‘Fine,’ I replied.
Jack Laver was the technician for the on-course broadcasting service that relayed the closed-circuit pictures to the many television sets all around the racecourse, including the monitor in the commentary box. His dress sense might have been suspect but he was an absolute wizard with electronics.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’ he asked.
‘Love one,’ I said and he disappeared into an alcove, re-emerging with two white plastic beakers of steaming brown liquid.
‘Sugar?’
‘No thanks,’ I said, taking one of the beakers.
Weighing-room tea would never have won any prizes for its taste, but it was hot and wet, and both were good for my voice. A race caller with a sore throat, or — worse — laryngitis, was no good for anything. Peter Bromley, the legendary BBC commentator, always carried with him a bottle of his special balm — a secret home-made concoction containing honey and whisky. He would take a small swig before every race to lubricate the throat.
I was never as organized as that, but I did like to have a bottle of water always close to hand. And tea was a bonus.
‘Jack, can you show me a replay of that last race? Just the last couple of furlongs will do.’
‘Sure,’ he said, moving towards the electronics. ‘Did you get something wrong?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me with a huge grin.
‘Get stuffed,’ I said. ‘And, no, I didn’t.’
‘You’d never admit it, anyway. You bloody commentators, you’re all the same.’
‘Perfect, you mean.’
‘Ha! Don’t make me laugh.’
He fiddled with some of the controls and the previous race appeared on one of the tiny screens on the front of his equipment.
‘Just the last two furlongs, you say?’
‘Yes, please.’
He used a large ball-type mouse to fast-forward the race, the horses moving comically along the track at break-neck speed.
‘There you are,’ said Jack, slowing the runners to a normal pace.
I leaned forward to get a closer look.
I hoped I was wrong. In fact, I wanted desperately to be wrong.
‘Can you show me that again?’ I asked Jack.
He used the ball to rewind the recording to the two-furlong pole.
I watched it once more, and there was no mistake.
I had absolutely no doubt that Clare Shillingford, my twin sister, had just been in contravention of rules (B)58, (B)59 and (D)45 of the Rules of Racing, rules that state, amongst other things, that a rider must ride a horse throughout the race in such a way that he or she can be seen to have made a genuine attempt to obtain from the horse timely, real and substantial efforts to achieve the best possible placing.
Put more simply, Clare had not won the race when she could have done. And, furthermore, I believed she had not won it on purpose.
The next hour passed in somewhat of a blur. Good commentating requires solid concentration to the extent that all other thoughts need to be excluded. No one actually complained about my race calling in the next two races but I knew that I hadn’t been at my best, and Derek made no further appreciative comments into my ears.
I made another trip down to the weighing room between the third and fourth races. Clare had a ride in the fourth and I wanted to have a quick word with her, but it was nothing to do with my unease over her riding of Bangkok Flyer. We had a long-standing arrangement to have dinner together that night and I wanted to confirm the plans.
‘Hi, Clare,’ I called out to her as she exited the weighing room in a set of bright yellow silks with blue stars across her front and back. ‘Are you still on for tonight? I’ve booked a table at Haxted Mill for eight o’clock.’
‘Great,’ she said, smiling up at me as I walked alongside her. ‘But I’m going to see Mum and Dad first, so I’ll meet you there.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
I slowed to a halt and watched her walk away from me and through the small crowd into the parade ring.
I wondered whether I really knew her any more.
We had arrived into this world by Caesarean section just thirty seconds apart, she being born first, as she never failed to remind me.
Our childhoods had been totally intertwined, with us sharing first cots, then bedrooms, schools and finally a rented flat on the outskirts of Edenbridge in Kent when, aged nineteen, we had together summoned the courage to tell our overbearing father that we no longer wanted to live under his roof.
That had been twelve years ago, but our sharing of a flat had lasted barely six months before she had moved out and gone north to Newmarket.
We had both wanted to be jockeys for as long as we could remember and had ridden imaginary races and stirring finishes, first on rocking horses and then on ponies in the paddocks behind our parents’ home in Surrey.
Twins we might be, but we didn’t have all the same genes.
While Clare remained short and slight, I became tall and broad.
She ate heartily and stayed annoyingly thin, while I had starved myself half to death but still grew heavier by the day. While we both became jockeys, we never rode against each other as we had done so often on our ponies. Hers became the life of a featherweight flat-jock at racing’s ‘Headquarters’ in Newmarket, while I rode precisely five times as an amateur over the jumps before my battle with my ever-increasing body mass put paid to that career path.
So, instead, I had rather pretentiously announced my desire to be a racehorse trainer and had moved briefly to Lambourn as an assistant to the assistant at one of the top steeplechase training stables. By this time I was twenty years old but, somehow, my body had still been growing at an age when everyone else’s had stopped. When it finally decided that enough was enough, I stood at six foot two inches in my socks with shoulders to match and, in spite of severe undernourishment, I was too heavy even to ride out with the string.
Riding had been my passion and I had soon discovered that driving a Land Rover up onto the Berkshire Downs each day to watch the horses at work was not what I’d had in mind as my future. I missed the adrenalin rush of riding a thoroughbred racehorse at high speed with the wind and rain stinging my face, and watching others do what I craved for somehow made the agony all the worse.
Strange, then, that I had ended up as a race caller doing just that, but the adrenalin rush was back, in particular on big race days when my audience could be millions.
‘Hello, Mark,’ a voice said behind me. ‘Are you rooted to that spot?’
I recognized the voice and turned round, smiling. ‘Hi, Harry,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘Dangerous stuff, thinking.’
As far as I could tell, Harry Jacobs was a man of leisure. Only twice over the years had I asked him what he did for a living and both times he’d replied in the same way. ‘Nothing if I can manage it.’ He was too young to be of retirement age, I estimated him to be in his late fifties, but he would’ve hardly had time for any paid employment as he seemed to spend every day of his life satisfying his passion for racing.
I’d first met him when I’d been an eighteen-year-old budding amateur jockey and he had agreed to me riding one of his horses in my first ever race. I hadn’t expected it to be the beginning of a firm friendship, especially as I’d missed the start, never recovered my position, and finished tailed-off last. But Harry hadn’t appeared to mind and he had slapped me reassuringly on the back. We’d been firm ‘racecourse’ friends ever since, although I’d no idea where he lived and, I suspect, he had no idea where I did either.
‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked.
‘Harry, I would have loved to, but I’m commentating and they’re almost on their way out of the paddock. Some other time.’