The other thing we did together was ride, with Mum, who was better than both of us. This was a source of huge amusement because Dad was in the cavalry, but of course that mostly meant tanks, apart from ceremonial stuff. We didn't have horses of our own, there wasn't the money, but Iris, Mum's great buddy, was always grateful to us for exercising hers. She competed in those days, three-day eventing at quite a high level, and she needed them ridden daily. Most were home-bred and she was always bringing on a youngster, although they were precious, and not everyone was granted this honor, but my mother had the best seat in the county and the lightest hands so Iris trusted her with her babies, as she called them.

I didn't actually fancy Hugo, as I recall, but he was good-looking and frankly, being at an all-girls school, one of the few boys I knew. I had two cousins in Devon and there were a few boys in the Pony Club who were sweet, but Hugo was the pin-up boy for the area: rich, remote, a bit shy which sort of helped, and away at school, so slightly mysterious. The whole package, if you were a bit shallow like me, and a bit of a sheep - ditto - was super glamorous. I often thought, as I rode Hugo’s new Cleveland Bay, I'm sitting in your saddle, mate. My bum's where your bum's been. Childish.

When Dad died, though, I put away childish things. The punch and the guts went out of me for anything frivolous, and with it went the posters on my bedroom wall of the young Prince William, who so closely resembled Hugo, and I put up prints by Monet, Constable and Henry Moore instead, all great favorites of Dad's. That was the furrow I ploughed: the one into my father's world, getting inside his head, spending hours painting the same views he'd painted, in oils now, but still in the fields because I liked the elements. And when the weather was fine, and not windy, I'd paint his face. I'd prop up a photo of him on my oId child's easel and paint it time and again, wanting to get it exactly right. I think Mum worried a bit at this stage and would come and find me, knowing exactly where I'd be, halfway down the cliff, just inside a little cave Dad and I had found, which at least afforded some protection from the wind. She'd pop her head round and usually I wouldn't have heard her.

"Coming back soon, darling? It's nearly supper time." I'd meet her anxious eyes and I knew she was reading mine, too.