‘But we would have fought. It would have all ended in a shouting match and I would have walked out. Better that I kept away.’
‘You think that service was better for you keeping away?’ His voice was full of sarcasm.
‘No. I suppose not.’
‘No. Then you and your father will have to learn how to make compromises without fighting, and to make yourselves heard without shouting.’
‘You should be a counsellor,’ I said.
‘I am.’
‘Are you really?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘But don’t tell your father. He thinks I’m a merchant banker in the City. And I do work for a bank, but I don’t deal with the money. I’m the company counsellor.’
‘Doing what exactly?’
‘Counselling the staff. It is one of their inclusive company benefits.’
‘Counselling them on what?’
‘Anything they like, but marital problems mostly. They all work so bloody hard and for such long hours, trying to earn the tons of money they need to pay their huge mortgages, and only because they think their families will be happier living in enormous houses with indoor swimming pools. The families, however, would much rather live somewhere smaller and see more of Daddy. By the time these guys get to fifty-five and are ready to give it all up to live on their accumulated millions, their wives and kids have had enough of being on their own, have left them, taken half their money, and gone to live with someone else. It’s all rather sad.’
‘So what do you tell them to do?’
‘Go home earlier, and stay out of the office at weekends.’
‘And do they listen?’
‘Not often,’ he said with a laugh. ‘In the city, money equates to testosterone. All of them are driven to get more and more of it, irrespective of the human cost.’
I knew some people in racing who were just like that, people for whom winning was like a Class A drug, and they were addicted.
I took a tray of sandwiches and offered them round to the miserable bunch of my relatives who were sitting in the drawing room. Conversation topics, it seemed, were minimal and the food provided some relief, something to talk about. Nicholas followed me with the wine that I hoped might lighten the gloom.
I went back to the kitchen to find Brendan helping himself to a large glass of red.
‘Just what I need,’ he said, taking a sizable slug. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought the kids. They’re quite distressed by it all. Their first funeral.’
‘How old are they now?’ I asked, not really that interested.
‘Christopher is sixteen, and Patrick will be fourteen next week.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, ‘maybe they are still a bit young.’ Nicholas and Angela hadn’t brought Tatiana and she was older than both of Brendan’s boys.
‘But the boys were so eager to come.’ He laughed. ‘Probably just to bunk a day off school. But I think they might be regretting it now though. There’s not much fun in this family.’
I poured myself a large glass of red as well.
‘How often did Clare ride for you?’ I asked. I was thinking of one of the definites I had found in the database, the race when she had stopped Brendan’s horse, Jasmine Pearls, in the Chester City Plate.
‘Not that often,’ he replied. ‘Most of mine are ridden by Dennis Wilson, and Clare was always riding for Grubby.’
‘Don’t I remember her riding one for you at Chester back in July?’
‘Jasmine Pearls,’ he said, nodding. ‘She should have won, too. I don’t think Clare was at her best that day, she went to the front too soon and the horse stopped itself. Pearly obviously didn’t like being in front. Some horses don’t. She’s won since, though, at Leicester, having been held up to the last moment.’
‘Did Clare ride her then?’
‘No. Dennis. And he should also have been riding her at Chester but he’d been thrown the previous day and hurt his ankle.’
‘So how many times did she ride for you altogether?’
‘Maybe a dozen or fifteen, over the years. Perhaps more. She last rode for me a couple of weeks ago at Doncaster on a difficult sod of a colt called Cotton House Boy. He always seems to go better with a girl up. Strange that.’
He took one of the cheese and pickle sandwiches off the tray I was still holding.
‘Suppose I’d better get these kids back home,’ he said with his mouth full.
‘I went to the hotel yesterday,’ I said.
‘Hotel?’
‘The London Hilton, on Park Lane.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘And?’
‘It seems that Clare met two men in her room before she died and one of them might even have been there when she fell.’
‘Any idea who?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I certainly intend to find out. The police took away some of the hotel CCTV video. I’ve asked them if I can have a look but the detective in charge is on leave this week and, unbelievably, no one else seems to know anything about it. I’ll just have to wait until he comes back but it’s bloody frustrating.’
‘Would it make any difference if you knew who the men were?’
I sighed. ‘I suppose not, but I’d like to understand why she did it. And I’d like to know if one of the visitors was her mystery boyfriend. Maybe they’d had a tiff, or perhaps it was something else to do with him that was troubling her.’
Or, I thought, had she jumped because of what I had seen at Lingfield, and because of what I’d said to her at dinner?
Oh, God, I hoped not.
Perhaps I was desperate to find some other reason for her death just to relieve the burden of guilt that weighed so heavily on my chest.
9
On Tuesday morning I went back to work again, this time properly. Life, it seemed, had to continue and Clare’s death was last week’s news. The world, and racing, went on regardless, without her.
I was due to be the racecourse commentator at the jumps meeting at Stratford-upon-Avon, so I left my flat early and drove clockwise round the M25, then up the M40 to Warwickshire. I spent the journey thinking back to the previous afternoon and, in particular my rather strange encounter with my father at the conclusion of the proceedings.
With Nicholas’s wise words still fresh in my memory, and also with his troubles over the on/off nature of Tatiana’s birthday party, I had sought out my father for a quiet chat.
At first I hadn’t been able to find him anywhere but, eventually, I’d discovered him in his high-backed desk chair in his study, sitting in the quiet, facing the window.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I’d said. ‘You OK?’
He’d swivelled slowly round to face me.
‘Not really. You?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘I’ve been a fool,’ he’d said. He had rotated the chair back so that he was again looking out at the garden, and he’d sat silently for some time.
‘In what way?’ I’d asked finally. But he’d been a fool in all sorts of ways.
‘Please leave me,’ he’d replied. ‘I’d rather be alone.’
I could tell from his voice that he’d been close to tears.
‘No, Dad. Talk to me.’
‘I can’t.’ His whole body had shaken with sobs.
Not only had the day been a first for him ever praising me, it was also the first time I had ever seen my father cry. He had always believed, and had stated loudly and often through my childhood, that crying was a sign of weakness. Yet there he had been, sobbing like a baby.
I hadn’t really known what to do. I was sure that he’d been embarrassed. Perhaps I should have left him alone to recover. Instead I’d grabbed the back of his chair and spun him round to face me.
‘Talk to me,’ I’d almost shouted at him. ‘We never communicate. We just argue.’