The lion’s share of my gratitude went to Desmond Elliott for masterminding the whole operation so engagingly, and to all his staff at Arlington, who worked so hard to produce such a huge book in under five months.
Finally there were really no words adequate to thank my husband, Leo, and my children, Felix and Emily, except to say that without their support, good cheer, and continued unselfishness the book would never have been finished.
— England, 2007
1
Because he had to get up unusually early on Saturday, Jake Lovell kept waking up throughout the night, racked by terrifying dreams about being late. In the first dream he couldn’t find his breeches when the collecting ring steward called his number; in the second he couldn’t catch any of the riding school ponies to take them to the show; in the third Africa slipped her head collar and escaped; and in the fourth, the most terrifying of all, he was back in the children’s home screaming and clawing at locked iron gates, while Rupert Campbell-Black rode Africa off down the High Street, until turning with that hateful, sneering smile, he’d shouted: “You’ll never get out of that place now, Gyppo; it’s where you belong.”
Jake woke sobbing, heart bursting, drenched in sweat, paralyzed with fear. It was half a minute before he could reach out and switch on the bedside lamp. He lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. Gradually the familiar objects in the room reasserted themselves: the Lionel Edwards prints on the walls, the tattered piles of Horse and Hound, the books on show jumping hopelessly overcrowding the bookshelves, the wash basin, the faded photographs of his mother and father. Hanging in the wardrobe was the check riding coat Mrs. Wilton had rather grudgingly given him for his twenty-first birthday. Beneath it stood the scratched but gleaming pair of brown-topped boots he’d picked up secondhand last week.