‘Sid,’ Charles said, snapping me back to reality, ‘remember, I’m the guest of Lord Enstone today and he asked me whether you’d be coming up to his box for a drink later.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, still half-thinking about what might have been.

‘He seemed quite insistent that you should.’

Charles was pressing the point and I knew him well enough to know that this was his way of saying that it was important to him.

‘I’ll be there.’

If it were important to Charles, I would indeed be there. I owed him a lot and paybacks such as this were cheap. At least, that is what I thought at the time.

We joined the throng pouring into the racecourse from the car parks.

‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said the gateman. ‘What do you fancy for the big race?’

‘Hello, Tom,’ I replied, reading the name on his badge. ‘Oven Cleaner must have a good chance, especially if we get much more of this rain. But don’t quote me.’

He waved me through with a laugh and without properly checking my badge. Ex-jockeys were a thorn for most racecourses. Did they get free entry or not? And for how long after they’d retired? Did it depend on how good they had been? Why wouldn’t they go away and stop being an embarrassment, always carrying on about how much better it had been when they were riding and that the jumps were getting too easy and hardly worthy of the name.

If Tom had studied my badge more closely, he would have seen that, like me, it was getting a bit old and worn. I had simply not returned my jockey’s metal badge when forced to retire and I had been using it ever since. No one seemed to mind.

Charles disappeared with a wave to make his way to the private luncheon boxes high in the grandstand while I walked unchallenged to the terrace in front of the weighing room next to the parade ring.