The light in the Camargue is not the same as in Paris. The sky is as soft as a watercolour, the dusky grey clouds on the horizon bleeding into the pale, pearly waves of the sea. It is this light that defines my painting now. The oil colours that I once relied on – the mustards and the browns, the dirty umbers that once created my world, all remain untouched in their tubes and instead I use different paint tones – chalky whites and dove greys, deep teals and muted greens.

I am painting every day, rising early to greet the dawn. I always think I will be the first one up, but in the kitchen Mimi is already there waiting for me, dressed in her uniform of jodhpurs and a cotton blouse.

“I have your breakfast, Rose,” she will say. “One egg or two?”

And I say, “Two, please.” Two fried eggs but no sausage because I am vegetarian – which Mimi still struggles with – and a brioche and café au lait. I eat mine while she takes Chantal’s breakfast upstairs to her on a tray to eat it in bed.

I never need to go upstairs. Mimi has converted the old library downstairs into a bedroom for me and there is a bathroom right beside it. My wheelchair slips in beside my bed and I’ve learnt to roll myself out of bed and straight into it, and then to wheel into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. Mimi has installed a wooden rail by the toilet so that I can lift myself on to it and then back to my chair.

“You don’t need me. You can do it yourself,” Mimi tells me. She says the Camargue is no country for the weak, and life here will make me tough. She is right. I look back on the whining child I was in Paris and I cringe with shame.

I am a creature of the Camargue now, like the flamingos and the bulls and the grey horses that roam the coastline, cantering in wild herds through the white froth of the waves. I see them in the distance sometimes. The Camargue horses are a perfect combination of power and beauty with burly physiques, strong legs and noble heads. They are untamed things and yet, twice a year, Pierre and the other gardians who work Mimi’s farm will muster them into the yards and select out a few from the feral herd to turn into their riding horses for the next season.

Pierre has a very nice horse from one such muster – a stony silver-grey mare with very big round dapples on her rump and the most luxurious silken white mane you have ever seen. Her name is Babette, and she is very quiet, so she is perfect for her morning duties with me.