“Any movement on the Sister Millie front?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity any longer.
He smiled broadly. “Negotiations are continuing,” he said. “But, as yet, there has been no breakthrough. She wants to, but she thinks Betsy will murder her if she does. And she’s probably right. But it certainly makes life interesting.”
“Just don’t let her meet Duggie,” I said, “or you’ll have no chance.”
He pulled a face at me. “Yes, all right, Grandpa,” he said. It was only meant as a joke, but it brought back in a wave all that I had been trying to banish from my consciousness.
The tears welled in my eyes, and I turned away from him, embarrassed by such a show of emotion.
“God,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine,” I said, not feeling it, and also not turning back.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“No,” I replied.
Duggie appeared from the Gents’ to save me from further inquisition.
“OK, then,” Duggie said cheerfully, “let’s go get ’em.”
I’m glad he’s so keen, I thought. I would much rather let “’em” go without us.
As it was, much to Duggie’s obvious disappointment, my fears were unfounded. There was no sign of the goons outside the racetrack entrance and none in the parking lot either. Perhaps they had received further instruction from their mystery boss. However, I would still keep a wary eye open for a black BMW 4× 4 on my way home.
I didn’t believe that I had seen the last of them.
On Sunday, Luca and I had planned to be at Market Rasen races in Lincolnshire, but we decided that with the two goons still on the prowl, and with our plans for Monday, it was prudent to lie low for a day. To say nothing of shifty-eyed Kipper, who might still be lurking in some other parking lot with his twelve-centimeter knife looking for his missing money.
Anyway, it suited me to spend a day with Sophie, especially as Alice was departing back to her home in Surrey. Sadly, she was not going permanently but just to do some washing and to gather some different clothes.
“How about your job?” I asked her over breakfast.
I knew that she had taken a week’s holiday from her position as a local radio producer in Guildford, but her week was up.
“A few days more won’t worry them,” she said.
I made no fuss, even though I didn’t consider that her continued presence was really necessary. Maybe I could stand it for a few days more. But I was beginning to yearn for the time when Sophie had been in the hospital, when I didn’t have to make the bed every morning or put my dirty coffee cup immediately in the dishwasher, when I could walk around the house in my underwear and lie down flat on the sofa to watch football on the television, and when I could leave the seat up in the lavatory and burp and fart whenever I wanted to. In five months, I had got quite used to living on my own.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sophie at home. Of course I did, and I loved it. I just wasn’t so sure about her sister being here too. Alice was becoming not so much a domestic goddess, more of a domestic nightmare.
“How long is she coming back for?” I asked Sophie as we waved Alice away.
“Just a little bit longer, I think,” she replied. “Alice likes to feel that she’s in charge, and she thinks I still need a little more of her care. To be honest, though, I would be quite happy if she didn’t come back tonight.”
So would I, I thought. But Alice’s presence had at least made me feel a little better as Sophie had not been alone in the house when I’d been at work. I think Sophie herself felt the same way, and she had not objected much when Alice had announced her intention to come back.
We closed the front door and went back into the kitchen.
“I can’t believe I’ve been home a week already,” she said. “It seems like only yesterday I left the hospital.”
I thought it felt like a month, but I didn’t say so.
I went up to my office while Sophie puttered around in the kitchen, relishing being able to do things without Alice constantly offering help and advice.
I logged on to the Racing Post website and checked the declarations for Bangor-on-Dee races for Monday. It was good news. The short-priced favorite in the two-mile hurdle race for maidens was still running. As were the others I wanted.
Sophie came into my office with a cup of coffee for me.
“Thank you, my darling,” I said.
She stood behind me, stroking my shoulders and playing with my hair.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just checking the runners for tomorrow,” I said.
“Can I come with you to the races?” she said.
“Of course,” I said, pleased. “We’re going to Bangor tomorrow. It’s quite a long way, but you can come if you like. We’re at Southwell for the evening meeting on Tuesday and then the July Festival at Newmarket on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”
“Are you staying in Newmarket?” she asked with slight concern.
“No chance,” I said. “Not at the prices the hotels charge during July week. The bloodstock sales are on too, don’t forget. The town is bursting with people. I’ll come home each night.”
She was relieved.“Good,” she said.“Maybe I’ll come to Southwell on Tuesday if the weather’s nice. I find there are too many people at Newmarket.”
“That would be lovely,” I said, meaning it. I shut down my computer. “Why don’t we go out to lunch?”
“What, now?” she said.
“Yes. Right now.”
“Great idea.” She smiled.
We went to the pub in the village of Avon Dassett where their specialty was sixty-four different ways to have pie. Sophie and I, however, opted not to go for a pie but for the Sunday roast lamb, which was delicious.
After lunch I drove the few miles to the Burton Dassett Hills Country Park, where I stopped the car on a ridge with a view all the way to Coventry and beyond.
And there we sat in the car while I told Sophie about my father.
I had lain awake for much of the night going over and over in my mind the secrets I had gleaned from my grandmother and weighing up whether I should tell Sophie anything just yet. It was true that she had been very well during her first week home from the hospital and hadn’t once accused me of drinking or being drunk, which, I knew from experience, was always the first sign that things weren’t quite right.
I had watched her carefully every morning to check that she swallowed her medication, but I was also painfully aware of how easily in the past her behavior had begun to change for the worse at times of stress or anxiety, and I desperately didn’t want to cause her either unnecessarily.
However, there was a real need in me for her to know the truth. I realized that I was bottling up my pain and my anger. I feared they would overwhelm me and cause an explosion in my head, the outcome of which in the long run might be more damaging both to Sophie and to me. I needed, perhaps selfishly, to share the knowledge in order to talk it through and ease the burden. Maybe I should have sought out one of the hospital psychiatrists to give me some therapy and treatment, but Sophie was the one I really wanted to provide me with the help I needed.
I started by telling her about my father’s sudden appearance at Ascot and the shock of finding that he hadn’t died in a car crash all those years ago as we had thought.
“That’s great,” she said. “You always wanted a father.”
But then I told her about him being stabbed in the racetrack parking lot and about him dying at the hospital. She was upset and deeply saddened, mostly on my behalf.
“But why was he stabbed?” she asked.
“I think it was a robbery that went wrong,” I said.
I considered that it was still prudent not to mention anything about microcoders, false passports or blue-plastic-wrapped bundles of cash. Best also, I thought, not to refer to my father’s black-and-red rucksack discovered by me in a seedy hotel in Paddington and subsequently collected from our home by his murderer.