He turned as he heard shot glasses being refilled yet again. ‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Nonsense. I want you to tell me everything, mysterious Mr Horsemaker.’ Handing him one, Signe wriggled closer. She’d changed the music streaming to something bluesier, a saxophone ripping through some bass notes. ‘Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t?’

‘Buzzcocks, 1978,’ he deflected.

‘I’ve done it plenty,’ she sighed, lifting her shot and squinting into its clear depths, quite drunk now. ‘It’s like falling off a horse, they say – do it seven times and you can call yourself a pro.’

‘And what number are you up to?’ he humoured her.

She held up a Victory V with the hand holding the glass, then lifted the other to add five more fingers. ‘You’re looking at a pro. You?’

Just one woman. Not mine to keep. ‘Signe, I’m not looking for any sort of relationship right now. I’m only just out of something that did my head in, you know?’ Leaving the final shot untouched, Luca planted a modest kiss on her cheek. ‘I gotta go.’

‘Hey, you’re safe.’ She caught hold of his shirt collar. ‘I’m not in the market for number eight. Let’s change the subject, okay?’ She played with the lapel. ‘Stay a while.’ She drew him closer. ‘We’ll just fuck, no more talking.’

‘Another time.’

She looked crestfallen when he stood up, her face unguarded for once. ‘I need company tonight.’

Luca kept his guilt in check. It could be a lonely life for a gypsy in Konig boots, trick riders living off their wits. But the cardinal rule of the job was that horses always came first. He reached back down to extract his phone and keys from the coffee table.

She was too quick for him, grabbing them and dancing off behind the big carved wooden screen that divided the room from the sleeping area. ‘You’ll need to do better than that!’

‘Signe, this isn’t funny.’

‘At least stay for a blow job.’ She headed into the bathroom with another husky laugh. ‘You know I’m good!’

Luca glanced at his watch impatiently. It was past midnight. He wanted to look in on the stallion. The stable hand on nightshift was his least favourite, a surly Bangladeshi, always sloping off for a cigarette when he wasn’t napping in the office with the CCTV screens. He didn’t check the horses often enough. Bechstein, who box-walked endlessly, and had to have automatic drinkers turned off because they freaked him out, would almost certainly need his water bucket topped up.

He could hear Signe peeing, the door open out of sight as she carried on talking. ‘You’re a boring old man, Luca,’ she shouted brightly. ‘You promised me you’d let me play your fiddle!’

Had he drunkenly offered to teach her a jig last time, he wondered as he pulled on his trainers by the door, or was that a sexual innuendo?

When Signe reappeared around the screen, she was naked, his keys in one hand, phone in the other. ‘Ready to fiddle?’