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appearing bright against the dull green of the February grass. My stepfather stood nearby, observing events, as he always did.
    “God, I hope he’s OK,” said Ian with a nervous rattle.
    The horse looked fine to me, but how would I know? The last horse I’d been close to had been an Afghan tribesman’s nag with half of one ear shot away, reportedly by its owner as he was trying to shoot and charge at the same time. I tactfully hadn’t asked him which side he’d been shooting at. Afghani allegiance was variable. It depended on who was paying, and how much.
    Ian became more and more nervous as the race time approached.
    “Calm down,” I said. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
    “I should have gone,” he said. “I knew I should have gone.”
    “Gone where?”
    “To Cheltenham,” he said.
    “What for?”
    “To keep an eye on the bloody horse, of course,” he said angrily. “To make sure no bugger got close enough to nobble him.”
    “Do you really think the horses are being nobbled?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “The bloody dope tests are all negative.”
    We watched as the horses walked around in circles at the start. Then the starter called them into line, and they were off.
    “Come on, Pharm, my old boy,” Ian said, his eyes glued to the television image. He was unable to sit down but stood behind the sofa like a little boy watching some scary science-fiction film, ready to dive down at the first approach of the aliens.
    Pharmacist appeared to be galloping along with relative ease in about third place of the eight runners as they passed the grandstand on the first circuit. But only when they started down the hill towards the finishing straight for the last time did the race unfold properly, and the pace pick up.
    Pharmacist seemed to be still going quite well and even jumped to the front over the second-last. Ian began to breathe a little more easily, but then the horse appeared to fade rapidly, jumping the final fence in a very tired manner and almost coming to a halt on landing. He was easily passed by the others on the run-in up the hill, and he crossed the finish line in last place, almost walking.
    I didn’t know what to say.
    “Oh God,” said Ian. “He can’t run at the Festival, not now.”
    Pharmacist certainly did not look like a horse that could win a Gold Cup in six weeks’ time.
    Ian stood rigidly behind the sofa, his white-knuckled hands gripping the corduroy fabric to hold himself upright.
    “Bastards,” he whimpered. “I’ll kill the bastards who did this.”
    I was not the only angry young man in Lambourn.

2
    T o say my homecoming was not a happy event would not have been an exaggeration.
    No “Hello, darling,” no kiss on the cheek, no fatted calf, nothing. But no surprise, either.
    My mother walked straight past me as if I had been invisible, her face taut and her lips pursed. I knew that look. She was about to cry but would not do so in public. To my knowledge, my mother had never cried in public.
    “Oh, hello,” my stepfather said by way of greeting, reluctantly shaking my offered hand.
    Lovely to see you too, I thought but decided not to say. No doubt, as usual, we would fight and argue over the coming days but not tonight. It was cold outside and beginning to rain. Tonight I needed a roof over my head.
    My stepfather and I had never really got on.
    In the mixed-up mind of an unhappy child, I had tried to make my mother feel guilty for driving away my father and had ended up alienating not only her but everyone else.
    My father had packed his bags and left when I was just eight, finally fed up with being well behind the horses in my mother’s affection. Her horses had always come first, then her dogs, then her stable staff and finally, if there was time, which there invariably wasn’t, her family.
    How my mother ever had the time to have three children had always been a mystery to me. Both my siblings were older than I, and had been fathered