As I got closer, I could see that his flanks were heaving and he was drenched in sweat. And the wound on his leg was even more horrific than I had anticipated. It looked like something out of Rose Bonifait’s abattoir visits – an open gash that ran almost the full length of his haunches, and near the hock the skin had split away and the flesh had been gouged so that I was pretty certain I could see all the way through muscle and sinew and down to the bone itself. It looked like the leg was broken too, it stuck out at such an impossible angle, and now I was trailing my eyes down it and, yes, there was more blood and swelling all the way down to the fetlock.

But if the leg was disturbing to see, what worried me most were the hidden injuries. I’d seen the way the van had struck Claude and knocked him down so that he was crushed beneath the wheels. It was entirely possible that they had run over his body and Claude had internal wounds, too.

I stepped closer, watching his laboured breathing, his glassy eyes. There was a foam of white sweat on his neck and he still hadn’t raised his head to look at me.

“Claude?”

When I spoke his name, I had hoped he would hear my voice and respond. But he didn’t, he just lay there. I felt my heart choking in my chest at the sight of him. My own breath now came out in little sobs and I was about to burst into tears when I heard the loose box door behind me open again.

A torrent of French words. I looked up and a burly man in navy overalls was standing there holding a syringe with a long needle in the end of it.

“What?” I looked at him blankly. “I can’t speak French.”

The man disappeared and when he came back, he had Alexandre with him to translate.

“This is Marcel, the vet. He says he wants you to move away from the horse, that he’s dangerous. But I have explained to him who you are.”

“What’s in the injection?”

“A painkiller and antibiotics to fight infection from the leg wound,” Alexandre said.

I looked at Claude on the floor. His ears were flattened in anger, his muzzle wrinkled in fury. He had refused to let Marcel near him last time and this time would be no different.

“Claude trusts me. Maybe if I hold his head the vet can get the injection in?”

The vet looked dubious as Alexandre explained this.

“Claude knows me,” I repeated.

Alexandre and the vet both came into the stall now and stood beside me next to Claude.