Corridor. Fire doors. Stairs. He was in the bar, surrounded by laughter and drunkenness and flirtation. Smiley Luca, the incorrigible flirt.

The horse whinnied.

‘Horse walks into bar,’ he heard himself telling a pretty blonde perched on a stool. ‘“Hey!” says the barman; horse says “Yes please”.’

The blonde turned. Ronnie, laughter in her eyes, telling him he’s incorrigible and it’s a terrible joke, that he can do better.

The horse whinnied.

He jolted up again, awake now, looking around him. A single high, barred window, thick with dust one side and rain-pitted the other, let in thin light. The shapes of saddles on racks and bridles snake-coiled. The familiar smells of leather and oil.

The horse whinnied. He’d know that call anywhere.

*

Arriving back from the hospital to find the yards deserted, Ronnie tracked Pax down in the stables cottage. She was folding crocheted counterpanes back into the tallboy in the tiny second bedroom, its walls matrixed with faded hunting prints, the brass bed freshly made up.

‘Can you believe Lester still uses sheets and blankets? There’s not a duvet in the house.’

She’d changed into her own clothes, a dowdy black jumper and jeans at least a size too big. Red hair scraped into a bun and wearing her glasses for once, she looked much younger than her thirty-one years, hers that edge of thinness that all too quickly tipped to fragility. As she led the way next door to gather up Lester’s overnight bags from his bedroom, Ronnie could see the bones protruding from her neckline at the top of her spine like little stepping stones.

‘How is he?’

‘Reliving the accident repeatedly in minute detail.’ Ronnie looked round. ‘Gosh, I always forget how pretty this room is. I’m glad you’re in here.’ Triple aspect, its casement windows looked across the driveway paddocks to the south, the stable-yard towers east and the little walled garden west. It streamed with light.

‘It’s Lester’s room,’ Pax said firmly. ‘I’ll be next door with Kes.’

‘You can’t both go in there.’

‘It’s not for long.’ Pax led the way downstairs.

Ronnie said nothing, grabbing the rail to steady herself at the steep oak steps, suspecting it would be many months before the old stallion man made it up here again.

‘How’s Luca settling in?’

Pax put the bag down and took off her glasses to rub her eyes with the balls of her hands, her lids red from all the crying. ‘He’s probably still asleep in the tack room.’

‘You mean the poor man’s flown in early to find us all at such sixes and sevens we’ve not even shown him to a bed?’

‘Next time I’ll hire a welcome banner and a brass band.’

Ronnie checked herself, remembering she’d no idea what had occurred between them beyond the obvious clothes-swapping and antagonisation. Fierce mother love flared. Luca could be a terrible chancer. ‘You shouldn’t have been expected to pick him up, given everything you’re going through.’

‘Nobody else around to do it.’