I took my arm back out and thought hard on what to do next. I would have to turn the foal somehow while it was still inside her so that I could get it out. I elbowed my way forward once more so that now I was moved a little closer to Loulou’s hindquarters. It was a precarious position. If she kicked out now she would strike me clean in the guts and that would hurt, possibly it would even kill me. But I needed to reposition myself like this if I was to be effective. Now, carefully, talking to her all the while, I put one hand inside to grasp at the foal and then pushed the other arm in too.

I had two things in my favour, I realised. The first was the size of my hands – tiny and slender, the hands of an artist – so I could reach inside and navigate to the foal. The other crucial factor was my knowledge of anatomy. Those days at the abattoir had given me a profound understanding of the internal workings of the horse. It was as if my eyes could look through Loulou’s skin to see inside, to know exactly what I was dealing with here. I could do this.

I reached deeper with my left hand and at the same time I pushed with my right, trying to turn the foal, to move it from breach so that I could … ah ha! I had a foreleg in my left hand! I was sure of it. I pulled, not too hard, be careful, move just a little, still pushing with the right. The foal was turning further. I could grasp a second foreleg now. I took one leg in each hand and I pulled. Two tiny hooves emerged, trapped inside a rubbery white sac. Through the opaque membrane I could just make out the dark shape of the foal inside the birthing sac, a tiny head, the muzzle and the ears and then the neck and shoulders. And then … in a mad rush the foal’s hindquarters slithered out, and I was caught up with it, the foal and me in a wet, fetid heap on the ground. I had been right in the path of the foal and the creature was now lying on top of me. I remembered back to the birth in the stables at Fontainebleau, how my father had helped the newborn foal to breathe by rupturing the birth sac to let the air inside. I needed to do this too as this foal’s sac hadn’t ruptured, and it was still trapped in its protective milky membrane. If the foal didn’t get the sac torn, then it couldn’t breathe. Except with the foal lying on me like this, I couldn’t move.