‘I plan to have thighs like a whippet and a washboard stomach by then,’ Gill said through gritted teeth.

‘Eat at the village pub and you will!’ Mo’s chuckle turned into a big guffaw.

Bridge – who was prone to grand pronouncements – had worked her way up to a New Year’s Eve one as, standing in her stirrups, she declared, ‘Ladies, if I don’t have meaningful employment by the time that fecking pub opens, I’m setting up a kebab van opposite. You heard it here first.’

It was only when her three companions whooped in delight, taking turns to high five her, that it occurred to Bridge they might just hold her to the wager. Her Saddle Bags honour was at stake. She had to get a job, and fast.

*

‘Blast the blasted thing!’ Ronnie waved her phone around, failing to get the thinnest wedge of a signal. She’d tried all the usual sweet spots – the top coppice, the watchtower over the furthest stable-yard arch and the gate by the walled garden – and now she’d even come up to the dust-festooned attic in the hope it might have reception, but there was nothing. Pulling her reading glasses from crown to nose, she frowned at the screen.

Her reply to Blair’s text was still there with a red unsent cross beside it: Happy New Year. A bland, innocent-looking greeting to an outsider, but loaded with meaning for two on-off lovers, one of them married, the other under disapproving family scrutiny, their five-year love affair date-stamped with just such messages.

When Off, no phone calls was the unspoken rule. Calling was pressing the red button. They’d last spoken just days ago, but he’d believed that she was leaving the country then. Now Ronnie’s plans had changed, the trip switch on their volatile relationship had been reset. Blair’s text message was testing the circuit. Picked up in a momentary patch of phone signal, it had made her morning. Now she couldn’t reply in kind.

Damn this rural go slow. Her late father’s refusal to allow a cellular mast on his land must have scuppered many a love affair in mobile-blackspot Compton Magna. With just one business landline and no Internet – also a legacy from the intransigent Captain Percy – the village’s stud was still in the communication dark ages. Taking no notice of stallion-man Lester’s proclamations that the world wide web was full of Russian spies, Ronnie had ordered the cheapest broadband deal available weeks ago. Multiple cancelled engineers’ visits later, the cabinet, telegraph pole and copper wire in the lane had all been pronounced inadequate, another engineer booked for February. How could anyone hope to sell horses with no mobile signal or Internet, she wanted to wail, let alone commit adultery?

Her son-in-law, a bullish property developer, had spent much of last week’s Boxing Day family get-together trying to persuade Ronnie to hire the ‘smart-home nerd’ who connected up the luxurious houses he and Pax renovated, installing all sorts of fibre-optic wizardry so that they were practically supercomputers with a roof. It sounded ridiculously expensive, and Ronnie could tell from Pax’s fixed-on-fingernails glare that she didn’t agree with the idea.