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Luke’s uncle Jack, who lived a few miles out of town, in the farmhouse he and Luke’s father had grown up in.
    Chestnut didn’t work any more. For as long as Luke could remember, he’d spent his days in the field, pulling up the grass with his strong yellow teeth.
    ‘What kind of work did he do?’ Luke had asked Jack, when they were out visiting the farm one Sunday a few months ago.
    ‘Everything the tractor does now. Ploughing, dragging, lifting – he was a strong old fellow in his time.’
    Luke looked up at the huge horse. ‘Did anyone ever ride him?’ He imagined sitting way up there, his legs pressed against Chestnut’s warm body, hanging on to the shaggy mane.
    Jack nodded. ‘Charlie did a bit, when she was younger.’ Charlie was Jack’s daughter, away at college now. ‘But nobody’s been up on his back for a long time.’ He looked at Luke. ‘Would you fancy it? He’s very quiet – you’d be fine.’
    Luke nodded, suddenly afraid to say anything.
    ‘Right, tell you what – I’ll collect you next Saturday,on my way home from the market. That’ll give me a chance to track down the saddle.’ He paused. ‘And if you stay around after and give me a hand with the cleaning-up in the yard, I’ll give you a few euro for your trouble.’
    And that was what happened, the next Saturday and most Saturdays since then. Jack called around to Luke’s house after dropping Luke’s aunt Maureen into the farmer’s market, where she sold fruit cakes and apple tarts. The two of them drove out to the farm, where Luke spent his first hour riding Chestnut around the field, and the next two helping Jack to hose down and scrub out the yard, and change the straw in the stable where Chestnut lived, and feed the pigs, and do anything else that needed doing, before Jack drove him home again, on his way to collect Maureen.
    Luke got fifteen euro from Jack every Saturday. When he tried to give it back the first time, feeling awkward, Jack said, ‘If I got a stranger to help me, I’d pay him. Why wouldn’t I pay you, just because you’re family?’ So Luke took it, and brought it home and hid it in an old custard tin at the back of his wardrobe.
    And now, eighteen weeks later, he had two hundred and seventy euro saved. Still a long way to go forwhat he wanted.
    On the way home, he asked Jack to drop him in town. ‘I have things to get.’
    ‘Fair enough.’
    Luke walked down the main street, past the straggle of market stalls. He stopped outside Brady’s Electrical and looked in the window, and there it was.
    Snow white, shining, with two neat rows of buttons running along its top panel, and a round glass door like a stomach in the middle of it. The door was open, and a blue towel was hanging halfway out of the stomach. The folded piece of card sitting on the top still said €409 in black marker – one hundred and thirty-nine euro more than Luke had saved.
    It was the washing machine he was going to buy for his mother, to replace the one that was worn out from washing Anne’s wet sheets so often – or maybe just because it was so old, a wedding present from Granny and Grandpa Mitchell. It hadn’t actually given up yet, but it clanked and rattled every time it was switched on, and Luke’s mother lived in dread of it breaking down. Luke hoped he could save enough before that happened, but at the rate he was going, it would be well after Christmas, which was only six weeks away, by the time he had enough.
    He turned to walk home, thinking hard. Was there anything else he could do to get more money? He passed a newsagent’s, and paused. What about a paper round? How much did they pay?
    He walked in. There was a tall, dark-haired man behind the counter, serving a teenage girl with lots of studs in her ears. Luke waited until the teenager walked out, and then he said, ‘I was looking for a paper round.’
    The man shook his head. ‘Sorry, son – I have my regulars for that.’
    ‘OK.’ Luke turned to go. He