Knott whined again.

‘You’re right,’ she told him. ‘He won’t pull the wool over our eyes any longer. I will see this school.’

Emerging from the dusty mildew of vintage horseware and breathing fresh air gratefully, she noticed her mother’s car missing and felt a tick of guilt.

Lester.

Pax hadn’t been to visit him yet. Somehow the intimacy of living among his possessions made it hard to face the reality of seeing him out of context, the layers of neat order, leather and tweed stripped down to cotton pyjamas and reading glasses. It was easier to imagine things as they had been years ago, when he’d been fast on his feet, always in control, and as reassuring to have around as Dr Who or Robin Hood. He was the wise elder she had outgrown.

In turn, Lester saw in her a legacy she could never match up to. He saw her mother flying around Badminton, her father leading hounds and riding hell for leather around the Wolf Moon Lap. He still saw what she could have been, not who she was.

Knott shadowed her heels with his grey ears inside out as they crossed through the brightly sunlit stable yard and beneath the arch. The wind had picked up with bitter breath and Pax cursed the lack of a hairclip, red tresses buffeting like seaweed. It badly needed a wash. If she was quick, she’d have time for a shower.

A horn beeped, a familiar horsebox making its way up the drive. Her heart plunged like a pond pump into cold, muddy waters, simultaneously sinking and pounding. Her mother’s lover, Blair Robertson had borrowed it, she remembered. Now he was returning it, and she was the only one around. She could hear the quad bike in the far distance; Luca delivering hay to the field feeders.

Pax hardly knew the Australian rider, apart from watching him hold up medals and trophies on television, but his legendary volatility made fielding him alone an unwelcome prospect, especially given that the only previous occasion they had met – apart from the fleeting, bad-tempered greeting on the day she’d arrived with Luca – was at her grandfather’s funeral. Quick to defend Ronnie against her children’s hostility, he’d ended up hurling insults at them over the coffin.

Handsome as a polo player, Blair had been Lizzie’s eventing pin-up when they’d competed as juniors together. Pax, a devotee of Blair’s great rival Hugo Beauchamp at the time, had spent long hours arguing her man was the better rider. How fiercely they’d defended their idols, claiming ownership of these married older men. Given her mother’s track record, Pax should have guessed Ronnie would end up bedding at least one of them.

Not that Blair was showing any signs of leaving his wealthy wife. For all Alice’s dark warnings that he was eyeing up the stud as a base, Pax knew their mother’s on-off lover was a business ally they couldn’t afford to lose.

Smoothing her mad hair, Pax waited while Blair parked in the yard with a hiss of brakes, the smell of cigarette smoke curling from the cab as the door opened and he jumped out, all swagger and animated brows, a craggy cliché of brawn, the wide smile disarmingly friendly.