Bloodline

I tried my best to climb away from him but, for all my efforts, I only managed to slide even closer.

Brendan was smiling again. He was sure he had me now.

But not if I could help it.

As he swung the metal pole at me I purposely leaned forward into it, taking a heavy blow on my left wrist, which made my whole left arm go numb.

However, at the same time, I grabbed the pole firmly with my right hand, and pulled hard.

Just as it had done with me earlier, it caught Brendan unawares.

He should have let go.

Even so, he would probably have been all right if the grandstand roof had been flat at the front edge, enabling him to have a steady stance. But it wasn’t. The slope meant that he was leaning forward slightly anyway, and now my sharp tug on the pole had him reeling over the abyss.

I could see the horror on his face as he pitched forward, grasping desperately for the wire stays that criss-crossed the framework to give it added stiffness.

But he didn’t fall.

The bulk of his body had come over the edge of the roof but it was still supported by the pole that lay underneath him, held up at one end by a wire stay.

The other end of the pole was still in my right hand, and Brendan’s weight was beginning to rotate me alarmingly around the spar.

I looked across at him and he stared back at me, terror deeply etched in his features, a dreadful realization apparent in his eyes — his zombie eyes.

I thought of my darling sister Clare, and also of the lovely Emily, and what might have been.

Maybe I could have saved him if I’d wanted to, or maybe I couldn’t.

I’d never know.

I let the pole slip through my fingers, and decided to look upwards at the black sky rather than downwards at the concrete.

I had no wish to witness another of Brendan’s ‘accidents’.

Epilogue

Two months later, on a bright cold morning just two days before Christmas, a thanksgiving service was held for Clare in Ely Cathedral and, this time, I organized everything myself.

The original plan had been to hold it at St Mary’s parish church in Newmarket but, such had been the demand for tickets, somewhere larger had to be found and Ely Cathedral, just half an hour up the road, was perfect.

There is something very grand about our great churches and Ely Cathedral is certainly no exception, sitting as it does on a small mound surrounded by the flatlands of the Fens.

The service matched the surroundings, and, unlike at her funeral, there was lots of live music, with the cathedral choir adding to the splendour.

Geoff Grubb read a lesson, as did James and Stephen, while Angela and I both gave eulogies.

Indeed, the Shillingford family had turned out in force.

Even Joshua, Brendan’s younger brother, was present although Gillian, Brendan’s widow, and their boys were not.

Life for them had been far from easy.

Not only had their father died that night at Kempton, but he had been shown to be a murderer, and the press had not been kind to him.

Toby Woodley may not have been the most popular member of the press, but he was still one of their brotherhood, and the others had devoured his killer like a pack of hungry dogs.

‘You can’t libel the dead,’ Toby had said to me at Stratford races.

So right he was.

Jim Metcalf and his fellow journalists had taken full advantage of that fact, dismantling any semblance of good reputation that Brendan had built up over his years as a trainer.

It had even been widely reported by some that Brendan had been the trainer who had layed his horses to lose, the trainer about whom Toby Woodley had written in the Daily Gazette the previous May.

That, I was sure, had come as a great relief to Austin Reynolds, although both he and I knew it wasn’t true.

The service concluded with a five-minute tribute film to Clare that was shown on big screens set up on either side of the altar, and also on a number of televisions placed down the nave.

The previous week I had spent a whole day in RacingTV’s edit suite in Oxford putting the film together. It started with a montage of photographs of Clare from throughout her life together with some home movies of her riding her pony as a child. Then there was footage of her riding career, including big-race victories intercut with snippets of interviews and celebrations. And, for the soundtrack, I had appropriately chosen the song ‘The Winner Takes It All’ by ABBA.

When I had first played the finished film through to myself it had made me cry, and now, as the music echoed around the arches and vaulted roof of the Norman cathedral, there were many more tears all around me.

But the film wasn’t all doom and gloom. Quite the contrary.

There was laughter too, and spontaneous applause when it finished with a still image of Clare, standing high in her stirrup irons, all smiles and happiness, punching the air having just won a race at Royal Ascot.

I stood under the West Tower shaking hands as the huge congregation spilled out past me through the West Door onto Palace Green.