Also by Jojo Moyes

SHELTERING RAIN

FOREIGN FRUIT

THE PEACOCK EMPORIUM

THE SHIP OF BRIDES

SILVER BAY

NIGHT MUSIC

THE HORSE DANCER

Jojo Moyes

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette Livre UK Company

Copyright © Jojo Moyes 2009

The right of Jojo Moyes to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978 1 848 94745 0

ISBN 978 0 34096 159 9

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

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To C, S, H and L

And to Mecca Harris

Show me your horse and I will tell you what you are

Old English proverb

Prologue

He saw her yellow dress before he saw her, glowing in the fading light; a beacon at the far end of the stables. He stopped for a moment, unsure that he could trust his eyes. Then her pale arm reached up, Gerontius’s elegant head dipping over the door to take whatever treat she offered, and he was walking briskly, half running, the metal tips of his boots clicking on the wet cobbles.

‘You are here!’

‘Henri!’

His arms were around her as she turned; he kissed her, dipped his head to inhale the glorious scent of her hair. The breath that escaped him seemed to come from somewhere in his boots.

‘We got here this afternoon,’ she said, into his shoulder. ‘I’ve barely had time to change. I must look awful . . . but I was in the audience and glimpsed you through the curtain. I had to come to wish you luck.’

Her words had become jumbled, but he could barely hear her anyway. He was shocked by the girl’s sheer presence; the feel of her in his arms after so many months’ absence. ‘And just look at you!’ She took a step back, allowing her gaze to travel from his black peaked cap all the way down his immaculate uniform, then reached up to brush an imaginary fleck from one of his gold epaulettes. He noted, with gratitude, the reluctance with which she withdrew her fingers. There was no awkwardness, he marvelled, even after so many months. No coquettishness. She was utterly guileless; the girl of his imagination made flesh again.

‘You look wonderful,’ she said.

‘I . . . cannot stay,’ he said. ‘We ride in ten minutes.’

‘I know . . . Le Carrousel is so exciting. We’ve been watching the motorcyclists, and the parade of tanks,’ she said. ‘But you, Henri, you and the horses are definitely the big draw.’ She glanced behind her towards the arena. ‘I think the whole of France is here to see you.’

‘You . . . get les billets?’

They frowned at each other. Language was still a problem, despite their best efforts.

‘Billets. . .’ He shook his head, irritated with himself. ‘Ticket. Tickets. Best tickets.’

She beamed, and his brief dissatisfaction evaporated. ‘Oh, yes. Edith, her mother and I are in the front row. They simply can’t wait to see you ride. I’ve told them everything about you. We’re staying at the Château de Verrières.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper, even though no one was near. ‘It’s very grand. The Wilkinsons have an awful lot of money. Much more than we have. It was very kind of them to bring me.’

He watched her talk – distracted by the Cupid’s bow of her upper lip. She was here. His hands, in their white kid gloves, cradled her face. ‘Florence . . .’ He breathed, kissing her again. The scent of the sun infused her skin, even though dusk had fallen. It was intoxicating, as if she had been created to radiate warmth. ‘Every day I miss you. Before, there is nothing but Le Cadre Noir. Now . . . nothing is good without you.’

‘Henri . . .’ She stroked his cheek, her body against his. He felt almost giddy.

‘Lachapelle!’

He whipped round. Didier Picart stood at the head of his horse, a groom at his side preparing his saddle. He was pulling on his gloves. ‘Perhaps if you think about your riding as much as your English whore we can achieve something, eh?’

Florence did not know enough French to understand but she caught the look that flickered across Picart’s face, and Henri saw she had guessed that whatever the other Frenchman had said it was not complimentary.

The familiar anger rose, and he set his jaw against it. He shook his head at Florence, trying to convey to her Picart’s stupidity, his irrelevance. Picart had been like this – insulting, provocative – since the trip to England when she and Henri had met. English girls had no class, Picart had exclaimed, in the mess afterwards; Henri knew that it had been aimed directly at him. They did not know how to dress. They ate like pigs at a trough. They would lie down with anyone for a few francs, or the equivalent of a pint of that foul beer.

It had taken him weeks to work out that Picart’s bile had little to do with Florence, and everything to do with his fury at having been usurped within Le Cadre Noir, jostled aside by the son of a farmer. Not that that made it easier to hear it.

Picart’s voice echoed down the yard: ‘I hear there are rooms near the quai Lucien Gautier. A little more fitting than a stableyard, n’est-ce pas?’

Henri’s hand tightened around Florence’s. He tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke: ‘You could be the last man on earth and she would be too good for you, Picart.’

‘Don’t you know, farmer boy, that any whore will have you if the price is right?’ Picart smirked, placed a perfectly polished boot in his stirrup and vaulted on to his horse.

Henri made to step forward, but Florence stopped him. ‘Darling . . . look, I’d better get to my seat,’ she said, backing away. ‘You need to prepare.’ She hesitated, then reached up and kissed him again, her slim white hand pulling the back of his neck towards her. He knew what she was trying to do: tug his thoughts from Picart’s poison. And she was right; it was impossible to feel anything but joy when Florence’s lips were on his own. She smiled. ‘Bonne chance, écuyer.’

‘Écuyer!’ he repeated, momentarily diverted, touched that in his absence she had discovered the correct word for ‘horseman’.

‘I’m learning!’ She blew a kiss, her eyes filled with mischief, with promise, and then she was gone, his English girl, running back down the long stables, her heels clicking on the cobbles.

Le Carrousel, the annual military festival, traditionally marked the end of a year of training for the young cavalry officers of Saumur. As usual, the July weekend was thick with visitors to the medieval town, keen not just to witness the passing out of the young cavalrymen but the traditional displays of cavalry riding, motorbike acrobatics and the parade of tanks, their great hulls still scarred from the war.

It was 1960. The old guard was teetering in the face of an onslaught of popular culture, of shifting attitudes and Johnny Hallyday, but in Saumur there was little appetite for change. The annual performance of the twenty-two elite French horsemen, some military, some civilian, who comprised Le Cadre Noir, the highlight of Le Carrousel weekend, was always enough to guarantee that the tickets were sold out within days – to the local community, to those who were imbued with a sense of France’s heritage, and, on a less cerebral level, to those intrigued by posters all over the Loire region promising ‘Majesty, Mystery, Horses that Defy Gravity’.

Le Cadre Noir had been born almost 250 years earlier, after the decimation of the French cavalry in the Napoleonic Wars. In an attempt to rebuild what had once been considered a crack band of horsemen, a school was created in Saumur, a town which had housed an equestrian academy since the 16th century. Here, a corps of instructors had been gathered from the finest riding schools at Versailles, the Tuileries and Saint Germain, to pass on the high traditions of academic riding to a new generation of officers, and had continued to do so ever since.

With the advent of tanks and mechanised warfare, Le Cadre Noir faced questions as to the usefulness of such an arcane organisation. But for decades no government had felt able to disband what had, by then, become part of France’s heritage: the horsemen in their black uniforms were iconic, and France, with its traditions of L’Académie Française, haute cuisine and couture, understood the importance of the tradition. The horsemen themselves, perhaps recognising that the best way to ensure survival was to create a new role, widened their remit: as well as teaching cavalrymen, the school opened its doors to reveal its rarified skills and magnificent horses at public performances in France and abroad.

This was the Le Cadre Noir in which Henri Lachapelle now found himself, and that night’s performance was the most symbolically important of the year, in the home of Le Cadre Noir, a chance to demonstrate hard-won skills to friends and family. The air smelt of caramel, wine and firecrackers, and the heat of thousands of gently moving bodies. Around the place du Chardonnet, in the heart of the École de Cavalrie, its elegant, honeyed buildings, the crowds were already swelling. The carnival atmosphere was amplified by the July heat, the still evening, an inflating air of expectation. Children ran to and fro with balloons or sticks of candy floss, their parents lost in crowds that surveyed stalls selling paper windmills and sparkling wine, or merely walking in laughing groups across the great bridge to the pavement cafés of the north side. All the while a low hum of excitement emanated from those who had already taken their seats around the Grand Manège, the vast sand arena of the public performance, and now sat impatiently, fanning themselves and perspiring in the dimming light.

‘Attends!’

Henri, hearing the cry to attention, checked his saddle and bridle, asked the dresseur for the fifteenth time whether his uniform was straight, then rubbed the nose of Gerontius, his horse, admiring the minute ribboned plaits that the groom had sewn across his gleaming neck, muttering words of praise and encouragement into his elegantly trimmed ears. Gerontius was seventeen, elderly in terms of the academy, and would soon be retired. He had been Henri’s horse since he had arrived at Le Cadre Noir three years previously, and an instant, passionate bond had formed between them. Here, within the confines of the school’s ancient walls, it was not unusual to see young men kissing their horses’ noses, muttering endearments they would have been embarrassed to bestow on a woman.

‘Vous êtes prêt?’ Le Grand Dieu, the master horseman, was striding down the centre of the preparatory arena, followed by a coterie of écuyers, his gilded uniform and three-cornered cap marking him out as the most senior of the school’s practitioners. He stood in front of the young horsemen and their fidgeting horses. ‘This, as you know, is the highlight of our year. The ceremony dates back more than a hundred and thirty years, and the traditions of our school from many years before that, back to Xenophon and the age of the Greeks.

‘So much in our world today seems to be about the need for change, of throwing out the old ways in pursuit of what is free or easy. Le Cadre Noir believes there is still a place for an élite, for the pursuit of excellence above all else. Tonight you are ambassadors, showing that true grace, true beauty can only be the result of discipline, of patience, of sympathy and self-denial.’

He gazed around him. ‘Ours is an art that dies the moment it is created. Let us make the people of Saumur feel privileged to witness such a spectacle.’

There was a murmur of approval, then the men began to mount their horses, some fiddling with their caps, rubbing at non-existent marks on their boots, little gestures to dispel the anxiety that was creeping in.

‘You’re ready, Lachapelle? Not too nervous?’

‘No, sir.’ Henri stood straight, feeling the older man’s eyes travel swiftly over his uniform, checking for chinks in perfection. He was conscious that his studied calm was betrayed by the sweat trickling from his temples to his stiff mandarin collar.

‘It’s no shame to feel a little adrenalin at one’s first Carrousel,’ he said, stroking Gerontius’s neck. ‘This old hand will see you through. So, you perform Capriole in the second team performance. Then, riding Phantasme, La Croupade. D’accord?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He knew the maîtres écuyers had been split over whether he should be granted such a visible role in the annual performance, given his history over these past months, the arguments, his perceived and catastrophic lack of discipline . . . His groom had passed on to him the talk in the tack room: that his rebelliousness had nearly cost him his place in Le Cadre Noir altogether.

He had not attempted to defend himself. How could he have explained to them the seismic shift that had taken place within him? How could he tell them that, to a man who had never heard a word of affection, or felt a gentle touch, her voice, her kindness, her breasts, her scent and hair had proven not just a distraction but an obsession far more powerful than an intellectual treatise on the finer points of horsemanship?

Henri Lachapelle’s childhood had been a world of chaos and disorder, dominated by his father. Refinement was a two-franc bottle of wine, and any attempt at learning derided. Joining the cavalry had provided him with a lifeline, and his progression through the ranks until he was recommended for one of the rare positions at Le Cadre Noir had seemed the summit of what any man could expect in life. At twenty-five he had believed himself at home for the first time.

He was prodigiously talented. His years on the farm had given him a rare capacity for hard work. He had an aptitude for dealing with difficult horses. There was talk that he might eventually prove a maître écuyer – even, in more fanciful moments, another Grand Dieu. He had been sure that the rigour, the discipline, the sheer pleasure and reward of learning would be enough for the rest of his days.

And then Florence Jacobs from Clerkenwell, who hadn’t even liked horses but had taken up a free ticket to the French riding-school performance in England, had destroyed it all – his peace of mind, his resolve, his patience. Later in life, with the kind of perspective that comes only with experience, he might have told his younger self that such passion was only to be expected with a first love, that such cataclysmic feelings would ease and perhaps fade. But Henri – a solitary man with few friends who might have offered such sage advice – knew only that, from the moment he had noticed the dark-haired girl who had watched, wide-eyed, from the side of the arena for three nights running, she was all he could think about. He had introduced himself, not even sure why he had sought her out after his performance, and every minute spent without her since felt like an irritation or, worse, an endless, meaningless abyss. And where did that leave everything else?

His concentration disappeared almost overnight. On his return to France he began to question the doctrine, became vexed by the tiny details he considered irrelevant. He accused Devaux, one of the senior maître écuyers, of being ‘stuck in the past’. It was only when he had missed the third training session in a row, and his groom had warned him he would be let go, that he realised he had to take a firm grip on himself. He studied Xenophon, bent himself to his travails. Kept his nose clean. He had felt reassured by Florence’s increasingly frequent letters, her promise that she would be over to see him that summer. And a few months on, perhaps as a reward, he had been given the key role in Le Carrousel: La Croupade – one of the most challenging movements a rider could attempt – displacing Picart and adding insult to whatever that privileged young man had already considered injurious.

The Grand Dieu mounted his horse, a robust Portuguese stallion, and took two elegant steps close to him. ‘Don’t let me down, Lachapelle. Let us treat this evening as a new start.’

Henri nodded, a sudden attack of nerves silencing him. He mounted, gathered his reins, checked that the black peaked cap was straight on his shorn head. He could hear the murmur of the crowd, the expectant hush as the orchestra played a few exploratory notes, the kind of dense silence that can only come from a thousand people watching intently. He was dimly aware of a murmured ‘Good luck’ among his fellows, and then he was guiding Gerontius into his place, halfway along the militarily exact line of gleaming, beribboned horses. His mount was eagerly awaiting his first instruction as the heavy red curtain was pulled back, beckoning them into the floodlit arena.

Despite the calm, orderly appearance of its twenty-two horsemen, the graceful nature of their public performances, life at Le Cadre Noir was physically and intellectually testing. Day after day Henri Lachapelle had found himself exhausted, almost reduced to tears of frustration by the endless corrections of the maîtres écuyers, his apparent inability to persuade the huge, highly strung horses perform the ‘airs above the ground’ to their exacting standards. He had felt, even if he could not prove, a perceived prejudice against those who had entered the élite school from the military, as he had, rather than from the civilian riding competitions, those upper-class members of French society who had always had the twin luxuries of fine horses and time with which to build their skills. In theory, all were equal in Le Cadre Noir, separated only by their skills on horseback. Henri was conscious that egalitarianism ran no deeper than their serge uniforms.

Yet slowly, steadily, working from six in the morning until late into the evening, the farmhand from Tours had built a reputation for hard work and his skill in communicating with the most difficult horses. Henri Lachapelle, the maîtres écuyers would observe, from under their black caps, had a ‘quiet seat’. He was sympathique. It was the reason that, alongside his beloved Gerontius, he had been allocated Phantasme, the explosive young iron grey gelding, who needed only the slightest excuse for catastrophic behaviour. He had been quietly anxious about the decision to put Phantasme in such a role all week. But now, with the eyes of the crowd upon him, the musical beauty of the strings filling his ears, the even tempo of Gerontius’s paces beneath him, he felt, suddenly, in Xenophon’s words, that he was indeed a ‘man on wings’. He felt Florence’s admiring eyes upon him and knew that later his lips would meet her skin, and rode more deeply, more elegantly, with a lightness of touch that had the veteran horse showing off, his neat ears flicking forwards with pleasure. This is what I am made for, he thought, with gratitude. Everything I need is here. He saw the flames of the torches flickering on the walls of the ancient pillars, heard the rhythmic thud of the horses’ hooves as they dovetailed neatly in and out of each other around him. He cantered in formation around the great manège, lost in the moment, conscious only of the horse that moved so beautifully beneath him, flicking out his hooves in a way that made Henri want to laugh. The old horse was showing off.

‘Sit straight, Lachapelle. You’re riding like a peasant.’

He blinked, glimpsed Picart as he rode up alongside him, passed him shoulder to shoulder.

‘Why do you fidget so? Did your whore give you the itch?’ he hissed, under his breath.

Henri made as if to speak, but broke off as Le Grand Dieu shouted, ‘Levade!’ and in a row, the riders raised their horses on to their back legs, to a burst of clapping.

As the horses’ front feet hit the ground again, Picart turned away. His voice, however, was still clearly audible. ‘Does she fuck like a peasant too?’

Henri bit the inside of his lip, forcing himself to keep his cool, not to let his anger travel down the reins to infect his sweet-natured horse. He could hear the announcer explaining the technicalities of the riders’ movements, and tried to corral his thoughts, to let the words flow through him. Under his breath, he repeated the words of Xenophon: ‘Anger undermines effective communication with your horse.’ He would not let Picart destroy this night. ‘Mesdames et messieurs, now in the centre of the arena you will see Monsieur de Cordon performing levade. See how the horse balances on his hind legs at an angle of exactly forty-five degrees.’ Henri was dimly aware of the black horse rearing somewhere behind him, the sudden breaking-out of applause. He forced himself to focus, to hold Gerontius’s attention. But he kept thinking of Florence’s face when Picart had yelled his obscenities near her, the anxiety that had passed across her features. What if she knew more French than she had let on?

‘And now, you will see Gerontius, one of our older horses, performing capriole. This is one of the most demanding moves, for both horse and rider. The horse leaps into the air, kicking out behind him while all four feet are off the ground.’

Henri slowed Gerontius, teaming the resistance of his hands with a swift request from his spurs. He felt the horse begin to rock beneath him, the terre à terre, the stationary rocking-horse motion that would build power beneath him. I will show them, he thought, and then: I will show him.

Everything else disappeared. It was just him and the brave old horse, the growing power beneath him. And then with a shout of ‘Derrière!’ he brought his whip hand towards the horse’s rear, his spurs to the horse’s belly, and Gerontius was leaping upwards, into the air, his back legs shooting out horizontally behind him. Henri was aware of a sudden blinding bank of camera flashes, a great stereophonic whooo of delight, applause, and then he was cantering towards the red curtain, taking with him a glimpse of Florence, who had stood to applaud him, her face wreathed in proud smiles.

‘Bon! C’était bon!’ He was already sliding off Gerontius, his hand rubbing the horse’s shoulder, the dresseur leading him away. He was dimly aware of some exclamations of approval, then a change in tempo of the music in the arena, a glimpse through the red curtain of two other écuyers performing their own display on foot, their horses controlled by two long reins.

‘Phantasme is very nervous.’ The groom had appeared beside him, his thick black brows knotted with concern. He chastised the grey horse, which wheeled around them. ‘Watch him, Henri.’

‘He will be fine,’ Henri said absently, lifting his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. The groom handed the reins to the waiting horsemen beside him then turned to Henri and carefully removed his cap. This movement was performed bare-headed to prevent the distraction of a sliding cap, but it always made Henri feel strangely vulnerable.

He watched the gunmetal grey horse prance into the arena in front of him, its neck already dark with sweat, a man at each shoulder.

‘Go. Now. Go.’ The dresseur brushed the back of his jacket briskly, then shoved him into the arena. Three écuyers surrounded the horse, one at each side of his head, another at the rear.

He strode out under the lights, wishing suddenly that, like them, he had the anchoring presence of a horse to hold on to.

‘Bonne chance!’ He heard his groom’s voice before it was swallowed by applause.

‘Mesdames et messieurs, voilà La Croupade which originated in the cavalry of the seventeen hundreds when it was considered a test of a cavalryman’s ability to stay in the saddle. Such movements may take four or five years to master. Monsieur Lachapelle will be riding Phantasme without reins or stirrups. This movement, which dates back to Greek times, is even more testing for rider than horse. It is a more elegant version of the rodeo, if you like.’

There was a ripple of laughter. Henri, half blinded by the floodlights, glanced at Phantasme, whose whitened eye was rolling with a mixture of nerves and barely suppressed fury. A naturally acrobatic horse, he disliked being held so firmly at his head, and the noise, sounds and smells of Le Carrousel seemed to have exacerbated his already bad temper.

Henri touched the horse’s tense shoulder. ‘Sssh,’ he murmured. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ He glimpsed the quick smiles of Duchamp and Varjus, the two men at Phantasme’s head. They were both effective horsemen, quick to respond to a horse’s mercurial change in mood.

‘Sit deep, eh?’ Varjus said, grinning, as he gave him a leg up. ‘Un, deux, trois . . . hup.’

The horse was radiating tension. This is good, Henri told himself, as he straightened in the saddle. The adrenalin will give him greater height. It will look better for the crowd, for Le Grand Dieu. He forced himself to breathe deeply. It was then, as he folded his hands at the small of his back in the traditional passive position that always reminded him uncomfortably of a captive, that Henri looked down to the near side and realised who had been stationed at Phantasme’s rear.

‘Shall we see what kind of rider you really are, Lachapelle?’ Picart said.

He had no time to respond. He lengthened his legs as far as possible, clasped his gloved hands behind him. He heard the announcer say something else, and felt the expectant hush in the arena.

‘Attends.’

Varjus glanced behind him. The terre à terre was building beneath him. ‘Un, deux, derrière!’

He felt the horse building in impulsion, heard the sudden thwack as Picart’s whip met its quarters. Phantasme bucked, rear end shooting up, and Henri was pitched forward, whiplashed so that he only just managed to maintain the clasp of his hands behind him. The horse steadied, and there was a burst of applause.

‘Not bad, Lachapelle,’ he heard Varjus mutter, braced against Phantasme’s chest.

And then, suddenly, before he had time to prepare, there was another cry of ‘Derrière!’ Phantasme’s back legs were shooting him up and forward so that this time Henri’s arms flew out to the sides as he tried to maintain his balance.

‘Not so soon, Picart. You’re unseating him.’

Disoriented, Henri heard Varjus’s irritated voice, the horse’s barely contained squeal as his back braced beneath him. ‘Two seconds. Give me two seconds,’ he muttered, trying to right himself. But before he could do so he heard another thwack. It came down hard from above, and this time the horse’s buck was huge; he felt himself pitched forward again, the abrupt, disconcerting distance between his seat and the saddle.

Phantasme threw himself sideways now, furious and the men struggled to hold the horse’s head. Varjus hissed something Henri could not hear. They were near the red curtain. He glimpsed Florence in her yellow dress, could see her confusion and concern. And then: ‘Enfin! Derrière!’ Before he could reposition himself there was another loud smack behind him. He was thrown forward again, his back twisting, and Phantasme, infuriated by this injudicious use of the whip, leapt forwards and sideways just at the point that Henri finally lost his balance. He was on the horse’s plaited poll, he was upside down, reaching for Phantasme’s neck as the horse bucked again, before – with an audible ouf – he hit the floor.

Henri lay there, dimly aware of the commotion in the arena: Varjus swearing, Picart protesting, the announcer laughing. As he lifted his head from the sand, he could just make out the words: ‘And there you go. A very hard movement to sit. Better luck next year, Monsieur Lachapelle, eh? You see, mesdames et messieurs, sometimes it takes many years of practice to reach the very high standards of the maîtres écuyers.’

He heard the un, deux, trois and Varjus was at his side, hissing at him to remount, remount. He glanced down, realising that his immaculate black uniform was covered with sand. Then he was up on the horse, hands at his legs, his feet, and they were walking out of the arena to sympathetic applause. It was the most painful sound he had ever heard.

He was numb with shock. Ahead, he was aware of a low argument between Varjus and Picart, but he could barely hear it above the roaring of the blood in his ears.

‘What was that?’ Varjus was shaking his head. ‘Nobody has ever fallen off during La Croupade. You made us look stupid.’ It was a moment before Henri grasped that Varjus was addressing Picart.

‘It’s not my fault if the only thing Lachapelle can ride is an English whore.’

Henri slid off the horse and walked up to Picart, his ears ringing. He was not even aware of the first punch, just of the loud crack as his knuckles met the man’s teeth, an almost satisfying give within the sound, a physical knowledge that something had been broken, long before pain raised the possibility that it might have been his hand. Horses shrieked and leapt apart. Men shouted. Picart was splayed on the sand, his hand pressed to his face, eyes wide with shock. Then he scrambled to his feet, launched himself at Henri and head-butted him in the chest, winding him. It was a move that might have felled a bigger man, and Henri was only five feet eight, but he had had the benefit of a childhood in which beatings were common-place, and six years in the National Guard. Within seconds he was atop Picart, his fists flying into the younger man’s face, cheeks and chest, with all the rage of the past few months.

His knuckles met something hard and splintered. His left eye closed as a vicious blow met it. There was sand in his mouth. And then hands were dragging him off, batting at him, voices scolding, raised in disbelief.

‘Picart! Lachapelle!’

As his vision blurred and righted, as he stood, spitting and swaying, the hands gripping his arms, his ears still filled with the string adagio from beyond the curtain, Le Grand Dieu was standing in front of him, his face bright with rage. ‘What. On earth. Is this?’

Henri shook his head, noting the spray of blood as he did so. ‘Sir . . .’ He was panting, only now becoming aware of the magnitude of his mistake.

‘Le Carrousel!’ Le Grand Dieu hissed. ‘The epitome of grace and dignity. Of discipline. Where is your self-control? You two have brought shame on us. Get back to the stables. I have a performance to finish.’

He mounted his horse as Picart staggered past, a handkerchief pressed to his ashen face. Henri watched him go. Slowly it dawned on him that the arena beyond the curtain was strangely quiet. They had seen, he realised with horror. They knew.

‘Two paths.’ Le Grand Dieu looked down at him from the Portuguese stallion. ‘Two paths, Lachapelle. I told you the last time. It was your choice.’

‘I cannot—’ he began.

But Le Grand Dieu had already ridden out into the floodlights.

One

‘The horse rearing thus is such a thing of wonder as to fix the eyes of all beholders, young or old.’

Xenophon, On Horsemanship, c. 350 BC

AUGUST

The six forty-seven to Liverpool Street was heaving. It seemed ridiculous that a train should be this busy so early in the morning. Natasha Macauley sat down, already overheated despite the cool of early morning, muttering an apology to a woman who had to move her jacket out of the way. The besuited man who had got on behind her forced himself into a gap between the passengers opposite, and promptly unfolded his newspaper, oblivious to the woman whose paperback he partially obscured.

It was an unusual route for her to take to work: she had spent the night at a hotel in Cambridge after a legal seminar. A satisfying number of business cards from solicitors and barristers lay in her jacket pocket; they had congratulated her on her speech, then suggested future meetings and possible work. But the cheap white wine that had flowed so freely now caused her stomach to gripe and she wished, briefly, that she had found time for breakfast. She did not normally drink, and it was hard to keep track of her consumption at events when her glass was perpetually topped up while she was distracted by conversation.

Natasha clutched her scalding polystyrene cup of coffee and glanced down at her diary, promising herself that at some point today she would carve out a space longer than half an hour in which to clear her head. Her diary would contain an hour in the gym. She would take an hour for lunch. She would, as her mother admonished, take care of herself.

But for now it read:

∗ 9 a.m. LA vs Santos, Court 7

∗ Persey divorce. Child psych evaluation?

∗ Fees! Check with Linda re legal aid situation

∗ Fielding – where is witness statement? MUST FAX TODAY

Every page, for at least a fortnight ahead, was a relentless, endlessly reworked series of lists. Her colleagues at Davison Briscoe had largely switched to electronic devices – handheld jotters and BlackBerrys – with which to navigate their lives, but she preferred the simplicity of pen and paper, even though Linda complained that her schedules were unreadable.

Natasha sipped her coffee, noticed the date and winced. She added

∗ Flowers/apols re Mum’s birthday

The train rumbled towards London, the flatlands of Cambridgeshire seguing into the grey, industrial outskirts of the city. Natasha stared at her paperwork, struggling to focus. She was facing a woman who seemed to think it was okay to eat a hamburger with extra cheese for breakfast, and a teenager whose blank expression was curiously at odds with the thumping emanating from his earphones. It was going to be an unforgivingly hot day: the heat seeped into the packed carriage, transferred and amplified by the bodies.

She closed her eyes, wishing she could sleep on trains, then opened them at the sound of her mobile phone. She rummaged in her bag, locating it between her makeup and her wallet. A text message flashed up:

Local authority in Watson case rolled over. Not needed in court 9 a.m. Ben

For the past four years Natasha had been Davison Briscoe’s sole solicitor advocate, a solicitor-barrister hybrid that had proved useful when it came to her speciality, representing children. They were less fazed to appear in court beside the woman in whose office they had already explained themselves. For her part, Natasha liked being able to build relationships with her clients and still enjoy the more adversarial elements of advocacy.

Thanks. Will be in office in half an hour

she texted back, with a sigh of relief. Then she cursed silently; she needn’t have missed breakfast after all.

She was about to put her phone away when it rang again. Ben, her trainee: ‘Just wanted to remind you that we – ah – rescheduled that Pakistani girl for ten thirty.’

‘The one whose parents are fighting care proceedings?’ Beside her, a woman coughed pointedly. Natasha glanced up, saw ‘No Mobile Telephones’ etched on the window, dipped her head and rifled through her diary. ‘We’ve also got the parents from the child-abduction case in at two. Can you dig out the relevant paperwork?’ She murmured.

‘Done it. And I got some croissants,’ Ben added. ‘I’m assuming you won’t have had anything.’

She never had. If Davison Briscoe ever abandoned the trainee system she suspected she would starve to death.

‘They’re almond. Your favourite.’

‘Slavish crawling, Ben, will get you a long way.’

Natasha closed the phone, and then her case. She had just pulled the girl’s paperwork from her briefcase when her phone rang again.

This time there was audible tutting. She mumbled an apology, without looking anyone in the eye. ‘Natasha Macauley.’

‘Linda. Just had a call from Michael Harrington. He’s agreed to act for you in the Persey divorce.’

‘Great.’ It was a big-money divorce, with complicated custody issues. She had needed a heavyweight barrister to take the financial side.

‘He wants to discuss a few matters with you this afternoon. You free at two?’

She was considering this when she became aware that the woman beside her was muttering, her tone unfriendly.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s okay.’ She remembered her diary was back in her briefcase. ‘Oh. No. I’ve got someone in.’

The woman tapped her on the shoulder. Natasha placed her hand over the receiver. ‘I’ll be two seconds,’ she said, more brusquely than she had intended. ‘I know this is a non-mobile carriage and I’m sorry, but I do need to finish this call.’

She stuck the phone between ear and shoulder, struggled to find her diary, then spun round in exasperation when the woman tapped her again.

‘I said I’ll only—’

‘Your coffee is on my jacket.’

She glanced down. Saw the cup balanced precariously on the hem of the cream jacket. ‘Ah. Sorry.’ She picked it up. ‘Linda, can we switch this afternoon around? I must have a gap somewhere.’

‘Hah!’

Her secretary’s cackle rang in her ears after she had snapped shut her phone. She crossed out the court appearance in her diary, added the meeting and was about to put it back in her bag when something in the newspaper headline opposite caught her eye.

She leant forwards, checking that she had read the name in the first paragraph correctly. She leant so far forwards that the man holding the newspaper lowered it and frowned at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still transfixed by the story. ‘Could I – could I have a very quick look at your paper?’

He was too taken aback to refuse. She took the newspaper, flipped it over and read the story twice, the colour draining from her face, then handed it back. ‘Thank you,’ she said weakly. The teenager beside her was smirking, as though he could hardly believe the breach of passenger etiquette that had taken place in front of him.

Sarah cut the second square of sandwiches twice diagonally, then wrapped both sets carefully in greaseproof paper. One she placed in the fridge, the other she tucked carefully into her bag with two apples. She wiped the work surface with a damp cloth, then scanned the little kitchen for crumbs before she turned off the radio. Papa hated crumbs.

Far below, the distant whine of the milk float signalled its departure from the courtyard. The milkman wouldn’t deliver up the stairs any more, not since someone had driven off with his float while he was on the fifth floor. He still put out bottles for the old ladies in the sheltered housing opposite, but everyone else had to go to the supermarket, then lug their litre cartons back on overcrowded buses or haul them on foot in bulging shopping bags. If she made it down there, he’d let her buy one; most mornings she made it.

She checked her watch, then the filter paper to see whether the dark brown liquid had drained through. She told Papa every week that the real stuff cost loads more than instant, but he just shrugged and said that some savings were a false economy. She wiped the bottom of the mug, then walked into the narrow hallway and stood outside his room.

‘Papa?’ He had long since stopped being Grandpapa.

She pushed the door with her shoulder. The little room was glowing with the morning sunlight and for a minute you could pretend outside was somewhere lovely, a beach or a country garden, instead of a tired 1960s estate in East London. On the other side of his bed a small bureau gleamed, his hair and clothes brushes neatly lined up below the photograph of Nana. He had not had a double bed since she’d died; there was more space in his room with a single, he said. She knew he couldn’t face the emptiness of a large bed without her grandmother in it.

‘Coffee.’

The old man pushed himself up from the pillow and scrabbled on the bedside table for his glasses. ‘You’re going now? What’s the time?’

‘Just after six.’

He picked up his watch and squinted at it. He looked curiously vulnerable in his pyjamas, this man who wore his clothes as if they were a uniform. Papa was always properly dressed. ‘Will you catch the ten past?’

‘If I run. Your sandwiches are in the fridge.’

‘Tell the mad cowboy I will pay him this afternoon.’

‘I told him yesterday, Papa. He’s fine.’

‘And get him to put some eggs by. We’ll have them tomorrow.’

She made the bus, but only because it was a minute late. Puffing, she hurled herself on board, her bag swinging wildly behind her. She showed her pass, then sat down, nodding to the Indian woman who sat in the same spot opposite every morning, her mop and bucket still in her hand. ‘Beautiful,’ the woman said, as the bus pulled past the betting shop.

Sarah glanced behind her, at the grimy streets illuminated in the watery morning light. ‘Going to be,’ she conceded.

‘You will be hot in those boots,’ the woman said.

Sarah patted her bag. ‘Got my school shoes in here,’ she said. They smiled awkwardly at each other, as if, after months of silence, they were embarrassed to have said so much, Sarah settled back in her seat and turned to the window.

The route to Cowboy John’s took seventeen minutes at this time of the morning; an hour later, when the roads to the east of the City were clogged with traffic it would take almost three times as long. She was usually there before him, the only person to whom he would give a spare set of keys. Most days, she would be letting out the hens by the time he came sauntering, stiff-legged, up the road. You could usually hear him singing.

Sheba, the Alsatian, barked once as Sarah fiddled with the padlock on the wire gate, then, realising who it was, sat and waited, her tail beating an expectant tattoo. Sarah threw her a treat from her pocket and walked into the little yard, closing the gates with a muted crash behind her.

Once, this part of London had been dotted with stableyards, tucked at the end of narrow, cobbled streets, behind barn doors, under arches. Horses had pulled the brewery drays, the coal and rag-and-bone carts, and it had not been unusual to see a much-loved family cob or a couple of fine trotters out for a circuit of the park on Saturday afternoon. Cowboy John’s was one of the few that remained, taking up some four railway arches, with three or four stables and lock-ups built into each, at the far end of a lane that ended on the high street. There was a walled yard in front of the arches, with a cobbled floor, in which were stacked pallets, chicken coops, bins, a skip or two, and whatever old car Cowboy John was selling, plus a brazier that never went out. Every twenty minutes or so a commuter train would rumble overhead, but neither humans nor animals took any notice. Chickens pecked, a goat took a speculative bite of whatever it was not supposed to eat, and Sheba’s amber eyes gazed warily out at the world beyond the gates, ready to snap at anyone who was not on her register.

Twelve horses were resident at the moment, including twin Clydesdales owned by Tony, the retired drayman, the fine-necked, wild-eyed trotters of Maltese Sal and his betting cohorts, and an assortment of scruffy ponies kept by local children. Sarah was never sure how many people knew they were there – the park keeper, who regularly chased them off the common, did and occasionally they received letters addressed to ‘The Horse Owners, Sparepenny Lane Arches’, threatening court action if they continued to trespass. Cowboy John would laugh and throw them into the brazier. ‘Far as I know, horses was here first,’ he would drawl.

He claimed to be an original member of the Philadelphia Black Cowboys. They weren’t real cowboys – not the cattle-ranching kind, at least. In America, he said, there were city yards like his, bigger ones, where men could keep and race their animals, and young kids came to learn and escape lives that were otherwise ghetto-bound. He had arrived in London in the sixties, following a woman who had turned out to be ‘way, way too much trouble’. He had liked the city, but missed his horses so much that he had bought a broken-kneed thoroughbred from Southall market and some near-derelict Victorian stables from the council. As far as anyone could tell, the council had regretted it ever since.

Cowboy John’s was an institution now, or a nuisance, depending on where you stood. The officials from the town hall didn’t like it, forever issuing warnings about environmental health and pest control, even though John told them they could sit out here all night dipped in cheese sauce and they wouldn’t see one rodent – he had a posse of mean cats. Property developers didn’t like it because they wanted to stick their blocks of flats there and Cowboy John wouldn’t sell. But most of the neighbours didn’t mind: they stopped by daily to chat to him, or buy whatever fresh produce he had on offer. The local restaurants liked it: sometimes Ranjeet or Neela from the Raj Palace called in if they needed hens or eggs or the odd goat, and then there were a few like Sarah, who was there whenever she didn’t have to be at school. With its tidy Victorian stables and teetering stacks of hay and straw, it was a refuge from the relentless noise and chaos of the city streets around it.

‘You let that fool goose out yet?’

She was throwing hay to the ponies when Cowboy John arrived. He was wearing his Stetson – in case people didn’t get the message – and his hollow cheeks were burnished with the effort of walking and smoking in the already warm sun.

‘Nope. It keeps biting my legs.’

‘Mine too. I’m going to see if that new restaurant wants it. Man, I’ve got welts all round my ankles.’ They stopped to eye the oversized bird he had bought on a whim at the previous week’s market. ‘Plum sauce!’ he barked, and it hissed in reply.

Sarah couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t spent most of her days at Sparepenny Lane. When she was tiny Papa would sit her on Cowboy John’s shaggy Shetland ponies, and Nana would tut contentedly, as if Papa’s passion for horses was something he shouldn’t pass on. When her mother had first left, Papa brought her there so that she couldn’t hear Nana crying or, on the few occasions her mother came home, yelling at her, or pleading with her to get straight.

It was here that Papa had taught her to ride, running up and down the back-streets until she had mastered the rising trot. Papa despised the way most of the owners at Cowboy John’s kept their horses; being in a city was no reason not to exercise them every day, he said. He never let her eat before her horse had been fed, never let her have a bath before she had polished her boots. And then, after Nana died, Baucher, whom they called Boo, had arrived. They had needed something to focus on, a reason to be out of a home that no longer felt like one. And Papa, who saw dangers for a wide-eyed girl just into her teens, had decided she needed a route out. He began to train the copper-coloured colt and his granddaughter. He trained her far beyond what the local kids called riding: the vaulting on to a pony’s back and haring down the streets until you reached the marshes, the scraping over park benches, fruit crates, any obstacles that offered a thrill. Papa would drill her and drill her about stuff they couldn’t even see – the correct angle of her lower leg to within a millimetre, the perfect stillness of her hands – until she wept because sometimes she just wanted to goof around with the others and he wouldn’t let her. Not just because he wanted to protect Boo’s legs from the tarmac roads, but also because she had to learn, he said, that the only way to achieve something magical was through work and discipline.

He still talked like that, Papa. That was why John and the others called him Captain. It was supposed to be a joke, but she knew they were a bit wary of him too.

‘You want tea?’ Cowboy John gestured at his kettle.

‘No. I’ve only got half an hour to ride. I have to be at school early today.’

‘You still working on yo’ tricks?’

‘Actually,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness, ‘this morning we will be working on our half-pass, with a flying change of legs and some piaffe. Under the orders of the Captain.’ She stroked the horse’s gleaming neck.

Cowboy John snorted. ‘I got to give it to your old man. Next time the circus comes by they’ll be biting his arm off.’

In Natasha’s line of work it was hardly unusual to find, within weeks, the child one had just represented up before the court again, recipient of a new ASBO or youth-custody order. Occasionally they might even make the newspaper. But this one surprised her, not just for the severity of his crime but because of who he was. Day after day the children came in and told stories of despair, abuse and neglect. For the most part she could listen without wincing. After ten years she had heard so many that few prompted more in her than a mental checklist: does he meet the criteria? Has she signed the legal-aid papers? How strong is the defence likely to be? Is he a believable witness? Just like the others, Ali Ahmadi should have faded from memory, processed by her staff, another name on the court roster to be swiftly forgotten.

He had come into her office two months earlier, with the wary, hollow-eyed look of distrust and despair that so many wore, feet squashed into cheap, donated trainers, an ill-fitting shirt hanging off his thin frame. He was in need of an emergency injunction to prevent him being sent back to the country he claimed had nearly destroyed him.

‘I don’t really do immigration,’ she had explained, but Ravi, who handled those cases, was off and they were desperate.

‘Please,’ the foster-mother said, ‘I know you, Natasha. You can do this for us.’ Two years previously Natasha had represented another of her children.

She had scanned the paperwork, looked up and smiled at him, and after a moment, he had smiled back. Not a confident smile, more appeasement. As if it was expected of him. As she had speed-read the notes, he had started to speak, growing more urgent as the woman translated, his hands illustrating the words she could not understand.

His family had been targeted as political dissidents. His father had disappeared on the way home from work; his mother had been beaten in the street, then disappeared with his sister. Ali’s desperation had been such that he had walked to the border in thirteen days. He began to cry silently as he spoke, blinking away the tears with adolescent embarrassment. He would be killed if he returned home. He was fifteen.

It was a fairly unremarkable story, as they went.

Linda had been hovering by the door. ‘Can you ring the judge’s clerk for me? See if we can get Court four?’

As they left she put her hand on the boy’s shoulder – she hadn’t realised until then how tall he was. He had seemed to shrink while he told his story, as if parts of him had been hacked away with his history. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said, ‘but I still think you’d be better off with someone else.’

She won him the injunction, and would have thought no more of him, but as she had swept her papers into her briefcase, ready to leave the court, she had noticed he was crying again, in the corner of the courtroom, heaving great silent sobs. A little taken aback, she had averted her eyes as she passed him, but he had broken away from his foster-mother, pulled a chain from his neck and pressed it into her hands. He wouldn’t look at her, even as she told him it was unnecessary. He just stood there, head down, body a question mark, his palms pressed to hers, even though such contact was against the dictates of his religion. She remembered how his hands had enfolded hers in a curiously adult gesture.

The same hands which had, two nights ago, apparently perpetrated a ‘prolonged and vicious attack’ on an as yet unnamed sales assistant, 26, in her own home.

Her phone sounded again. More tutting, unrestrained this time. With another apology, Natasha stood, gathered her belongings and made her way through the crowded carriage, struggling to stay upright as the train swung suddenly to the left. Tucking her case under her arm, she lurched towards the standing area, and found herself a small space by the window, as close to a mobile-friendly carriage as she could get. She dropped her bags as the caller disconnected, and swore. She had relinquished her seat for nothing. She was about to tuck her phone into her pocket when she saw the text message:

Hi. Need to pick up some stuff. And talk. Any time next week good for you? Mac

Mac. She stared at the little screen and everything around her stilled. Mac.

She had no choice.

No problem

she typed back, and shut her phone.

Once, this corner of the City had been stacked with solicitors’ offices, side by side in Dickensian buildings, their gold-painted ‘partners’ signs promising representation of the business, taxation and matrimonial variety. Most had long moved to new commercial premises, glossy glass buildings on the outskirts of the City, architect-designed spaces that their occupants felt properly reflected their twenty-first-century outlook. So far, Davison Briscoe had resolutely failed to join this trend, and Natasha’s cramped, book-stuffed room in the rickety Georgian building that housed her and five other lawyers bore more of a resemblance to an academic’s tutoring room than a commercial enterprise.

‘Here’s the paperwork you asked for.’ Ben, a gangly, studious young man whose fair, determinedly smooth cheeks belied his twenty-five years, placed the pink-ribboned file in front of her. ‘You haven’t touched your croissants,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’ She flicked through the files on her desk. ‘Lost my appetite. Ben, do me a favour. Dig out the file for Ali Ahmadi, will you? Emergency judicial review from about two months ago.’ Then she glanced at the newspaper she had bought on her way from the station in a vain attempt to persuade herself that what she had read had been a hallucination, perhaps brought on by lack of sleep.

The door opened and Conor entered. He was wearing the blue striped shirt she had bought him for his birthday. ‘Morning, Hotshot.’ He leant across the desk and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘How’d it go last night?’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Really good. You were missed.’

‘My night for having the boys. Sorry, but you know how it is. Until I get more access I daren’t miss an evening.’

‘Did you have a nice time?’

‘It was wild. Harry Potter DVD, beans on toast. We sure rocked the joint. That enormous hotel bed too big without me?’

She sat back. ‘Conor, desperate as I am for your company, I was so shattered by midnight I could have slept on a park bench.’

Ben came in again and, with a nod to Conor, laid the file on her desk. ‘Mr Ahmadi,’ he said.

Conor peered at it. ‘Wasn’t that your deportation case from a couple of months ago? Why are you digging him out?’

‘Ben, go and get me a fresh coffee, will you? From the shop, not Linda’s brown water.’

Conor tossed a bank note at him. ‘And me. Double-shot espresso. No milk.’

‘You’ll kill yourself,’ she observed.

‘But by God, I’ll do it efficiently. Okay,’ he said, noting that she was waiting for Ben to leave. ‘What’s up?’

‘This.’ She handed him the paper, pointing at the story.

He read it quickly. ‘Ah. Your man there,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes.’ She stretched out her arms, letting her face fall briefly on to the desk. Then she reached over and picked at an almond croissant. ‘My man there. I’m wondering if I should tell Richard.’

‘Our senior partner? Oh, nonononono! No need for a hair shirt, Hotshot.’

‘It’s a pretty serious crime.’

‘And one you could not have predicted. Let it go, Natasha. All part of the job, sweetheart. You know that.’

‘I do. It’s just that it’s . . . so grim. And he was . . .’ She shook her head, remembering. ‘I don’t know. He just didn’t seem the type.’

‘Didn’t seem the type.’ Conor actually laughed.

‘Well, he didn’t.’ She took a swig of cold coffee. ‘I just don’t like having been part of something so awful. I can’t help feeling responsible.’

‘What? You forced him to attack the girl?’

‘You know that’s not what I meant. I put up a good case for him to stay in the country. I’m responsible for him being here.’

‘Because nobody else could have made that happen, could they?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Get over yourself, Natasha.’ Conor tapped the file. ‘If Ravi had been here it would have been him. Let it go. Move on. I’ll see you for a quick drink tonight. Are we still on? Fancy the Archery? They’ve started doing tapas, you know.’

But Natasha had only ever been good at giving advice, not taking it. Later that day she found herself opening Ahmadi’s file for a second time, searching for clues, some reason why this boy, who had cried, had held her hands so gently, had been capable of such a random act of violence. It didn’t make sense. ‘Ben? I need you to find me an atlas.’

‘An atlas?’

He had found one within twenty minutes, scuffed and fabric-bound, the spine missing in patches. ‘It’s probably very much out of date. It has – ah – references to Persia and Bombay,’ he said apologetically. ‘You might do better looking up whatever you need on the web. I could do it for you.’

‘I’m a Luddite, Ben,’ she said, flicking through the pages, ‘you know that. I need to see it on paper.’

Almost on a whim, she’d decided to look up where the boy had come from; the name of the town had stuck in her mind.

It was then, as she stared at the map, tracing the names of the places with a finger, that she realised none of the care workers, the legal team, his foster-mother had asked Ali Ahmadi the obvious question. But there it was – staring up at her: how could anyone walk nine hundred miles in thirteen days?

That evening Natasha sat in the bar and cursed herself for not being thorough. She told Conor the story, and he laughed, a short, wry laugh, then shrugged. ‘You know these kids are desperate,’ he said. ‘They tell you what they think you want to hear.’

She saw them every day, refugees, ‘problem’ children, young people who were displaced or neglected, teenagers who had never known a word of praise or a supportive embrace, their faces prematurely hardened, their minds already hard-wired to survival at any cost. She believed she could usually tell the ones who were lying: the girls who claimed their parents were abusive because they no longer wanted to live at home; the asylum-seekers who swore they were eleven or twelve, even when you could make out the thick stubble of adulthood on their cheeks. She was used to seeing the same young offenders, in an endless cycle of misbehaviour and alleged repentance. But she had been moved by Ahmadi.

Conor gave her his full attention. ‘Okay. Are you sure you got the place right?’

‘It’s in the statements.’ She asked a passing waiter for mineral water.

‘And he really couldn’t have walked that far?’

‘In less than two weeks?’ Her voice was sarcastic. She couldn’t help it. ‘Seventy miles a day. I calculated it.’

‘I don’t know why you’re so upset. You’re protected by privilege. You knew nothing of this while you were representing him, so what does it matter? You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. Hell, it happens to me all the time. I have to tell half my clients to shut up at first meeting before they tell me something I’m not supposed to hear.’

But if she had checked his story herself, Natasha wanted to say, she might have guessed earlier on that Ahmadi was lying. She might have excused herself from the case – cited ‘embarrassment’. That was often enough to get people looking at the facts a little harder. She could have saved that woman, that unknown sales assistant, 26. But she had skimmed the notes. And she had let the boy go, allowed him to disappear between the cracks of London’s landscape, assuming that he was one of the good ones who wouldn’t reappear in court some day.

If he had lied about how he’d got here, he could have lied about anything.

Conor leant back and took a long sip of his wine. ‘Ah, let it go, Natasha. Some desperate kid managed to avoid being sent back to some plague-infested hell-hole. So what? Move on.’

Even when he was dealing with the most high-profile cases, Conor had a deceptively sanguine air, beaming outside court, glad-handing, as if it was of no consequence to him whether he won or not. He patted his pockets. ‘Will you get me another? I’ve got to nip to the cashpoint.’

She checked in her bag for her wallet and found her fingers entangled in something. She pulled it out. It was the little amulet, the roughened silver horse, that Ahmadi had given her on the morning she had won his case. She had resolved to send it to his home – he had too few possessions to give anything away – and had promptly forgotten. Now it was a reminder of how she had failed. Suddenly she remembered the unlikely vision of that morning, an unearthly apparition in urban surroundings.

‘Conor – I saw the strangest thing this morning.’

The train had stopped for fifteen minutes in a tunnel outside Liverpool Street station, just long enough for the temperature to rise to a point at which people shifted restlessly in their seats and a low murmur of discontent rippled along the train. Just long enough for Natasha, shielded from telephone calls now, to stare out at the inky nothingness and think about an ex-husband who wasn’t yet ex enough.

She had shifted slightly on her feet as, with a harsh squeal of overheated metal, the train edged forward and out into daylight. She wouldn’t think about Mac. She wouldn’t think about Ali Ahmadi, who had proven so depressingly removed from the person he had presented to her.

And it was at that moment she saw it, so fast, so unlikely, that even as she cricked her neck to look back, she wasn’t sure she had registered it correctly. Gone in a flash, swallowed by the blurred streets and backyards, grimy balconies and lead-specked lines of laundry.

But the image had stayed with her all day, long after the train had carried her towards the hazy centre of the City. In a quiet cobbled street squeezed between high-rise blocks, flanked by lorry yards and parked cars a young girl had stood, her arm raised, a long stick in her hand – not in threat but instruction.

Above her, in the middle of the road, perfectly balanced on glossy, muscular haunches, a huge horse reared.

Natasha dropped the silver pendant into her bag, barely suppressing a shiver. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’

‘Mm?’ He was reading the newspaper. He had already lost interest. Move on, he always told her. As if he ever could.

She stared at him. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and get the drinks.’