She gave the lead rope a gentle tug and took a step towards the mare. The horse stumbled a little and stomped her front foot but then, mercifully, she began to walk slowly backwards. Gradually, she eased out of the float and into the yard, where three vets immediately surrounded her with hoses and wet towels. Claire unwound the rope and handed it to a vet nurse.
Jackie was standing on the mare’s near side, her hands hidden beneath the switching tail. She had somehow drawn the short straw and was taking the horse’s temperature. When the electronic thermometer beeped, Jackie looked down at the reading and shook her head.
‘Forty-one degrees,’ she told Claire, the disgust in her voice palpable.
Again, Claire felt fury twist in her stomach. Though it often had dire consequences, heat stroke wasn’t a particularly complex condition. In most cases, it was caused by overexertion – too much work or too much exercise in hot conditions and not enough opportunities for the horse to cool down.
Which meant that some colossal idiot had, either by neglect or design, allowed a pregnant mare – a horse that shouldn’t have even been out of her stall in these hellish conditions – to nearly kill herself on a day that was hotter than Hades. Claire would put money on the mare belonging to a riding stable trying to keep up with school-holiday demand. Mostly, they treated their horses like royalty, but some cared more about cashing in on rich parents desperate to keep their kids entertained, even if it meant pushing an animal far beyond its limits.
‘Where’s the owner?’ Claire spat. ‘Who brought her in?’ She eschewed confrontation as a rule, but whoever was responsible for this was going to hear about it.
‘That would be me,’ said a voice from behind her.
She turned and saw the shape of a person standing next to the four-wheel drive that was hitched to the float. The sonorous tone of the voice told her it was a man, but in the glare of the late-afternoon sun she couldn’t make out his face.
‘Come with me,’ she snarled.
Without confirming that he was following her, Claire stalked across the yard and into the welcome cool of the hospital. If the heat was driving her mad, this man who had left his horse to its mercy was making her positively incandescent.
She heard his footsteps behind her as she went into the walk-in supply cupboard. ‘Your horse has heat stroke,’ she coldly informed him, not turning around.
‘I know,’ he replied. Something in the timbre of his voice stirred a flicker of recognition in the back of Claire’s mind, but she was too angry to follow the trail.
‘You know?’ She wrenched open drawers and cupboards, assembling the syringes and vials she would need for the mare’s blood tests. ‘Then you should know better than to have exercised her in this weather.’
‘Can you test her for MH while you’re at it?’ he said, ignoring her accusation.
Claire scoffed. Malignant hyperthermia – was this guy serious? ‘Wouldn’t that be convenient?’ she said. ‘A genetic disease that makes your mare prone to heat stroke. Nothing to do with forcing her to work on a blistering summer’s day.’
‘I didn’t —’
‘And I cannot believe you floated her in that state. You should have called and had us come to you. She could have collapsed and died in that trailer.’
‘She was already in —’
Claire grabbed a kidney dish from a shelf and dumped the vials and syringes in it. ‘I’ll be reporting you to the RSPCA. People like you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near animals.’
‘Claire.’
‘You’d better hope like hell that poor horse and her foal survive this because —’
‘Claire.’
She froze. How does he know my name? She was damn sure she hadn’t bothered to introduce herself to this loser. He must have heard Jackie address her in the yard. Unless . . .
A chill unfurled at the base of her spine and scuttled up to her neck like a spider. I do know that voice. Slowly, Claire set the kidney dish on the bench. Even more slowly, she turned to look at the man who seemed to know her.
I know that face, too.
CHAPTER TWO
The power of speech had deserted her. Claire opened her mouth then closed it again, doing her best impression of a goldfish.
Scotty Shannon. In the flesh.
Over the past six months they had kept in touch as often as any far-flung old friends in this new digital age: not that often at all. Their occasional emails were full of easy small talk about work, travel, books, what they were binge-watching on Netflix. They hadn’t picked over the carcass of their relationship or rehashed its gut-wrenching conclusion eight years earlier. They didn’t discuss significant others – not that there was anything to discuss on her side anyway. That wasn’t in the spirit of their tentative new arrangement. They were now, if not quite bona fide mates, then definitely warm acquaintances. Anything else that had once existed between them was long dead. Their banter wasn’t serious and neither were they. It suited her. Scotty-and-Claire version 2.0 felt relaxed, uncomplicated, nice. She liked just knowing he was out there somewhere – and that he didn’t seem to despise her.
The geographical distance between them also meant there was no pressure to take their revived friendship into the real world. He hadn’t asked her why she never went back to Bindallarah; she never suggested he pay her a visit in Sydney. She’d mostly managed to avoid imagining what she might say to him if she ever saw him
