Bloodline

Of course I’d been to this cottage many times during the preceding four years, regularly staying overnight whenever I was working at Newmarket or anywhere further north. But I’d been a guest, always sleeping in the spare room. Here I was searching Clare’s own bedroom, pulling open drawers overflowing with what Americans would call ‘intimate apparel’. And intimate it was too. She’d clearly had a fondness for sexy black-lace underwear and I was rather embarrassed to find it.

There was precious little else to find.

Even as a child, Clare had been frugal in the clothes department and her wardrobe, with the exception of the lace undies, was fairly sparse and consisted mostly of jeans, polo shirts, and sleeveless puffer jackets, her usual attire.

There were only a couple of dresses hanging in the closet, one of which she had worn to our parents’ golden wedding party. It was the only time in years I could recall her not wearing trousers, mostly blue denim jeans. She had always tried to avoid occasions where she was expected to dress up.

I knew that coming to her cottage would be difficult but I hadn’t realized just how much I would miss her. Every single thing I touched reminded me of the blissful times I had enjoyed in this place.

My heart ached and ached and ached for her.

I sat down wearily on the side of her bed and longed for her to come back, to be here once more, to laugh, to bounce up the stairs with her endless energy, to be alive again — oh, to be alive again, alive, alive.

The bout of grief lasted ten to fifteen minutes, my body plagued by both pain, and guilt. There was little I could do but let the session take its course with a continuous stream of tears pouring down my cheeks.

In a strange way, the experience made me feel a little better. Perhaps it was the body’s natural healing mechanism at work.

I would have to come back later though, I thought. Her loss was still too recent, too raw and too painful. I simply couldn’t do much sorting of her things at the moment.

I collected the condolence letters, went out to my car and drove away.

I was due to record my tribute to Clare at Newmarket racecourse.

Channel 4 was broadcasting both the Friday and the Saturday of the Cambridgeshire meeting and Thursday was the day that the equipment would be set up in preparation.

The tribute was to be a short piece of me talking straight to camera in front of the Newmarket weighing room, then my voice-over of the four VTs of her major race successes including her two Group One victories, her win in the Northumberland Plate, and also the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot in June when her horse had won by a nose with a perfectly timed late run. Then there was to be another short piece to camera, then more voice-over of her last race on Scusami at Lingfield, with another very short piece to camera to finish. Three minutes and forty-five seconds in total.

I just hoped I would be able to get through it without breaking down.

I parked my car, as always, in the area reserved for the press, and walked through to the Channel 4 scanner, the huge blue truck that was already parked in the fenced-off compound behind the northern grandstand.

The technical team were busy laying thick black cables between the scanner and the signals-relay vehicle that was parked alongside, with its arrays of receiving domes and transmitting dishes on the roof. The images from each of the seven cameras around the racecourse, together with the pick-ups from the numerous microphones, would all be transmitted back here by microwave link ready for mixing in the scanner.

It was also from where the final fusion of sound and pictures was sent via far-away satellite to the Channel 4 main studios in London for broadcast through the ether to people’s televisions at home. And all in the blink of an eye, or maybe two blinks.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Neville, the Channel 4 Racing producer.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ I said, taking in a deep breath.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Neville said. ‘And we can always do it again.’

Yes, I thought. Thank goodness it wasn’t going out live.

But I needn’t have worried. As soon as the camera’s Cyclops-like lens pointed my way outside the weighing room, my professional instincts took over and I managed to do all the straight-to-camera pieces in just one take.

Afterwards, I sat in the scanner for over an hour putting together the whole thing, editing the VTs and doing the voice-overs, shuffling things around until both Neville and I were happy with the final tribute. I played it right through from start to finish and, once more, it made me close to tears. I hoped that it might have the same effect on those who watched it on Saturday.

By the time I emerged from the scanner into a light September drizzle, the Thursday afternoon races were well under way. But I’d had enough for one day and decided to take myself off home to Edenbridge. If I was lucky, I’d get round the M25 before the rush-hour.

Mitchell Stacey was waiting for me in the car park.