farrier’s box, she’d hoovered up the azaleas blooming outside. Now, jumping on to Wilkie’s back, she was wolfing pansies growing in the hanging baskets above the saddling-up boxes. Debbie agreed they were the best hanging baskets she’d ever seen.
137
A terrific tension and feeling of menace was building up. Animal Rights, revving up for Horse Awareness Week, were out for blood. Would they sabotage the race?
The combination of Mrs Wilkinson, Rupert and the possibility of his three-thousandth win had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The bookies had already taken a massive £200 million.
Bafford Playboy, the course specialist, was favourite, particularly as he was being ridden by Killer, who was wearing the gold armband of the jockey with the meeting’s most wins. But with punters worried the fences and the extra weight would be too much for her, Wilkie’s odds had drifted to 20–1.
Many of the vast crowd, fifteen deep round the parade ring and waving ‘Where there’s a Wilkie, there’s a way’ posters and cuddly Wilkinsons and Chisolms, were unhappy and booed Rupert and Valent, shouting at them to give Wilkie back to Marius. They also booed Eddie for replacing Rafiq on Furious.
Their animosity had been exacerbated by Dora’s leak to the press that Etta, whom the crowd loved because she’d rescued Wilkie in the first place, had stayed away because she so disapproved of the move to Rupert and felt Wilkie was far too small for the National.
Unlike a heartbroken Etta, however, Rafiq couldn’t bear to stay away. Disguised as a treader, in woolly hat, gumboots and dark glasses, he had stolen away from the course where he was pretending to replace divots, and joined the crowd round the parade ring.
There was his darling Tommy, proudly leading up Mrs Wilkinson, whose lack of inches nothing emphasized more than Rupert’s dark blue rug with the emerald-green binding almost trailing on the grass.
‘Painswick should have turned it up,’ giggled Dora, who was hanging on to Chisolm. She’d escaped earlier and been found running round the lorry park.
For the first time, Mrs Wilkinson, like Furious, would be running in Valent’s violet and dusty green colours. In defiance, on her quarters, now hidden by the rug, Tommy had imposed a weeping willow.
After the Gold Cup win, Furious was 12–1 and evoking vast interest. He looked both glorious and potentially victorious, but he’d sweated up and as he dragged along Michael Meagan and another of Rupert’s lads, his rolling eyes, eternally searching for Rafiq, showed how unhappy he was.
Rafiq longed to call out, knowing he could calm him in a trice. It was cold comfort that when the arrogant American bastard Eddie came swaggering out, female screams at his beauty were drowned by boos and cries of ‘Bring back Rafiq.’
Amber was panicking again. Even in the paddock she had borrowed Rupert’s mobile and having illicitly rung the hospital had failed to get beyond the switchboard.
‘I don’t want to look at your swine flu website,’ she was yelling, ‘I want to talk to my father, Billy Lloyd-Foxe. I know he’s there. I’m about to ride in the Grand National, yes I bloody am, I want to say goodbye to my father in case I don’t come back.’
‘That’s enough.’ Rupert took the mobile from her.
At least this altercation distracted her from the embarrassment of seeing Marius and Olivia. Olivia, wearing dark glasses and a rather dowdy olive-green suit, which Amber recognized from her wardrobe at Throstledown, clung on to Marius’s arm. She looked tired but so relieved to be back with him, which couldn’t have improved Shade’s temper. Ringed by the orange and magenta backs of the four jockeys riding his horses, Shade and Harvey-Holden had their heads together, plotting devilries and death to Mrs Wilkinson.
Incarcerated at Rupert’s, Mrs Wilkinson hadn’t for ages seen any of her horse friends, except Furious who she loathed. Suddenly, ambling half asleep towards her, his long grey face lengthened by a lack of noseband, came her sugar daddy, Sir Cuthbert. Mrs Wilkinson went crazy, rushed over, nuzzling and nudging, knuckering and exchanging whiskery kisses.
Towed up by Chisolm, Dora turned to Bianca.
‘I wonder if she’s telling Cuthbert Love Rat’s got her up the duff,’ she whispered.