Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,74

flight. However, two of them were remarkably nimble in spite of these handicaps, and more than once I felt their fingers on my coat. On one occasion I swung my overnight bag at one of chem and was rewarded with an audible grunt.

I tore out of the station and leapt over the pedestrian barrier into the traffic on the Euston Road, dodging buses, cars and taxis as I sprinted for my life. Fortunately for me, a combination of good sense and the timely intervention of a passing police car meant that the chasing pair did not follow me as I weaved across the four lanes and jogged rapidly westward along the pavement, breathing heavily.

I slowed down and laughed out loud in relief. I received a few strange looks from people I passed but, thankfully this time, there was nothing more sinister than amusement in their eyes. I felt on top of the world and I literally skipped along the pavement as I searched the oncoming vehicles for a vacant black cab to take me to Fulham.

Caroline lived in what she described as a lower-ground-floor apartment. Tamworth Street, like many residential streets in west London, was bordered on each side by rows of stucco-fronted terraced town houses built in the 1920s and 30s to house an increasing urban population. Whereas they had originally all been single-family homes, many had since been subdivided into flats as the pressure for accommodation increased further in the latter part of the twentieth century. All along the road the lower-ground-floor flats had been created out or the original ‘below stairs’ areas, where the servants had once tended to the family living above. Access to Caroline’s abode was not through the house’s front door but by way of the old staff entrance, via a gate in the iron railings and down eight or so steps to a small concrete yard below street level.

She opened her door with what appeared to be a squeal of delight and threw her arms round my neck, planting a long welcoming kiss on my lips. If she was having any second thoughts about our relationship, she had a funny way of showing it.

Her flat ran through the house from front to back and had access to a small exterior space at the rear, just big enough for a table and a few chairs.

‘I get the morning sun during the summer,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely little garden. It was the reason I had to have the flat.’

How was it, I thought, that human beings were happy to live so close together in this urban jungle that a table and chairs on a six-foot-square concrete slab constituted a garden to delight in? I was happier with the wide-open spaces of Newmarket Heath, but I knew that I would soon have to move and join the throng in this conurbation if I was to fulfil Mark’s ambition.

The flat itself was modern and minimalist in style with plenty of bare wooden floors and chrome bar stools in the white-fronted fitted kitchen. She had two bedrooms but the smaller of them had been converted into a practice room with a chair and music stand in the centre and piles of sheet music around the walls.

‘Don’t the neighbours object?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she replied rather firmly. ‘I don’t play late at night or before nine in the morning and no one has complained. In fact, the lady upstairs has said how much she loves to listen.’

‘Will you play for me?’ I asked.

‘What, now?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not playing for you until you’ve cooked for me.’

‘That’s not fair. I would have cooked for you during the week if my car hadn’t crashed.’

‘Excuses, excuses,’ she said, laughing.

‘What’s in your fridge?’ I asked her. ‘I’ll cook for you now.’

‘No you won’t,’ she said. ‘We’re going down the pub. I’ve had to bribe the barman to keep us a table.’

Going to the pub with Caroline on a Saturday night was everything I had hoped it would be. The pub in question was The Atlas round the corner in Seagrave Road, and it was packed. Even though she had somehow managed to make a reservation, this was unquestionably a pub and not a restaurant like the Hay Net, our bleached wooden table being underneath the window of the public bar. Caroline sat on an upright wooden chair that reminded me of those at my school, while I fought my way through the crowd at the bar to choose a bottle of Chianti Classico