Luca didn’t want to think about his violin, splintered to firewood four thousand miles away.

‘There’s bound to be one. It’s so devilishly dull in winter, we all fiddle a bit.’ She let out that tiger-growl laugh he’d never forgotten. The way she kept stopping to cross her arms and strike a power pose was unspeakably sexy.

She was the perfect feather pillow for a weary head, a tireless hedonist with old-fashioned manners. Ronnie knew how to find a good horse with her eyes closed, which made her irresistible. He and other male riders at Gestüt Fuchs had all made fools of themselves trying to chat her up. She’d run rings round them, much to the amusement of her Dutch lover, Henk.

She hadn’t changed: an explosion of ageless positivity, and still just as blasé. The ‘sweet little stud in need of your magic touch’ was clearly riven with a big family feud, decrepitude in plain sight, the drunken daughter and frail old retainer like balls and chains around her legs. Beneath this bouncy welcome tour, there was the breathless relief of a Sister Maria let loose from the convent. Having always taken Ronnie to be as much a nomad as himself, he wondered what or who was keeping her captive. The brooding Australian was an obvious suspect.

A big part of the answer came to him as they stood at the top boundary, overhung with skeletal ancient oaks, looking down at the secret valley in which the village nestled, a ridiculously pretty cliché of Englishness. Like Ronnie, it was pretending nothing was wrong in the world, and it was doing a convincing job, from its golden stone walls hugging each picture-perfect house and field to the smoke trails rising from its ornate chimney pots into a cold, cloudless blue sky, the dark rain chugging north to bother Shakespeare country, a rainbow cast in its wake. Luca half expected unicorns to come galloping beneath its arch, trumpeting the crock of gold.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, breathless from walking uphill fast.

‘You sell it well.’ He laughed, loving it, however archaic and arcadian. Luca wasn’t in search of a crock of gold, but something much less tangible, a free spirit he’d shared in younger years. The free spirit who had always cheered him up, who believed utterly in a talent. A spirit he’d always been a little bit in love with. One who, for all her plucky imperialism, could look him in the eye with a wise blue gaze and see straight to the truth.

When Ronnie had first invited him to come and work at the stud, he’d imagined that it would be just like this: an old-fashioned fairy-tale setting. What he hadn’t foreseen was the curse at its heart.

Below them, he could see Beck trotting round the big sand pen, calmer now he wasn’t under scrutiny, and as beautiful as any myth. The shock of seeing him again had been like the explosion of smoke that brought the genie from the lamp. He was still blinking and taking it in. Be careful what you wish for; a fairy tale could fast become a pantomime or worse.