‘Do you still love her?’

‘What sort of a question’s that?’

‘An honest one.’

‘She made me feel consequential, you know?’

She looked at him curiously. That bloody smile was in the way again. Without thinking, she reached up a hand to mask it from her line of vision like a spotlight. He jerked his head away violently.

‘Sorry,’ she said, recoiling.

‘Have you heard enough now?’ He was cornered and angry, veins high in his neck, pupils flooded. He looked, she realised, like her mother’s grey stallion.

‘Yes.’ Pax looked away, ashamed.

But her head worked on, shocked to find itself thinking back to the night in the hotel airport, to her own drowning, out-of-control unhappiness. Comfort and care were instincts to Luca, even when it was the last place in the world he wanted to be. Pissed or sober, he gave comfort; in extremis, in transit, in loco, he put others’ needs first. He’d be the medic on the front line, saving lives as mortars rained down.

‘Actually, no.’ She turned back. ‘Tell me, did she hit you?’

The smile sent the eyes darting away for cover, fingers rubbing his chin. ‘Is that another honest question?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sometimes, she hit me.’ She could feel the mortification rippling off him.

‘And you hit her?’

‘Never.’

Pax rubbed her face. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘It can’t be an easy thing to admit to.’

‘Sure, I work with horses, Pax. I’ve been kicked, bitten and trampled by plenty who’ve lost all trust in humans. I don’t blame the horse, I blame the person who hurt them in the first place.’

‘Horses don’t drink a bottle of Scotch a night to blot it out.’

‘Fair point.’

No matter how awful her marriage had become, how much he’d goaded her, Pax had never once got close to hitting Mack. His self-control was pure steel, the mental pain he inflicted dosed in metronome blows. In a passionate love affair, by contrast, sex and violence sometimes had a dangerously thin line between them. She remembered trying to slap Bay earlier that day and her hand burned in her lap.

‘It wasn’t all bad. I’d never stayed past September before. Autumn in Canada was my compensation, all golden trees and blue sky, pretending nothing was wrong. I used to go to the lake cabin after work, watch the moon on the water, play the fiddle, drink myself numb. Ronnie’s invitation to come here was heaven sent.’

‘How did they react?’

‘I’d agreed to stay to the end of the year, so there was no point starting fires on ice. It’s a long siege out there in winter – you can’t imagine how cold it gets. The snow just falls and falls. I had the job of ploughing clear the track to the lake. I’d stay up there some nights, sitting by the fire in the cabin trying to compose a letter telling her I was leaving. I was drinking so much I’d blank for hours, find pages I’d written I had no memory of. One night she drove up there after the family had gone to bed and told me she wanted us to run away to Ireland again, only this time she promised she wouldn’t change her mind.’