David then insists that I hang up to save my mobile-phone bill, and calls me back a few minutes later, when I’ve had time to compose myself. We talk for another half an hour or so, until he’s sure that I’ve calmed down. I tell him a bit about Kit, Tui and Queenstown – but neither of us mentions Anna. I don’t tell him how it felt to be so close to those horses today, either, because I know what he would say. He would tell me that it’s time to get back in the saddle. He would say that it wasn’t my fault I chose to go Christmas shopping that day instead of taking Suki out for a ride, and that it was in no way wrong of me to allow Anna to go in my place, as she so often had before. He would insist, as he had countless times over the past year, that I could not have foreseen my horse’s catastrophic reaction to the car backfiring while she and Anna were on the road, and that it would have made no difference who was up in the saddle that day. He would tell me that Suki was just an animal, and that animals can be unpredictable and skittish. Anna falling off and landing badly was the fault of nothing but bad luck – the same cruel twist of fate that caused Suki to bolt away afterwards into the path of another car, breaking two of her legs in the process. It was not fair, but it was done, and neither blame nor guilt could change the facts or bring either of them back. He had said it all before, and I had listened and nodded. But I had never believed. David did not know what happened the day before Anna left for the yard; he doesn’t know what I said, which I can now never take back. I would give anything to go back to that moment and shake some sense into myself. Anything.

‘I think you should stay where you are,’ David says eventually, answering the question I had asked him right at the start of our conversation.

‘Bonnie is bound to head home at some stage, back to New Zealand. If you come here now, the two of you risk overlapping again and you might miss her, but if you stay put, you’re guaranteed to find each other in the end.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ I allow. ‘But Kit told me she would be away for at least three weeks. That means I will definitely have to spend Christmas here, and potentially New Year’s Eve, too.’