Felix Francis
Syndicate
For grandson,
Alfie Lowe,
born 9 November 2023
With my thanks to
Harry Herbert,
chairman and managing director of
Highclere Thoroughbred Racing,
one of the world’s leading racehorse
syndication companies
and also to my wife
Debbie
for her love, help, and support
Chapter 1
I was hardly daring to breathe, not wanting to move even an inch, but my heart was beating so fast I feared it would burst clean out of my chest.
Come on. Come on.
I didn’t so much say it as think it.
Come on. Hang on. You can do it.
The pounding in my chest increased both in rate and in intensity.
Epsom Downs. The first Saturday in June. The Derby.
‘Whatever happens, don’t be late. Our first guests will be arriving at seven, and you have to be here, dressed and ready. And please try to remain sober.’
My wife of twenty-five years, Georgina, was leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs.
I looked up at her. ‘Yes, dear.’
Whose crazy idea had it been for us to hold a party on Derby Day?
Mine probably, but nearly a year ago, when we’d booked the marquee and the caterers, I hadn’t been expecting to own the favourite for the race. And today was our actual silver wedding anniversary, so it had been an obvious choice.
I say ‘own’ the favourite for the Derby but that wouldn’t be entirely true. I possessed just one twelfth of the horse in my own name, but I managed the whole animal as the syndicate organiser.
‘I need the place cards,’ Georgina said. ‘Have you done them?’
‘They’re on my desk,’ I said.
‘Can you get them for me?’
‘But I have to go. The traffic is always horrendous around Epsom for the Derby.’
‘A couple of minutes won’t make any difference.’
I glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway — twenty past nine.
Did she not realize how important this race was for me? I had hardly slept a wink all night because of my nervousness, and I’d been up since five. All I wanted to do was to get going, to ensure I was at the racecourse in good time.
Calm down, I told myself. It’s just another race.
Except it wasn’t just another race. This was the Epsom Derby, the preeminent flat race in the U.K., if not in the whole of Europe.
I walked into the kitchen, on the way to my office at the back of the house. Our daughter, Amanda, was sitting at the kitchen table in a dressing gown, eating toast and typing into her mobile.
‘So are you looking forward to this evening?’ I asked jovially.
‘No,’ she replied blandly, without looking up. ‘Darren says it’s stupid to have a combined party. I should be having my own birthday party, and not having to share it with James and all your dreary old friends.’
The party was to be a celebration not only for Georgina and me, but also to mark our son, James’s, twenty-first, and Amanda’s nineteenth birthdays. James’s birthday had been two days previously, and Amanda’s was next Friday.
‘But you were really keen on the plan to hold a joint party. Indeed, if I remember correctly, it was your idea in the first place.’
‘Well, I’m not keen anymore,’ Amanda said, still not looking up from the screen. ‘Darren says we would have much more fun, like, down at the pub, wearing jeans and T-shirts than having to dress up here in fancy suits and bow ties.’
Darren was an unemployed twenty-six-year-old college dropout who had been Amanda’s boyfriend for the past eight months, and as far as Georgina and I were concerned, he was not a suitable match for our daughter. In fact, he was totally unsuitable.
Not only was he eight years older than Amanda, but he had also been convicted for joyriding in a stolen car the previous summer in the nearby town of Didcot. And we were also extremely worried about the way he tried to control our daughter’s life. He demanded that she tell him where she was at any given time, and he became angry if she didn’t or if she went out anywhere without him. He even stipulated what she could wear. And he had done his best to cut her off from all her other friends, especially the male ones.
She had planned to go travelling during her gap year between school and university, but Darren had put paid to that too, telling her she would be better off getting a job and staying here. So, instead of backpacking around Australia with a girlfriend for three months at the beginning of the year, she’d spent the time working as a checkout girl in the local Tesco supermarket, something she still did.
‘Darren says I should have had a party last year for my eighteenth birthday, not this year for my nineteenth.’
I didn’t actually care one iota what Darren said, but decided not to say so. I wasn’t in the mood for another argument with her — not here, not today.
‘If you remember,’ I said calmly, keeping a tight hold on my temper, ‘we all decided that it wasn’t sensible to have an eighteenth birthday party right in the middle of your A levels, and that we would do it this year instead as a joint celebration.’
‘Darren says it’s just because you want to do it on the cheap.’
‘Darren doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Now, please be helpful to your mother today. She has lots to do to get ready for this evening.’
Amanda finally looked up from her phone.
‘Where are you going all dressed up?’
I was wearing morning dress and carrying a top hat.
‘To the Derby. Potassium is running.’
‘Will he win?’
‘I hope so.’
God, I hoped so.
I went through into my office and picked up the place cards from my desk — one hundred and forty of them in four stacks, one for each of the four long tables set up in the marquee. Amanda and James had a table each for their friends, while Georgina and I had one apiece for ours. I carried the cards back through the kitchen, where Amanda was still sitting at the table.
‘Remember what I said about helping your mother,’ I said to her.
She looked up at me and didn’t answer.
‘Please,’ I said imploringly. ‘Mum’s not very happy about me being out all day at the races, and you know how stressed she can get.’
‘Okay,’ Amanda said reluctantly.
‘Right. I must get going or I’ll be late.’
I went back into the hallway and put the place cards on the hall table.
‘The cards are all in the right order,’ I called up to Georgina. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘What time is the race?’ she asked, coming back onto the landing from our bedroom.
‘Twenty past three.’
She drew her breath in through clenched teeth. ‘That’s cutting it a bit fine.’
‘We’re actually lucky,’ I said. ‘It’s usually run at four thirty, but it’s been brought forward so as not to clash with the football at Wembley.’
‘Well, don’t be late. Leave as soon as the Derby is over.’
‘I can’t just leave if Potassium wins.’
Georgina waved a dismissive hand, which I took to mean she rather hoped he wouldn’t win.
‘It would pay for the party,’ I said.
And some, I thought.
The Epsom Derby might not be the most valuable horse race in Europe, but the purse was still £1.5 million, with £850,650 of that going to the winning connections. To say nothing of the future value of the horse as the Derby winner. Potential stud fees could easily run into the tens of millions.