*

Pax cut the radio – ‘Holding Back the Years’, Simply Red – as Luca steered around potholes and loose dogs in the arrivals yard, Knott barking excitedly in the boot.

‘Welcome to Compton Magna Stud. Looks like they’ve laid on a reception committee.’ It was an odd line-up, a babushka doll of surprised faces: her mother and her Australian beefcake lover, alongside a vaguely familiar scraggy-looking blonde with small children hanging off both arms and a leg.

She glanced at Luca; his smile was at full beam as they came to a halt in front of the grand old buildings. With the beard on top, it was an explorer’s mask, taking in the tribal ceremony. He kept so much of himself hidden, Pax didn’t trust him at all. Only his eyes, green as mint, were giveaway intense, fixed firmly on her mother’s pretty features like a castaway spotting a ship.

‘Just remember, Mummy’s the only one of us happy you’re here,’ she murmured, realising she sounded like Alice. But she felt like Alice, aggrieved and protective, their childhood home under threat. She’d been denied her one night alone here with her memories. The more her day unravelled, the more she wished she’d been granted its sanctuary. ‘I don’t think her boyfriend’s too keen on you either,’ she added, noting Blair’s glowering face. Seeing Luca’s eyes flicker, processing this, she felt a degree of satisfaction for putting down a marker. If Blair was here at the stud, it was obviously back on.

‘Luca!’ Her mother was already at the driver’s door, charm at full throttle, eyes sparkling. ‘I hardly recognised you in your winter coat! Welcome! Good journey?’

Out of the car, Ronnie’s small dogs eagerly sniffed Luca’s trouser legs and shoes while she introduced him to everyone, circus showman rollcalling her troupe for the benefit of the tired-eyed Irishman: ‘my brilliant eventing star friend, Blair’, ‘my secret-weapon apprentice, Carly’ and ‘her three ravishing little jockeys in training who are all going to give you a quick guided tour – meet Ellis, Sienna and Jackson – while I have a word with Pax in the house.’ Her small, firm hand clamped around her daughter’s. ‘You two have had quite a night of it with the fog, haven’t you? You’ll forgive me dragging her off, won’t you, Luca?’

‘Be my guest.’ The O’Brien smile was fixed in place.

Pax looked away, her gaze inadvertently meeting Blair’s, sensing his bad temper as he snapped in a gravelly undertone, ‘Ron, I’m going to push off.’

‘I should get back home too.’ Pax took his cue gratefully, needing to pace the Mack Shack and form a plan.

‘It’s important, Pax,’ Ronnie said urgently, her voice lowered so that the others couldn’t hear. ‘I’ve spoken with the Forsyths.’

‘That’s my business!’ The last thing she wanted was her mother’s involvement.

‘If you want to keep Kes, you’ll listen to what I have to say.’

Heartbeat spiking at the mention of her son’s name, Pax waited with gritted teeth and tightly folded arms while her mother said a brisk farewell to Blair. The formal way they pecked cheeks was at odds with the white-knuckled emotion with which they briefly clasped hands, she realised, struck with reluctant admiration for the self-control with which the two loved one another.