'You're bloody naive, aren't you? There's nothing to link me to your dishonesty, but plenty to nail you. I took the precaution of paying a thousand pounds cash into your post office account after both Fontwell and Worcester. When, acting out of public duty, I tell my friends at the Jockey Club about the money, and they then take another look at the patrol films of those races, you can wave goodbye to your licence and that darling son of yours. Freddie!' he called out.
'Shh! What the hell do you want to wake him up for?' I asked angrily.
'So you can look at him for the last time. I'm sure my mother will be delighted to let us stay with them pending the court proceedings.'
'You're mad. He's your son as well, you know. Don't you love him too?'
'I suppose so, but to be honest I love myself a great deal more.'
I arrived home from Cheltenham at about six-thirty, to find Freddie still finishing his tea. He was so excited to see me that I put aside my fears and threw myself into playing games with him for the next hour. We were building a space station with his Lego set when the phone rang. It was a man's voice on the line, one I didn't recognise, flat and very matter-of-fact. He asked for Edward Pryde.
'I'm sorry, he's not back from Cheltenham. Can I give him a message?'
There was no response at the other end.
'Hello? Is anyone there? Who is this?' I wasn't in the mood for an obscene phone call or a practical joke.
'My name's not important. You must be Mrs Pryde. I thought you rode a very gutsy race today. A great shame, though, about the result. Could you just tell your husband there are one or two very upset people around who'd like a word with him?'
The line went dead. The vultures were beginning to gather.
The proposed carcass did not arrive home until the early hours of the morning. After putting Freddie to bed I had been inundated with phone calls from friends congratulating me on my victory and journalists trying to obtain further information on the attack in the paddock after the race. I just blamed it all on a disgruntled punter, which in one way of looking at it was true, and said that as far as I was concerned the incident was closed.
I had been in bed for well over two hours, going over the race in my mind again and again to stop me thinking about the confrontation ahead, when I heard the sound of Edward's Jaguar pulling up outside. Through the crack in the curtains I saw the headlights go out. My heartbeat began to quicken as the key turned in the lock of the front door. He usually poured himself a nightcap before coming to bed and I listened for the sound of his footsteps as he walked to the dining-room where the whisky was kept. Only this time there was silence, save for the tick of the alarm clock beside the bed. Edward was down there all right, but where and what he was doing I had no idea. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door, opening it gently, just a little. The light was on in the kitchen and I could hear the kettle puffing as it boiled. Presumably he was making himself a cup of coffee to sober himself up. I went back to bed and waited.
It must have been a good ten minutes before he came up the stairs, taking each step deliberately as if he was afraid of falling over. I thought of getting up and pushing him back down again in the hope he'd break his neck. Death by misadventure they would call it. I just didn't have the courage. He came to a halt outside the door and paused for what seemed an eternity. I could bear it no longer.
'Edward. Is that you?' I asked pointlessly.
He responded by throwing open the door and hurling a pan of boiling water towards me in the bed.
I was lucky he was so drunk. Most of the water hit the wall behind, although some splashed on my shoulder and neck and part of my forehead. I screamed in pain and rushed past him into the bathroom and locked the door. Heart pounding, I listened to see if Freddie had woken up but fortunately there was no sound from him. For the next ten minutes I stood under a cold shower cooling off my shoulder and wondering what I should do next. I decided my only option was to sit on the floor and wait there until Edward had fallen asleep.
About half an hour later, I could make out the sound of snoring. I tiptoed into the spare room, took his shotgun from under the bed and loaded it with two cartridges from the ammunition belt he kept above the wardrobe. I then returned to the bedroom and sat down in the rocking chair beside the window and watched him. If he woke up and threatened me or Freddie I was going to blow him away.
It seemed unlikely to happen. He was out to the world. He lay there in front of me on his back, still in his checked racing suit, his mouth open, occasionally muttering incomprehensible half sentences punctuated by the odd tobacco-inspired cough. It was strange, almost unbelievable, to think that once upon a time I had thought him beautiful and wanted no more than to caress his soft skin and run my fingers through his thick dark curly hair. All I could see now, as I rocked back and forth, was a countenance ravaged by greed and deceit, rounded off by a lascivious mouth, which was about as sensual as an adder's tongue. And I just wished I had enough courage to pull the trigger and shoot him dead.
Despite my attempts to stay awake, I dozed off to a barrage of disjointed dreams and woke up at seven with the loaded shotgun balanced precariously across my knees. Edward was still lying comatose on the bed and at least that meant I could avoid any further scene for a few hours. I certainly didn't delude myself that the boiling water would be his final gesture of frustration and anger. Luckily, I had agreed to school some horses over at Wantage and three quarters of an hour later, after dressing Freddie and leaving him with Mrs Parsons in the village, I arrived at Tom Radcliffe's yard. It was, as usual, bustling with activity and Tom himself was waiting to greet me.
'Hail the conquering hero!' he shouted. 'We were worried that now you've ridden the winner of the Gold Cup you might consider schooling a couple of novice chasers beneath your dignity.'
I grinned. 'Well, I must admit I was tempted to go back to sleep after the butler served me breakfast in bed, but then I thought I'd better help out a poor struggling trainer.'
Tom grinned and hugged me and as he did so I almost burst into tears. He was big and slightly overweight but as strong as an ox, and after what Edward had done I suddenly needed to feel safe.
In fact, Tom was anything but struggling. In the five years he had held a licence he had sent out a continual stream of winners and was now one of the top trainers in the country. What's more, he had achieved his success without the backing of rich parents or social connections.
He'd had a few rides as an apprentice jockey but by his own admission was never very good and had soon given up. It was then he was offered a job as travelling head lad to Ron Cox, who trained over a hundred horses on the flat in Newmarket, and Tom had never looked back. He'd been blessed with a gift for understanding horses and knew exactly what distances and going they preferred but, more importantly, he could tell to the minute when they were right.
In no time at all he had made quite a lot of money by backing Cox's horses and word of his success soon spread around the small world of the racing industry. He then found that he no longer had to risk his own money. Punters were actually putting money on for him in return for information. In his first flat season Tom had won or earned over ?15,000 from betting, but his success was beginning to cause friction between himself and his boss. Word was going around that if you wanted to know how one of the horses from Ron Cox's was likely to run, you asked Tom and not the trainer.
The situation came to a head the following spring in the first big flat race of the season, the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster. Ron had entered a four-year-old bay colt called Tuneful, which Tom had been riding out at home throughout the winter. He could tell that the horse had grown much stronger during the off-season and had been backing it through his punters since early February, when the horse had begun to work well at home. Tom calculated that he would win the best part of ?100,000 if Tuneful did the business, but then two days before the race, Ron declared that the horse wouldn't run because he didn't think that it was fit enough. They had had a stand-up row in the middle of the yard and Tom had taken the liberty of telephoning the horse's owner and offering to refund his entry fee and all of his travelling costs if the horse didn't win. That had been enough to persuade the
