They made leisurely, sleepy love this time, breaking off to get the fire going, and again when Blair went to the bathroom to pee and Ronnie nipped downstairs to silence her dogs who were barking at nothing, egged on by Blair’s pack, fetching a bottle of water while she was there.

Awash with San Pellegrino and tiredness, they lazily slipped into a favourite place, tightly slotted, face to face, knowing how and when to make the other come. Ronnie was trying to hide hiccups, making him laugh, his mirth shaking through her to speed her up deliciously. The dogs were barking again. Something clattered outside. The dog fox was still shouting its hoarse cry. It didn’t matter. They were there, letting out delighted groans, relieved they’d made it, still riding round twice and adoring one another all the more for it.

Then they heard thudding above them as feet hurriedly crossed the attic landing to the back stairs.

‘Oh God we’ve woken Luca,’ Ronnie whispered into Blair’s hot skin.

They both looked up as something clattered outside again, louder this time.

A moment later, the dog cacophony stilled, then started up in earnest as the back door banged.

‘Is someone out there?’ Ronnie was alert now, adrenaline pumping.

Blair peeled away and went to check at the window, silhouetted suddenly as the yard lights went on. He squinted into the bright light. ‘It’s bloody misty – I can only just see him. Hang on there is somebody else – on the other side of the wall. He’s onto it.’

Ronnie hurriedly joined him, peering out through the mist to a triangle of light cast across Lester’s cottage garden and recognising the furry hat with earflaps and padded coat. ‘It’s Pax. Why is she up?’

‘You want me to go and check?’ Blair’s teeth were already chattering as the draughts from the old sash window bit into the freshly post-coital heat of his naked body.

Ronnie folded her arms around him and watched Luca cross the yard to knock on the wall doorway to the garden, Pax opening it and beckoning him quickly in. From the way they huddled together talking, her daughter’s arm pointing to the big hutch by the back door and then the raised vegetable beds, she suspected there was no need for reinforcements. Perhaps the energy she’d sensed between them earlier was as sleepless as her own.

‘They’re fine.’ At least it had stopped her hiccups. ‘Come and warm me up again. The fire’s almost out.’ Taking his hand, she led him back to bed.

‘My fire’s never out, you know that, Ron.’ Blair landed beside her like a lion on a rock, wide awake again, pulling the covers right over them for warmth and kissing her shoulder.

‘You can’t possibly ride round a third time, surely?’

‘Let’s walk the course and find out, shall we?’

*

‘I’ve lost Laurence,’ Pax told Luca in a low voice through the thick scarf that covered her face from the nose down, shining her torch around the garden.