High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,55

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.

Hantsford Manor Riding School.

First class instruction. Residential Accommodation.

Ponies and horses for hire or at livery.

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,