It was the happiest I’d ever seen him.
Eight months later, Kate and I went on a twelve-day non-honeymoon to the Maldives, although to a different resort to where she had been previously.
Ladbrokes had happily paid out my two thousand pounds of winnings in the Derby and I had used the money to upgrade our flights to business class. Hence, we sipped chilled champagne at forty thousand feet while I thought back to what had happened since that glorious summer’s day at Epsom in June.
And much had indeed happened, especially to the Chadwick family.
Tony had been indicted for both the murder of Zoe Robertson and for attempting to dispose of her body by setting fire to his father’s stables. In the face of the police recording of his disclosures to me in Declan’s stable, plus the discovery of traces of Zoe’s DNA in the boot of his car, he had pleaded guilty to both charges at the earliest opportunity, saving everyone the stress of a trial.
But if he’d been advised that early guilty pleas would keep the sexual abuse element of the story out of the newspapers, he’d been sadly misguided.
Two days after Tony started a life sentence behind bars, a Sunday newspaper had run a four-page detailed exposé of the Chadwick family’s big secret, although from where they obtained their information I knew not. It certainly wasn’t from me.
Ryan was portrayed as the main villain of the piece and, if his racehorse training business had been in trouble before the revelations, it was in complete free fall afterwards, with owners deserting him in droves. Indeed, two weeks later, the racing authority decided that he was no longer a ‘fit and proper person’ to hold a training licence. And then, to top off all his problems, Susan walked out on him, taking their children with her, citing the reason as the need to keep their young daughter safe from any potential sexual abuse by her own father.
The reports also depicted Oliver as a manipulative patriarch who had shamelessly tossed Zoe’s life aside in order to protect his predatory golden son. Oliver’s previous high standing in the racing community had stood for nothing and he was now very much persona non grata, even in his home town. And he too had matrimonial problems, with Maria announcing that she was suing him for divorce, and claiming half his assets.
I personally wondered if Maria had been the newspaper’s source. It had to have been either her or Yvonne, maybe even both of them, and perhaps with Peter adding his share of malice as well — for a sizable fee of course.
Declan was the only Chadwick male to have emerged relatively unscathed as the reporters had correctly pointed out that he had been away riding in the United States at the time Zoe had become pregnant.
Hence, he had kept his trainer’s licence and the majority of his owners, not that he hadn’t personally lost perhaps the most of all of them.. In spite of being unable to have children, his marriage had been loving and strong, and Arabella’s suicide would forever be a source of huge pain for him.
The Suffolk police had recently informed me officially that Declan would face no charges in relation to historic sexual abuse of a minor. The same must have been true for the other Chadwick men.
I wasn’t surprised. The likelihood of a court conviction without the testimony of the victim would have been remote, although that hadn’t stopped the newspapers from concluding that Ryan was as guilty as hell.
And some of the scandal had inevitably rubbed off on Declan.
‘No smoke without fire,’ I overheard someone say.
Fire, I thought.
Fire was what had brought me into this sorry saga in the first place. But it wasn’t all bad. If ASW hadn’t sent me to Newmarket, I would never have met Kate, and my life would have been much the poorer as a result.
Our flight touched down at Malé International Airport and, as we walked from the aircraft to the terminal, we revelled in the tropical heat, having left London in a snowstorm.
Twelve whole days together, and the nights too. How wonderful.
Kate and I had spent as much time as possible with each other over the previous eight months. With her still working full-time at Tattersalls and me still living in Neasden it was not always easy, but somehow we managed. Indeed, I had become such a familiar face at Cambridge Station that I was now greeted warmly by the railway staff.
But we had big plans.
We had just had an offer accepted on a cottage in a small village close to Stansted Airport, from which Kate could drive up the motorway to Newmarket, and I could catch the airport express direct to central London. We had high hopes that we would be moving in before the summer.
But, for now, twelve days together with no work and no travelling was total bliss.
Having cleared immigration and customs we were taken by minibus to a dock from where we climbed aboard a Twin Otter seaplane for the final leg of our journey to Halaveli, one of some twelve hundred separate Indian Ocean islands that make up the state of the Maldives.
Halaveli was the archetypal tiny desert island, rising just a few feet above the turquoise sea and ringed by white sandy beaches. But it was also a five-star boutique hotel with bars, restaurants and luxury villas set among the lines of coconut palm trees. In addition, on the south-western corner of the island, there was a raised wooden walkway stretching several hundred metres out from the shore, with more villas on each side, built on stilts above the water.
Ours was one of those, a palm-thatched oasis of paradise.
Over the next twelve days, we swam and snorkelled, went in search of whales and dolphins, and sailed on sunset cruises. We breakfasted each morning in the sunshine on our private terrace, dined each night on the beach under the stars, and made love in the afternoons.
And, on the last evening of our non-honeymoon, when we were both sure we adored each other far more than even the idyllic place in which we were staying, I put one knee down onto the soft white tropical sand and asked Kate to marry me.