They were both there this time too, and this time, as he had once or twice before, Mr Boots whistled me over. I went because I liked him. I liked him because he always gave me a biscuit, and I can never resist biscuits. He’d never done me any harm. When I went up to him he patted me and I waited for my biscuit. He gave me one, but as I ate it he reached out suddenly, grabbed me by my collar, and held on to me. I thought that was odd, because he hadn’t done that before, and it all became stranger still when my head began to swim, and my legs buckled underneath me. I found myself lying down at his feet then, Mr Boots holding me fast on the ground, not that I could have struggled anyway. I had no strength left for that.

“Don’t you worry,” Mr Boots was saying. “He’s right out of it. He couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You haven’t given him too much stuff, have you?” said the other voice.

“‘Course not,” Mr Boots told him. “I know what I’m about, don’t I? He’ll be right as rain in an hour or two, you’ll see.”

“He’d better be,” said the other. “I’m getting out of here before that ruddy kid comes looking for him.” He was undoing my collar now. “Here, you’d better lose this, chuck it in the pond. I won’t be needing his phone number, will I? Nor his name.”

“What about my money?” Mr Boots asked. “£500 was the deal.”

They argued loudly about it for some time. “£400, take it or leave it.”

Then Mr Boots was shouting at him: “That’s robbery that is, daylight bleeding robbery!”

“That’s rich coming from you, Bootsy,” said the other, “from a dog thief. And mind you get rid of that collar.”

They were still arguing as they put a muzzle on me, tight, so tight that it hurt. I heard Mr Boots storming off, swearing and cursing as he went. Then I was dumped in the back of a van, and the door slammed after me. I drifted in and out of sleep for some time, I think, before waking up properly, before I really understood that my nightmare had been no dream, that everything was true, that I was not home again on the sofa with Patrick.

It was not the cold nor the blackness all around me that frightened me most, that made me tremble and whimper as I lay there. It was the fear of the unknown that truly terrified me. Where was I being taken to? Why had they done this? What was going to happen to me? Would I ever see Patrick again?

“Be Fast, Brighteyes, Be Very Fast”

For Becky the only good days were when Craig wasn’t at home, and she wasn’t at school. So that Sunday morning had been a good day, so far, just her and her mother alone together, like it used to be three years ago, before they’d moved out of town and come to live out on the moor miles away from all her friends and so much that she had known and loved. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being in the countryside. She did, when Craig wasn’t there, and when she could get away on her own. She’d ride out on Red to the top of High Moor, galloping most of the way. Once up there she’d clamber up on the rocks and stand there leaning into the wind, revelling in it.