Chapter 7: On the Club Valcros Operation

A non-descript, mud-streaked Land Rover Defender pulls a horse box trailer away from the stables at Club Sporting Valcros. Inside the trailer, a piebald pony munches absent mindedly at the hay in his net, seemingly unconcerned by the grunts and thumps coming from inside the trailer's tack box.

Karen Freeling is driving the Land Rover. Her elder sister, Trudy, is sitting beside her. Karen, fresh from practising her dressage, peers through her sunglasses at the lane ahead and slows down for the speed bumps at the Country Club's gates. She waves to the gate keeper and blows him a kiss as the Land Rover and trailer drive through. The grunts and thumps are still coming from a helpless figure, locked inside the box, struggling beneath a blanket. The figure groans as the trailer bumps along. The sound isn't loud but it's enough to disturb the pony. He looks up, puzzled, not used to sharing his trailer, but soon returns to his hay.

They turn on to the road down towards Le Val.

Trudy Freeling pulls her golfing sun visor from her forehead and shakes her long, blonde hair loose. She tosses the pink visor onto the dashboard in front of her. The visor matches exactly the pink of her polo shirt and her short, divided skirt. "You're a dreadful flirt," she says to her sister. "You'll give that poor boy all sorts of expectations."

"What makes you think I've only given him expectations?" Karen replies with a giggle as she swings the Land Rover on to the Le Val ring road and on towards Brignoles and the cross-country route south.

Two bags of golf clubs are lying across the back seat of the Land Rover. One bag is bright pink, matching Trudy's shirt and skirt. The other is lemon yellow. The club head cover is missing from the three wood in the lemon yellow bag. All of the other woods are neatly capped with matching lemon yellow covers.

The lemon yellow, number three wood, club head cover is the reason why there is relatively little noise coming from the figure in the trailer's tack box. It is currently jammed into the mouth of the woman to whom it belongs. She would rather it were not there, to say the least. However, the fact that the lower half of her face has been wrapped with tape means that she can't push the mouth-stuffing cloth out with her tongue.

The woman in the tack box is Denise Tallis, women's captain at the Club Sporting Valcros and previously Denise St John-Ferris. She always attracts attention when she turns up at the club: the men want to flirt with her; the women want to gossip with her. She's not beyond using her charms to get where she wants to be and, until right now, she's happy with what she's been able to get. She's 32, but looks a good 6 years younger. She keeps herself fit; being out on the course three or four times a week has given her a glowing tan that you couldn't get under any lamp. She's always immaculately turned out. She thinks that it's important to look the part as captain. Today, she's wearing a lemon yellow outfit;: short sleeved polo shirt, shorts, white socks and yellow shoes. It was a sunny day when she got up that morning and she wanted to look as bright as the day.