This was her place, her rock, the only place she could talk to her father, tell him everything. His spirit was in the wind, she was sure of it, in the air she breathed up there, in the rocks themselves. He was as real to her as the wild moorland ponies, the browsing cattle and the shifting sheep. It was a place of rising larks and wheeling buzzards in the summer, of wind-buffeted crows in the winter. Whatever the season, Becky knew her father was always there with her, always listening, and that soothed, for a while at least, the aching loneliness inside her. And that was also why she loved being around the kennels with the greyhounds. They got her out of the house and away from Craig, and they were her friends too. They listened and they understood.

Becky and her mother had been working together around the kennels all that morning, feeding the greyhounds and exercising them, bedding up the calves and the lambing ewes in the farm yard. They hadn’t argued at all, and that was because Craig was not around, and because they hadn’t even talked about him. If he wasn’t there and he wasn’t mentioned, they were fine together. Craig had left the night before in his van. He was going to fetch another dog, a top dog, a sure-fire champion, he said. So for a while at least Becky and her mother had been left to themselves. All the kennel work was done and the two of them were mucking out Red’s stable together. Becky was singing away to herself as she shook out the straw, while her mother tossed the hay up into the rack.

“I wish you were always this happy,” said her mother.

“I would be,” Becky replied, “if it wasn’t for him.”

“If it wasn’t for him, Becky, we wouldn’t be here. You should remember that sometimes. We came from a pokey little room with a bathroom the size of a postage stamp – have you forgotten? And now we’ve got all this, the farmhouse, the moor, Red, the dogs, everything.”

“So I suppose I have to be grateful, do I?” Becky could feel the anger in her rising. She tried to hold it back. “We were all right before, Mum, when there was just the two of us. We had all we needed.”

“Listen, Becky, I really don’t want to argue with you,” said her mother. “I just want you to try a little harder to like him, for my sake. I mean, the minute he walks in you go out, and you hardly ever speak to him.”

“That’s because I’ve got nothing to say.” Becky was tearful already. “Nothing he’d want to hear, anyway. I mean, what do you want me to do, Mum? Do you want me to tell him what I really think of him? Do you? ‘Listen up, Craig, you bully my mother, make her cook for you, clean for you, work like a slave on your farm – me too when I’m not at school – and you never do any work yourself. Tell me Craig, when did you last clean out the kennels? Oh yes, and another thing, why do you put me down all the time? Either I’m a “stroppy teenager” or a “spoilt brat,” or I’m “dressed up like a Barbie doll”. Excuse me, Craig, what business is it of yours, and how come you keep telling me what to do anyway? I mean just who do you think you are? You’re not my father.’”