know what a terrible past she had, her eye gouged out, look at the scars on her body. Someone was obscenely cruel to her, and now you’re being obscenely cruel all over again. There, there, my pet,’ Tommy caught Mrs Wilkinson’s reins. ‘That bloody bridle’s made her mouth bleed, you bastard.’
‘Oh, put a sock in it.’ Eddie pretended to play a violin.
Rafiq’s mood was not improved later in the day when Eddie brought Tommy a bunch of daffodils picked from Rupert’s garden, apologized for upsetting her, and took her off to see the stud and the stallions in her break.
‘They’re so beautiful,’ sighed Tommy as Peppy Koala was led past. ‘Jump horses like Lusty and Sir Cuthbert go on for ages, awful to think flat horses end their glorious careers so early.’
‘I don’t know,’ drawled Eddie, ‘I’d much rather fuck all day than be thrashed within an inch of my life for not running round a racetrack fast enough.’
Rafiq, who was hovering, could see a blush creeping up Tommy’s cheek.
‘Is it easier racing in England?’ she asked.
Eddie grinned. ‘Sure, the horses are slower.’
Meanwhile, every time Dora drove in and out the press accosted her.
‘Which story are you doing? Marius and Amber, Bonny back with Valent, Wilkie and Furious going to Rupert, or Rogue Rogers wrecking his career for love?’
‘All four,’ replied Dora happily.
Chisolm was having a lovely time, her column in the Mirror getting more and more unbridled:
‘Here I am at Penscombe. Never a dull moment. Excellent primroses and violets. Love Rat, Rupert’s top stallion, whinnies to Mrs Wilkinson every time she passes. Furious kicked Rupert’s black Labrador Banquo yesterday. Rupert very cross. Why can’t he talk to the rest of us in the loving, “Come to Daddy” way he talks to his dogs?’
‘Watch it,’ snapped Rupert.
Great reservoirs of rage kept bubbling up over Rogue losing him the Gold Cup and forcing him to sack him. If only he could get him back. Agents were never off the telephone offering him lousy replacements for his three National horses.
Valent and Hengist Brett-Taylor, who was still making his film about Beau Regard, Mrs Wilkinson and the Willowwood legend, kept trying to persuade Rupert to put Rafiq up on Furious. Rupert, however, had been poring over the videos of Rafiq’s races, noting the ones when his horses should have won, and concluded Rafiq was bent. That horse Bullydozer had certainly been nobbled at Leopardstown.
The police had already warned him to watch out.
‘Rafiq’s OK,’ insisted Hengist. ‘He learnt his lesson inside.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Rupert. ‘Bang up heavy-duty villains together, they just learn more skills to continue their villainy.’
Nor was Amber finding it easy at Throstledown. None of the stable staff liked the new hierarchy. Would Miss Toffeenose end up as the boss’s wife?
Her allies, Tommy and Rafiq, had gone to Penscombe. Painswick, who’d been devastated by the departure of Wilkie and Furious, didn’t approve of Amber in Marius’s bed. Wandering down to the yard one morning, Amber found Tresa reading OK! and gossiping to Josh.
‘Amber’s always got to the top on her back,’ she was saying.
‘Rubbish,’ shouted Amber, making them both jump, ‘I got to the top on Wilkie’s back,’ and stormed off upstairs.
Amber found it such a bleak house. Marius, however kind he was to her, was above all a trainer, one-track and focused, who worked a seventeen-hour day, rising at five and not going to bed until after the ten o’clock news. No time really for love. Mistletoe the lurcher, who now shadowed Amber, was her only friend.
Poor Amber was in such a muddle. She was finding the relationship with Marius too frenzied. He was too needing of comfort and he still talked in his sleep about Olivia, whose presence was stamped all over the house.
Then she read, in Katie Nicholl’s column in the Mail on Sunday, that Olivia had been seen this week having a discreet drink with Rogue, and Amber felt the same searing red-hot-poker jab of jealousy. Rogue’s colours were superimposed on her heart rather than the racecourse.
She must get back on a horse. She longed to ride Sir Cuthbert in the National but Lady Crowe had a soft spot for goofy Awesome and insisted he was given the ride on her old horse. Amber had been gutted to be jocked off Wilkie. She couldn’t bear the thought of Eddie Alderton beating her and yanking her around.
Finally, she was sick with worry about her father, who’d told the BBC he couldn’t cover the three days at Aintree but hoped to