by Renée Dahlia
‘Thanks mate. The Palace has been asking everyone to join, and he’s pretty persuasive.’
‘Who else has joined?’
‘Dunno. But probably a few, I reckon.’
Jacob scratched his forehead. ‘My sister’s new housemate is a jockey. I’ll ask, and if it’s legitimate, I’ll let you know.’ Damn it, now he had to talk to Rachel and figure out what it was about her that made him put up his barriers.
The spring sunset hung over the city with soft streaks of orange as Jacob knocked on Allira’s front door. She opened the door and frowned.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Hi to you too. And yes, I brought food for myself.’
Allira laughed. ‘Come in, bro. It’s just us. Rachel is still driving home from wherever she rode today. She texted to say she’d be home around eight, and not to worry about dinner for her.’
‘Sweet, just me and you then.’ Jacob said. Allira raised her eyebrows and he pinched his lips together.
‘I know you don’t like her.’ If only Allira’s words were true. He suspected the opposite might be true. No, lust didn’t mean anything. He could ignore lust.
Jacob shook his head, ‘Nah, it’s not that. I actually dropped by to see her. I have a question about horse racing.’
‘And here I was thinking you’d come to visit your little sister.’
‘Hey.’ He held up his hands in protest, bags of food dangling in the air, and Allira cracked up.
‘Come in, Jacob. It’s nice to see you take time out of your busy life for me, even if it is just to see my housemate.’
Jacob grinned. He knew better than to answer and dig the hole deeper as he strode into Allira’s house and placed the bag filled with takeaways onto the small coffee table, before sitting in one of Allira’s chairs.
‘Hell, Jacob, how many people are you intending to feed?’
‘Three.’
‘That’s enough food for twelve, isn’t it?’
Jacob shrugged, ‘Isn’t Rachel an athlete, I figured she’d eat as much as me. Well, not quite as much, since she’s smaller …’ He cursed himself under his breath. The last thing he needed right now was to be reminded of Rachel’s neat hot body. He tamped down the rush of lust, flicking a glance at the back of Allira’s front door. His sister’s laugh slowly sunk in through the mess of thoughts shouting in his brain, and he stared at her.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You’ve never met a jockey before, have you? Rachel would take a week to eat the same amount of food you eat in one sitting.’
‘How does that work?’ Jacob leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
‘She can explain it better than me.’ Allira glanced at her phone. ‘She’ll be here in half an hour. You can ask her then.’
‘Okay.’ Jacob changed the subject before he started thinking about Rachel’s mouth, and how it would look as she bit into a strawberry. How could she affect him so much when he’d only met her once? ‘How’s work?’
‘The usual collection of heart attacks, kid’s sport injuries, car crashes, spring allergies, and idiot drunks.’
‘Idiot drunks?’
‘Yeah.’ Allira rolled her eyes. ‘We had a guy walk into ER a couple of days ago with a massive cut down his cheek. He’d been riding his motorbike around a carpark while pissed and crashed into a shopping trolley. Completely sliced his face open and hadn’t wanted to call an ambulance in case the cops came. Idiot.’
‘But don’t you have to call them anyway?’
Allira smiled, her dark brown eyes glinting with glee. ‘Yip. Drink driving is a reportable offence, carpark or public road. And he was so toasted, I stitched him up without any anaesthetic.’
‘Brutal.’ Jacob was saved from more gory stories—he was certain his sister told him the worst ones just to see him grimace—when the front door pushed open. Rachel. His whole body turned towards her, vibrating like a tuning fork in her presence. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail at the base of her skull, not a strand escaping, and her face changed from relaxed to tense as her gaze settled on him.
‘Hey Rachel, how did you go today?’
Her gaze lingered on his for a fraction longer than he wanted, before she turned to answer Allira’s question.
‘Fine. Justa Lad won as expected. He’s a grand old campaigner, so consistent.’ She smiled, then rolled her shoulders and parked a small suitcase beside the door. ‘All up, seven rides, two winners, and a fourth. I’ve made enough to make the drive worthwhile.’
‘What does that mean?’ Jacob wished he had more control over his mouth as he blurted out the question, and Rachel’s keen stare made him swallow.
‘How much money did you earn today, Jacob?’ Rachel’s hard tone made him blink.
‘What? What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Everything.’ She rolled her eyes, although he did note that the tension in her shoulders relaxed a touch as she turned to pull the front door shut. ‘I’m self-employed, and for a race meeting more than four hours’ drive from here, I need to have at least four rides to pay my costs of getting there. Anything above that is a bonus, and I earn a portion of the horse’s earnings, so today’s wins will pay the rent for a couple of weeks.’
‘Is that normal?’ Allira asked the question Jacob wanted to ask.
‘Being self-employed? Yes. I do have an agent who books all my rides and takes a cut. He manages quite a few jockeys. He spends all day on the phone talking to trainers to organise everyone. When I signed my contract with him, we worked out my minimums for each race meeting. The last thing I want is for him to book me for two rides somewhere out in the bush for a day’s work. It’d cost me more to get there than I could possibly earn. Matthew is pretty good, although—’ Rachel paused and huffed out a big sigh.
‘What?’ Allira asked. She patted the couch next to her. ‘Come and sit down. Relax.’
‘I won the Memsie …’ Rachel walked over to Allira and perched on the edge of the couch, ‘a big race on a nice filly called Static Alarm last weekend, and the trainer wants a different jockey going forward. I’m pretty annoyed … no, scratch that. I’m fucking furious Matthew didn’t fight harder for me.’ Her cheeks glowed pink, and she flicked a glance at him. ‘Sorry. I swear too much. I’m trying to tone it down.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ He didn’t understand the pious mindset about swearing and was more likely to be annoyed when people truncated vocabulary. His teammates swore constantly. Sometimes a swear word was the perfect word to convey passion. Hell, he stared at the plastic containers of food on the coffee table, rather than look at Rachel while the word passion was banging around in his head.
‘Thanks. The whole situation shits me to tears.’
Allira laughed, and Jacob inhaled sharply through his nostrils. He’d forgotten he sat in his sister’s house with her watching on as he focused on Rachel.
‘And there is nothing you can do?’ Allira asked.
Rachel fidgeted in her chair. ‘I could rant about it on social media, except that would be in breach of my contract with Matthew and would burn our relationship. Besides, that’s the type of thing that gets a jockey fined for bringing racing into disrepute. Sometimes the stipes are ridiculous.’
‘So you can’t talk to the trainer at all?’ Allira asked. Jacob wanted to see her contract. Maybe he could find a loophole, but he quashed that thought before he vocalised it. He wasn’t qualified. Yet. And to assume he could fix something in her job, a job he knew nothing about, was the height of arrogance. He pinched his lips shut.
Rachel squared her shoulders. ‘I can talk to whoever I want. And I’ll be seeing Johnson, the trainer, at trackwork in the morning. I’ll talk to him again, but I don’t see him changing his mind.’
Jacob stared at her. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’
Rachel lifted her chin and gave him a sarcastic look. He lifted his hands up in front of him. What?
‘I lost the ride beca
use I’m a Girl.’ Rachel imbibed the word with heavy snideness.
‘What does that matter?’ he asked, and the glare from both Rachel and Allira nearly singed the hair off his head.
‘Bloody nothing. Everything. Fuck.’ She let out a giant sigh that seemed to deflate the whole room. Allira reached out and rubbed Rachel’s shoulder, but she flinched away.
‘Sorry, Allira. Sometimes the sexist pigs of racing really get to me. Johnson will only blame the owners, who will blame Johnson, or Matthew, and in the end the result is the same. I’ve done all the work to get Static Alarm to the top, and it doesn’t matter because one of the blokes gets the ride on her.’ Rachel growled under her breath, reminding him of an angry kitten, and Jacob knew there was a deeper story to unveil. ‘It’s a bloke’s world out there.’
‘Why do you do it then?’ He couldn’t help ask the question.
‘Why is Allira a doctor?’ She shrugged, ‘I do it for the same reason. To prove I can. I grew up with horses and racing, this is all I know. I love horses. I want to spend my life with them. I love the thrill of galloping, the wind whipping past your cheeks, the speed and power of a half-tonne horse flying over the turf. And mostly, because I’m good at being a jockey.’
Allira nodded, a sly smile on her face. ‘Sounds a lot like someone else I know.’
Rachel twisted on the couch to stare at Allira, a deep frown between her brows. ‘Who?’
‘Jacob. He plays footy because he’s good at it.’ Allira winked at him, and he shook his head at her.
‘I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given a talent, and I’ve worked hard to make the most of it.’ He spoke quietly. Compliments made him feel awkward, and he knew his answer was clunky at best. The kind of thing his brain would revisit in the middle of the night, leaving him pondering the million other better ways he could have said thank you.
‘Oh, don’t sound so pompous, Jacob,’ Allira said. Jacob’s cheeks warmed and he hoped no one noticed. He didn’t want to sound so arrogant or tense, it just came out that way. He rubbed his stubbled chin.
‘It’s cool. I get it.’ Rachel said. ‘That’s why this situation sucks so much—it took talent and loads of practice to get to the point where I’d even get a ride in a big race like the Memsie. To have Static Alarm, my filly damn it, taken away at the height of our success is gut wrenching, and all because people believe female jockeys aren’t as good or as strong as the blokes.’
‘Hold on, do you ride in the same races as male jockeys?’ Jacob asked.
Rachel’s brown eyes opened wide, her upper lip curled up at the corner. ‘Man, you know nothing about racing. There aren’t any powder puff derbies anymore. It’s one of the cool facts about racing—male and female jockeys compete on an even basis, technically speaking.’
‘How? And what do you mean, on an even basis?’ Jacob couldn’t see how that would work. The men’s footy didn’t play against the women players because of the size and strength difference.
‘I assume you mean from a technical point of view?’ Rachel’s gaze stayed glued to his and he craved the connection. He didn’t care about horse racing, but he wanted to know more, purely to keep her looking at him like that.
‘Yes.’
‘All horses carry a weight set by the handicapper, no matter if the rider is male or female, or non-binary. There is a trans jockey in the UK, and it makes no difference to the horse or the weight they carry. Weights are set on the horse’s form, not the gender of the rider. The only gender difference is that female horses get a weight allowance when they race against male horses.’
‘Did you say powder puff?’ Allira asked.
Rachel laughed, a hard sound. ‘Yeah, before women could be licensed jockeys, they used to hold races called powder puff derbies for female riders only. It’s so damned insulting, I guess I should be grateful that things have changed.’
‘And you ride against male jockeys all the time?’ Jacob asked.
‘Sure. Riding a racehorse is about balance and timing, not about physicality. No amount of strength is going to make a half-tonne horse do something it doesn’t want to do.’ Rachel shrugged.
‘So why is it a technicality, if it’s the truth?’ Jacob knew he annoyed his team mates with his insistence for understanding the loopholes behind the words written on the page, but it was the same tenacity that he hoped would make him a good lawyer.
‘Just because the rules of racing state that the weight is carried by the horse and the rider’s gender is irrelevant, doesn’t mean that everyone gives female jockeys the same chances as male ones. Loads of owners and trainers don’t believe female riders can be as good, therefore they don’t put us on their best horses. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t get to ride the good horses, therefore we don’t win as often, so we don’t get to ride the good horses. And fuck, even when I finally get to ride a good horse, she gets taken away from me in favour of a man who did nothing but gets to benefit from my work.’
‘Can I ask one more question?’ he asked, even as he told himself not to ask more questions. This was why Rachel would be trouble. She picked away at his control, like a ruckman niggling at him on the field, always pushing him off the ball.
‘Sure. Why the hell not.’
‘A couple of guys in my team have invested in a punter’s club, and I wanted to ask if it was legal.’
Rachel blinked slowly. ‘Okay. That’s not the question I was expecting. Um, yeah, punter’s clubs are legal, but I wouldn’t call them an investment.’
Jacob wanted to know what question she had been expecting, although he assumed it wouldn’t reflect well on him. He was better off not knowing, and he picked up a fork, rather than fidget in his chair.
‘Sounds like a scam to me,’ Allira said.
‘Don’t quote me on this, because jockeys aren’t allowed to bet. I don’t know much about punting, but as far as I know a punter’s club is just a few people who pool their money to bet with. They agree on their bets beforehand, and they have more money to spread their risks.’
‘And that’s legal?’ Jacob asked.
‘Punting is legal in this country, unless, like I said, you are a jockey. Look, I might not be the best person to ask about it, but my sister-in-law is a professional punter, so I can ask her if you want.’
Jacob frowned. ‘I think that might be good. This whole thing feels wrong to me.’
‘Just because it’s racing, and gambling, doesn’t make it wrong. Not everything is a rort, and the stewards are pretty good at staying ahead of the cheats.’
‘Can you explain that?’ Jacob needed a moment to unpack the tense retort from her as she leaped to the defence of her job. He was falling back on the need for more information before he came to a conclusion. Rachel didn’t budge, keeping her narrowed gaze firmly on his.
‘The stewards are the racing police. Their job is to make racing fair for everyone. It used to be an impossible job in the old days, you know before drug testing, and DNA typing, and computers to track gambling trends, hence why racing got a bad reputation. It’s pretty hard to cheat nowadays, I’m not sure why the old stuff keeps hanging around in the media.’
‘But people still cheat?’
Rachel laughed that harsh laugh again. ‘People cheat at everything. You can’t pin that on horse racing alone. It’s human nature. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t need the police, or the law.’
‘Society’s laws are not to stop people cheating each other …’
‘I’m glad you said that.’ Rachel held up her hand, palm towards him. ‘Sometimes the law is there to help people cheat others.’
Allira grinned, her eyes flicking between them both. ‘She’s got you there. Laws are often more unjust than they are fair.’ She obviously enjoyed the interchange between him and Rachel, and if he was honest with himself, he enjoyed the way Rachel spoke abruptly, unflinching at his questions and assumptions.
‘Unfair laws can be changed.’ Jacob knew precisely where he wou
ld start once he was qualified.
‘Yeah, if you have decades to dedicate to politics. Well, anyway, back to racing, you can tell your mates their punter’s club is legal, but they should keep track of where their money is being spent.’
‘Thanks.’ Jacob’s stomach growled.
‘Must be time to feed the endless pit.’ Allira laughed, and picked up a fork from the pile on the coffee table.
‘I’ve brought dumplings, and noodles from Shanghai Moon down the road. Do you want some, Rachel?’ He reached down and started unpacking the takeaway containers onto the coffee table.
‘Maybe one. I had dinner on the drive home.’
‘Are you sure? I brought heaps.’ Jacob said.
‘No thanks. One dumpling will be plenty.’
Allira laughed. ‘I told you she eats like a—’
‘—jockey.’ Rachel grinned, the first real smile he’d seen all evening. Her face lit up and her eye colour changed into a warmer brown, more like the way the sun reflected off dark sandstone, rich and brown with golden-orange streaks.
Chapter 5
Rachel sat in her car, her head resting on the shoulder of the seat, as she stared at the roof. Another day’s racing had concluded with fair results, a minor win to add to her tally and her income, and now she faced the long drive back to Melbourne. She’d enjoyed yesterday evening with Allira and her brother, Jacob, far too much. They were both so easy to talk to, and there was the added benefit of Jacob being easy on the eye as well. His athletic body drew her gaze more often than she wanted to admit. Damn it, she’d sworn off relationships.
She hated the idea that she wasn’t enough for Lisa, to the extent where Lisa had gone off hunting for more, and the idea that she was only good enough to be Lisa’s house wife, not someone she took out in public, burned her deep inside. The hurt of Lisa’s throwaway statement curdled inside like milk and orange juice, or lava eating its way through her chest cavity. Her parents had had a loving, loyal relationship, and she didn’t think it was too much to ask for the same. Moving out of Lisa’s house had been cathartic in a way, a process of cleansing herself by throwing out accumulated crap. It didn’t stop the hurt, or the nagging self-doubt that she wasn’t wanted. Leaving only served to remind her it was time to start afresh.
