‘Because if you don’t, you can kiss goodbye to your riding career for good. Even if Valance doesn’t ruin it, I will. If I’m to help you keep your jockey’s licence, and your job, I need to know everything. Do you understand?’

He nodded again, if one can nod and also hold one’s head down in shame at the same time.

‘Look at me,’ I said, slapping him on the arm.

He lifted his head and looked straight into my eyes.

‘We will win. Trust me. And that will be a victory worth celebrating.’

But I’m not sure he believed me.

Perhaps I didn’t believe it either.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Marcus had to go and do evening stables at Noel Kline’s yard.

By then, I think I had finally convinced him to call me whenever Anton Valance contacted him, but only time would tell if I had been successful.

He was certainly a very unhappy boy. He had foolishly got himself into something that was way over his head, and getting out unscathed was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

Rosie, in contrast, was overjoyed to see me when I walked back to the Discovery in the marketplace. With her barking enthusiastically in the back, I climbed in and drove out of the town on the Coverham Lane. After about half a mile, I pulled off the road alongside the gallops on the Low Moor, and let her out for a run.

Was it really only four short days since I had come this way in Marina’s Skoda to meet secretly with Gary Bremner just slightly farther on at Pinker’s Pond? It felt like much longer ago than that.

I watched as Rosie ran fast along the edge of the gallops, her nose held low towards the ground as if following the scent of another dog, or maybe a rabbit, or even a fox. Over the years, and in spite of my initial hesitancy at having dogs at all, Rosie had given Marina and me so much pleasure. If this marital separation of ours was to be made permanent, we would likely argue just as hard over custody of our dog as over custody of our daughter.

‘Oh, God.’ The very thought of it made me cry out in anguish.

I stood with my face pointed into the brisk, cold, northerly wind and enjoyed the spectacular views across Wensleydale towards the distant Bolton Castle on the far side, where Mary, Queen of Scots, spent some of her nineteen-year imprisonment prior to being executed in 1587, aged just forty-four.