Her youngest daughter had looked thin and drawn that day, drinking too much and saying little. Although Pax smoothly denied anything was wrong, Ronnie read something into the fact she wasn’t joining her in-laws in Scotland this New Year, insisting she could usefully cover the yard while her mother visited old friends, adding candidly, ‘It’s easier being there when you’re not around.’ Their relationship was butterfly-wing fragile, upsetting it likely to ripple out through the family. Of Ronnie’s children, all trustees of the stud with her, only Pax supported keeping the business running; the other two wanted it sold off. The trio judged her harshly for past mistakes, and rightly so Ronnie felt. She had a lot to prove.

It was probably a good reason for keeping her nose clean with Blair. None of her children approved of their close friendship, even though the only reason the stud could pay its feed bill this winter was because he’d done her a favour and bought a lorry full of unbroken four-year-olds in the autumn. The reason he could afford to do that, they’d no doubt point out, was because he was married to a woman rich enough to pay.

Blair Robertson, legendary Australian rider, had been a close friend of Ronnie’s for over three decades, one of the loyal brigade to stand by her when she’d fled her marriage, just as she had defended him in the nineties when he’d shocked the eventing world by running off with the wife of one of its greatest aristocratic patrons, a ravishing countess twenty years his senior. It had taken ‘Mr Sit Tight’ a great many hard-won championships, team medals and feats of bravery to reclaim his reputation as the daring darling of the sport, as famously hot-headed with rivals as he was cool-headed with his horses. By then, Ronnie had become a near neighbour of the Robertsons’ big yard in Wiltshire, one of the few to know the tragic truth behind the great love story: Verity’s ill health had stolen her away from Blair just a few years after their marriage, early onset Alzheimer’s gradually depriving her of almost all memory of him. He cared for her stoically, helped by a small team at home, but he’d long since lost the woman he’d risked everything to love. His affair with Ronnie, born of friendship and forged by intense physical attraction, had knocked them both for six. Passionate, mutually adoring, it was soul-deep in affection and allegiance, but it would devastate Verity’s family and friends if they ever found out about it.

Conscience pricked, Ronnie tapped her phone against her chin. Let her reply wait until she drove out of the blackspot. Dangerous enough to be celebrating New Year in their former stomping ground, partying just a few fields from Blair’s farm. Not that their paths would cross; Blair was an honourable absentee from the old Wiltshire set these days, his once-sociable wife no longer able to remember who her neighbours were.

‘Blast it!’ She stalked to one of the little windows, slapping the phone down on the sill, unable to fool herself. They both had their fingers hovering over the red button, she and Blair: Ronnie deliberately tempting fate by agreeing to the Wiltshire invitation, his message sent to test her reaction time. Without a laggy signal, it would have been less than a minute.