His engine really was very loud. He needed to get it looked at.

‘Night, night, little cowboy.’ She backed out of the room, inching the door almost closed.

‘Gronny…’

She looked up in despair, peeking in. ‘Yes?’

He was behind the curtains again. ‘Why is a helicopter landing in the front field?’

*

Luca was laying waste to everything on the Chipping Hampton pub tapas menu that came with a v beside it.

Watching him, getting used to the beauty of his new-found face, Pax found a smile impossible to shake. They were going to take this so slowly, they’d agreed. Kes came first. And their sobriety. Trust took a long time. She’d already entrusted him with her biggest secrets. She’d never felt an instinctive draw towards anybody as strongly as she did now.

She drank in the sight of him tucking back sweet potato fries, olives, garlic mushrooms and cauliflower bonbons, telling her he’d originally quit eating meat as a bet with one of his brothers, who still owed him a hundred euros. ‘He thought I’d never stick it, and it’s true I’d never starve for the sake of a lump of cheese, but it helps keep the weight off. We’re all porpoises in my family, which is tough when you ride horses for a living.’

She loved the way he described the big, boisterous O’Brien tribe in Ireland, his eternal restlessness growing up, the healing skills his father had wanted to exploit to pass off lame horses as sound and make his chasers race faster. ‘Sure, he’s a terrible crook, but he’s not a bad man. He knows no better, like the fella in Canada I worked for. They’re all the same under the skin. Horsemen.’

‘Not like Horsemakers?’

He smiled at her over a plate of miniature stuffed peppers, offering her one. ‘We need to feed you up.’

She wasn’t remotely hungry, but she ate one to make him happy. It was delicious. She ate two more and polished off the sweet potatoes, sharing horror stories of her grandfather, the Captain, another old-fashioned horseman of questionable ethics and unflinching principle.

Then she told him about her father and Lester.

With each secret she shed, she saw a clearer picture of everything, like an oil canvas being revealed by a restorer after years of grime, over-painting and varnish. The colours were brighter, cheering and healing.

Unable to stop herself, she told him about riding the cob the previous night.

‘I watched you,’ he admitted, taking her hand, both their fingers bearing pale stripes where rings had been.

‘You spied on me?’

‘I heard hooves, thought you were a loose horse.’ He sucked his teeth, looking away to pull up a smile. ‘You looked great.’

‘I’m far too rusty really to take on the Wolf Moon Lap. I’ve absolutely no hope of doing it in the time.’

‘Does it matter? If you cross under the arch while Jupiter’s playing, it’d be good luck, yes? But that doesn’t mean it’s bad luck if you don’t.’