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‘I win!’ yelled Shane, and pushed Davey’s face once more into the cool leaves for good measure, before standing up, laughing.

Davey was so relieved it was only Shane that for a moment he just lay there, face down, pulling himself together again. Then he arced his fist out to the side and slammed it into Shane’s knee so hard that his friend joined him on the forest floor with a shout of pain.

Davey got up and stood over him. ‘You cheat.’

‘I didn’t cheat.’ Shane sat up, holding his knee. ‘You almost broke my leg, you tosser.’

Davey was about to come back at him, but suddenly the idea of falling out with Shane and having to walk home alone through the forest made him bite back his own insult.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said instead, and extended his hand. Shane looked at it suspiciously, then allowed himself to be helped up.

‘You OK?’ said Davey, and his friend’s unusual deference made Shane similarly noble.

‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ he said.

‘You want to lean on me?’

‘Yeah, OK.’

Their games over for the day, Shane and Davey walked home, Shane making a meal of hobbling and leaning on Davey’s shoulder once they reached the village, and Davey happy to let him show off his injury. He’d have done the same.

‘Awesome game though,’ said Shane as he reached his own house.

‘Yeah,’ said Davey. ‘Awesome.’

14

THEY WERE IN English class when Emily said, ‘Do you want to go to the show on Saturday?’

‘OK,’ said Steven, then was forced to ask, ‘What show?’

Emily smiled, but in a good way. ‘The hunt show. At Deepwater Farm.’

Steven had never been to a horse show before. He knew they went on, of course, just as he vaguely knew farming and hunting and sheep-trialling and jam-making went on around him – all without the benefit of his active involvement.

He had no idea where Deepwater Farm was, nor any concept of what going to the show might be like, but those were trifles – and no bar to his feeling a little thrill that Emily had asked him. He was low-key about it though, because others were watching.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Sure.’

* * *

The Midmoor Hunt had cancelled its annual show out of deference to its Master’s loss.

Joint Master, several disgruntled members had pointed out at a meeting where John Took was not present. Charles Stourbridge stood up for John Took, but in an arthritic kind of way, and the motion to cancel only survived by six votes.

The old Blacklands Hunt had been subsumed by the Midmoor last winter after years of decline. The rot had started years before, when it was discovered that the serial killer Arnold Avery had turned the hunt’s patch of moorland into his own personal cemetery. It was an uneasy thing – galloping across the graves of murdered children – and many hunt supporters had lost their taste for it.

Later, in the wake of the hunting ban, saboteurs had stepped up their campaigns of harassment. Not all of them were incomers and professional agitators – some were local people who finally felt able to make their feelings known now that they had the law – albeit pallid – on their side. There had been clashes. Angry clashes. At Edgcott, a local sab named Frank Munk had his foot run over and crushed by a hunt follower’s Land Rover, and in retaliation young David Lodge was pulled from his horse and broke his collar bone. His horse had bolted into a bog and died of exhaustion before they could get it out. Hunting stopped being fun and started being dangerous for more than the fox. Devout hunt followers were suddenly reluctant to bring their children out with them, and turn-out – and vital subscriptions – dipped alarmingly. Some members saw the writing on the wall and deserted to the bigger Dulverton West or the Exmoor Foxhounds on the basis that there was safety in numbers.

It only hastened the end for the Blacklands. As the smaller of the two beleaguered hunts, the Blacklands had come off worst. Jobs had been lost, horses sold and hounds disposed of. Sad but necessary. The Blacklands Master, John Took, had been made joint Master of the Midmoor, but it was clear to all just who the poor relations were within the new hunt.

Now – a mere six months into the uneasy alliance – many original Midmoor members blamed Took’s crisis for the loss of their traditional summer show. To add insult to injury, the Exmoor Foxhounds had been indecently hasty to offer to run the show instead. After all, their secretary had reasoned, the field was booked, the jumps and tents paid for, the date publicized and the entries received.

‘I mean,’ she’d told Charles Stourbridge on the phone, ‘the kidnapper’s already taken poor Jess Took and that other boy. We shouldn’t let him ruin a good day out into the bargain.’

When this fuzzy logic was relayed to them, the Midmoor members prayed for rain on Saturday, but an unusually reliable summer let them all down.

* * *

Saturday morning. Exactly two weeks since Jess Took had been taken.

She had not called home from a boyfriend’s mobile or a London phone box. And no farmer had been surprised to find Pete Knox in his hay barn.