Jumping to Conclusions by Christina Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

her son. 'Simon – baby, what's wrong? What say? Oh, you poor lamb! She's bitten you!'
    And the rest, Jemima thought, as she and Floss belted along the A34 towards Berkshire and pastures new, was history. Oh, well, one thing was certain. At least it was over now. All in the past. Nothing like that would ever happen to her in Milton St John.

May

Chapter Four
    'Holy shit!'
    Drew Fitzgerald stared at the screen in front of him with mounting horror. Seconds earlier it had been full of names and numbers, columns of them, weeks and weeks of work. Now it was blank, black, the nothingness accentuated by a galaxy of little white sparkles.
    He crashed his chair away from the desk. Give him a horse with rolling eyes and snatching teeth and hooves intent on causing fatal injuries, and he was fine. Face him with an empty screen where there should be oodles of information, or little flashing boxes blinking piously that he'd made an input error and all data will be deleted, and blind panic immediately set in.
    He snatched up the telephone, impatiently punching the numbers. 'Holly? It's Drew. The bloody thing's gone again! What? No, I didn't! Or, at least, I don't think I did ... Could you -? Brilliant. You're an angel.'
    Holly, Drew's secretary, was an IT wizard. He'd leave the whole thing to her. Right now, he wanted to get as far away from the unpleasant beige box as possible. This wasn't what training racehorses was supposed to be about; if he'd wanted to spend his day behind a desk he'd have gone into insurance or something respectable. Before he'd come to train in Milton St John, before he'd had his aspirational dreams of breaking into the big time, all his paperwork had amounted to names and numbers scribbled in a diary, or on the backs of envelopes – much to his accountant's horror – or, more often than not, was merely kept in his head.
    Squinting in the glare of the sun, Drew hurried beneath the clock arch across Peapods' cobbled stable yard towards normality.
    Sunday. The nearest the racing fraternity came to a day of rest, although with race meetings now taking place seven days a week, even that was never taken for granted. Still, today, was as close as he was going to get to a day off. Alister, his assistant trainer, had taken the yard's two runners to the meeting at Bath. Drew had thought it would be an ideal opportunity to use the computer to check the entries for the next few weeks. Calculate the possible income. Work out in private just how desperate the financial circumstances were. He hadn't expected the bloody computer to die on him.
    The stable yard was divided into two, with thirty boxes in the main yard and a further ten through the ivy-covered gate. Forty boxes for forty potential champions. Drew sucked in his breath. Only half the boxes were occupied – and none of the current inmates, much as he adored them, were going to make his fortune.
    The sun dappled over the slate roofs, throwing shadows across the cobbles. The horses had had their Sunday-morning pipe-openers, been breakfasted, and the stable lads had escaped back to the hostel to catch up on their sleep. There was no sound from the stables except the occasional rustle of hooves on bedding, and the odd contented whinny of a well-fed horse. Drew breathed in lungfuls of the yard's air and felt more at peace. The equine smell was the same the world over. Mingled with dusty straw, and the spicy warmth of bran mash – Peapods' Sunday special treat – the indefinable essence of horse, as always, quickened his pulse. This was his life-blood. He'd survive somehow. He'd have to.
    Sensing him, the horses poked long noses over their half-doors and snorted pleasurably. He spoke to each one as he passed, patting, pulling ears. It was only his second year as a trainer in Milton St John, and his first had brought a rash of successes. Beginner's luck, he now thought ruefully. But at the time, the wins had convinced him that he would soon be up among the best trainers