I smiled. ‘I won him!’ I said, and as Will listened I told him how I had first seen Sea and how he had been called unridable. How I had persuaded my master to let me ride him (a horse-trader he was, I said), how he had started the book and made hundreds of guineas from the bet. Will laughed and laughed, a great open-hearted bellow, at the thought of me hitching up my housemaid skirts and getting astride Sea. But he went quiet when I told him how Sea reared and plunged at the end and threw me down.

‘You must have had many falls,’ he said gently.

I nodded, smiling at the memory of that day in Salisbury, uncaring about past pains.

‘Is that how you banged your face?’ he asked. ‘Falling off horses? Your nose is a little bit crooked.’

I stroked it, self-conscious. ‘No,’ I said. I was about to tell him of the fall from the trapeze but the thought of it called her, my sister, from the quiet silent place where I had buried her in my mind. I could feel my grief swelling up in my throat, as if I were about to choke on a sorrow too big to live inside my chest.

‘No,’ I said husky, and turned my face away so that he should not see that my mouth was turning downwards in an ugly grimace of pain, and my eyes were going red and hot. I dared not start crying. I knew that if I started I would never stop. A lifetime would not be long enough to have my cry out for the loss of her and the loneliness I was left with.

‘No,’ I said again.

‘We’ll go back over the Common,’ he said suddenly, as if he had forgotten what we had been talking about. ‘There’s some land there which could take trees. I want you to tell me what you think about it. They’re mining a lot of coal quite deep in Kent these days and there’s a good market for small straight timber to prop up the ceilings of the galleries where they dig for coal. We could plant pine trees and they would be ready for cutting in as little as ten years’ time.’

‘Oh,’ I said. My throat was still tight.

‘And you can have a look at the north side of the Common and the Havering estate,’ he went on. He was talking faster, louder than usual, giving me time to pack my heartbreak away again, where no one could see it. ‘You’ve never been around that side, I don’t think, unless you’ve been with Lord Peregrine. D’you ride much with him?’

‘Hardly at all,’ I said huskily, but I had myself back in hand.

Will glanced at me, gave me one of his fleeting sweet smiles. ‘He’ll be off to town soon, I daresay. Or wherever else they go in summer.’