Chapter nineteen

The almost unbearable belief that I had lost Kate grew very little easier as the days passed. I couldn't get her out of my mind. When I woke in the morning the ache rushed in to spoil the day: when I slept I dreamed continually that she was running away down a long dark tunnel. I thought it unlikely I would ever see her again, and tried to make myself be sensible about it.

Then, a week after the inquest on Uncle George, I went to ride at Banbury races, and Kate was there. She was dressed in dark navy blue and there were big grey hollows round her eyes. Her face was pale and calm, and her expression didn't change when she saw me. She was waiting outside the weighing-room, and spoke to me as soon as I drew near.

'Alan, I think I should apologize for what I said to you the other day.' The words were clearly an effort.

'It's all right,' I said.

'No - it's not. I thought about what you said - about those children going to school with the judo expert - and I realize Uncle George had got to be stopped.' She paused. 'It was not your fault Aunt Deb died. I'm sorry I said it was.' She let out a breath as if she had performed an intolerable duty.

'Did you come all the way here especially to say that?' I asked.

'Yes. It has been worrying me that I was so unjust.'

'My dear precious Kate,' I said, the gloom of the past week beginning to vanish like morning mist, 'I would have given anything for it not to have been Uncle George, believe me.' I looked at her closely. 'You look very hungry. Have you had anything to eat today?'

'No,' she said, in a small voice.

'You must have some lunch,' I said, and giving her no chance to refuse, took her arm and walked her briskly to the luncheon-room. There I watched her eat, pecking at first but soon with ravenous appetite, until some colour came back into her cheeks and a faint echo of her old gaiety to her manner.

She was well into her second helping of hot game pie when she said in a friendly tone, 'I wish you'd eat something too.'

I said, 'I'm riding.'

Yes, I know, I saw in the paper. Forlorn Hope, isn't it?' she asked between forkfuls.

'Yes,' I said.

'You will be careful, won't you? He's not a very good jumper, Pete says.'

I looked at her with delighted astonishment, and she blushed deeply.

'Kate!' I said.

'Well - I thought you'd never forgive me for being so abysmally beastly. I've spent the most vile week of my life regretting every word I said. But at least it brought me to my senses about you. I tried to tell myself I'd be delighted never to see you again and instead I got more and more miserable. I - I didn't think you'd come back for a second dose, after the way you looked at Brighton. So I thought if I wanted you to know I was sorry I'd have to come and tell you, and then I could see how- how you reacted.'

'How did you expect me to react?'

'I thought you'd be rather toffee-nosed and cool, and I wouldn't have blamed you.' She stuffed an inelegant amount of pie-crust into her mouth.

'Will you marry me, then, Kate?' I asked.

She said, 'Yes' indistinctly with her mouth full and went on uninterruptedly cutting up her food. I waited patiently while she finished the pie and made good time with a stack of cheese and biscuits.

'When did you eat last?' I asked, as she eventually put down her napkin.

'Can't remember.' She looked across at me with a new joy in her face and the old sadness beneath it, and I knew from that and from her remark about Forlorn Hope – the first concern she had ever shown for my safety – that she had indeed grown up.

I said, 'I want to kiss you.'

'Racecourses were not designed for the convenience of newly affianced lovers,' she said. 'How about a horsebox?'

'We've only got ten minutes,' I said. 'I'm riding in the second race.'

We borrowed Pete's horse-box without more ado. I took her in my arms, and found this time on Kate's lips a satisfactorily unsisterly response.

The ten minutes fled in a second, and the races wouldn't wait. We walked back, and I went into the weighing room and changed into colours, leaving Kate, who looked a bit dazed and said she felt it, sitting on a bench in the sun.

It was the first time I had been racing since Uncle George's inquest. I glanced uneasily round the changing room at the well-known faces, refusing to believe that any was the go-between who had brought death to Joe. Perhaps Lodge was right, and I didn't want to find out. I had liked Uncle George himself, once. Did I shrink from seeing the façade stripped from another friend to reveal the crocodile underneath?

Clem handed me my lead-packed weight cloth. I looked at his patient wrinkled face, and thought, 'Not you, not you.'

From across the changing room I had a good view of Dane's back solidly and deliberately turned towards me. Talking to someone by the gate, he had unfortunately seen Kate and me returning from the horse-box parking ground. He had had a good look at our radiant faces before we knew he was there, and he didn't need to have things spelled out for him. He had congratulated Kate in two clipped sentences, but to me he had still spoken not a word.

There, ten yards away, stood the craggy Clifford Tudor, opulently rolling a cigar round his mouth and laying down the law to his trainer and jockey.

My gaze slid beyond him to where Sir Creswell Stampe was superintending the raising of his unamiable son David into the saddle, before going to take his judicial position in the Stewards' box. Beyond him again were other groups of owners and trainers planning their plans, hoping their hopes, giving their jockeys instructions (and counter-instructions) and calculating their last-minute bets.

So many people I knew. So many people I liked.

Which of them - which of them was not what he seemed?

Pete gave me a leg up on to Forlorn Hope's narrow back, and I waved to Kate, who was standing by the parade ring rails, and cantered down towards the start.

On the way Dane came past briskly, turning his head in my direction as he drew level. With cold eyes he said, 'Blast you,' giving both words equal punch, and shook up his horse to get away from me and give me no chance to reply. I let him go. Either he would get over it or he wouldn't; and in either case there wasn't much I could do about it.

There were eleven runners in the race. We circled round while the starter's assistant tightened girths and the starter himself called the roll. Sandy asked his permission to dismount in order to straighten his saddle, which had slipped forwards on the way down to the gate. The starter nodded, looking at his wristwatch and telling Sandy not to be too long. This particular starter hated to start his races late and grew fidgety over every minor delay.