If she wasn’t touring, though, the thought of doing only what they were doing today, maybe for the rest of their lives, filled Connie with mild dread. Devan’s cunning plan for building up her strength was working so far. He kept arranging leisurely jaunts into the countryside, where they would walk short distances, rest, walk some more. They might visit a church, a beauty spot, or do what they were doing today – poke around the brightly coloured shops of Glastonbury – making Connie exercise without realizing it. She was always wiped out by the time she got home, but she was grateful to her husband. And she enjoyed the days out, after weeks cooped up, too wobbly to make it to the end of the road. But they also made her nervous. This is what retirement could look like, she thought, as they passed yet another purple-painted crystal shop on the crowded pavement.

They found a seat outside a vegan café on the town square and ordered mint tea for Connie and a black Americano for Devan, with two banana and peanut butter cupcakes – about which Devan was highly suspicious.

‘I hate feeling like this,’ Connie said. ‘I’ve been so dependent on you, so whiny … and I feel really vulnerable when I’m out in crowds. I seem to have lost my nerve.’

‘That’s normal. You’re convalescing,’ Devan assured her, biting cautiously into the cupcake, then nodding slowly in appreciation.

‘Yes, but I feel so old, Devan. Like really crocked and old. It’s horrible. And I worry it’s a slippery slope …’

She looked towards the spire in the centre of the square, around which a number of tanned young people in shorts and hiking boots were hanging out, laughing and smoking, tinnies in their hands, lumpy backpacks lying at their feet. She pointed to them. ‘This is where we started,’ she said, with a smile, remembering the medical tent at the festival as if were another life, she and Devan other people.

Her husband turned to look. ‘I thought you were the craziest girl I’d ever met.’

‘Crazy? Me?’ Connie was astonished. He’d never said that before. ‘Gaby was the crazy one.’

He laughed. ‘She was stoned. You were crazy. You kept dancing barefoot around the tent to the music, your gorgeous hair all over the place, legs covered with mud, laughing like a lunatic and saying things like “You look so weird in those trousers”, which were perfectly standard jeans. I was sure you were on something too.’

Connie stared at him. ‘You’re making this up. I don’t believe you.’

Devan’s face was alight with mischief. ‘You don’t remember, though, do you?’

‘I do! I remember everything. You did look a bit peculiar in those tidy jeans. But I liked it.’ She frowned. ‘I remember the mud … Did I really dance around the tent?’ Her memory was of being the sober, responsible friend, saving Gaby’s life.