Bloodline

Nothing prepares a family for death, particularly not for the death of one of its youngest members. But my family had responded in true Shillingford fashion, shouting each other down and refusing to countenance any opinion but their own. Only Nicholas demonstrated any real decorum and, I realized, he was the only one amongst them I actually liked.

I finally escaped from this family hotbed of accusation and blame, using the excuse that there were insufficient bedrooms for us all to stay and, as I lived closest, it was easiest for me to come and go.

So I went, and just as soon as I could.

5

On Monday I went to the races, and back to work. It seemed like the logical thing to do.

I had sat at home alone all day on Sunday feeling miserable, answering the hundreds of e-mails that kindly people had sent and dealing with the fifty or so voice messages on my phones. How I wished Clare had left a message on Friday evening.

Why hadn’t I answered her call?

By Monday morning I’d been desperately in need of some human contact and the thought of going back to my family in Oxted had filled me with horror. So much so that I’d invented a sudden nasty cold in order to escape from them all day on Sunday.

‘Are you sure you can’t come?’ my mother had asked when I’d called early.

‘Quite sure,’ I’d replied while holding my nose. ‘I don’t want to give this cold to Dad.’

I’d been on safe ground. She knew as well as I did that my father was obsessive about avoiding people with colds. Indeed, he was obsessive about lots of things. How she had put up with him for fifty-two years I couldn’t imagine.

‘I didn’t think you’d be here today,’ Derek said from behind me as I climbed the half dozen steps up to RacingTV’s scanner, the blacked-out production truck parked in a compound near the Windsor racecourse stables. ‘I’ve arranged for Iain Ferguson to present.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ I said, turning round. ‘I’ll just help where I can. To be honest I don’t feel up to much anyway.’

‘No,’ said Derek. He paused. ‘Look, mate, I’m really sorry about Clare. I can’t actually believe it.’

‘Thanks, Derek,’ I replied. ‘I can’t believe it either. Half the time I feel that life has to go on as normal and then, the next minute, I wonder why I bother to do anything at all. I think it’s the frustration that’s the worst, frustration that I can’t turn back time, can’t bring her back.’

I was close to tears once more and it showed in my voice. Open displays of emotion could be unsettling, and I could tell that Derek didn’t quite know what to do.

‘It’s OK,’ I said, breathing deeply. ‘You must be busy. You get on.’

‘Right,’ he said, clearly relieved. ‘I had better. Are you coming to the production meeting?’

‘I thought I’d sit in at the back.’

Whether I was working for Channel 4 or for RacingTV, the first task of my day was always to attend the production meeting where the running order for the show was discussed and agreed. The meeting took place in the scanner at least three hours before the broadcast was due to begin.

The producer, Derek in this case, began by handing out the print-out of the draft running order. That afternoon RacingTV was covering all seven races here at Windsor and also seven from Leicester racecourse a hundred or so miles away to the north, the paddock presenter at Leicester joining the meeting via live video link.

The programme was on-air from two o’clock to six, four hours of high-octane adrenalin. If things went wrong and off-script, as they usually did at some point during the afternoon, then we just had to carry on regardless. The thing about live television was that mistakes were history as soon as you made them, there was nothing you could do to unmake the error. There was no saying ‘Let’s do that again’ as you might in a recorded programme where you could do it over and over until it was perfect.

In all, there were three race meetings taking place that afternoon, with Hamilton being broadcast on the other satellite network. Even though a race took place only every half hour at each course, the times were staggered so that across the three meetings a race was due to start every ten minutes from ten past two until five thirty, which was fine as long as all of them went off roughly on time.

If a horse got loose or lost a shoe on the way to the start, or if a stirrup leather or bridle broke, the delay could throw out the whole schedule, resulting in races at different courses running simultaneously. And that gave the producer a big headache.

Added to the actual broadcasting of the races were interviews with winning trainers and jockeys, trophy presentations, video footage of prior races of the main participants, as well as comments from the paddock presenters. And somewhere there also had to be found the time to fit in a set number of advertisement breaks and promos for future race days.