Horse head with poppies on thigh

Juno had hauled the hire cart along Pellow Sands for nineteen summers, carrying children and their buckets back up to the boarding house on Carrick Terrace at the end of every afternoon. Her bridle had come from a saddler in Lyme with more brass than sense: a gold-plated cheekpiece, a row of blue stones down each strap, and a silver rosette the size of a saucer that Uncle Walter swore would make her look like a lady at the regatta. He had died the winter before, and the bridle had hung in the tack room ever since, its leather going stiff.

Aunt Dorothy had sold the cart and the mare to a farmer from Cutcombe for the Monday. The letter was on the hall table with the price pencilled on the back, and Nell had read it twice before deciding she would not be the one to lead Juno up the lane to the waiting trailer. So she had come to the sea wall with a halter and an apple, and found the mare already waiting, as if someone had told her.

Nell unbuckled the browband with fingers that would not keep still. The gold had worn to brass where Walter's thumbs had held it on the way down to the tide. Juno lowered her head, shook the black mane out of her eyes and walked past the gatepost into the poppies growing rough along the dune, red as the ones pinned to the guests' hats. Nell hung the bridle on the hook inside the front door, where the lodgers would see it first, and let the stones catch the light. By morning a red petal had blown in and stuck to the blue leather of the cheekpiece, and nobody had the heart to move it.