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luck!’ Charles would whisper. ‘Shut your eyes, Garth, my boy, and when you open them you’ll see the next winner of the Derby.’
    His father was whispering now, his tone pleading. ‘This really is The One, Garth. Bang your heel and spit! Do it! Do it!’
    Garth did bang his heel and spit. He banged his heel hard on his father’s toe and aimed a vicious gob at his father’s cheek. He also drew back a clenched fist. Gryffed prickled and growled. Garth let fly, missed, and before he could let fly again, there were hoof-beats.
    There was just one horse – Garth could hear that – and instead of a light, steady beat, there was chaotic skidding. When the horse finally appeared, it was not being led by a man, it was dragging a man behind it. Charles sharply ordered Gryffed to be still and pushed Garth aside.
    â€˜This colt yours?’ the dragged man panted. He jabbed at reins flecked with froth and crammed his bowler hat more firmly on to his head. Despite the cold and his loud checked suit, he was sweating.
    â€˜No!’ shouted Garth.
    Charles bit his lip. ‘I believe so,’ he said.
    â€˜Money?’
    â€˜I have it here.’ Charles fumbled in his pocket.
    The man snatched the wad of notes. ‘I’ll count it.’
    Garth counted too. Ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred, ten, twenty – Garth’s eyes widened. Two hundred. Three hundred. His mouth dried. Three hundred and sixty, seventy, eighty. Four hundred.
Four hundred!
Enough notes to get rid of that ‘for sale’ sign. He turned to his father but for the moment Charles had eyes only for the horse. The man pocketed the notes. ‘Guineas, wasn’t it?’ he said, and held out a bag.
    Charles coughed and dipped into another pocket. Four hundred shillings, dropped in uneven handfuls, formed a mountain in the bag.
    At last the man was satisfied. ‘I’ll give you a receipt.’ He thrust the horse’s rein at Charles and scribbled something on a dirty piece of paper. ‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, and I wish you joy of it. It’s hauled me all the way from Liverpool and I’m less fond of it now than I was when I first saw it and I wasn’t that fond of it then.’ He laughed sourly and gave the colt an unfriendly slap. It took no notice. ‘It’s a scatty thing. Three years old and no sense at all.’ He turned to go.
    Charles fiddled with the reins, suddenly eager. ‘Drink for your trouble?’ He was just putting off the moment when he and Garth would be left alone. The dealer knewit and gave a pitying sneer. ‘No, guv’nor. I’ll get something in town before I get the train. Oh –’ the man clapped his bowler even more firmly on to his head just as the colt, jigging about, caught the top of Charles’s arm between two large incisors – ‘it bites.’
    Garth wrenched the lead-rope from his father and threw it at the dealer. ‘Take it back. There’s been a mistake. We don’t want it.’
    The dealer did not catch the rope. Instead he jangled the bag triumphantly. ‘Well, sonny, me neither!’ He chuckled loudly and walked briskly off.
    Surprised to find itself free, the colt walked swiftly after the man, and Charles had to run to catch it. There was a small tussle before it agreed to come back through the Hartslove gate, only to shy sharply first at Gryffed, who followed every move his master made, and then at the ‘for sale’ sign.
    Despite Garth, and despite the animal being nothing like its advertisement – it was even the wrong colour, chestnut instead of bay – Charles’s eyes were sparkling again. If drink was Charles’s prop, racehorses were his drug, every fix bursting with promise. ‘This
is
The One, Garth,’ he burst out, holding tight to the rein. He really believed it. It was winter now, but as he smelled the sweet smell of