Bloodline

Of course, I remembered getting an invitation to buy tickets for the event but, as usual, I had left it so late before deciding that all the spaces had already gone.

‘And the group had included a Mr Reg Nicholl, an ex police superintendent who, I understand, is now the head of the racing security services. It was he who confirmed the identity of Miss Shillingford.’

‘I still can’t understand what she was doing there in the first place,’ I said, ‘let alone having booked a room. I feel this is just a huge mistake and Clare is home safe in Newmarket.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not a mistake, sir. It would appear that your sister turned up at the hotel without having made a reservation. There had been a cancellation and Miss Shillingford checked in using her credit card at...’ He consulted his notebook. ‘...ten twenty p.m.’

An hour and ten minutes after leaving me. She must have gone almost straight from Haxted Mill to the hotel. But why?

In the end it was decided that James would go with Detective Sergeant Sharp to perform the gruesome task of making a formal identification, and Nicholas would go with him for support.

I couldn’t decide whether I should go as well. Part of me really wanted to, in order to see Clare for one last time, but I was frightened. Fifteen floors was a long way down and I didn’t like to think about what the impact might have done to her. But equally I was distressed by my memory of the last time I had seen her alive, staring straight ahead in anger as she had driven away from the restaurant.

The afternoon dragged by with my mother taking herself off to bed while my father wore a groove in the carpet endlessly pacing up and down in the drawing room. Helen and Angela, meanwhile, adjourned to the kitchen to find us all something to eat and I settled down in the small sitting room on my own to watch the racing on Channel 4 from Newmarket and Newbury.

The programme started with a short tribute to Clare, showing video clips of her winning many races on a variety of horses. The flags at Newmarket racecourse were flying at half mast and there was even a minute’s silence before the first race, with some racegoers shown clearly in tears.

I watched the races but less than half my mind was on the action. I kept coming back to the same questions. Why had Clare gone to a hotel in central London? And why had she killed herself?

So distracted was I that I only remembered my hundred pound bet on Raised Heartbeat as the horse was being loaded into the stalls at Newbury. As I had predicted last evening, his price had shortened from thirteen-to-two to five-to-one but, with my computer still at my flat, it was too late now to lay the horse on the internet exchanges. My money would just have to take its chances on the nose.

The horses broke from the stalls in an even line and I found myself commentating on the race inside my head. However, as was always the case, my eye was drawn unintentionally towards the horse I had backed. It was why I almost never had a bet in those races on which I was commentating, it was simply too distracting.

Raised Heartbeat lived up to his name, lifting my own pulse a notch or two as he fought out a tight finish with the favourite, only going down to defeat in the final stride.

My hundred pounds was lost, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to the greater loss of my twin sister.

I sat there alone for quite a while and wept.

I cried in grief, but also I cried in frustration. Death was so final, so permanent. There was no ‘undo’ button like there was on my computer.

Why, oh why, hadn’t I answered the phone when Clare had called me? Perhaps I could have prevented this disaster.

Stephen and Tracy arrived from Saint-Tropez at four o’clock, just as James and Nicholas returned from the mortuary looking drawn and shell-shocked.

I didn’t need to ask how it had been and I was suddenly thankful that I’d decided not to go with them.

James just nodded at me before disappearing into the cloakroom. I wondered if he was going to be sick.

‘Bloody awful,’ said Nicholas. ‘Literally bloody awful. But it was her. No mistake.’

I hadn’t really expected there to be a mistake but the confirmation of what we already knew was, nevertheless, another cause of distress, especially to my mother who had come down to greet the new arrivals.

We sat once more in the drawing room, this time for some tea, except that my father refused to sit down, again pacing back and forth near the French windows.

None of us could imagine why Clare would have taken her own life. We speculated over what might have been troubling her but came up short of providing any answers.

‘I absolutely refuse to believe she committed suicide,’ said my father resolutely. ‘It had to have been an accident.’

‘Or murder,’ said Stephen.

Everyone looked at him; even my father ceased his pacing.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to kill our Clare? Everyone loved her.’