‘That’s the spirit!’ Alice applauded. ‘Mack’s just hiding behind his parents like most big girls’ blouses.’

Grateful for the rallying cry – even if it did sound more Blyton than ‘Fight Song’ – Pax caught sight of her mother lounging in the saddle like Nancy Astor, urging Luca to hurry up as he put a bridle on the leg-lashing, sweated-up Beck. Witnessing Luca’s predictably compliant smile, she felt a fresh spike of exasperation. ‘Mack’s an entire clothes rail of blouses, Lisp. He’s even accusing me of sleeping with Luca O’Brien. I’m more likely to run over the man. All bloody men in fact!’ She let out an angry growl then ducked as Ronnie looked up.

Her sister snorted on the phone. ‘Of course, the quickest way to get rid of him is to out-ride him. Men hate that that.’

‘Buy a motorbike, you mean?’ She had a vision of herself in full leathers snarling past Mack’s sports’ bike at 100 mph on the Fosse Hills.

‘No, out-ride this Horsemaker-on-the-make. You can do his job, darling. Make him redundant.’

There was a furious clatter of hooves on cobbles and she peered out to watch Beck prancing across the yard to be mounted at last, her stomach tightening involuntarily. He looked half wild.

Pax had to hand it to O’Brien, he was up in the saddle before the stallion knew what was happening.

‘Nothing ever stood in your way when you rode for the stud,’ Alice pep-talked.

She watched Luca sit out a couple of huge bucks and ride out through the arch after her mother. With his helmet brim low as a visor and Puffa zipped up over his chin, he looked like a black knight.

‘I’ll pick my own battles, Lisp.’

Her first was with the muck heap, descending into chaos in Lester’s absence. If she couldn’t roar back to the Mack Shack to drive the tractor over her shit of a husband, the next best thing was flattening his namesake.

‘I’d lay money on you and Mack being back together again by Valentine’s Day,’ Alice predicted. ‘And you’ll see off Luca before that.’

*

Bridge sang ‘Holding Out For A Hero’ in a flat, sardonic undertone as the Bags trotted up the bridle path beside the stud like guardsmen, all heads looking left across its paddocks to the stable yard.

‘Movement nine o’clock!’ Gill held up her hand and they all pulled up to look.

A tall figure was driving a tractor with a bucket on the front, reshaping the muck heap into steps. The red hair was unmistakeably Pax Forsyth’s.

‘Our lady of the manure,’ Bridge muttered, remembering Carly saying the woman had looked straight through her.

‘Now she’s your classic Demelza Poldark,’ Mo sighed.

‘I prefer my fictional heroines buxom,’ Petra dismissed.

‘Good technique on that hydraulic lift,’ Gill admired. ‘She must be helping out while Old Lester’s laid off.’

‘Thought I’d seen that Noddy car of hers in the village a lot lately,’ said Mo.

‘Still making calls to her Chipping Norton-set lover from lay-bys, then?’ Bridge scoffed.