Luca felt too tired for sympathy. But she was Ronnie’s daughter and she was in distress, and he could no more leave her suffering than he could any animal.

‘I’ll finish this off.’ He put his hand on her shoulder, its bones hard as pebbles in his palm. ‘You look done in.’

A memory flashed, her soaked through in the hotel bathroom, body thin as a greyhound’s.

‘Everything’s mixed up…’ Her deep voice trembled.

‘We all lose our way sometimes, life gets mixed up,’ he reassured her gently. ‘Go and lie down. Let me take over here.’

‘I said the feeds are all mixed up,’ she explained, teeth gritted, turning back to the buckets and picking up the stirring spatula. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down?’

‘I don’t want to lie down.’

‘Neither do I.’

The stallions bellowed.

‘I’d rather carry on with this alone, if that’s all right.’ The polite brittleness was cracking.

‘Ronnie left me in charge.’

‘I didn’t hear her say that.’

‘I’m the manager now.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

‘D’you have a problem with it?’

‘This place will never make money again.’

‘I don’t agree.’

‘That’s because my mother is paying you to agree with her.’

Luca’s irritation needed little needling. The long journey, missing the chance to see his family, the heartache he’d left behind in Canada, the shitty welcome, the call he always dreaded, all crowned by finding Beck here was all under his skin like splinters. ‘Ah, get over yourself.’

Very tired people should never argue in Luca’s experience, but as Pax turned to face him he felt an unassailable urge to shake her out of her rigid, neurotic politeness and point out that there were more important things at stake here than her self-obsessed marriage misery. He’d just landed Compton Magna with a whole heap of problems. She didn’t even know the start of it.

‘You’re not my boss,’ Pax fumed, ‘so bog off while I trot on.’

‘Fuck off yourself, calling me a bogtrotter!’

‘I didn’t call you a bloody bogtrotter, I said BOG OFF, Mack!’

‘Now it’s Mick, is it? What sort of Irish-hating racist are you?’

‘I said Mack. It’s my husband’s name. Shit! I’m going mad – sorry.’ She held up an open palm, politely compelled to take the sting out of the exchange, although the murderous base note still gave her hostility away. ‘Be grateful I didn’t call you Mummy.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ he muttered. ‘No girl over the age of ten should call her mother that.’

‘Why not?’ Pax glared at him. ‘Does it remind you that Ronnie’s old enough to be yours?’

‘Hardly.’

‘She’s grandmother to six.’

‘I’m sure she loves them all.’ He stared her out, unblinking, but the thought wasn’t one he wanted to dwell on.

‘You have no idea at all about our family, do you?’ Her voice was climbing again.

‘It’s not my business to know. It’s dysfunctional horses I sort out, not marriages.’

‘What are you insinuating?’ Higher still.