The young lad behind the counter of the betting shop looked at me askance. ‘This horse is 200–1.’
‘Yes. I know.’
He leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. ‘Have you had a tip?’
I looked around me to see why he was whispering. ‘No.’
He stared at the betting slip. ‘You’ve had a tip, haven’t you?’
‘No!’ I insisted. I really hadn’t had a tip either. I was betting on a horse I had just seen being loaded into a lorry in the yard where Darcy is busy becoming a racehorse.
I got so excited seeing, for the first time, one of my horse’s stablemates going out to the races, to be ridden by her trainer, no less, that I ran down to the Coral and put a fiver on the nose.
The horse didn’t win but I had a fun few hours fantasising that if it did I would be able to pay Darcy’s training fees next month, no problem.
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