As she headed back to the cob’s stable to sponge him off and put on a rug, it occurred to Pax that she’d thrown away a lot of control and privacy with the gesture. A call so easily dismissed with a swipe on a mobile screen was public knowledge over an ancient wired line with two inconveniently placed handsets. In a motion sickness powershift, she had an immediate and overwhelming need to know Kes was all right, to explain to Mack as calmly as possible that she’d be staying at the stud for a few days, seek reassurance that he was bringing their son home tomorrow and that they would put his needs first, call a brief truce until they sought something more formal.

Instinctively, she pressed her face into the cob’s neck and breathed deeply. That familiar salty, biscotti scent filled her nostrils. Fourteen years rolled back again. Tears briefly wet and soft against a warm, clipped coat, a wall of comforting muscle, the steady crunch of jaw on hay.

Turning quickly away, she picked up the saddle and headed to the tack room.

Luca was indeed still asleep, deathly pale beneath his beard, his cheeks hollow, reminding her again of a prisoner of war, not the golden boy they’d been anticipating. He looked so peaceful, her mother’s fallen angel, a man who had seen her at her unforgiveable worst and was consequently hard to like or forgive. The room was refrigerator-cold. Ignoring the small voice telling her to wake him hospitably and show him to a real bed, Pax flicked on the oil heater and shushed the puppy to stay, edging an old wool horse rug over them both and hurrying back to the house.

The landline started ringing as she let herself in and she hurtled down dim corridors to answer it in the kitchen, expecting Mack as she pressed the clunky old cordless house phone to her ear.

But it was Alice, the Cotswold jungle drums working faster than Reuters. ‘Just heard what’s happened, Mother,’ came her sister’s customary snappy falsetto, always at its most arch when she thought she was speaking with Ronnie.

‘It’s me, Lisp – Pax.’ Growing up, the Ledwell siblings Alice, Timothy and Patricia had been a Blytonesque trio of Lisp, Moth and Pax, Alice earning Lisp because she couldn’t pronounce her ‘s’ words.

‘Thank God you’re there. Poor Lester. Is it serious? Shall I come round? We’ve got a shoot going on, but lunch is all made.’

‘There’s no point rushing here.’ She couldn’t face the prospect of Alice right now, with her short-fused black-and-white opinions. ‘Mummy’s ambulance chasing. He didn’t fall off, so I’m hoping it’s not too bad.’

‘Is it really true the antis were behind it? I heard they lay in wait and lynch-mobbed him.’

‘Hardly.’ She relayed what Bay had told her about the hedge-lurking monitor, then held the receiver away from her ear as Alice spouted furiously about ignorant townies interfering in country traditions.

‘Luca O’Brien has arrived,’ Pax said to shut her up.