Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,92

… I asked her how she managed to live with the fear … she said if it was fear and Joe against no fear, no Joe, the choice was easy.’

I held her close. I could feel her heart beating.

‘Today I was wandering about, looking at things,’ she said. ‘Wondering if I wanted a life of racecourses and winter and perpetual anxiety … watching you go out on those horses, with you not knowing … and not caring … if it’s going to be your last half-hour ever … and doing that five or six hundred times every year. I looked at the other jockeys on their way out to the parade ring, and they’re all like you … perfectly calm, as if they’re going to an office.’

‘Much better than an office.’

‘Yes, for you.’ She kissed me. ‘You can thank Aunt Casilia for shaming me into going racing again … but most of all, Joe’s wife. I thought today clearly of what life would be like without you … no fear, no Kit … like she said … I guess I’ll take the fear.’

‘And throw up.’

‘Everything up, everything down. She said it was like that for all of the wives, sometime or other. And a few husbands, I guess.’

It was odd, I thought, how life could totally change from one minute to the next. The fog of wretchedness of the past month had vanished like ruptured cobwebs. I felt light-heartedly, miraculously happy, more even than in the beginning. Perhaps one truly had to have lost and regained, to know that sort of joy.

‘You won’t change your mind, will you?’ I said.

‘No, I won’t,’ she answered, and spent a fair time doing her best, in the restricted circumstances, to show me she meant it.

I saw her eventually into the studio and drove back towards Eaton Square on euphoric auto-pilot, returning to earth in time to park carefully and methodically in the usual place in the mews.

I switched off the engine and sat looking vaguely at my hands, sat there for a while thinking of what might lie ahead. Then with a mental shiver I telephoned to the house, and got Litsi immediately, as if he’d been waiting.

‘I’m in the alley,’ I said.

TWENTY

We didn’t know how he would come, or when, or even if.

We’d shown him an opportunity and loaded him with a motive. Given him a time and place when he could remove an immovable obstruction: but whether or not he would accept the circuitous invitation, heaven alone knew.

Henri Nanterre … his very name sounded threatening.

I thought about his being at Windsor and making his way through the crowds on the stands, moving upwards and sideways, approaching Danielle. I thought that until that afternoon he might not have reliably known what she looked like. He’d seen her in the dark the previous Monday, when he’d opened her tyre valves and chased her, but it had been her car he had identified her by, not her face.

He’d probably have seen her with Litsi at Bradbury, but maybe not from close to. He’d have known she was the young woman with Litsi because Beatrice had told him they were going together with me.

Nanterre might not have known that Danielle had gone to Windsor at all until he’d seen her with me several times in the paddock and on the stands during the fourth race. He couldn’t have gone to Windsor with any advance plans, but what he’d meant to do if he’d reached Danielle was anyone’s nightmare.

I was sitting with these thoughts not in my own car but on a foam cushion on the floor inside the garage where Danielle was keeping her little Ford. One of the garage doors was open about a hand’s span, enough for me to see the Mercedes and a good deal of the mews, looking up towards the road entrance. A few people were coming home from work, opening their garages, shunting the cars in, closing and locking. A few were reversing the process, going out for the evening. The mechanics had long gone, all their garages silent. Several cars, like the Mercedes, were narked in the open, close to the sides, leaving a scant passage free in the centre.

Dusk had turned to night, and local bustle died into the restless distant roar of London’s traffic. I sat quietly with a few pre-positioned necessities to hand, like Perrier, smoked salmon and an apple, and rehearsed in my mind all sorts of eventualities, none of which happened.

Every half hour