Thank God for Allie’s strict schedule, I think silently, as he tows Keith and Tui back to shore.

‘I want Genie to lead me!’ Tui cries, her legs flapping against Keith’s sides as she attempts to urge him forwards.

‘I don’t really think that she—’ begins Kit, but I am already reaching across to take the lead rope.

‘It’s OK,’ I say, surprised to discover that it genuinely is. ‘I’d like to.’

‘Only if you’re sure?’ he checks, and then, as we turn to head back up the hill, ‘I’m right here if you need me.’

I may not be able to talk openly about the fall that killed my mum, or how I feel so wretched about it that sometimes the guilt knocks me physically to the ground, and I might not be ready to envisage sharing anything meaningful at all with the woman who gave me up, but I am able to walk along this pathway leading a pony. What’s more, I want to, and that has everything to do with the girl up in the saddle.

18

Bonnie

Jet lag had woken Bonnie in the early hours, her eyes scratchy and her throat parched from the two glasses of wine she had indulged in over yet another excellent dinner. Tracey had refused all Bonnie’s offers of help, or of money, insisting that it was a pleasure having someone to cook for again. Like Bonnie herself, Tracey had never married, but she’d had a number of live-in boyfriends over the years, the most recent of which, she told Bonnie, she’d had to boot out when he started seeing another woman behind her back.

‘The cheek of the fella,’ she fumed to Bonnie, as she tossed a handful of frozen peas into a pan of boiling water. ‘Leaves me at home, ironing his underpants, while he buggers off to swing jive classes at the town hall with her from number ten.’