seeing Furious repeat his Larkminster Cup form. They suspended Rafiq for a week for breaching the non-trying rules.
Later Marius returned to the attack.
‘If anyone thinks I encouraged you to pull Furious, I could be banned from entering any horse in a race for forty-two days (which would rule out the Gold Cup and the entire festival), and be fined thirty-five thousand which I can’t bloody afford, so don’t do it again.’
Rafiq felt bitterly ashamed but waited in terror for another telephone call.
118
Alan for once was working flat out. From his study window, over a pile of Wilkie’s cuttings and photographs, he could often see her let out for an hour or two in her New Zealand rug, trailing her devoted entourage through the frosty fields.
He had accepted the fact that his marriage was dead. He hadn’t seen Carrie for days. The hedge fund market was in free fall, Carrie clinging to the wreckage. He was convinced his only happiness lay in running off with Tilda, and he needed to make a massive success of Mrs Wilkinson’s story to fund it.
He knew he was neglecting Trixie and he hardly had time to see Tilda, but he found intense satisfaction in rising at dawn to write, sustained by endless cups of black coffee made on the percolator Tilda had given him for Christmas. He didn’t even slip out to the Wilkinson Arms at lunchtime or in the evening. Alban and Seth missed him dreadfully, and Chris complained his takings had nose-dived.
Adding pieces to the jigsaw, Alan had been digging into Wilkie’s early history, even braving Harvey-Holden.
‘H-H dear boy, I must devote a chapter to Usurper’s leaving her dam and spending time at your yard. It’s all a bit shadowy. Who broke her? You must have had valuable input. I’m determined to portray you in a positive light.’
‘Fuck off,’ said Harvey-Holden, hanging up.
How had she escaped the fire? wondered Alan. Hengist remembered Rafiq being close to Jimmy Wade, one of the Ravenscroft stable lads, when he was in prison, but when Alan asked Rafiq for details Rafiq had also closed up. H-H had such a rapid turnover of staff, most of them foreign, so when they left they disappeared off home. Alan talked to H-H’s ex-wife, who remembered little Usurper as being a poppet, ‘But frankly my mind was on escaping from H-H, not his horses.’
Moving on to the present, they were now a few weeks away from the pinnacle of the National Hunt season – the Cheltenham Festival. After her glorious win in the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day, Mrs Wilkinson was favourite for the Gold Cup. But after every big race the bookies would shuffle the pack and a new challenger would emerge.
It had been a tremendously exciting season, with Killer and Rogue battling to be leading jockey, Shade pouring in more and more to become leading owner, and Marius, Harvey-Holden, Isa Lovell and Dermie O’Driscoll fighting to become leading trainer.
One of the greatest prizes was the Order of Merit series, which awarded a million pounds to the horse that notched up the most points for wins in the biggest races. Mrs Wilkinson, Furious, Ilkley Hall, Bafford Playboy, Internetso, Dermie O’Driscoll’s Squiffey Liffey and Rupert Campbell-Black’s Lusty were all in contention. But as Marius refused to overrace his horses, Wilkie and Furious were unlikely to triumph unless they won the Gold Cup or the National. Fans and press still kept reminding H-H and Shade they had let Mrs Wilkinson slip through their fingers.
The Gold Cup demanded level weights, which meant all horses had to carry 11 stone 10 lb on their backs. This, in turn, meant that Amber, who was light, had to drop into her saddle a deadening amount of lead, which didn’t move and thrust like her body, to be as heavy as the other jockeys.
Mrs Wilkinson had gone up 13 lb in the handicap after the King George at Kempton and another 7 lb after a good win at Warwick. She was therefore in danger of being forced to run only in races carrying weight beyond her strength. Like running a marathon when you’re giving Jude the Obese a piggyback, reflected Alan.
Syndicates, however, become spoilt, and the more Willowwood won, the more they wanted. They were now looking forward to a trip to Leopardstown where a prep race in early February, six weeks before the Gold Cup, would boost both Wilkie’s large Irish fan club and sales of Alan’s book, when it was published. Dora had