I stepped back from the horse and clicked to him to get going. He was new to the work or else he had forgotten the skill. I worked with him all morning though my hands were stiff and my cheeks were icy. It was only when I went into the kitchen for my breakfast that I found they had become red and chapped because I had been crying into the cold east wind for all of the time.

We hardly noticed the Christmas season. Robert was distant and cold to us all since that time in the yard. He spun a silver coin down the table to Jack at breakfast on Christmas morning and he gave Dandy and Katie and me a thrupenny piece each. Mrs Greaves had a bolt of material, William a penny, David a rather good pair of second-hand gloves.

That was it. We all went back to work, and Christmas was just another day of training horses for me and working on the trapeze for the rest of them.

The new ponies bought at Salisbury were going well with the others and Robert had taught me the moves with the stick in one hand and the whip in the other and the words to call at them. We had a pretty little act with them coming into the ring and splitting into two teams, crossing from one side to another, passing while they circled (I always lost the smallest one who would tag on to the wrong team), pirouetting on the spot, and finally taking a bow while I stood in the middle of them smiling at where the audience would be, with my back to them as if I could trust them on their own – which I absolutely could not.

I worked them every morning before breakfast, while Robert watched the trapeze practice or worked at his accounts inside the house. After we had eaten we took Bluebell and the new horse, Morris, into the field and I practised vaulting on them, and standing. Bluebell was steady as a rock, she had learned the job with Jack all those years ago and I was probably a welcome relief – a good deal lighter even if I did tend to overshoot and go flying off the far side.

‘Don’t jump!’ Robert would yell irritably from the centre of the ring while his pipe puffed little signals up at the cold blue sky. ‘Let the horse’s speed take you up. All you do is get your feet off the ground. Her canter will do the rest!’