"Now for the big one," Ian said. "Pharmacist should win. He's frightened off most of the opposition."

" ' Pharmacist'?" I asked.

"Our Gold Cup hope," he said, in a tone that implied I should have known. "This is his last warm-up for the Festival. He loves Cheltenham."

Ian was referring to the Cheltenham Gold Cup at the Steeple-chase Festival in March, the pinnacle of British jump racing.

"What do you mean he's frightened off the opposition?" I asked.

"Mrs. Kauri's been saying all along that old Pharm will run in this race, and so the other Gold Cup big guns have gone elsewhere. Not good for them to be beat today with only a few weeks left to the Festival."

Ian became more and more nervous, continually getting up and walking around the room for some unnecessary reason or other.

"Fancy another beer?" he asked, standing by the fridge.

"No thanks," I said. He'd given me one only two minutes before.

"God, I hope he wins," he said, sitting down and opening a fresh can with another still half-full on the table.

"I thought you said he would," I said.

"He should do, he's streaks better than the rest, but…"

"But what?" I asked.

"Nothing." He paused. "I just hope nothing strange happens, that's all."

"Do you think something strange might happen?"

"Maybe," he said. "Something bloody strange has been happening to our horses recently."

"What sort of things?"

"Bloody strange things," he repeated.

"Like what?"

"Like not winning when they should," he said. "Especially in the big races. Then they come home unwell. You can see it in their eyes. Some have even had diarrhea, and I've never seen racehorses with that before."

We watched as my mother was shown on the screen tossing the jockey up onto Pharmacist's back, the black-and-white-check silks 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.

To 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 by my mother's first husband, whom she had married when she was seventeen. Richard Kauri had been rich and thirty, a New Zealand playboy who had toyed at being a racehorse trainer. My mother had used his money to further her own ambition in racing, taking over the house and stables as part of their divorce settlement after ten years of turbulent marriage. Their young son and daughter had both sided with their father, a situation I now believed she had encouraged, as it gave her more chance of acquiring the training business if her ex-husband had the children.

Almost immediately she had married again, to my father, a local seed merchant, and had produced me like a present on her twenty-ninth birthday. But I had never been a much-wanted, much-loved child. I think my mother looked upon me as just another of her charges to be fed and watered twice a day, mucked out and exercised as required, and expected to stay quietly in my stable for the rest of the time.

I suppose it had been a lonely childhood, but I hadn't known anything different and, mostly, I'd been happy enough. What I missed in human contact at home I made up for with dogs and horses, both of which had plenty of time for me. I would make up games with them. They were my friends. I could remember thinking the world had ended when Susie, my beloved beagle, had been killed by a car. What had made it much worse was that my mother, far from comforting me, had instead told me to pull myself together, it was only a dog.

When my parents divorced there had been a long and protracted argument over custody of me. It was not until many years later that I realized that they had argued because neither of them had wanted the responsibility of bringing up an eight-year-old misfit. My mother had lost the argument, so I had lived with her, and my father had disappeared from my life for good. I hadn't thought it a great loss at the time, and I still didn't. He had written to me a few times and had sent an occasional Christmas or birthday card, but he clearly thought he was better off without me, and I was sure I was without him.