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herself.
    I stoked the fire a little more. “Ian Norland said it wasn’t the first time that your horses haven’t run as well as expected.”
    “Ian knows nothing.” She was almost shouting. “We’ve just had some bad luck of late. Perhaps there’s a bit of a bug going round the stable. That’s all. It’ll pass.”
    She was getting distressed, and I thought it would be better to lay off, just for a bit.
    “And Mrs. Kauri doesn’t need you spreading any rumors,” my stepfather interjected, somewhat clumsily. My mother gave him a look that was close to contempt.
    I also looked at my stepfather, and I wondered what he really thought of his wife still using the name of another man.
    Only when the other children at my primary school had asked me why I was Thomas Forsyth, and not Thomas Kauri, had I ever questioned the matter. “My father is Mr. Forsyth,” I’d told them. “Then why isn’t your mother Mrs. Forsyth?” It had been a good question, and one I hadn’t been able to answer.
    Mrs. Josephine Kauri had been born Miss Jane Brown and was now, by rights, Mrs. Derek Philips, although woe betide anyone who called her that in her hearing. Since first becoming a bride at seventeen, Josephine Kauri had worn the trousers in each of her three marriages, and it was no coincidence that she had retained the marital home in both of her divorces. From the look she had just delivered across the kitchen table, I thought it might not be too long before her divorce lawyer was again picking up his telephone. Mr. Derek Philips may soon be outstaying his welcome at Kauri House Stables.
    We ate in silence for a while, finishing off the chicken casserole that my mother’s cleaner-cum-housekeeper had prepared that morning and which had been slow-cooking in the Aga all afternoon. Thankfully, there had been more than enough for an uninvited guest.
    But I couldn’t resist having one more go.
    “So will Pharmacist still run in the Gold Cup?”
    I thought my stepfather might kick me under the table, such was the fury in his eyes. My mother, however, was more controlled.
    “We’ll see,” she said, echoing the major from the MOD. “It all depends on how he is in the morning. Until then, I can’t say another word.”
    “Is he not back here yet, then?” I asked, not taking the hint to keep quiet.
    “Yes,” she said without further explanation.
    “And have you been out to see him?” I persisted.
    “In the morning,” my mother replied brusquely. “I said I’d see how he was in the morning.” She swallowed noisily. “Now, please, can we drop the subject?”
    Even I didn’t have the heart to go on. There were limits to the pleasure one could obtain from other people’s distress, and distressed she clearly was. It was not a condition I was used to observing in my mother, who had always seemed to be in complete control of any and every situation. It was more usually a state she created in others rather than suffered from herself.
    As Ian Norland had said, something very strange was going on.
     
     
    I went for a walk outside before going to bed. I had done something similar all my life, and the loss of a foot wasn’t going to be allowed to change my lifestyle more than I could help it.
    I wandered around the garden and along the concrete path to the stables. A few security lights came on as I moved under the sensors, but no one seemed to care and there was no halting shout. There was no one on stag here, no sentries posted.
    Not much had changed since I had run away all those years before. The trees had grown up a bit, and the border of bushes down the far side of the house was less of a jungle than I had remembered. Perhaps it was just the effects of the winter months.
    I had loved that border as a child and had made no end of “dens” amongst the thick undergrowth, fantasizing great adventures and forever lying in wait for an unseen “enemy,” my toy rifle at the ready.
    Not much may have changed in the place, but