"I didn't see you at the Cheshires this year," Hugo called, and I felt myself blushing as I ducked a branch. He'd noticed.

"No, Mum and I decided to give it a miss."

"Fair enough."

“Not — you know — for any particular reason. We just thought . . .”

"Usual crowd? Same old same old?"

"Exactly."

I felt hot. That had come out wrong. As if the people there bored me. Before I could think how to remedy it, though, he was speaking.

"Um, Flora, I've never said it, and I've wanted to, and it's probably too late, but I wanted to say how sorry I was about your dad."

I looked at him, surprised. His cheeks were pink and his eyes half shut with embarrassment, just a sliver of blue. I shored up the most tremendous smile which came right from my rapidly reverberating heart.

"It's never too late," I told him gratefully.

At that moment, the track opened up, and glorious green, open country appeared before us. Hounds fled eagerly across it and horses spread out behind them. Across the wide pasture and beyond, the panorama of the undulating North Cornish countryside in all its hilly, patchwork glory revealed itself for miles around. For the first time that season the horses felt the intoxicating thrill of springy grass beneath their hooves and pulled hard. We stood up in our stirrups, kept our reins short and tight, and galloped, hearts pumping, every man for himself, towards our first jump.

Chapter 5

There it was, down at the bottom of a sloping valley, one of the famous five Pascoe walls. The farmer, Charlie, one of the few wealthy landowners round here courtesy of a wind farm he'd somehow been allowed to throw up while no one was looking, was forever having another layer of drystone slapped on his walls. Up ahead the hounds were already flowing over it like a river, whippers-in on either side. Then Saintly Sean gave us a master class in how to do it, taking hold a few strides out so as not to come in too fast, sitting up, and letting the horse do the rest. Harder, obviously, that restraining hold, for the rest of the field, not in splendid isolation like Sean's mare with her considered thoughts, but instead, racing as a herd, and Hugo and I had left it late to get to the front.