There was a spotted mare and a black gelding, both slow and old, their coats dull and patchy, their manes and tails tangled. The mare had a film of grey over her eyes, but her ears would prick up at the sound of me. They snuffed and stepped high towards the fence, which was soft with moss. They nudged me with their long, wet noses, finding the small treats I held out on my palm. They let me kiss their muzzles, scratch between their ears, run my fingers through the tangles in their forelocks. Once, they had been looked after, these two horses, and it made me sad that they weren’t anymore. I could see their ribs, the sharp edges of their hipbones.

Roy found me out there one day. He’d finished work early, he said, and his mother had told him where I might be. I didn’t like to know that she had been keeping her sharp eyes on me.

‘Do they have names?’ I asked, gesturing towards the horses, who had stepped back from the fence when Roy walked up. They were wary now, watching, the gelding’s haunches quivering at an invisible fly.

‘Him ’n Her, that’s what Dad’s always called ’em. We don’t have a use for them any longer now we use the tractor to pull the plough. Don’t know why Dad keeps them around. I would’ve sent them to the glue factory years ago.’

‘That’s an awful thing to say.’

‘It’s the truth, Sarah. You grew up on a farm. You know how it is as well as I do.’

I was silent, thinking of Big Bill, of Blackie, of the whole lost herd.

‘Well, they’re work if you’re going to look after them right, and there’s enough to do just planting a crop and tending it, harvesting, drying, everything else. I’m not being mean—I’m just saying rather than leave them here in this field half starved, with nothing to do, he ought to have shot them. Every time I see ’em it makes me sad.’

I squinted at him in the pale light, the faded freckles on his nose and the lines beside his eyes. Why was it I could no longer love him the way I’d thought I did?

‘Show me their stables,’ I said. ‘Is that where they sleep?’

Roy limped ahead of me, opening the gate, leading the way into the shabby structure. It smelled of urine-soaked hay and mouldy feed, mouse droppings and damp.

‘They probably do sleep in here to stay warm a little. It looks as though this stall has been getting some use.’

The light came in slatted through the boards, dust and fragments of cobwebs suspended in the still air. There was manure mounded on the hay-covered floor.

‘Would your dad mind if I cleaned it out?’