Bloodline

How could she be so stupid? And for what? Did I really believe she was stopping horses from winning just to play some weird game of control over trainers and owners? There had to be more to it than that. Surely there had to be some financial implications.

‘It’s complicated,’ she had said.

It sure was.

My phone rang again and I went on ignoring it. I was sure it was Clare but I was angry and upset, and I wouldn’t speak to her. It stopped ringing and, as before, there was no message.

I forced myself back to the horses running at Newbury the following day and spent the next hour going through all eight races in detail. Only three of the eight were due to be shown live on Channel 4 but, as I still tried to supplement my income with some winnings, I was looking for horses that I believed showed especially good value in the prices currently offered on the internet betting sites.

One particular horse, Raised Heartbeat, running in the third race, was quoted at decimal odds of 7.5; in other words, if I placed a bet of one hundred pounds I would get seven hundred and fifty back altogether, including my hundred pound stake. That was equivalent to fractional odds of thirteen-to-two. I felt sure that the horse would actually start at maybe six-to-one or even five-to-one. If I placed a bet now at the longer price and then ‘layed’ the horse at shorter odds tomorrow, I would effectively have a bet to nothing. If it won I would win a little, but if it lost then I wouldn’t lose anything.

It was a technique I had employed for some time with considerable success. But the system wasn’t foolproof. The horse could drift in the market, making my bet seem rather undervalued. I could then still lay the horse to limit my exposure but that would guarantee a financial loss whether it won the race or not.

However, due to my job, I watched the same horses run day by day, week by week, even year by year, and I knew them as well as anyone. Experience had proved that I was more often right over the way the odds would change.

I logged into my account and made my bet on Raised Heartbeat — a hundred pounds stake to make six hundred and fifty profit.

If I was right and the price shortened to, say, five-to-one, I would then lay it, that is I’d take a hundred pound bet from someone else for them to win five hundred. Now, if the horse won, I would win six hundred and fifty on my bet and pay out the five hundred on the bet from someone else, giving me a profit of a hundred and fifty pounds. If the horse lost then I would lose my hundred pound stake but I’d also keep the hundred from someone else, leaving me even. Whereas it wasn’t quite win/win, at least it was win/not-lose.

The phone rang once more. I looked at my watch. It was ten past eleven. I was tempted to answer it but I was still smarting from earlier and I didn’t want another row. I would speak to her in the morning when we had both cooled off a little.

I closed the lid of my computer and went along the corridor to bed.

The only significant change I had made when Clare had moved out to go to Newmarket was to transfer from the smaller bedroom into the larger one. Now I lay awake on the double bed in the darkness and thought back to those months we had spent here together.

Undoubtedly it had been the happiest time of my life. We had escaped the nightmare of living in a house where our father had become so prescriptive of what we could and couldn’t do that he had refused permission for us to go out to a friend’s New Year’s Eve party in spite of the fact that we were over eighteen. When we had defied him and gone anyway, we had found the house locked and bolted on our return. We had rung the bell and battered on the door but he wouldn’t let us in, so we had spent the night shivering in Clare’s Mini and planned our getaway.

This flat had seemed like a palace — somewhere we could leave the lights on without being shouted at, and where we didn’t have to account for our every waking minute.

How I longed for a return to those halcyon days.

Perhaps I should call Clare after all.

I turned on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock. It was a quarter to midnight. Was it too late to call? It was a good half hour since she had last tried me. Would she be asleep?

I tried her anyway, figuring that she could always turn her mobile off if she didn’t want to be disturbed.

It went straight to voicemail.

‘Clare, it’s Mark,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry this evening was such a disaster. Call me in the morning. Love you. Bye.’

I hung up and then turned my phone off. I needed to sleep and didn’t want her calling me again tonight.

I woke to the sound of someone hammering on my front door.

My bedside clock showed me that it was just past three o’clock in the morning.

The hammering went on.

I turned on the bedside light and collected my dressing gown from the back of my bedroom door.

‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ I shouted as I walked down the corridor.

Bloody Clare, I thought. Go home.