She changed tack. ‘I’m hiring a weekend girl on the yard so you can both have more time off.’ Vague nods greeted this.

‘Who?’ Pax asked eventually.

‘Carly Turner.’

Pax and Luca both spoke at the same time again: ‘She’ll be—’

‘Expensive,’ finished Pax as Luca said, ‘Good.’

They glanced at each other with an energy that made Ronnie step back.

‘You know we can’t afford it, Mummy,’ Pax insisted.

‘We can if we sell some horses.’ Watching Pax racing after Kes, she told Luca about his mysterious royal caller.

That got him standing to attention, in as far as he ever did, languid leanness shifting from one foot to another, smile rearranging itself. ‘Yeah, he rang me after.’

‘Old friend?’

‘He’s a time-waster.’ He clicked his tongue in his cheek, watching Pax as she rejoined them with Kes, whose cuddly rabbit was covered in teasels, burrs and now hay.

‘Who’s a time-waster?’ Pax asked.

‘Luca’s Arab friend – sorry, Arab acquaintance.’

‘AA!’ Kes identified proudly, grabbing Ronny’s hand.

‘Well done, Kes.’ Pax gave her mother guilty eyes above a frozen smile, then glanced at Luca.

That same electric look passed between them again, Ronnie noticed. A precarious intimacy, alien to them both.

‘So who is your Arab acquaintance?’ Pax asked him.

‘Just a guy I worked with once.’

‘A prince,’ Ronnie deadpanned.

‘Really?’ Pax looked bemused.

‘You know a real prince?’ Kes could do big-eyes just like his mum. ‘Like Eric or Naveen?’

‘Sure, it’s nothing,’ Luca smiled.

‘Does he have a magic sword? Or a magic carpet?’ Kes made hand swoops whilst doing imaginary flying.

‘No, just a magic da.’

‘Like my daddy?’

Pax’s face developed its rigidly kind look. ‘Like Daddy, yes.’

An ordinary prince. Ronnie thought back to Luca talking about the run-up to the London Olympics. ‘Does this mean you’re still in touch with the royal family who bought Beck, Luca?’

‘Kind of.’

Ronnie’s business head now had stud fees on a loop, knowing there were huge performance horse programmes taking off over there, semen straws flying east first class at tens of thousands a pop. ‘Do they breed?’

‘Not sure.’

‘I can get Blair to check if you like. He has a lot of contacts. He coached in the UEA and Saudi and knows—’

‘Excuse me!’ A rabbit was thrust up between them all. ‘Rab and Oliver say grown-ups are reeeeaaaally boring.’ Kes made a fart noise. ‘Can we play with the hosepipe, Gronny?’

‘What a good idea,’ Ronnie took his hand, quashing the need for Blair’s grown-upness more than ever.

*

Pax tried not to let a sense of Schadenfreude take over when her son doused her mother from head to foot in cold water. It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to get on, but she found Ronnie’s all-consuming desire to be super-granny overwhelming sometimes. All that love-at-first-sight mutual adoration still felt too new to trust, like everything in the last few weeks.

When Ronnie disappeared into the main house to change and dry off, she tried to persuade Kes in to the warmth of the cottage, but he clung to the yard, thin moon sliding up the night sky overhead now, horse silhouettes moving in a magic pool of golden light.