MRS LONERGAN HAD something new for us. Formidable, with jet-black hair and heavy gold jewellery, she ran Poetry Club at my primary school on Wednesday afternoons. We listened and recited in a poky spare classroom crowded with filing cabinets and surplus desks. She had a wonderful voice, now hushed and conspiratorial, now sonorous. She cleared her throat and began: ‘There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around / That the colt from old Regret had got away.’

As she read on, I was transported. Gone was the grey-carpeted room with its rattling aircon unit. I heard the stomp of restless horses, the crack of the stockwhip, smelled campfire smoke and leather. I was there, leaning way back in the saddle and trusting my pony to find purchase on the steep scree of the downward slope.