Bloodline

And I had. As my sister had so correctly pointed out, I tended to drift rather a lot and I hadn’t actually acquired a proper job since returning from my brief sojourn in Lambourn two years before. Rather, I’d decided to earn my living as a professional gambler and had consequently spent most of my time studying the form. I knew the horses very well.

‘Only for the first race, then,’ the producer had said. ‘I’ve sent for a replacement but he won’t be here until two o’clock.’

I had talked easily to the camera about each horse in the first race and had even tipped the winner. When the replacement had arrived, he’d just sat and watched me all afternoon as I’d tipped the winner in three other races as well.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ the producer had asked as they were packing up.

‘Nothing,’ I’d replied honestly.

‘We’re at Wincanton. Fancy a job?’

Since that day I had never looked back, spreading into commentating again by accident when the race caller at Windsor had been held up by a big crash on the motorway and I had been asked to stand in.

Nowadays I split my time three ways — commentating at the racecourses, paddock presenting for RacingTV, and also hosting the TV coverage on Channel 4, the terrestrial broadcaster of horseracing in Britain.

But Clare firmly believed that I still didn’t have a ‘proper’ job, and that I would soon drift off into something else.

Maybe she was right.

‘I much preferred the old you,’ I said to her.

‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘Don’t start all that again. I live in a competitive world. I have a competitive job. I have to compete. Otherwise I’d be trampled on.’

‘Do you have to compete on everything?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I just feel that, whenever we have a conversation these days, it’s a points scoring exercise.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

I wasn’t going to argue with her. There was no sense in it. For whatever I might say, she would have a riposte. Losing was not an option for her, except clearly, of course, when she lost on purpose.

I paid the bill and we went out together to the car park.

‘Is there anything I can say that would stop you doing it again?’

She turned to me. ‘Probably not.’

‘I might report you to the authorities.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Don’t bank on it,’ I said.

‘Mark, don’t be such a prat. You know perfectly well that you won’t tell anyone. For a start, it would reflect badly on you. So just keep your eyes and mouth shut.’

‘I can hardly do that in my job.’

‘Then you’ll have to turn a blind eye instead.’

‘Clare, seriously, if you do that once more when I’m commentating, I’ll never speak to you again.’

She opened the door of her silver Audi TT.

‘Your loss, not mine.’

She climbed into the sports car and slammed the door shut.

Again, I was stunned. Maybe it had been a careless thing to say, but I hadn’t expected such a brusque answer.

What had happened to my lovely twin sister?

She gunned the engine and spun the rear wheels on the gravel as she shot off without a wave, without even a glance.

As I arrived back at my flat, the phone in the hallway was ringing and the caller ID readout on the handset showed me that it was Clare calling from her mobile.

I wondered what else she had to say to hurt me some more. Maybe she had thought up another barbed comment to thrust into my heart.

I let the phone go on ringing.

Eventually the answerphone picked it up and I stood there in the dark listening for any message. There wasn’t one. Clare had hung up.

My own mobile started vibrating in my pocket but I also let that go to voicemail.

I didn’t want to talk to her. I was hurting enough already. Even if she was ringing to apologize, which I doubted, she could wait. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel guilty for a while.

I flicked on the light and looked at my watch. It was still only nine twenty. Far from enjoying a leisurely dinner with my loving twin sister to mull over our news and catch up on family gossip, I was back home less than an hour and a half after leaving.

I felt wretched, and cheated.

I walked into my sitting-room-cum-kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-office.

Perhaps Clare was right about my flat. Maybe it was time to move on.

We had initially found the place through a student-accommodation company and, looking at it now, I had to admit that it certainly still had a ‘student’ feel about it.

Once I had talked the landlord into redecorating, but that had been about eight years ago, and the cheap paint he had used had faded and cracked. I knew I should ask him to do it again but I didn’t relish all the upheaval it would produce in moving my stuff. Better to live with a few marks on the walls and a slowly yellowing ceiling.

I sat down at my table and opened my laptop computer. I logged onto the Racing Post website and looked through the cards for the following day’s racing at Newbury, where I would be presenting for Channel 4.

As hard as I tried to concentrate on the horses, looking up their form and making notes, my mind kept drifting back to Clare and our conversation over dinner.