But then the cavalry always gave themselves airs. Earlier, at the briefing, Malise had had the ill manners to point out that he thought a horse show was hardly the place to introduce a lot of people who had nothing better to do with their afternoons than play soldiers. “I’ll show him,” fumed Colonel Carter.

Outside, hackney carriages were bouncing around the ring, drawn by high-stepping horses, rosettes streaming from their striped browbands, while junior riders crashed their ponies over the practice fence. By some monumental inefficiency, the organizers of the show had also ended up with three celebrities, who’d all arrived to present the prizes and needed looking after.

Bobby Cotterel, Africa’s owner, had originally been allotted the task, but at the last moment he’d pushed off to France, and such was the panic of finding a replacement that three other celebrities had been booked and accepted. The first was the Lady Mayoress, who’d opened the show and toured the exhibits and who had now been borne off to inspect the guides. The second was Miss Bilborough 1970, whose all-day-long makeup had not stood up to the heat. The third was a radio celebrity, with uniformly gray hair and a black treacle voice named Dudley Diplock. Having played a doctor in a long-running serial, he talked at the top of his voice all the time in the hope that the public might recognize him. He had now commandeered the microphone for the junior jumping.

Fen felt her stomach getting hollower and hollower. The jumps looked huge. The first fence was as big as Epping Forest.

“Please, God, let me not have three refusals, let me not let Dandelion down.”

“Oh, here comes Tory,” she said as Jake helped her saddle up Dandelion. “She went to a dance last night but I don’t think she enjoyed it; her eyes were awfully red this morning.”