the gauntlet of Drummond and Poppy, Etta woke to thick snow. The hedge of mature conifers was weighed down and no longer blocked all her view.
Turning on the television, she was greeted by the hideous news that Harvey-Holden’s yard, Ravenscroft, had burnt to the ground during the night. No humans had died, but all the horses had perished. Etta hadn’t liked Harvey-Holden at the party, but felt desperately sorry for him, the owners and all the stable lads. That must have been the screaming and neighing she had heard.
A later bulletin announced that five fire engines had been called to the scene and battled to contain the blaze. Despite so many crews, flames had spread to the tack room and the office, only just sparing the house.
Harvey-Holden’s staff were mostly foreign.
‘We heard the horses crying,’ said a distraught, swollen-eyed Polish stable lass. ‘They were cooked meat when we found them. Even worse, all were lying in the same position, their poor heads pointing away from the fire.’
Etta was appalled: poor, poor Harvey-Holden. She immediately wrote him a letter of commiseration, sending him a hundred pounds she’d saved up for a winter coat.
At first, according to the village shop, the fire had been started by a cigarette in the hayloft. Willowwood swarmed with reporters and the snow still fell. Two days later, news leaked out that Harvey-Holden’s travelling head lad, Denny Forrester, who’d been rowing with his boss at Ludlow, had shot himself, leaving a crazed email. This said he’d been drunk and smoking in the yard because he was so stressed and had set fire to the place because he was so fed up with Harvey-Holden.
A devastated, grey-faced Harvey-Holden then appeared, talking to Chris Vacher on Points West.
‘I cannot think why Denny Forrester did it. Smoking was utterly forbidden in the yard. Denny had been drinking all day; he was upset because he’d screwed up with one of our best horses at Ludlow. He hadn’t been up to the job recently, fretting about his mortgage, and I admit I reprimanded him. But I was very fond of Denny. I’ve lost a good friend and a generally fantastic head lad.’ Harvey-Holden’s voice broke. ‘But how could he have committed a crime of such barbarity? I love my horses, they’re my friends. I thought Denny did too.’
Harvey-Holden’s ratty little face had crumpled, and as he sobbed Etta had wanted to jump through the television set and comfort him.
By contrast to such horrors she was slightly cheered up to get Christmas cards from the Cunliffes, the Travis-Locks, Mr Pocock and Miss Painswick, and strangely comforted to receive a card from the young couple who’d bought Bluebell Hill. They said how blissful they were, and hoped she’d come and see them, adding that Ruthie and Hinton, who’d sent Etta a bottle of sherry, had worked out really well and often spoke of her and hoped she had got a dog.
Dora, who’d been saving up to spend Christmas in Paris with her boyfriend Paris, sent Etta a bottle of Baileys and said wasn’t it ‘the most hideous thing’ about Harvey-Holden’s horses and that ‘revolting Shagger’ would be hopping if he’d insured them.
Niall the vicar, worried that Etta was having Christmas on her own, dropped in, drank most of Ruthie and Hinton’s sherry and reported with round eyes that Ione Travis-Lock had been roaring round the Salix Estate yelling at people to turn off their Christmas lights, and wasn’t Woody the most charming chap?
As Romy and Martin had left for the ski slopes, Carrie Bancroft, determined to extract her pound of flesh, hijacked Etta for a dinner party on 23 December. Guests, mostly high-flyers from the City, had been emailed CVs of the other guests. Alan got drunk.
The party had meant extra beds to be made up in case these guests got snowed in and stayed the night. Etta noticed an open Pill packet beside Trixie’s bed, wondered if it was for the benefit of Marius’s glamorous red-headed stable lad, and would have tackled Trixie if she hadn’t suddenly become so ratty and door-slamming.
Carrie and Alan were off to the Rockies the next day.
‘Much cheaper than Courchevel,’ Alan told the guests. ‘And I won’t have to mortgage the barn every time Trixie has a hamburger.’
Trixie had agreed to go with them, but was acting up at the prospect of being stuck with two warring wrinklies for ten days.
Alan was sweet and appreciative about the dinner party. Carrie was ungrateful and very critical. ‘The onions weren’t done,