A loud shrieking made her turn. It was coming from Lester’s cottage.

‘Is that the phone?’ asked Ronnie hopefully.

‘Oh hell!’ Pax recognised the sound. ‘Smoke alarm.’ She sprinted back to find the scones she’d forgotten about were charred to black lava. The baking tray burnt her fingers through the thin tea towel as she pulled it out of the oven, dropping it on the quarry tiles, eyes smarting. ‘Ouch!’

The frustration and jealousy she felt around her mother and Kes hijacked her as she let out a sob, dropping to her haunches and wrapping her head in her arms.

‘Everything all right?’ Luca appeared through the black fumes with an old CO2 extinguisher, just a yellow helmet and a hose short of heroic. ‘Your mother thought you might need this?’

‘Fine!’ Pax sprang back up and flapped the towel at the screeching alarm. ‘I’ve never been able to bake.’

‘When you’re perfect in every other way, who needs cake?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Flatter me, why don’t you?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re being creepy.’

‘Creepy?’ he laughed.

It was the wrong word, but it was out there before she could think of a better one. Trying to cheer her up seemed to be one of his new missions but if he wanted to make her feel good about herself, he kept laying it on too thick. ‘Creepy’ sounded like she was accusing him of being a perv, not overdoing the mood-lifting.

Once the alarm had been quietened, he studied the black remains. ‘You’re right, you’re shit at baking.’

She laughed, relieved. ‘Creep.’

‘Cake wrecker.’

Illogically, Pax now had an urge to salvage her reputation by pointing out that she could throw together an asparagus soufflé and rack of lamb in her sleep, just not bake. Knowing such boasts would hardly impress a vegan, she kept quiet.

On the way out, he fixed on one of the photographs on Lester’s wall. ‘This is you, isn’t it?’

It was herself at three or four on a fat Dartmoor pony.

‘She was called Mouse and pure evil. She once bit my brother so hard he fainted. And I know what you’re doing, by the way.’

‘Good. My first pony was called Banjax, a little Vanner stallion who teased the mares. Da wouldn’t let me have a saddle until I could jump him over every field wall on our farm bareback. Look at you, all prim and pretty. Is that your auld fella holding the lead rein? Good-looking man.’

‘That’s Lester!’ she laughed, remembering her grandmother saying he’d once been a village heartthrob.

Pax pointed to the noble figure of her father on a hunter surrounded by hounds in a neighbouring frame. ‘That’s Daddy.’

‘He looks kind.’ He sounded surprised.

‘He was, especially to his horses. He far preferred them to people.’

‘I’ve met enough who do in our business.’ His eyes trailed the other pictures. ‘This him too?’

‘Yes, with Grumps and Granny at Eyngate Hall. The hunt always meets there on New Year’s Day. That’s Alice in a basket saddle with Mummy leading. Tim was only a baby. She’s pregnant with me, can you see? It must have been the year Daddy rode the Wolf Moon Lap.’