"You men," Isabella said. "Girls wouldn't put up with it."
"The girls don't fight," I said. "At least, not in the infantry. Not yet."
"Will it happen?" she asked.
"Oh, I expect so," I said.
"Do you mind?"
"Not really, as long as they fight as well as the men. But they will have to be strong to carry all their kit. The Israeli army scrapped their mixed infantry battalions when they suspected the men were carrying the girls' kits in return for sex. They were also worried that the men would stop and look after a wounded female colleague rather than carry on fighting."
"Human nature is human nature," Isabella said.
"Certainly is," I replied. "Any chance of a bonus?"
5
Back at Kauri House Stables there was still tension in the air between my mother and her husband. I suspected that I'd interrupted an argument as I went through the back door into the kitchen with my bags at three o'clock on Monday afternoon.
"Where has all that stuff come from?" my mother asked with a degree of accusation.
"It's just my things that were in storage," I said, "while I was away."
"Well, I don't know why you've brought it all here," she said rather crossly.
"Where else would I take it?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said with almost a sob. "I don't know bloody anything." She stormed out clutching her face. I thought she was crying.
"What's all that about?" I asked my stepfather, who had sat silently through the whole exchange.
"Nothing," he said unhelpfully.
"It must be something."
"Nothing for you to worry about," he said.
"Let me be the judge of that," I said. "It's to do with money, isn't it?"
He looked up at me. "I told you, it's nothing."
"Then why can't you afford to buy her a new car?"
He was angry. Bloody furious, in fact. He stood up quickly.
"Who told you that?" he almost shouted at me.
"You did," I said.
"No, I bloody didn't," he said, thrusting his face towards mine and bunching his fists.
"Yes, you did. I overheard you talking to my mother."
I thought for a moment he was going to hit me.
"How dare you listen in to a private conversation."
I thought of saying that I couldn't have helped it, so loud had been their voices, but that wasn't completely accurate. I could have chosen not to stay sitting in the kitchen, listening.
"So why can't you afford a new car?" I asked him bluntly.
"That's none of your business," he replied sharply.
"I think you'll find it is," I said. "Anything to do with my mother is my business."
"No, it bloody isn't!" He now, in turn, stormed out of the kitchen, leaving me alone.
And I thought I was meant to be the angry one.
I could hear my mother and stepfather arguing upstairs, so I casually walked into their office off the hall.
My stepfather had said that they would have been able to afford a new car if it hadn't been for the "ongoing fallout" from my mother's "disastrous little scheme." What sort of scheme? And why was the fallout ongoing?
I looked down at the desk. There were two stacks of papers on each side of a standard keyboard and a computer monitor that had a moving screensaver message "Kauri House Stables" that ran across it, over and over.
I tried to make a mental picture of the desk so that I could ensure that I left it as I found it. I suppose I had made the decision to find out what the hell was going on as soon as I had walked into the office, but that didn't mean I wanted my mother to know I knew.
The stacks of papers had some order to them.
The one on the far left contained bills and receipts having to do with the house: electricity, council tax, etc. All paid by bank direct debit. I scanned through them, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, although I was amazed to see how expensive it was to heat this grand old house with its ill-fitting windows. Of course, I'd never had to pay a heating bill in my life, and I hadn't been concerned by the cost of leaving a window wide open for ventilation, not even if the outside temperature was below freezing. Perhaps the army should start installing meters in every soldier's room and charging them for the energy used. That would teach the soldiers to keep the heat in.
The next stack was bills and receipts for the stables: power, heat, feed, maintenance, together with the salary and tax papers for the stable staff. There were also some training-fee accounts, one or two with checks still attached and waiting to be banked. Nothing appeared out of place, certainly nothing to indicate the existence of any "scheme."
The third pile was simply magazines and other publications, including the blue-printed booklets of the racing calendar. Nothing unusual there.
But it was in the fourth pile that I found the smoking gun. In fact, there were two smoking guns that, together, gave the story.
The first was in a pile of bank statements. Clearly, my mother had two separate accounts, one for her training business and one for private use. The statements showed that amongst other things, my mother was withdrawing two thousand pounds in cash every week from her private account. This, in itself, would not have been suspicious; many people in racing dealt in cash, especially if they like to gamble in ready money. But it was a second piece of paper that completed the story. It was a simple handwritten note in capital letters scribbled on a sheet torn from a wire-bound notebook. I found it folded inside a plain white envelope addressed to my mother. The message on it was bold and very much to the point. THE PAYMENT WAS LATE. IF IT IS LATE ONE MORE TIME, THEN IT WILL INCREASE TO THREE THOUSAND. IF YOU FAIL TO PAY, A CERTAIN PACKAGE WILL BE DELIVERED TO THE AUTHORITIES.
Plain and simple, it was a blackmail note.
The "ongoing fallout" my stepfather had spoken about was having to pay two thousand pounds a week to a blackmailer. That worked out to more than a hundred thousand pounds a year out of their post-tax income. No wonder they couldn't afford a new BMW.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"
I jumped.
My mother was standing in the office doorway. I hadn't heard her come downstairs. My mind must have been so engaged by what I'd been reading that I hadn't registered that the shouting match above my head had ceased. And there was no way to hide the fact that I was holding the blackmail note.
I looked at her. She looked down at my hand and the paper it held.
"Oh my God!" Her voice was little more than a whisper, and her legs began to buckle.
I stepped quickly towards her, but she went down so fast that I wouldn't have been able to catch her if we had been standing right next to each other.
Fortunately, she went vertically down on her collapsing legs rather than falling straight forwards or back, her head making a relatively soft landing on the carpeted floor. But she was still out cold in a dead faint.
I decided to leave her where she had fallen, although I did straighten out her legs a bit. I would have been unable to lift her anyway. As it was, I had to struggle to get down to my knees to place a small pillow under her head.
She started to come around, opening her eyes with a confused expression.
Then she remembered.
"It's all right," I said, trying to give her some comfort.
For the first time that I could remember, my mother looked frightened. In fact, she looked scared out of her wits, with wide staring eyes, and I wasn't sure if the wetness on her brow was the result of fear or of the fainting.
"Stay there," I said to her. "I'll get you something to drink."