Lester was aware of being the last in his line too, not so much that he was a childless bachelor whose family had long ago been lost to him, but also that he was the last of the Captain’s generation at the stud. His lifetime had seen such change, and yet a horse’s loyalty was timeless.

Out on the yard just after six, peering through a fog of precipitation and misted cataracts, he realised that Pax’s car was still missing. Whilst telling himself it was no great surprise – he had listened to the weather forecasts and reports of travel chaos – it worried him, the owl shriek still echoing in his ears. This Luca character was unknown to all but Ronnie.

He checked round each yard and barn first, as he always did, carrying a flashlight because most of the working lights needed new bulbs, frustrated by his own slowness and the caution with which he had to cross the frosted ground to keep balanced. In the furthest barn, his torch beam caught the little colt they all thought so highly of and he let the light linger to admire him, liking the bold toss of his head as he bustled up in greeting. Super sort. He could hear the Captain’s voice in his head. Suit Pax, that one. Jocelyn had never given up hope of seeing his granddaughter back on a horse. She has her parents’ talent and her grandparents’ good sense, he’d been fond of saying, although they both knew it was her mother, Ronnie, that Pax most took after in the saddle, with that instinctive Percy gift for getting the most out of every horse she rode.

Lester, who had taught Ronnie to ride, had also taught all three of her offspring. None inherited their mother’s firecracker nerve. Alice, the oldest, had only ever been a moderate rider, overly impatient and aggressive, her short, top-heavy body not lending itself to elegance and balance. An enthusiastic Pony Club mum these days, she still stewarded at rallies and camp, rode her children’s ponies around her husband’s family farm during term time to keep them fit, and supported her older son’s point-to-point ambitions with fierce determination; but she preferred shooting for sport. Tim was even less interested, a glitz-loving fair-weather dilettante whose natural talent had gone to waste early on, seducing Pax’s pony-mad friends and dabbling briefly in polo before devoting himself to the grape as a wine merchant.

It was Pax who had possessed her parents’ eye for a stride, and that divine seat which could rebalance itself faster than a finger-click, lower leg never moving, no matter how wild the leap or steep the landing. She’d been bred to hunt. And yet she’d refused to do so almost as soon as she’d graduated from a Shetland’s basket chair to a saddle. It was cruel, she’d protested at the grand age of five, red plaits swinging, indomitably, politely stubborn even then. Despite the Captain roaring with laughter and barking, ‘She’ll change her mind soon enough!’ she hadn’t altered her opinion over the ensuing twelve years, during which little Pax Ledwell had grown to become one of the most stylish riders Lester had seen, selected absurdly young for British junior teams, tipped to be the next big three-day eventing sensation, the perfect emissary for the stud’s young horses. Hers was a different courage to her mother’s: not blood-and-guts Percy sportsmanship, but something altogether more cool-headed and analytical that Lester had recognised with an element of concern, that suspension of fear which was almost superhuman. Like her father Johnny…