He located the small toolkit tucked in with the spare wheel, then dug around in his battered rucksack, locating his folding hoof knife and a pair of spur straps. He gathered up Pax’s discarded drink cans from the footwell by the passenger’s seat. Pacing around a few yards away, she was demanding that her son came back tomorrow as planned. Luca took his knife and carefully cut into each metal cylinder, removing the ends to create curved sheets of metal. These he wrapped around the holey exhaust to create a shell and then secured it with the straps. All he needed was a couple of twists of wire to attach it to the chassis fixings.

He looked around, but there was nothing in the muddy field entrance. Further along the road was another gateway and he went to investigate. They’d broken down beside a sewage works.

He could see Pax waving her free arm around, hand balled into a fist, landing on the car roof with a thwack. Yet when he made his way back, she sounded no angrier than an irritated teacher telling a small boy to calm down and behave himself.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mack. I’m not going to talk to you about this if you say things like that. Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start that again. There is nobody else.’ She caught Luca watching her, glaring at him as though he was the unseen husband. ‘I was in a hotel, yes, but I—’ Her eyes rolled as she waited out a lot of shouting. ‘Is that really what you think I was doing? You know what? You’re so wrong. Yes, you are. You want the truth? You do? Well, I picked up a complete stranger and spent the night with him. Isn’t that amazing?’

Apart from bright spots of colour in her pale cheeks, she gave away no trace of emotion. She could have been telling him she bumped into an old friend in Waitrose. Luca picked up a stream of obscenities from the voice shouting out of her phone.

‘You do that,’ she said eventually. ‘I think lawyers are a very good idea. Yes, I do actually. How clear must I make it that our marriage is over? Do I need to run along Princes Street twirling my bra around over my head singing “I Want to Break Free”?’

Without warning, she hurled her phone over the gateway into the field, turning angrily to face Luca, her pale face livid. For an alarming moment he thought she was going to attack him, but she hissed. ‘Do you still need wire?’

‘It would help.’

Hands burrowing under her sweater and around her back, she unhooked her bra, small-cupped and conservative cream, and fed it out through a sleeve. Within seconds, she’d sprung out the underwires and handed them to him. ‘There.’

‘Thank you.’ They were still warm. ‘Are you going to twirl it around your head and sing now?’

‘No.’

His gaze automatically went to her chest where two angry nipples pointed accusingly at him through the thick cable knit of her sweater.