Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,14

her condition and could bring on a severe bout of depression. Currently she was improving, and I was hopeful that she would soon be coming home, until the next attack.

Sophie rode a roller-coaster life with great peaks of mania followed by deep troughs of despair, every cycle seemingly taking her higher and lower than ever before. Between the extremities there were generally periods of calm, rational behavior. These were the good times when we were able to lead a fairly normal married life. Sadly, they were becoming rarer, and shorter.

“Have you been drinking again?” she’d asked accusingly.

I wasn’t an alcoholic. In fact, quite the reverse. I had never drunk to excess, except perhaps an excess of Diet Coke. But Sophie, in her irrational mind, believed absolutely that I lived for alcohol. However, her obsession was probably good for my health, as I now rarely touched the stuff. It made for a quieter life.

I’d had a single beer four hours previously, but I had still promised her that I hadn’t touched a drop. She wouldn’t be convinced.

“You’re always drinking,” she had gone on at full volume down the line. “You won’t come and see me because you’re drunk. Admit it.”

At that point I had come close to telling her that my father had been murdered and I couldn’t come to see her because I was being interviewed by the police. But then she may have become convinced that I was a murderer, and that might have sent her back over the edge of the chasm out of which she was slowly climbing. Better to be thought of as a drunk than a killer.

“I’m sorry,” I’d said, admitting nothing. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”

“I may not be here tomorrow,” she had replied more calmly. It was her way of telling me once again that, one day, she intended to commit suicide. Just a little reminder to me that she believed she was in control of the situation. It was a game we had been playing for at least the past ten years. I had no doubts that she had convinced herself it was true. However, after all this time, I was not so certain. The only occasions I thought she might actually do it were during some of her manic phases when she would imagine she had superhuman powers. One day there might be no one around to prevent her leaping from a window when she was convinced she could fly. It wouldn’t be a true suicide, more like an accident or misadventure.

I, meanwhile, was completely fed up with this half existence. In my darker moments, I had sometimes wondered if suicide would be the only means of escape from it for me too.

The second day of Royal Ascot didn’t quite have the excitement of the first. Murder in the parking lot was the talk of the racetrack, with conspiracy theories running full tilt.

“Did you hear that the victim was someone involved in doping?” I heard one man confidently telling another.

“Really?” replied the second. “Well, you never know what’s going on right under your nose, do you?”

For all I knew, they might have been right. There was scant factual information being given out by the police. Probably, I thought, because they couldn’t be sure of the true identity of the victim, let alone the perpetrator.

Luca and Betsy were surprisingly not at all inquisitive about my rapidly darkening eye. However, they were also suitably sympathetic, which was more than could be said for my fellow bookmakers, or even my clients.

“’Morning, Ned,” said Larry Porter, the bookie on the neighboring pitch. “Did yer missus do that?” He was obviously enjoying my discomfort.

“Good morning to you too, Larry,” I replied. “And, no, I walked into a door.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Pull the other one.”

I felt sorry for people who really had walked into a door. No one must ever believe them.

“Actually, I was mugged,” I said.

“We were all mugged yesterday,” he said, laughing expansively at his little joke, “by the bloody punters.”

“Maybe this punter”—I put my hand to my eye—“wanted more.”

The smile disappeared from his face. “Were you robbed, then?” he asked. Robbery of bookmakers was never a laughing matter in our business.

“No,” I said, thinking fast. I didn’t really want to say that it might have been murder on the mugger’s mind, not robbery. “Seems he was frightened off.”

“Not by your physique, surely,” said Larry, laughing again.

I just smiled at him and let it go. He must have weighed a good eighteen stone,