Dick Francis - The Danger

'Don't let Miranda mention my name to her husband in connection with any plan she makes,' I said. 'I'm not in favour with him, and if he knew I'd suggested anything he'd turn it down flat.'

'But you brought Dominic back!

'Much to his embarrassment. He'd sacked us two days earlier.'

She laughed. 'All right. What's the name of the doctor?'

I told her, and also told her I'd telephone the doctor myself, to explain the background and verify Dominic's need.

'You're a poppet,' Alessia said.

'Oh sure. What was it you said about going racing?'

'I rode out with the string today and yesterday, and I can't understand why I didn't do it sooner. I'm riding work for Mike Noland tomorrow, and he says if I'm fit and OK he'll give me a ride next week at Salisbury."

' Salisbury… races?' I said.

'Yes, of course.'

'And, um, do you want an audience?'

'Yes, I do.'

'You've got it.'

She said goodbye happily and in the evening rang me at home in my flat.

'It's all fixed,' she said. 'Miranda said your doctor sounded a darling, and she's taking Dominic there first thing tomorrow. Then she's coming straight down here to Lambourn. I've got her a room in a cottage owned by a retired nanny, who I went to see, and who's pleased with the whole idea, and John raised no objections, absolutely the contrary, he's paying for everything.'

Terrific,' I said, with admiration.

'And Popsy wants you down again. And so does Miranda. And so do I.'

'I give in, then. When?'

'Soon as you can.'

I went on the following day and also twice more during the following week. Dominic slept better because of a mild liquid sleeping draught in his nightly bottle of milk and progressed to eating chocolate drops and, later, mashed bananas. The ex-nanny patiently took away rejected scrambled eggs and fussed over Miranda in a way which would have worn my nerves thin but in that love-deprived girl produced a grateful dependency.

Alessia spent much of every day with them, going for walks, shopping in the village, all of them lunching most days with Popsy, sunbathing in the cottage garden.

'You're a clever clogs, aren't you?' Popsy said to me on my third visit.

'How do you mean?'

'Giving Alessia something so worthwhile to do.'

'It was accidental, really.'

'And encouraged.'

I grinned at her. 'She looks great, doesn't she?'

'Marvellous. I keep thinking about those first days when she was so deathly pale and shaky. She's just about back to her old self now.'

'Has she driven anywhere yet, on her own?'

Popsy glanced at me. 'No. Not yet.'

'One day she will.'

'And then?'

'Then she'll fly… away.'

I heard in my voice what I hadn't intended or expected to be there: a raw sense of loss. It was all very well mending birds' broken wings. They could take your heart off with them when you set them free.

She wouldn't need me, I'd always known it, once her own snowstorm had settled. I could have tried, I supposed, to turn her dependence on me into a love affair, but it would have been stupid: cruel to her, unsatisfactory to me. She needed to grow safely back to independence and I to find a strong and equal partner. The clinging with the clung-to wasn't a good proposition for long-term success.

We were all at that moment out in Popsy's yard, with Alessia taking Miranda slowly round and telling her about each horse as they came to it. Dominic by then had developed enough confidence to stand on the ground, though he hung onto Miranda's clothes permanently with one hand and needed lifting to her hip at the approach of any stranger. He had still not said anything else, but day by day, as the fright level slowly declined, it became more likely that he soon would.

Popsy and I strolled behind the two girls and on an impulse I squatted down to Dominic's height and said, 'Would you like a ride on my shoulders?'

Miranda encouragingly swept up Dominic and perched him on me with one leg past each ear.

'Hold on to Andrew's hair,' Alessia said, and I felt the little fingers gripping as I stood upright.

I couldn't see Dominic's face, but everyone else was smiling, so I simply set off very slowly past the boxes, so he could see the inmates over the half doors.

'Lovely horses,' Miranda said, half anxiously. 'Big horses, darling, look.'

We finished the tour of the yard in that fashion and when I lifted Dominic down he stretched up his arms to go up again. I hoisted him onto my left arm, my face level with his. 'You're a good little boy,' I said.

He tucked his head down to my neck as he'd done so often with Miranda, and into my receptive ear he breathed one very quiet word, 'Andrew.'

'That's right,' I said equally quietly, 'and who's that? I pointed at Miranda.

'Mummy.' The syllables weren't much more than a whisper, but quite clear.

'And that?' I said.

'Lessia.'

'And that?'

'Popsy.'

'Very good.' I walked a few steps with him away from the others. He seemed unalarmed. I said in a normal voice, 'What would you like for tea?'

There was a fairly long pause, then he said 'Chocolate,' still quietly.

'Good. You shall have some. You're a very good boy.'

I carried him further away. He looked back only once or twice to check that Miranda was still in sight, and I reckoned that the worst of his troubles were over. Nightmares he would have, and bouts of desperate insecurity, but the big first steps had been taken, and my job there too was almost done.

'How old are you, Dominic?' I asked.

He thought a bit. 'Three,' he said, more audibly.

'What do you like to play with?'

A pause. 'Car.'

'What sort of car?'

He sang, 'Dee-dah dee-dah dee-dah,' into my ear very clearly on two notes, in exact imitation of a police car's siren.

I laughed and hugged him. 'You'll do,' I said.

Alessia's return to race-riding was in some respects unpromising, as she came back white-faced after finishing last.

The race itself, a five furlong sprint for two-year-olds, had seemed to me to be over in a flash. Hardly had she cantered down to the start, a bent figure in shining red silks, than the field of eighteen were loaded into the stalls and set running. The red silks had shown briefly and been swamped, smothered by a rainbow wave which left them slowing in the wake. The jockey sat back onto her saddle the moment she passed the winning post, stopping her mount to a walk in a few strides.

I went to where all except the first four finishers were being dismounted, where glum-faced little groups of owners and trainers listened to tale after tale of woe and disaster from impersonal jockeys whose minds were already on the future. I heard snatches of what they were saying while I waited unobtrusively for Alessia.

'Wouldn't quicken when I asked him…'

'Couldn't act on the going…'

'Got bumped… shut in… squeezed out.'

'Still a baby…'

'Hanging to the left…'

Mike Noland, without accompanying owners, non-committally watched Alessia approaching, then patted his horse's neck and critically inspected its legs. Alessia struggled to undo the buckles on the girths, a service Noland finally performed for her, and all I heard her say to him was 'Thanks…Sorry,' which he received with a nod and a pat on the shoulder: and that seemed to be that.

Alessia didn't spot me standing there and hurried away towards the weighing-room; and it was a good twenty minutes before she emerged.

She still looked pale. Also strained, thin, shaky and miserable.

'Hi,' I said.

She turned her head and stopped walking. Managed a smile. 'Hello.'

'What's the matter?' I said.

'You saw.'

'I saw that the horse wasn't fast enough.'

'You saw that every talent I used to have isn't there any more.' '