When the biopsy results had come through, however, and Dr Kenyon had summoned her back to the clinic, Bonnie had fallen to pieces in the waiting room and almost bolted back home to the stables. She had decided there and then that cancer was not an option, that she would not tolerate so cruel a twist. Finding out a few minutes later that the lump she had found was, in fact, just a cyst after all, had made Bonnie weep all the harder. She had come so close to allowing time to run out, and while she had never been superstitious in her life before, she took this scare as a sign that she must seek out her lost daughter – and that is exactly what she did. Following a relatively simple operation the following week, Bonnie had fired up the ancient computer in the office at Koru Stables and booked herself the first available flight over to England.

‘How have you been feeling since the op?’ Dr Kenyon asked now, sipping from a half-empty bottle of water.

Bonnie pictured the puckered scar under her arm.

‘Fine. A bit sore right after, but nothing for a while now.’

‘Good.’ The doctor nodded in satisfaction. ‘And no other lumps or bumps anywhere they shouldn’t be?’

‘Well,’ Bonnie said lightly, ‘I did eat a lot of stodgy British food while I was away, so there may be a few around my middle.’

Dr Kenyon swept a frowning eye from Bonnie’s neck down to her sandals, and scoffed.

‘It was a bit foolish of you,’ she said, turning back to the old monitor, which had begun humming like an idle bus, ‘to scarper off abroad like that before the stitches were even out.’

‘I know.’ Bonnie did her best to look sheepish. ‘But it didn’t feel like it could wait. Finding the lump and going through the terror of it being potentially cancerous, it made a few things fall into place for me, you know? It was just a cyst this time, but next time it might not be. I realised that I’d been a bloody wimp for long enough, and that I should go and get things done while I still could.’

‘And did you?’

For a moment Bonnie thought about Genie, and the ride they had gone on together the previous day, how much they had already shared with one another, and how understanding her daughter had been. She was an incredible young woman, she really was, and even though Bonnie had had no part in raising her, she still felt proud. Genie was her girl, and what a wonder she was.

‘You know what, Doc?’ she said. ‘I really think I did.’