they were joined by an escaped Chisolm trailing her lead.
‘Punch the air with your fist, Etta,’ exhorted Dora.
Amber was too cool to betray her elation. Think of winning like this every day.
‘Good horse,’ she drawled to Etta. ‘I’d like to ride her again.’ Carefully Tilda pieced together Alan’s betting slip and handed it back to him. Shagger was livid.
‘Why didn’t you tell me she had a chance?’
Rupert’s irritation with Dora, on the other hand, evaporated as ecstatic punters mobbed him, thanking him for tipping the winner.
‘We must get another horse,’ said Joey as he and Woody led back Crowie and Doggie.
Etta received £100 as the winning owner, which she split with her jockey and her trainer, then spent her share on champagne, which was drunk in the Fox that evening out of Mrs Wilkinson’s splendid silver cup. She was also presented with a video of the race, which when shown on the pub’s big screen flabbergasted everyone. Most horses slow up to jump but Mrs Wilkinson, once she got going, made up a length with every fence, skimming them like a swallow to land running and carry on.
They also noticed how beautifully Amber rode, not bobbing about like many women but crouched down over Mrs Wilkinson like a man, like her father Billy, knowing exactly how to take her weight off a horse in the air.
Everyone in Willowwood except an outraged Shagger seemed to have backed her. Etta had made £1,800, Woody £600. Joey, who’d perilously risked half Valent’s workmen’s wages, had pulled in enough to buy another horse, although he wasn’t telling Mop Idol.
Alan and Alban had also bet heavily and were thrilled to pay off their credit card bills. Direct Debbie and the Major had both made £300 but weren’t telling each other. The vicar’s street cred had rocketed because his prayers for Mrs Wilkinson had been answered. Old Mrs Malmesbury had put on a fiver, which would enable her to buy a new goose for her poor blind gander.
‘What’s this about an Indian in a turban living at the bottom of your garden?’ she asked Ione and Debbie.
‘Not an Indian turban, a wind turbine,’ explained Ione.
‘Turban, turbine, all the same thing. Too many foreigners.’ Ione’s eyes met Debbie’s and they managed not to laugh, happy to be friends.
Toby and Phoebe, who’d borrowed a fiver off Tilda which she’d never repay, were peeved because they’d only got their money on at 4–1.
As a result of Dora’s publicity skills, Rupert’s tipping an outsider, Amber’s glamour and famous name, and Mrs Wilkinson’s romantic rescue in the snow, the story made most of the papers.
Martin Bancroft was not pleased:
‘At least donate your winnings to the Sampson Bancroft Fund, Mother, we’ve got lots of bills to pay. So insensitive to call yourself Mrs Etta rather than Mrs Sampson Bancroft in the race card. Dad would have been so hurt and we need all the publicity we can get.’
‘And the pushiest of them all is charity,’ observed Alan.
The rest of Willowwood, on the other hand, were enraptured. A move was definitely afoot to form a syndicate.
Etta, however, was feeling so depressed she was grateful to be invited by Painswick, flush from her £150 win, to share a celebratory drink the following evening.
Painswick was particularly excited because Hengist Brett-Taylor had rung, asking her to pass on his congratulations. Etta once more admired handsome Hengist and his greyhound, Elaine, in the framed school photograph on the wall. Dora, Paris, Amber, Xavier Campbell-Black and right at the back a youth with rumpled dark curls who was blatantly smoking a cigarette were also pointed out to her.
‘That’s Cosmo Rannaldini, the late Sir Roberto and Dame Hermione Harefield’s son, so naughty but such a charmer. He owns several racehorses.’
After a second glass of champagne, Etta unbuttoned not just about Martin’s bullying but how worried sick she was. If Wilkie went into training, she’d have to have a DNA test to find who her sire and dam were.
‘She must have some excellent blood,’ said Painswick, who was now knitting Mrs Wilkinson a warm red hood for next autumn.
‘Her owners might claim her back,’ said Etta despairingly, ‘and what trainer shall we use? Harvey-Holden wrote me such a nice letter and he’s rebuilding his yard. Wilkie might do better with just a few horses and Marius just looks so cross. Oh Joyce,’ she took a gulp of champagne, ‘Wilkie looked so sweet lying down in her stable last night. She was so tired after hacking home yet so happy at