Good hostess that she was, she’d bake some jeźyki biscuits like her Polish sister-in-law had taught her; that would sweeten the bitter aftertaste. First, she needed a cold shower.

*

‘Are all your family in Ireland involved with horses?’

‘Pretty much so.’

Luca heard the hiss of a can pull.

Not long into Pax’s interrogation about his relationship with her mother, his former employers, the horses he trained and anything else she could fish for, she’d started to gulp diet cola. Getting blood out of a stone was plainly thirsty work. Now on her fourth can, voice ever more painfully husky, she’d moved on to his roots. ‘What fields?’

‘Same sort of fields as over here,’ he said lightly. ‘Greener, maybe.’

She didn’t catch the joke. ‘It’s showjumping, isn’t it?’

‘Pretty much.’

Being grilled made him guard his truths – easier to smile and avoid detail.

‘Hunting and dealing as well?’

‘That too.’

‘So you grew up in the saddle?’

‘You too, I imagine.’

‘Yep. No choice.’

‘Still ride much?’

‘Nope.’ Her fingers were drumming the door trim, her knees jumping, disliking the role reversal. She jangled with nerves, like a racehorse in the stalls. Yet she had a steely calmness, that brittle Englishness which would not crack however many fissures ran through the walls. It was exhausting to share space with her. He almost preferred her drunk.

She gnawed at a thumbnail. ‘Where do you go after this job finishes?’

‘Let me unpack first!’ he said, laughing easily.

The car was making terrible noises now they’d come off the M40. Looking in the wing mirror as they roared along the Stratford Road, Luca saw sparks and, slamming on the brakes, managed to bring the car to a halt in a pitted field entrance.

The rusted exhaust, full of holes, had dropped from its clips and been dragging along on the tarmac.

‘I should have got that fixed,’ Pax muttered when they got out to look at it.

‘Telling me.’

Reaching underneath to assess the damage, he burned his hand, winced and tucked it under his armpit, tilting his head to look again. ‘Sure, that’s a sieve under there. I can maybe patch it up to get us home if you’ve some wire.’

She looked down her long, freckled nose at him. ‘Wire?’

‘Yeah. There’ll be a toolkit in the boot somewhere, am I right?’

‘Search me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll call the AA, shall I?’ She headed back to the passenger’s door to reach in for her phone.

A few flakes of snow had started to drift down.

‘I have the app,’ she explained, tapping away at the screen. No sooner had she switched on the device than it rang. She rejected the call, still tapping and now waving the phone around. ‘Patchy data signal.’ It rang again. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ The voice softened to its honeyed newsreader calm as soon as she answered. ‘What is it, Mack? Is it Kes?’

Luca listened to a one-sided call between Pax and her husband, her stern, dry husk of a voice telling him very coolly to go to hell. She’d be murder to be married to, he imagined, all that neurosis upholstered in middle-class chintz. Thank goodness her mother was so different.