Cutting off Mack’s droning outgoing message by hooking the receiver angrily back on its wall holster in the kitchen, she pulled up the little blind above the sink, so stiff it was like raising a portcullis. Behind it was a tiny casement window that looked out into the main stable yard. Her mother was talking to Luca outside Cruisoe’s corner box. Why was she standing like a badass bouncer?

Pax turned away, eyes skirting the ugly oak-trimmed melamine cupboards, already knowing what her unconscious mind was seeking out. Having thought she’d never want to drink again just hours earlier, the tug at the back of her mouth was getting too persistent to ignore. She tried Mack’s line again, an activity to stop herself searching for booze as much as anything else, shuddering with revulsion at his nasal outgoing message, the Scooootish vowels soooo irritating. Normality had turned to demonisation so quickly. She wondered if she’d be able to bring herself to like him again one day, and if he could bring himself to forgive her for all this, to accept this was a good thing, releasing two escape capsules before the big, burning impact. He’d never forgiven his ex-wife for deserting him and taking the children beyond reach… Oh shit, not more tears. Oh, Kes. When would the thrum of adrenaline washing constantly around her body stop?

‘God, I need a drink,’ she told Knott. Luca would probably tell her she just needed God. If only he could turn water into wine…

As Pax picked up the receiver to dial Mack’s number again, it occurred to her that her multiple call attempts would come up on his phone’s log. She’d worked too hard at self-control to let him power-play missed calls. She rang Lizzie instead, grateful to be able to cry on the shoulder of someone who understood and was prepared to listen as she unloaded the horror of the past twenty-four hours. Playing down her drunken awfulness at the hotel, she wept and growled with frustration about Mack’s current stand-off.

‘They always do the into-my-cave after the he-man shouty control thing,’ Lizzie reassured, annoyingly eager to move onto the subject of Luca O’Brien. ‘So, is the Horsemaker good-looking?’

‘If you’re a Chewbacca fetishist. And into priests.’

‘He’s a priest?’

‘He’s a moralising veggie which is close enough. Mummy’s predictably all over him already. I caught them in a clinch, earlier. He must be twenty years younger than her.’

‘Ew.’

Pax peered out of the sink window, wondering if ‘clinch’ was a bit misleading; they’d looked more like they were about to Morris dance. But there was been something about the way Luca looked at Ronnie, the way so many men looked at her mother, that put a fist in the hollow between her ribs.

Luca was letting himself out of the stable beside Cruisoe’s, carrying a wicking rug. He looked exhausted. She suddenly felt incredibly bad for not helping out. He’d flown all night, slept on a chair, and he was out there while she skulked in here pressing redial.