‘She’s an alcoholic!’ Mack bellowed. ‘If you can’t see that you’re an even lousier mother than I took you for.’

Ronnie could hear Mairi hushing him. She felt a steel blade of fear, cold and familiar, run up through her. The sins of the fathers too. She’d guessed Pax drank too much, but to name it as a disease out loud made it feel far bigger, far more out of control.

She took Blair’s hand, square fingered and calloused from riding and breaking horses, his fingers comfortingly familiar between hers as she pulled its weight onto her shoulder and leaned into him.

Ronnie had no great affection for her son-in-law, a man of her own generation, who was at best a well-meaning bully and at worst a judgemental control freak, but she knew silence bred mistrust in a break-up faster than bacteria. ‘Come back and talk it through with her, Mack. Your train’s booked for tomorrow, isn’t it?’

‘We’ll not be on it unless she agrees to give up whoever that bastard is. I’m willing to make a go of things for the sake of the boy and forget all this happened if she is.’

‘That’s not up to me to say…’ Ronnie hesitated.

‘Will you help save this marriage, Veronica?’ Mairi demanded.

Ronnie remembered her own escape so vividly. She’d never wanted to go back to Johnny, not for a minute. But if anybody had offered her a way of keeping her children, however duplicitous, she’d have taken it without hesitation.

‘I’ll help in whatever way I can,’ she said.

‘In that case I’ll call back when you’ve spoken with her.’ Mack hung up without a farewell.

Groaning with frustration, Ronnie turned to press her face gratefully into Blair’s chest, his collarbone hard against her forehead.

His arms tightened around her. ‘She went to the airport to get your Horsemaker friend.’

‘He’s supposed to be in Ireland.’

‘Diverted in the fog, Lester says.’

‘Oh, shit.’ She closed her eyes. ‘That’s who Mack’s accusing her of spending the night with.’

‘Fast worker.’ Blair looked delighted.

‘Don’t even joke.’ She tried not to let her mind run with the idea, but it had already mugged it, remembering Luca’s wild reputation when she’d first known him in Germany, his effortless charm, the girls who hung on his every word, his skill with the most damaged hearts. He’d even tried to seduce her once, a very mannerly Lothario, rebuffed with no lost friendship. But that had been years ago. He’d surely calmed down. And Pax was in no fit state. Alcoholic… The word made her shudder afresh.

‘No, it’s absolutely not possible,’ she said, shaking her head sharply. ‘Oh, poor Pax. She’s going through hell and I land Luca on her.’

‘His plane made it onto the runway; I don’t think the fog was that bad.’

‘I always love your bad jokes in a crisis.’ She lifted her face to look up at Blair. ‘Goodness, I’m glad you’re here.’

‘I’m not stopping,’ he reminded her, brow creasing regretfully.