M | A seductive, scheming stable lass at Marius Oakridge’s yard. |
S | Sexy but shady arms dealer and owner with more than twenty horses in training and definitely something of the night about him. |
N | An Animal Rights heroine. |
‘K | King of the Irish jockeys, who rules the weighing room, goes brutally to work on horses with great success and has no scruples whatsoever. |
M | An obsessive, brilliant trainer, who bonds with horses but woefully lacks the small talk necessary to charm owners. Marius’s yard, Throstledown, is to the south of Willowwood. |
O | Marius’s wife and, to many, the only good thing about Marius. Olivia’s charm makes up for her husband’s lack of diplomacy as she works her backside off cherishing horses, stable jockeys and owners. |
I | Marius and Olivia’s five-year-old daughter. |
B | Sampson Bancroft’s |
B | Blanche’s complaisant husband. |
J | Formerly Hengist Brett-Taylor’s dragon of a secretary at Bagley Hall, retired to a cottage in Willowwood and missing school life dreadfully. |
J | A farrier who mostly shoes race-horses, consequently best gossip and worst tipster in the world. Partner of Woody Adams and Joey East in a racing syndicate entitled the Terrible Trio, which has a good deal more fun than success. |
H | Willowwood widower and gardener to Ione Travis-Lock. Runs the allotments, which mean a lot to him, and as Tower Captain rules the St James’s bellringers. |
C | Long-suffering vet. |
B | Valent Edwards’s trophy mistress – a stunning, hugely fancied actress determined to be taken seriously, paranoid about media interest in her sex life and gold-digging ability. |
R | Prince Charming of the Irish jockeys, who battles with Killer O’Kagan for weighing-room rule. Awesome rider of horses and women, Rogue is forgiven his bad behaviour because the racing world needs stars. |
T | Marius Oakridge’s sweet-natured stable lass, no beauty – therefore adored more by the horses than the opposite sex. |
R | Etta Bancroft’s cleaner at Bluebell Hill. |
‘S | A City Slacker – but shrewd financially. A bachelor bruiser, he owns a weekend cottage in Willowwood. Has an on-off relationship with Tilda Flood, who longs for a ring but is more often left looking after Shagger’s holiday lets. |
C | A red-hot QC. |
B | Sampson Bancroft’s lawyer. |
A | Charming, self-deprecating, newly retired British ambassador who has mostly served in Arab countries. Desperately missing embassy life and spending rather too much time in the Fox with Alan Macbeth. |
I | Alban’s formidable wife – with her sister the last living descendants of Sir Francis Framlingham, whose twelfth-century stone effigy lies in St James’s church, Willowwood. After forty years as an ambassador’s wife, Ione, a serious gardener, has returned to Willowwood Hall to reclaim her rights as lady of the manor. |
T | A seductive blonde stable lass working for Marius Oakridge. |
V | A sinister Pakistani stable lad working for Ralph Harvey-Holden. |
J | Former stable lad at Ravenscroft, in prison with Rafiq Khan. |
C | A very famous and still beautiful actress in her late fifties who lives with Seth Bainton. Corinna and Seth have an open partnership. |
T | Newishly weds with a house in Fulham, who weekend in Wild Rose Cottage in Willowwood. Phoebe, very pretty, works in an art gallery. Toby, rather pink, white and chinless, works nervously for Carrie Bancroft in the City, but is a nephew of Ione Travis-Lock, which means they are asked everywhere. Toby is a great friend of Shagger Simmons, who both he and Phoebe think is a hoot. |
J | A wise, not-so-young judge. |
A | Alban Travis-Lock’s black Labrador, missing embassy life even more than her master. |
B | Shade Murchieson’s awesome bay gelding, trained by Ralph Harvey-Holden. A bully. |
B | A huge, sweet Irish gelding belonging to Shade Murchieson. |
B | Etta Bancroft’s Golden Retriever. |
C | Dora Belvedon’s chocolate Labrador. |
C | A rescued goat – companion to Mrs Wilkinson. |
C | A very lazy equine narcissist devoted to Mrs Wilkinson. |
G | Harold Pocock’s black cat, who moves house mid-story. |
D | A sheep, companion to Furious. |
F | A short-legged sweet-faced hurdler, owned by the Terrible Trio syndicate. |
F | A delinquent rescued racehorse, destined for a career move into polo or eventing, but returning instead to National Hunt racing. |
H | A Shetland with attitude. |
I | Shade Murchieson’s equally awesome black gelding, trained by Marius Oakridge. |
J | A horse. |
O | A foxhound. |
S | All horses trained by Marius Oakridge. |
L | Rupert Campbell-Black’s most successful stallion. |
L | Love Rat’s son, Rupert Campbell-Black’s most successful liver chestnut National Hunt gelding. |
M | Marius Oakridge’s lurcher. |
N | Incurably greedy tailless wonder, owned by the Terrible Trio syndicate. |
P | Seth Bainton’s beautiful black greyhound. |
S | A doughty dapple-grey warrior. Trained by Marius Oakridge. Owned by Nancy Crowe. |
M | The Village Horse. |
Bullies and dictators are everywhere, not just imposing their stranglehold on vast companies and entire continents but also creating reigns of terror within small businesses and even marriages.
Sampson Bancroft was both a Hitler at work, where he kept 50,000 employees worldwide on the jump, but also at home where he imprisoned, albeit in a beautiful Dorset house called Bluebell Hill, Etta, his sweet wife of forty-five years.
Sampson Bancroft had been so phenomenally successful in both property and engineering that legends were woven around him.
On one occasion, having reached a deadlock while trying to sell a thousand Bancroft engines to the Chinese, he had stunned the meeting by suddenly announcing:
‘If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have to go and fuck my secretary.’
Although this was interpreted to bemused Chinese officials as a family crisis, by the time Sampson returned forty minutes later the world’s markets had shifted dramatically, a foreign power had threatened China and the deal was closed. No one was sure what Sampson had been up to but ‘having a Bancroft’ became City terminology for a quick shag.