By this time the two dogs were quite inseparable. Try to take one out of the kennel and not the other, and they would both make a terrible fuss, an ear-splitting hullabaloo of yowling and whining and yapping that upset every dog in the kennels. Brighteyes stood as tall as Alfie these days, though he was not as powerfully muscled. For each other, and for Becky too, they had become soul mates. She would never go without them when she rode out on Red. And if ever Craig and her mother went out and left her alone in the house for an evening, she would bring them in from the kennels. She liked to let them have the run of the house, to jump up on the sofa beside her. It was strictly against Craig’s rules to have any of the dogs inside the house, but Craig’s rules were of no account to Becky when he wasn’t there.

She loved these evenings, just the three of them with the log fire blazing and her music on. She’d often find herself talking to them, confiding in them all her deepest thoughts. She was lying there one evening with Alfie and Brighteyes sprawled beside her on the sofa, when she began to feel all her pent-up grief welling inside her, until she was so utterly overwhelmed by waves of sadness that the whole story came pouring out of her, about her father, about what had happened on that terrible Sunday morning nearly three years before. It was a secret she had never shared with anyone before, not even her mother, a secret that had haunted her every day since.

“Whichever way you look at it,” she told them, through her tears, “it was my fault. I made it happen. I was the one who had two mugs of hot chocolate the night before and finished all the milk. That was why there was no milk for breakfast. Mum was away visiting Nan, who hadn’t been too well. Before Nan died, she got this emphysema thing. She couldn’t breathe very well and she used to get panicky. So sometimes Mum went over to be with her at weekends. That’s why there was just Dad and me at home, and I’m lying in bed upstairs trying my best not to wake up. Dad shouts up to me and says we’ve run out of milk, and will I get up and fetch some from the corner shop down the road, while he does the breakfast. But I’m really sleepy and just not feeling like getting up at all, so I pretend I’m still asleep and I haven’t heard him.

“The next thing I know I hear the front door open and he’s calling upstairs, all jokey and sarcastic. ‘I’ll go myself then, shall I, Sleepyhead? Oh, and don’t you worry yourself about your poor old dad. He doesn’t mind going out in the rain and getting himself a good soaking just because his daughter’s pigged out on the hot chocolate again last night. You have a nice lie-in, why don’t you? Back soon!’