‘Ørjan Nilsen featuring Neev Kennedy, “Anywhere But Here”,’ she told him, hands on her head, hips gyrating. ‘She’s Irish too.’

‘No kidding.’

He looked around the room. The staff apartments were all identical, white sarcophagus cells with brightly polished floors and windows too high to look through. No bigger than a single garage, cupboard doors mirrored to give the impression of space, the icy cold air conditioning made it feel more like living in an igloo than an accommodation block in a scorching equestrian oasis. Signe had personalised hers with a framed photograph of her ruddy-faced blonde family, a Swedish flag throw over the sofa back, the glacially white shelves jewelled with colourful boxes and bottles bought at the souk. Her love of shopping was a running joke on the yard, the tax-free earnings that others saved up going through her fingers like sand.

Signe sat back down astride him. He rolled her off, deflective smile at the ready. ‘Let’s have another vodka.’

‘Have as many as you like, sötnos.’ She picked up the bottle, unruffled. ‘I have more in the freezer: Beluga Noble.’

‘Only the best black markets for you.’

She unscrewed the lid with a wink.

‘Don’t you ever find this place soulless?’ he asked her.

‘Not any more. After four or five months, you stop noticing the hypocrisy: that the Indians are bussed in from camps to work like slaves, that the ecology is totally fucked and the malls are full of zombies with credit cards buying pret-a-porter Stella McCartney like it’s an H&M sale. This place buys your skill and sells your soul. And they get the best horses.’ She whistled. ‘They just keep arriving like drugs. Watching you on that stallion is something else, Mr Horsemaker. You make him look like Pegasus.’

‘He’s better.’

She handed him a brimming shot glass, blue eyes gleaming.

‘He flies without wings.’ He drank the vodka in one.

While it burned his lips and throat, he saw all too clearly through his own evasion. Tonight, he needed sleep, not drunken sex he wouldn’t remember. He couldn’t make the boy ride any better, but if he put his mind to it, perhaps he could stop the horse self-destructing.

He cast Signe an apologetic smile. ‘I’m going back to crash out.’

‘Stay and talk just a little longer, hey.’ With a mischievous smile, she refilled his glass so fast it overflowed.

He stared at it, wishing he had the willpower to push it away. ‘Just one more then.’

She was playing with his collar now, head tilted prettily. ‘What are you, Luca, twenty-eight, thirty?’

‘Thereabouts.’

‘Good-looking man like you must have broken a lot of hearts.’

He smiled, shaking his head. She had a lovely, lively face, and he was reminded again of somebody he’d once known; her eyes had the same roundness and sparkle, the way they drank him in with that live-for-the-moment vivid blue. But he wasn’t about to share his shadowed soul. Looking away, he caught his own reflection staring back at him from one of the mirrored doors, a clean-cut stranger. Luca’s royal employers, who liked their staff immaculately presented, sent in a barber every fortnight to keep the team’s hair trimmed. He looked as if he was in the army, his shorn hair bleached white by the sun.