That would make us a family, I realized as I removed my bridle from the chestnut's face, rubbing her sweaty ears and clipping on a head collar. Something we'd never been. Well once, obviously, briefly, and thereafter, let's face it, I'd always been the one who'd resisted. Yet somehow, strangely, it felt fine here. Maybe because we'd been a family here before, dangling Peter in the shallows in his diaper on that very same beach, watching him turn shells over in wonder with his podgy little hands. As I went to the tack room, saddle and bridle over my arm, the back lawn became visible to my right. I paused.

Hugo's two other children were playing on the monkey bars in the long grass by the trees. Christina was striding from the house across the lawn towards them with her hands in her jeans pockets. And the funny thing was, the more I saw of this evidently happy family, the easier I found it to be around them, I'd noticed. Yes, my heart still raced the moment I saw Hugo, but I hadn't lain awake for hours last night dissecting the evening as I did when I saw him on his own, at a parents’ evening, or a rugby match. Replaying every line, every conversational gambit in my head. I hadn't felt a tiny bit sick today, either. I realized it helped to see them together. I'd built them up into a hugely glamorous couple, and they weren't. They were perfectly average.

Christina, who was now coming back across the lawn having no doubt informed her offspring of an imminent supper time, never wore more than jeans and a shirt, and not hugely fashionable ones. There was something graceless in her stride, I realized. She walked like a duck, feet out at an angle. And I'd seen her openly pick her teeth after supper last night. I didn't see that in the studio as I painted: I only saw her in that garden in Wales, seventeen years ago, swinging from a long rope across the stream. The only girl to do it. Landing on the other side with a whoop, turning and punching the air, Hugo's eyes shining. That's what I saw as I stood at my easel in Fulham, beside Celia. I certainly didn't see her throw open a window and shout:

"When I say now, I mean now! Not when it suits you!"

The window slammed shut. The twins exchanged a bored look, rolled their eyes, and slid off the bars.