Heading for the door, she felt Skully’s eyes on her and turned. He winked nastily. She winked straight back at him, cold-eyed, not caring what Flynn said. He didn’t frighten her.

*

‘To auld acquaintances!’

Pax held her glass against Lester’s, her gaze focussed tightly on the three fingers of malt whisky refracted behind the carved crystal, a fiery golden hit she’d been looking forward to all day. The past last hour had crawled by, feeding the tack room wood burner half a cider apple tree’s worth of logs while helping Lester meticulously clean leatherwork for hunting tomorrow. The sun had been over the yardarm for ages, Happy Hours would be coming to an end, New Year’s Eve parties already well underway, and at last she had a drink in her hand.

To her frustration, before they could knock back the toast, Lester started reciting a list of family absentees, Laphroaig still aloft. ‘The Captain and Mrs Percy, and Major Percy before them – may got rest their souls.’ He went on to reel off a register of distant dead relatives, recently departed friends, a couple of favourite horses and a labrador. Mistaking her wide-eyed frustration for alarm, he explained, ‘Your grandparents liked to remember those we’ve lost this time of year.’

Pax thought Lester far too obsessed with death, like many of his age. ‘Maybe that tradition can be laid to rest.’

‘To Johnny!’ he toasted stubbornly.

Pax stared longingly at her glass. ‘Yes, to Daddy.’

‘Your father was a good man.’

‘I know he was.’

‘Soul of a poet, heart of a cavalryman.’

‘Quite.’ Pax drew the glass towards her lips with an ecstatic shudder of anticipation, then realised he was off again, toasting the living as well as the dead now.

‘To your brother in Africa and to your sister and her family here. May they have good fortune and good health.’

She felt a beat thud in her temples as Lester took a reedy breath to add more. ‘To your mother, who we must help as best we can. To all the little ones who will benefit from the Percy stud breeding champions again…’ He seemed to take pride in pedantically naming all her nieces and nephews. ‘And of course, to poor little Oliver, who you miss so much.’

She looked away, the pain instant. ‘We call him Kes.’

Lester lowered his glass, voice quiet, ‘To Kester too.’ The crystal rim touched hers again.

Pax’s gaze went sharply across to his face, but his wise eyes had disappeared into their creases as he took a long, appreciative draft of the fine malt.

She knocked hers back in one, temples pounding now. ‘As you know, Lester, there’s a lot of things we don’t talk about in this family. Best left that way.’

With a brisk nod, he admired the whisky left in his glass. ‘Attic flat ready for the newcomer, is it?’

Already craving a second measure, Pax let the heat of the malt diffuse through her, grateful for the change of subject at least. ‘It’ll do.’