Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [22]
I decided to do nothing until I’d had a chance to discuss it with Patrick. Besides, I would need to inform him before I could start the process of liquidating Billy’s assets.
I looked at my watch. It was already past six o’clock, and the office would be closed. I’d have to speak to Patrick about it in the morning. Nothing could be done now anyway, the markets in London were also long closed for the day.
Instead, I went to stay with my mother.
Hello, darling,” she said, opening her front door. “You’re far too thin.”
It was her usual greeting, and one that was due to her long-standing pathological fear that I was anorexic. It had all started when I’d been a fifteen-year-old who had been desperate to be a jockey. I’d never been very short so I had begun starving myself to keep my weight down. But it hadn’t been due to anorexia, just willpower. I had always loved my food, but it seemed that my body, and my mind, had now finally trained themselves to stay thin.
As a rule, I never really thought about food and, if left to my own devices, there was little doubt that I would have become undernourished through neglect. But my mother saw to it that I didn’t. She would literally send food parcels to Claudia with strict instructions to feed me more protein, or more carbohydrate, or just more.
“Hello, Mum,” I said, ignoring her comment and giving her a kiss. “How are things?”
“So-so,” she replied, as always.
She still lived near Cheltenham but not in the big house in which I had grown up. Sadly, that had had to be sold during my parents’ acrimonious divorce proceedings in order to divide the capital between them. My mother’s current home was a small whitewashed cottage, hidden down a rutted lane on the edge of a small village just north of the racetrack with two double bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a single open-plan kitchen/ dining room/living room downstairs, the levels connected by a narrow, twisting, boxed-in staircase in the corner, with a leverlatched door at the bottom.
The cottage was an ideal size for her enforced solitary lifestyle, but I knew she longed still to be the charming hostess in the grand house, a role in which she had excelled throughout my childhood.
“How’s your father?” she asked.
Her inquiry was a social nicety rather than a true request for information. She probably thought that I’d appreciate her asking.
“He’s fine,” I replied, completing the duty. At least I assumed he was fine. I hadn’t spoken to him for more than a fortnight. We really didn’t have much to say to each other.
“Good,” she said, but I doubt that she really meant it. I thought she would almost certainly have also replied “Good” if I’d told her he was on his deathbed. But at least she had asked, which was more than he ever did about her.
“I’ve bought you some fillet steak for dinner,” she said, turning the conversation back to my feeding habits. “And I’ve made some profiteroles for pudding.”
“Lovely,” I said. And I meant it. As usual, when coming to stay with my mother, I hadn’t eaten anything all day in preparation for a high-calorie encounter with her cooking and, by now, I was really hungry.
I went up to the guest bedroom and changed out of my suit and into jeans and sweatshirt. I tossed my mobile onto the bed. As always, the closeness to Cleeve Hill, and the phone-signal shadow it produced, rendered the thing useless. But at least I’d have a rest from its constant ringing.
When I came down, my mother was standing by the stove starting supper with saucepans already steaming on the hob.
“Help yourself to a glass of wine,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve already got one.”
I went over to the antique sideboard that had once sat in the dining room of the big house and helped myself to a glass of Merlot from the open bottle.
“How is Claudia?” my mother asked.
“Fine, thank you,” I said. “She sends her love.”
“She should have come with you.”
Yes, I thought, she should have. There had been a time when we couldn’t bear to be apart from each other even