Rory’s horse was called Fig, and Fig’s greatest flaw—or virtue—was that she refused to be rushed. She sniffed my face for five whole minutes before she let me sit on her back behind Rory, then took ten minutes more snaffling boysenberries from a bramble. It was only after she’d finished, when Rory’s threats had increased tenfold, that she began to idly trot down the holloway road.
