Sea broke into a trot again and I sat down in the saddle and let him go what speed he wished. I was far away in my thoughts. I was thinking of a summer years and years ago when she and I had been little grimy urchins and we had gone scrumping for apples in a high-walled orchard. I had been quite unable to face the thought of climbing up the wall or jumping down the other side and in the end had squeezed through a fence which had ripped half of my ragged dress off me. She had laughed at my scratched face. ‘I don’t mind being high,’ she had said.

I wished now that I had made her fear heights as I do, that I had somehow insisted that she always stay on ground level. That I had turned Robert against the idea of the trapeze as soon as he mentioned it. That I been warned by the barn owl. That I had remembered in time that the one unlucky colour in shows is always green.

Sea suddenly wheeled sharply to the right and nearly threw me off sideways. I clutched at his neck and stared around me. For some reason, clear only to his horse’s brain, he had turned off the main track and was heading down a little lane scarcely wider than a hay wagon. I stopped and thought to turn his head back towards the main road. But he was stubborn and I was too weary to be able to bend him to my will. Besides, it mattered so little.

I listened. I could hear the ripple of a river ahead of us in the darkness and I thought that perhaps he was thirsty and it was the noise of the clear water which was drawing him away from the road and down this little cart track. I let him go where he would, obeying my training which said that the horses must be fed and the horses must be watered. Whether you are hungry or thirsty or no. Whether you have forgotten what it feels like to want water or food. Still the horses have to be fed and watered.