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Etta’s voice broke. ‘Someone’s done perfectly dreadful things to her.’

‘We’d better report it to the RSPCA or the ILPH,’ said Charlie. ‘They could winch her and get her on a drip in a veterinary hospital.’

‘Oh please don’t.’ Etta was almost hysterical. ‘They’ll take her away.’

‘Well, she’ll die because all her internal organs will get crushed if we don’t get her up off the ground. If she’s too weak to stand, we’ll have to winch her.’ Charlie looked up at the ceiling. ‘We could hang a sling from those beams.’

Charlie, who was wearing a bow tie, check shirt and horn-rimmed spectacles, had crinkly dark hair, pugnacious features and the belligerent, exasperated air of a pathologist in a television whodunnit, but he had the gentlest hands. After they had slung Mrs Wilkinson up he gave her a massive shot of antibiotics.

‘Keep tubing her, she ought to take in at least four gallons a day. And keep her off any new hay or concentrates, they might give her colic.’

Etta ran home and collected her wireless and some leg warmers she’d been intending to chuck out. Now she taped them to Mrs Wilkinson’s bandaged legs with Elastoplast, wrapping them in baking foil to make her even warmer.

She also dragged one of Valent’s leather chairs back into the office and settled into it, to be on a level to stroke a hanging Mrs Wilkinson, who gradually relaxed, twitching her ears in time to the carols from King’s College, Cambridge.

At moments the filly’s eye would glaze, her whole body shudder and shrink into itself. Thinking she was losing her, Etta would sing, ‘Don’t give up now, little donkey, Bethlehem’s in sight,’ in a quavering treble, because the song always made her cry.

She must have dropped off because she was suddenly roused by church bells rollicking out across the frozen air. Pocock, the Tower Captain, was on great form ringing for Midnight Mass.

Poor Niall. Etta had promised to go, but hoped the congregation would be swollen by families home for the holiday. At least she was appropriately spending Christmas night in a stable.

‘I’m sorry I’m not in church, God and Niall,’ prayed Etta, ‘but please save this sweet horse. Happy Christmas, Mrs Wilkinson,’ she added, kissing her on her pink nose.

After three days, Mrs Wilkinson gave the first whicker of delight, when Etta returned from stocking up at the village shop. After six days, she was able to stand for a second, come off the sling, had normal droppings and had perked up no end. Etta started feeding her boiled barley and linseed bought by Jase from the local feed merchant, two-thirds water to one-third of barley with a little jug of linseed. Etta boiled it overnight in a big pan on the stove in the bungalow. Mrs Wilkinson found this delicious and very comforting on a cold winter’s morning and was soon licking her bucket clean.

Etta also mixed in a small amount of sugar beet for slow-release energy: four smallish feeds at 7am, 12pm, 5pm and 10pm every day. Seeing Mrs Wilkinson respond, Etta was utterly captivated and during the evenings read Walter Scott from the bookshelf out loud to her. She seemed to love the swinging rhythms of ‘Lochinvar’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’. She also liked music, particularly when Etta sang to her.

Etta was touched too that Mrs Wilkinson preferred to have everything fed to her by hand and, even when she came in to dress the filly’s wounds, had stopped shrinking away.

After ten days, she managed to walk to the door, swaying like a toddler on its first outing, then fell over again as she tried to leap away in terror because Joey had dropped in with some carrots. Jase and Woody couldn’t keep away either. After the pub closed, Chris and Chrissie arrived with Friday’s special, bread and butter pudding, and were gratified when Mrs Wilkinson accepted a second and even a third helping.

Her right eye was still closed and Charlie Radcliffe confirmed she had lost the sight in it, but the other eye, dark blue, big and
beautiful, no longer looked on the world with terror. She was still woefully thin, her pelvic bones protruding, but gradually a lovely thoroughbred filly was emerging.

Etta was alarmed that news of the rescue was spreading round the village. People visiting the sick were also motivated by an opportunity to see what sort of cock-up Valent Edwards was making of Badger’s Court. Miss Painswick, Pocock and Gwenny the cat, who would curl up in the wood shavings, all made frequent trips. Niall the vicar popped in bringing barley sugar and on the second Sunday after Christmas a sprinkling of parishioners were exhorted to pray for the continued recovery of Mrs Wilkinson.

‘Is she the woman who’s moved into the Old Rectory?’ boomed Old Mrs Malmesbury.

Rumours still swirled about Harvey-Holden’s fire and Denny Forrester, the head lad, who had allegedly topped himself.

‘Doesn’t add up,’ said Jase. ‘Denny was a dote, loved his horses, he’d never have burnt them to death.’

‘Poor darling, at least you were spared that fate,’ said Etta as she began reading
Ivanhoe
to Mrs Wilkinson.

Etta had, however, been touched to get a sweet note from Harvey-Holden, saying he was determined to rebuild his yard, that he had been moved to tears by her kind letter and very generous cheque and hoped she’d come and have a drink one day soon.

Perhaps Mrs Wilkinson could be the first new horse he trained, thought Etta.

Being Willowwood, there were vastly different estimates of the insurance money Harvey-Holden would be able to call on.

‘Lucky he didn’t use Shagger as a broker,’ observed Woody. Returning to Little Hollow one frosty morning, Etta met the postman delivering a postcard from Trixie: ‘Sorry I was bloody, most of the ski instructors gay.’

Joey, after a boozy and expensive Christmas with his four children, kept trying to inject a note of reality into the pantomime. Valent couldn’t swan around with Bonny Richards for ever, he had empires to run – he must roll up sometime and unless Mrs Wilkinson was ejected fairly soon, someone would be caught at Badger’s Court red-handed.

If Joey was edgy about Valent coming down, Etta was even more worried about the return of Martin and Romy from France and Carrie, Alan and Trixie even earlier from the Rockies. She’d be scooped up into their lives again and how would she escape to look after Mrs Wilkinson? Martin, with his obsession for getting
Valent Edwards on side, would be furious, Romy hated animals, and what about Drummond’s asthma?

‘Perhaps she’ll give the little sod a serious attack,’ said Jase.

‘Don’t worry, Etta, if the worst comes to the worst, Wilkie can move in with Not for Crowe and Doggie,’ Woody said.

Everyone was having great fun inventing parents for Mrs Wilkinson.

‘Her sire could be Rugger Jonny,’ suggested Joey, ‘and her mother Near Miss.’

When the Macbeths returned from what seemed to have been an embattled holiday, Carrie promptly drove up to London, Alan sloped off on some date of his own, and Trixie, who was going back to school the next day, descended on Etta and commandeered her landline.

‘The reason I wouldn’t snog you,’ Etta could hear her shouting, ‘is because you’ve got a hairy back, a fat ass, narrow shoulders, a huge tummy and you’re a pompous geek.’

‘That’s a boy called Boffin Brooks who goes to Bagley Hall and who turned up in the Rockies,’ she told Etta, as she picked at the shepherd’s pie Etta had made for her lunch.

Afterwards Trixie pretended she was going back to Russet House to pack and mug up for her exams. She had, however, developed a crush on Woody, the buffest and fittest, and had observed him and her grandmother sloping off to Badger’s Court twice that morning.

She therefore followed Etta and rumbled her secret.

‘I promise I won’t tell anyone,’ said Trixie, collapsing in the wood shavings beside a trembling Mrs Wilkinson. ‘Just let me stroke her, she’s really sweet. I’ll look after her while you go and prepare the fatted calf for Uncle Martin.’

Etta had already made two shepherd’s pies, one with salt for Trixie and one without for Martin and Romy, but got them muddled. Martin and Romy, replete and bronzed from skiing and living in a five-star hotel, were not impressed.

‘You could have made us a nicer meal, Mother,’ complained Romy. ‘This is so salty, I’ll be up drinking water all night.’

‘We’re tired,’ Martin announced the moment supper was over. ‘You’ve had a good break, nice if you could put the kids to bed.’

Etta was gratified when Poppy hugged her.

‘I’ve missed you, Granny, snow’s boring. Yours were the only presents we got. Will you read me two stories?’

Drummond wanted a story, but only one.

‘You can go now,’ he said coolly. ‘I want to play with my willy.’

On the way home, Etta popped into Badger’s Court to check on Mrs Wilkinson and found Trixie asleep there, her head on Mrs Wilkinson’s shoulder, their dark and white manes entwined.

Once more swearing Trixie to secrecy, Etta sent her home.

As Valent Edwards landed the Lear at Staverton, he wondered how difficult it would be to install a runway in Willowwood. The locals, spearheaded by that monster Ione Travis-Lock, had kicked up enough fuss about a helipad.

Valent was not a man who ever admitted to tiredness, but Bonny Richards had been a very exacting companion. She had upset his routine. She was always two hours late for everything, which drove him demented.

Since he’d met her, he’d spent £30,000 on very beautiful teeth but wasn’t any more inclined to smile in photographs. He had lost two stone, worked out in the gym and ceased to look laughable in bathing trunks. Women had always run after him, more, he suspected, for his success than his sex appeal, but it was wonderful for his ego to have such a beauty on his arm and in his emperor-sized bed, although it was an effort to keep his tummy in. He had refused to wear lifts so he’d appear much taller than Bonny even when she went out in six-inch heels. He had refused to dye his hair or his eyebrows, but had cut his thick, iron-grey hair short so it didn’t flop around when he was sailing on the vast new yacht that Bonny had persuaded him to buy. He refused to admit it made him seasick.

Bonny was terribly demanding and hot on her rights. On holiday she had thrown not only tantrums but his mobile and his BlackBerry into the swimming pool to get his attention. She had also engaged him in a colossal amount of sex and shipping. Having kept him up half the night, she would drag him off to visit museums and temples whenever they drew into port.

Having attempted to improve his mind and his figure – ‘No desserts, Valent’ – Bonny had set about him socially. Along with
the make-up artist, agent and personal trainer, she’d also invited on board a voice coach, ostensibly to prepare her Southern accent to play Maggie, her latest television part, in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, but in fact to teach Valent to talk proper.

And when Valent had lost it, and shouted he was not going to talk like a ‘fooking fairy, how now bluddy brown cow’, Bonny had replied that he had only to listen to himself to prove her point.

As a final straw, Redwin, the voice coach, had made a pass at him.

Valent had been born in Bradford sixty-five years ago into a mining family. His dad had loved his mum. He had loved his wife Pauline and had never been into one-night stands, which went against his Chapel background. This was also why he had half committed himself to Bonny but had still not given her a ring.

Bonny didn’t drink, which was great for her flawless complexion but not for jollity. Valent, a workaholic, liked to unwind on holiday, read a dozen biographies, watch football on Sky, drink rather too much and put on half a stone.

As a goalkeeper who had once played for a Premier Division club, he had arthritis in both hands but also the hawk eyes that didn’t miss a field mouse. As a great racehorse will find a way through a testudine of closely packed, galloping quarters, Valent saw gaps in the market: retirement homes with people of your own background, and ‘Attractive and Affordable’ houses for young couples that were cheap and charming to look at, and came with a red rambler rose in a blue tub to grow up the wall. Happy Prentice placed bright and trustworthy youngsters, who hadn’t necessarily blossomed at school, in friendly flourishing companies. Another company provided sympathetic people to help you downsize, while a gently massaging rubber hand successfully winded babies and helped couples to avoid sleepless nights. His laboratories had produced an energy source and a method of disposing of waste. His latest product, Rinstant, saved a mass of water by enabling hand-washed clothes or even hair to be rid of soap or shampoo after a single rinse. Although he didn’t need it himself, he was working on a cure for baldness.

But even Valent couldn’t find a cure for a broken heart.

In Duty Free, he discovered he had bought Rive Gauche, Pauline’s favourite perfume, and a bottle of Benedictine, which she had loved; just as when at home, he still found himself making two cups of builder’s tea in the morning.

She had died in the Cotchester train crash three years ago, just at the moment when he’d decided to stop spending his life in Concorde and superjets and devote some real time to her. Now it
was too late … His son wouldn’t speak to him because of Bonny. This was not helped by Valent forgetting his and his wife’s and his grandchildren’s birthdays. Now he expected Pauline to be there when he got home, expected her voice on the end of the telephone longing to hear about his trip, delighting in every new achievement.