Free The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes Page A

‘Maltese Sal’s having a rumble,’ he said, gesturing at the truck across the road. Sal was shrugging on his jacket, checking his mobile phone. ‘You coming?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘On the flyover. The one by the football pitches. It’s only going to take twenty minutes. Come on – Vicente says we can get a lift on the back of his pick-up.’
    He looked at her expectantly, a lit cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth. ‘I helped Sal get the mare ready. She’s busting out of her skin.’
    She understood now why there were twice as many vehicles as usual outside on Sparepenny Lane. Men were climbing in, slamming doors, their voices low in the still morning. She could hear ignitions starting, smell anticipation in the atmosphere. Sarah glanced again at her watch, unsure.
    ‘Cowboy John’s already there,’ Ralph said. ‘Come on. It’ll be a laugh.’
    She should have been schooling her horse but Ralph was standing there, waiting. And she was the only one in the yard who had never seen a race.
    ‘Come on – it’ll probably be the last of the summer.’
    She hesitated just a moment, then ran after him towards the red pick-up truck, whose engine was already sending purple plumes of exhaust fumes into the still morning air. She hurled her bag into the back, took Ralph’s hand and hauled herself up on to the pile of ropes and tarpaulins. Vicente told them to hold on, then pulled out into the quiet street behind four other vehicles, each full of dark-haired men, cigarette smoke trailing out of partially open windows.
    ‘He’s got a big bet against the travellers at Picketts Lock,’ Ralph shouted, over the noise of the engine. They ducked briefly as a police car went past.
    ‘Which mare?’
    ‘He’s racing the grey.’
    ‘The one that kicked the sulky out?’
    ‘He’s got a new one and a better set of blinkers. He’s got money riding on this, I tell you. Big money.’ He held his hands six inches apart, a wide grin splitting his face.
    ‘Don’t tell Papa I came,’ she yelled. He took a deep drag, then flicked his cigarette butt into the road. Some things went without saying.
    Unlike greyhound racing, or Sunday-league football, sulky racing was an intermittent and unheralded fixture in sporting annals east of the City. There was no stadium, no floodlit track on which the best horses could compete, no regulated bookmaker to offer short odds or shout for punters. Instead, several times a year, the competitors would arrange to meet at some desolate location with a pre-agreed length of smooth Tarmac.
    The fact that this ‘track’ was inevitably a public road was no obstacle to the prospect of a race; pick-up trucks from each side would simply head out shortly after dawn when traffic was low. They would manoeuvre alongside each other until they occupied both lanes of the dual-carriageway, and then, at agreed points, slow to a halt, hazard lights flashing, so that any other vehicles were forced to stop behind them. Before the other drivers even worked out what was happening the rival horses would be on the road, their lightweight two-wheeled sulkies behind them. The race would be run down a mile stretch, accompanied by shouting, sweating, swearing, a blur of legs and whips, the drivers craning forwards as they urged their horses flat out towards some agreed finishing line, perhaps a length of tape held by two youths. Within minutes the tape would have been snapped, the race decided, and the participants would vanish into side-streets to congratulate, argue or hand over winnings. By the time the police arrived there would be little evidence – perhaps the odd pile of horse droppings, a few cigarette ends – to suggest anything had happened there at all.
    This, Ralph told her, was Maltese Sal’s favoured racetrack. ‘New Tarmac, innit?’ He slid an appreciative boot over the smooth surface.
    They had jumped from the back of the van and now stood below the flyover that led out to the industrial park,