It is such a big question that my voice cracks, and I fight for several seconds to keep the tears at bay. I cannot cry any more – there has been too much of that already.

‘I was scared,’ Bonnie confesses. ‘I know it sounds pathetic – and it is – but it’s the truth. I was scared of letting down my parents, scared of proving everyone right when they warned me that I wasn’t cut out to take on the big, wide world. I was scared that I wouldn’t be a good mother, and that you would be unhappy. I was even scared that I wouldn’t be able to love you in the way that I should, but of course I did. I loved you from the first second that I felt you kick.’

‘Did you ever think about me?’ I ask.

‘Every day,’ she says simply.

‘And did you ever think about coming back?’

‘Every day.’

‘But you never did.’

‘I told myself that you were happy, that you were better off with the parents that you had. I watched as David’s career skyrocketed, and I imagined the life you must have, all the opportunities and the nice things. I thought it would be cruel of me to disrupt all that. It was only when Tui came along that I realised how much I had given up, how much I had lost. But by then you were a teenager, and I was a world away, with a new baby – it felt impossible.’

‘Anna was going to suggest that I meet you,’ I say. ‘Right before she died – in fact, the day before. She wrote about it in her diary. And she gave me your ring on my twenty-first birthday, although I never knew then that it belonged to you.’

‘The jade-stone ring?’ Bonnie says, perking up.

‘Yes. But I lost it. It fell off in the river when I waded in to rescue Beavis.’

‘Well then,’ Bonnie flicks her eyes in my direction, ‘I guess it found its way home, then.’

I know she’s waiting for me to add a ‘just like me’ to the end of that sentence, but I can’t. Not yet. There are still too many things that I need to have clarified.

‘Is there somewhere we can stop for a bit?’

In the end we double back on ourselves and pick a spot not far from the river, where the horses can have a drink and there are plenty of trees under which to shade from the sun. Pulling up our stirrups and unbuckling the girths, we ease the saddles off Brian and Keith and spread the thick cloths on the ground to sit on. Mine is dappled with sweat and covered in chestnut hairs, but it saves me from getting white dust all over my jodhpurs.