fruit stall there,’ I said. ‘Shut, at this time of year. A sort of wooden hut.’

‘Seen dozens of ’em,’ Bert nodded.

‘It has a good big space beside it for cars.’

‘Which side of the road?’

‘On the near side, going north.’

‘Yeah. I get you.’

‘It’s on a straight stretch after a fairly steep hill. Nothing will be going very fast there. Do you think you could manage?’

‘Here,’ he complained to Charlie. ‘That’s a bleeding insult.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Is that all I do, then? Stop the bleeding traffic?’ He sounded disappointed; and I’d thought he might have needed to be persuaded.

‘No,’ I said. ‘After that you do a lot of hard work extremely quickly.’

‘What, for instance?’

When I told him, he sat back on his chair and positively beamed.

‘That’s more bleeding like it,’ he said. ‘Now that’s a daisy, that is. Now you might think I’m slow on my feet, like, with being big, but you’d be bleeding wrong.’

‘I couldn’t do it at all without you.’

‘Hear that?’ he said to Charlie.

‘It might even be true,’ Charlie said.

Bert at that point described himself as peckish and moved in a straight line to the store cupboard. ‘What’ve you got here, then? Don’t you ever bleeding eat? Do you want this tin of ham?’

‘Help yourself,’ I said.

Bert made a sandwich inch-deep in mustard and ate it without blinking. A couple of cans of beer filled the cracks.

‘Can I chuck the betting shop, then?’ he asked between gulps.

‘What have you learned about Ganser Mays?’

‘He’s got a bleeding nickname, that’s one thing I’ve learned. A couple of smart young managers run his shops now, you’d never know they was the same place. All keen and sharp and not a shred of soft heart like my old boss.’

‘A soft-hearted bookmaker?’ Charlie said. ‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Trouble was,’ Bert said, ignoring him, ‘he had a bleeding soft head and all.’

‘What is Ganser Mays’ nickname?’ I asked.

‘Eh? Oh yeah. Well, these two smart alecs, who’re sharp enough to cut themselves, they call him Squeezer. Squeezer Mays. When they’re talking to each other, of course, that is.’

‘Squeezer because he squeezes people like your boss out of business?’

‘You don’t hang about, do you? Yeah, that’s right. There’s two sorts of squeezer. The one they did on my boss, telling him horses were fixed to lose when they wasn’t. And the other way round, when the smart alecs know a horse that’s done no good before is fixed to win. Then they go round all the little men putting thousands on, a bit here and a bit there, and all the little men think it’s easy pickings because they think the bad horse can’t win in a month of bleeding Sundays. And then of course it does, and they’re all down the bleeding drain.’

‘They owe Ganser Mays something like the National Debt.’

‘That’s right. And they can’t raise enough bread. So then Mr pious bleeding Mays comes along and says he’ll be kind and take the shop to make up the difference. Which he does.’

‘I thought small bookies were more clued up nowadays,’ I said.

‘You’d bleeding well think so, wouldn’t you? They’ll tell you they are, but they bleeding well aren’t. Oh sure, if they find afterwards there’s been a right fiddle, like, they squeal blue murder and refuse to pay up, but take the money in the first place, of course they do. Like bleeding innocent little lambs.’

‘I don’t think there would be any question of anyone thinking it a fiddle, this time, I said.

‘There you are, then. Quite a few would all of a bleeding sudden be finding they were swallowed up by that smarmy bastard. Just like my poor old boss.’

I reflected for a minute or two. ‘I think it would be better if you stayed in the betting shop until we’re certain which day the horse is going to run. I don’t imagine they would risk letting him loose without backing him, so we must suppose that his first race is it. But if possible I’d like to be sure. And you might hear something, if you’re still in the shop.’

‘Keep my ears flapping, you mean?’

‘Absolutely. And eyes open.’

‘Philby won’t have nothing on me,’ Bert said.

Charlie stretched out to the makings of the sandwich and assembled a smaller edition for himself.

‘Now, transport,’ I said. ‘I’ve hired all the vehicles we need from a firm in Chiswick. I was there this morning, looking them over. Owen took a Land-Rover and trailer from there to Gatwick to meet Black Fire and ferry him to his stable, and he’s coming back by train. Then there’s the caravan for you, Charlie, and the car to pull it. Tomorrow Owen is driving those to Reading and leaving them in the station car park, again coming back by train. I got two sets of keys for the car and caravan, so I’ll give you yours now.’ I went through to the sittingroom and came back with the small jingling bunch. ‘Whichever day we’re off, you can go down to Reading by train and drive from there.’

‘Fine,’ Charlie said, smiling broadly.

‘The caravan is one they hire out for horse shows and exhibitions and things like that. It’s fitted out as a sort of office. No beds or cookers, just a counter, a couple of desks, and three or four folding chairs. Owen and I will load it with all the things you’ll need before he takes it to Reading.’

‘Great.’

‘Finally there’s the big van for Owen. I’ll bring that here tomorrow and put the shopping in it. Then we should be ready.’

‘Here,’ said Bert. ‘How’s the cash, like?’

‘Do you want some, Bert?’

‘It’s only, well, seeing as how you’re hiring things left right and centre, well, I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to hire a car for me too, like. Because my old banger isn’t all that bleeding reliable, see? I wouldn’t like to miss the fun because of a boiling bleeding radiator or some such.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Much safer.’ I went back to the sitting-room, fetched some cash, and gave it to Bert.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘I don’t need that much. What do you think I’m going to hire, a bleeding golden coach?’

‘Keep it anyway.’

He looked at me dubiously. ‘I’m not doing this for bread, mate.’

I felt humbled. ‘Bert... Give me back what you don’t use. Or send it to the Injured Jockeys’ Fund.’

His face lightened. ‘I’ll take my old boss down the boozer a few times. Best bleeding charity there is!’

Charlie finished his sandwich and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief. ‘You won’t forget the sign-writing, will you?’ he said.

‘I did it today,’ I assured him. ‘Want to see?’

We trooped down to the workshop, where various painted pieces of the enterprise were standing around drying.

‘Blimey,’ Bert said. ‘They look bleeding real.’

‘They’d have to be,’ Charlie nodded.

‘Here,’ Bert said, ‘seeing these makes it seem, well, if it’s all going to happen.’

Charlie went home to a bridge-playing wife in an opulent detached in Surrey and Bert to the two-up two-down terraced he shared with his fat old mum in Staines. Some time after their departure I got the car out and drove slowly down the M4 to Heathrow.

I was early. About an hour early. I had often noticed that I tended to arrive prematurely for things I was looking forward to, as if by being there early one could make them happen sooner. It worked in reverse that time. Allie’s aeroplane was half an hour late.

‘Hi,’ she said, looking as uncrushed as if she’d travelled four miles, not four thousand. ‘How’s cold little old England?’

‘Warmer since you’re here.’

The wide smile had lost none of its brilliance, but now there was also a glow in the eyes, where the Miami sun shone from within.

‘Thanks for coming,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t miss this caper for the world.’ She gave me a kiss full of excitement and warmth. ‘And I haven’t told my sister I’m coming.’

‘Great,’ I said with satisfaction; and took her home to the flat.

The change of climate was external. We spent the night, our first together, warmly entwined under a goosefeather quilt: more comfortable, more relaxed and altogether more cosy than the beach or the fishing boat or my hotel bedroom on an air-conditioned afternoon in Miami.

We set off early next morning while it was still dark, shivering in the chill January air and impatient for the car heater to make an effort. Allie drove, concentrating fiercely on the left-hand business, telling me to watch out that she didn’t instinctively turn the wrong way at crossings. We reached the fruit stall on the A34 safely in two hours and drew up there in the wide sweep of car-parking space. Huge lorries ground past on the main route from the docks at Southampton to the heavy industry area at Birmingham; a road still in places too narrow for its traffic.

Each time a heavy truck breasted the adjoining hill and drew level with us, it changed its gears, mostly with a good deal of noise. Allie raised her voice. ‘Not the quietest of country spots.’

I smiled. ‘Every decibel counts.’

We drank hot coffee from a thermos flask and watched the slow grey morning struggle from gloomy to plain dull.

‘Nine o’clock,’ said Allie, looking at her watch. ‘The day sure starts late in these parts.’

‘We’ll need you here by nine,’ I said.

‘You just tell me when to start.’

‘Okay.’

She finished her coffee. ‘Are you certain sure he’ll come this way?’

‘It’s the best road and the most direct, and he always does.’

‘One thing about having an ex-friend for an enemy,’ she said. ‘You know his habits.’

I packed away the coffee and we started again, turning south.

‘This is the way you’ll be coming,’ I said. ‘Straight up the A34.’

‘Right.’

She was driving now with noticeably more confidence, keeping left without the former steady frown of anxiety. We reached a big crossroads and stopped at the traffic lights. She looked around and nodded. ‘When I get here, there’ll only be a couple of miles to go.’

We pressed on for a few miles, the road climbing and descending over wide stretches of bare downlands, bleak and windy and uninviting.

‘Slow down a minute,’ I said. ‘See that turning there, to the left? That’s where Jody’s stables are. About a mile along there.’

‘I really hate that man,’ she said.

‘You’ve never met him.’

‘You don’t have to know snakes to hate them.’

We went round the Newbury by-pass, Allie screwing her head round alarmingly to learn the route from the reverse angle.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘Still the A34. Signposts to Winchester. But we don’t go that far.’

‘Right.’

Through Whitchurch, and six miles beyond we took a narrow side road on the right, and in a little while turned into the drive of a dilapidated looking country house with a faded paint job on a board at the gate.

I had chosen it from an advertisement in the Horse and Hound because of its location, to make the drive from there to the fruit stall as simple as possible for Allie, but now that I saw it, I had sinking doubts.

There was an overall air of life having ended, of dust settling, weeds growing, wood rotting and hope dead. Exaggerated, of course. Though the house indoors smelt faintly of fungus and decay, the proprietors were still alive. They were two much-alike sisters, both about seventy, with thin wiry bodies dressed in jodhpurs, hacking jackets and boots. They both had kind faded blue eyes, long strong lower jaws, and copious iron grey hair in businesslike hairnets.

They introduced themselves as Miss Johnston and Mrs Fairchild-Smith. They were glad to welcome Miss Ward. They said they hoped her stay would be comfortable. They never had many guests at this time of year. Miss Ward’s horse had arrived safely the day before and they were looking after him.

‘Yourselves?’ I asked doubtfully.

‘Certainly, ourselves.’ Miss Johnston’s tone dared me to imply they were incapable. ‘We always cut back on staff at this time of year.’

They took us out to the stables, which like everything else were suffering from advancing years and moreover appeared to be empty. Among a ramshackle collection of wooden structures whose doors any self-respecting toddler could have kicked down, stood three or four brick-built boxes in a sturdy row; in one of these we found Black Fire.

He stood on fresh straw. There was clean water in his bucket and good-looking hay in his net, and he had his head down to the manger, munching busily at oats and bran. All too clear to see where any profits of the business disappeared: into the loving care of the customers.

‘He looks fine,’ I said, and to myself, with relief, confirmed that he really was indeed the double of Energise, and that in the warm distant Miami night I hadn’t been mistaken.

Allie cleared her throat. ‘Er... Miss Johnston, Mrs Fairchild-Smith... Tomorrow morning I may be taking Black Fire over to some friends, to ride with them. Would that be okay?’

‘Of course,’ they said together.

‘Leaving at eight o’clock?’

‘We’ll see he’s ready for you, my dear,’ said Miss Johnston.

‘I’ll let you know for sure when I’ve called my friends. If I don’t go tomorrow, it may be Monday, or Wednesday.’

‘Whenever you say, my dear.’ Miss Johnston paused delicately. ‘could you give us any idea how long you’ll be staying?’

Allie said without hesitation. ‘I guess a week’s board would be fair, both for Black Fire and me, don’t you think? We may not be here for all of seven days, but obviously at this time of year you won’t want to be bothered with shorter reservations.’

The sisters looked discreetly pleased and when Allie produced cash for the bulk of the bill in advance, a faint flush appeared on their thin cheeks and narrow noses.

‘Aren’t they the weirdest?’ Allie said as we drove out of the gates. ‘And how do you shift these damned gears?’

She sat this time at the wheel of the Land-Rover I’d hired from Ghiswick, learning her way round its unusual levers.

‘That one with the red knob engages four-wheeled drive, and the yellow one is for four ultra-low gears, which you shouldn’t need as we’re not aiming to cross ploughed fields or drag tree stumps out of the ground.’

‘I wouldn’t rule them out when you’re around.’

She drove with growing ease, and before long we returned to hitch on the two-horse trailer. She had never driven with a trailer before and reversing, as always, brought the worst problems. After a fair amount of swearing on all sides and the best part of an hour’s trundling around Hampshire she said she guessed she would reach the fruit stall if it killed her. When we returned to Hantsford Manor after refuelling she parked with the Land-Rover’s nose already facing the road, so that at least she wouldn’t louse up the linkage, as she put it, before she’d even started.

‘You’ll find the trailer a good deal heavier with a horse in it,’ I said.

‘You don’t say.’

Without encountering the sisters we returned to Black Fire, and I produced from an inner pocket a hair-cutting gadget in the form of a razor blade incorporated into a comb.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ Allie said.

‘If the two old girls materialise, keep them chatting,’ I said. ‘I’m just helping the understudy to look like the star.’

I went into the box and as calmly as possible approached Black Fire. He wore a head collar, but was not tied up, and the first thing I did was attach him to the tethering chain. I ran my hand down his neck and patted him a few times and said a few soothing nonsenses. He didn’t seem to object to my presence, so rather gingerly I laid the edge of the hair-cutting comb against his black coat.

I had been told often that nervous people made horses nervous also. I wondered if Black Fire could feel my fumbling inexperience. I thought that after all this I would really have to spend more time with horses, that owning them should entail the obligation of intimacy.

His muscles twitched. He threw his head up and down. He whinneyed. He also stood fairly still, so that when I’d finished my delicate scraping he had a small bald patch on his right shoulder, the same size and in the same place as the one on Energise.

Allie leant her elbows on the closed bottom half of the stable door and watched through the open top half.

‘Genius,’ she said smiling, ‘Is nine tenths an infinite capacity for taking pains.’

I straightened, grinned, patted Black Fire almost familiarly, and shook my head. ‘Genius is infinite pain,’ I said. ‘I’m happy. Too bad.’

‘How do you know, then? About genius being pain?’

‘Like seeing glimpses of a mountain from the valley.’

‘And you’d prefer to suffer on the peaks?’

I let myself out of the loose box and carefully fastened all the bolts.

‘You’re either issued with climbing boots, or you aren’t,’ I said. ‘You can’t choose. Just as well.’

The sisters reappeared and invited us to take sherry: a double thimbleful in unmatched cut glasses. I looked at my watch and briefly nodded, and Allie asked if she might use the telephone to call the friends.

In the library, they said warmly. This way. Mind the hole in the carpet. Over there, on the desk. They smiled, nodded and retreated.

Beside the telephone stood a small metal box with a stuck-on notice. Please pay for calls. I dialled the London number of the Press Association and asked for the racing section.

‘Horses knocked out of the novice hurdle at Stratford?’ said a voice. ‘Well, I suppose so, but we prefer people to wait for the evening papers. These enquiries waste our time.’

‘Arrangements to make as soon as possible...’ I murmured.

‘Oh, all right. Wait a sec. Here we are...’ He read out about seven names rather fast. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes, thank you very much,’ I said.

I put down the telephone slowly, my mouth suddenly dry. Jody had declared Padellic as a Saturday Stratford runner three days ago. If he had intended not to go there, he would have had to remove his name by a Friday morning deadline of eleven o’clock...

Eleven o’clock had come and gone. None of the horses taken out of the novice hurdle had been Padellic.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He runs tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ Allie’s eyes were wide. ‘Oh golly!’