Keeping the Peace (22 page)

Pippa took a deep breath as she made her decision. Her own weariness after her long drive from London raised its head before she quashed it. Her own needs could wait for the time being.

‘I’m going to Bristol to check on Rhys and Jack. Emmie needs you, Billy,’ she urged.

Billy shrugged again.

‘I guess a bit of company might help. For both of us, like.’

‘That’s right.’ She gave his shoulder a squeeze. ‘Please go to her, Billy. I’d better get moving if I want to get to Bristol before midnight.’

Billy gave her a twisted smile and nodded.

‘If you’re intending to comfort Jack, I reckon you got the harder job.’

Pippa gave a mirthless chuckle.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said before heading back into the rain towards her car.

The hospital reception was all but deserted when Pippa stepped through the automatic doors. The small internal bookstore and gift shop in the lobby had their shutters closed and the woman sitting behind the reception desk leaned over some paperwork, oblivious to the occasional passers-by.

‘Excuse me,’ Pippa said when she didn’t raise her head. She smiled a greeting when the woman looked at her above her glasses.

‘A and E’s round the back, love.’

‘No, I don’t need to go to the A and E. You have a patient here, Rhys Bradford. He would’ve been brought in earlier. I’m not sure what time,’ Pippa explained.

‘You family?’

‘No, he’s a friend – well, we work together,’ she corrected herself. She didn’t really know Rhys well enough to class herself as a friend.

‘Visiting hours are over. You’ll need to come back tomorrow after two o’clock.’

Pippa pulled a face. She’d driven all this way in horrible weather. Her eyelids felt coated with lead, she was so tired. And now she had to go all the way home again?

‘But I just need to find out if he’s okay and to find Jack –’

‘Sorry, love.’ The receptionist shook her head. ‘Not unless you’re family.’

Pippa dragged her fingers through her hair and looked around her, searching for a good enough reason for the woman to let her in.

‘He’s a jockey,’ she tried again. ‘He had the most awful fall. Our boss should be with him –’

The receptionist tapped her pen against a sign on the desk.

‘That’s our visiting hours. Come back tomorrow at two.’

Pippa opened her mouth to protest, but the woman’s telephone rang and with a meaningful look towards the visiting hours sign, she turned away from Pippa to answer it. Pippa’s shoulders sagged as a resigned sigh escaped. Maybe she could try calling Jack on his mobile. She rummaged through her handbag and scrolled through her address book to find his number.

‘
The number you have called is unavailable. Please try again later. The number you...
’

‘Damn,’ Pippa muttered under her breath and punched the cut-off key. She dropped her phone back in her bag and, dragging her feet across the stark clinical hospital flooring, made her weary exit. So much for flying in to the rescue. Now all she could do was go home and wait for tomorrow. The chivalrous automatic doors whooshed open as she neared them, letting in a blast of cold wet air.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a familiar figure walking down a side corridor before turning through a doorway. Pippa stopped short.

‘Jack!’ she cried. She made a dash to follow him, clattering past the reception desk.

‘Here, you can’t go through there!’ the receptionist barked after her, futilely holding her hand over the telephone receiver.

‘It’s okay! It’s Jack! I know him!’ Pippa threw over her shoulder. ‘Jack!’

A sudden awareness of the silence around as her voice and heels echoed down the corridor made her lower her voice. ‘Jack?’ she called quietly. She nipped through the doorway out of sight from the reception and saw him at the far end, standing in front of a vending machine. He pushed a couple of couple of buttons then rattled the machine with force. He was about to give it a kick when Pippa spoke again.

‘Jack.’

He whirled round.

‘Pippa! What are you doing here?’

Up close he looked even more haggard than he had earlier on television.

‘I came to see if you – if everything was all right,’ she replied, carefully rephrasing her answer. It seemed so inadequate when things were obviously very wrong.

‘No, everything is not all right,’ Jack replied. He turned back to the vending machine and delivered the threatened kick to its metal gut. ‘Ow, fuck,’ he muttered, leaning down to rub his toes. ‘And you can’t even get any bloody food here either.’

‘Let’s go find a canteen or something. There must be something still open,’ Pippa said, taking his arm gently.

Jack scowled at her, but let himself be led away. They walked back towards the main foyer and Pippa avoided meeting the receptionist’s glare.

‘There,’ she said, pointing further down the room. ‘That looks like a café. Let’s get a coffee and a muffin and you can tell me how Rhys is.’

Pippa ordered their drinks and two Chelsea buns from the café’s limited menu and glanced across to Jack, sat in the corner booth. He had his head in his hands, his elbows resting heavily on the linoleum table. In the near-deserted room, he looked the picture of desolation.

Why wasn’t Melissa here to support him? If you loved someone, you wanted to be with them, especially when they needed you most. Not for the first time she considered the complexities of Jack and Melissa’s involvement.

With a shake of her head, she shoved her change into her handbag. For a start, she knew next to nothing about their relationship, she chided herself. Secondly, what business was it of hers?

Jack looked up as she arrived at the table and slid onto the plastic-cushioned bench opposite him.

‘So, how’s Rhys?’ she said.

Jack picked up his Chelsea bun, but dropped it again with a bleak sigh.

‘Broken his leg in three places,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘He’s waiting to go into theatre now. They say he’s going to be out for at least three months.’

Pippa grimaced. To break your leg once sounded painful, but to break it three times in one go sounded agony. The broken toe she had incurred when she’d fallen down the steps outside Brannigans’ Nightclub last year had been bad enough.

‘Poor guy. But otherwise alive?’

‘Just about. He’s so pumped full of painkillers it’d make you wonder though.’

‘Well, that’s the main thing,’ she said, trying to look on the bright side.

Jack wiped his sticky fingers on a paper napkin before throwing it down.

‘Yeah,’ he snorted. ‘Where does that leave us though? He’ll be out for the rest of the season. Finn’s good, but how can I run a stable with one jockey?’

‘It’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘There’s loads of jockeys out there, really good jockeys, who’d jump at the chance of riding for you.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that after today’s performance,’ Jack said in a morose tone, his head drooping. ‘God, I can’t believe he’s gone.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Jack.’

He looked up at her, his blue eyes desperate.

‘What if it was though? I shouldn’t have run Black Russian when we haven’t had a chance to do some proper schooling over hurdles at home. He made mistakes when he lost the Fighting Fifth. I
knew
he needed more work. Even a couple of jumps in the indoor school, but I didn’t do it. I still entered him at Kempton and now – now he’s dead.’ His face drained of what little colour it held as he said it out loud.

‘It was just an accident,’ Pippa insisted, ‘a terrible, terrible accident. He’d been jumping fine before he fell. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

‘He was so good,’ Jack continued. ‘He would have won, you could see him stepping up a gear and pulling clear of High Scribe. He would have had a great chance to win at Cheltenham again next year.’ He shook his head. ‘Does that make me a bad person because I’m feeling worse over his death since he was such a talented horse?’

The insecurity in his eyes made Pippa’s heart twist in anguish.

‘No, of course not,’ she said gently. ‘It always seems to hurt more when we lose a real talent. It doesn’t make you a bad person at all.’

Jack didn’t say anything. Instead he frowned at his clasped hands resting on the table.

Pippa realised she’d reached across and was covering his hands with her own. She eased her hands away. She felt a sudden surge of anger towards Melissa for not being here to hold Jack when he so obviously needed it, but which she, Pippa, wasn’t allowed to do.

‘Where’s Melissa?’ she said.

Jack blinked as if trying to recall her existence. He gave a sardonic smile.

‘Virtuoso won the King George with Finn aboard. She’s in London with her father.’

‘Oh,’ Pippa replied, thinking that she’d been in London too and it hadn’t stopped her coming back. Maybe it was different for Melissa. She knew the King George was a big race – maybe the winning owners were expected to attend some sort of royal banquet afterwards.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Jack muttered.

‘I had to.’

‘You’re meant to be celebrating Christmas with your family and your boyfriend.’

‘How could I, Jack? How could I stay in London after seeing the race on TV and knowing how awful everyone would be feeling?’

‘You’ve got your priorities wrong.’

Pippa thought of Rich Holden’s party, which would be well into its stride by now and the pretence she would have had to keep up the entire evening to impress Ollie’s co-stars and peers. Not to mention the red dress that Ollie had wanted her to wear.

She shook her head and smiled.

‘I don’t think so.’

Jack looked at her with a steady gaze, a glint of curiosity in his eyes.

Pippa readied herself for the explanation he was bound to ask for, but the question never arrived. He just nodded.

‘In that case, I’m glad you came.’ He broke eye contact and cleared his throat.

Pippa bit back a smile. She wanted to gather his hands in hers again to show how those few words had made her four-and-a-half-hour journey back on the dark and wet M4 in holiday traffic worthwhile. Instead, she picked up her coffee and took a sip.

‘Urgh, the coffee here is awful,’ she said, grimacing.

Jack raised a smile for the first time.

‘It’s a government incentive to never end up in hospital,’ he replied. ‘Think of Rhys. God knows how long he’s going to be subjected to it for.’

Pippa laughed in sympathy, which soon became a yawn.

‘You look done in,’ Jack said.

‘So do you,’ she replied.

‘Shall we go? Presumably you’ve got your car.’

Pippa nodded.

‘Come on, then.’ Jack shifted along his seat to get up. ‘I’ll follow you home. Just to make sure you get back all right.’

‘It’s okay, I got rid of my Take That CD. That was my only hazard while driving.’

Jack chuckled and waited for Pippa to stand up before guiding her to the exit.

‘Nonetheless, for my peace of mind then.’

They walked in silence out of the hospital and into the damp winter outside.

‘I’m over there,’ Jack said, pointing to a section of the car park.

‘I’m just here,’ Pippa replied.

‘Well, see you tomorrow then.’

‘Yes, see you tomorrow,’ she echoed.

‘I’ll be right behind you.’

She watched him walk away across the car park to his Land Rover, feeling a warmth inside fill her from within. She wasn’t anxious about her drive back to Hazyvale, more dreading the fact that she wouldn’t be able to curl up in bed for at least another half hour. But the thought of having Jack drive behind her leant a curious feeling of comfort to her. Whether it was simply having his company, albeit in a separate vehicle, for the duration of the journey or his small gesture of protectiveness, she was too tired to decide.

With a shrug, she delved into her bag to find her car keys.

P
ippa arrived at Aspen Valley Stables the next morning feeling exhausted. She stood near the entrance to watch the yard activity as she had done on her first morning. With a sad acknowledgement, she saw the vitality and buzz that had captured that original moment was absent. The lads and lasses still went about their duties, but without any spark or enthusiasm. There were no jovial shouts and chatter. Even the horses looked miserable, their heads lowered away from the constant rain that plastered their manes and forelocks to their skin in rats’ tails.

Pippa hoped the Christmas ‘party’ scheduled for tonight might help lift everyone’s spirits. Before she became soaked through, she walked on to the office.

Her emails were taking so long to load, Pippa was able to make herself a cup of coffee in the meantime. Jack’s office door remained firmly locked and she imagined him, sitting in his Land Rover halfway up the Gallops in dejected solitude, watching the horses work in the rain. She wished she could go deliver him a coffee just to warm him up, to let him know that she was on his side. Her longing to do this became even more acute when she finally sat down to read through the hundred odd emails they’d received over the last forty-eight hours.

So sorry to hear about Black Russian. He was my favourite horse…

Murdering hypocrite. How can you say you like horses? You killed Black Russian by forcing him to race…

R.I.P. Black Russian. A true hero of National Hunt racing who brought great pleasure to his many fans…

Have you recently been hurt or injured at work? If so, you may be entitled to claim compensation…

You bastard, Jack Carmichael. Any fool would have seen Black Russian wasn’t fit to run in the Christmas Hurdle. I put my faith in you with a two grand bet that Black Russian could win at Cheltenham two years running and he would have if you hadn’t been so blind…

And so they went on. Tears sprung in Pippa’s eyes as each well-wishing email was interspersed by angry punters and animal activists. She hoped Jack’s mobile was unlisted. Methodically, she deleted the hate mail and after a moment’s deliberation, opted to keep the condolences for Jack to read if he wanted to.