After Francis had picked himself up they found they had lost the hunt, though the distant echo of the master’s horn could still be heard across the valley, and the three of us, two mounted and myself on foot keeping up as best I could, went to a pub that Francis knew in the village for lunch. They left their horses tethered in the car park. He stepped under the low lintel of the pub’s doorway into the warm wooden space beyond, and a cheer went up from behind the bar. When the barmaid saw Francis’s black eye she cheerfully teased him, asking him how the other guy was looking. The first round was on the landlord, though Francis graciously fought to pay. He and Jessica were so exhilarated from the ride, and from the fear and laughter of the recent tumble, that her coolness towards me melted in the warmth of the hearth.

‘So, what do you make of your first hunt?’ Francis asked me.

‘It was . . . amazing,’ I said, ‘just incredible.’ In my desperation to find something intriguing or insightful to say, I was rendering myself idiotic.

Francis laughed. ‘Amazing! Incredible!’ He was mocking me, but his eyes included me in the joke, inviting me to laugh at myself, so that I was able to turn to Jessica and give her a hopeless shrug. When I spoke to him again, I tried to make my awkwardness seem like the product of sincerity.

‘I mean, when I saw you come off the horse, the cream and scarlet hanging against the deep green fields . . . I don’t mean to sound weird, but I wanted to draw you.’

‘Do you draw?’ Francis asked, leaning forwards in his chair. ‘I would love to see your stuff.’

When we left the pub, the horses were already gone. Francis had texted his stable master, who had collected them in a horse box. The sleek silver Mercedes was waiting in the car park to carry us back to Cambridge.

It was just what I needed, Francis’s fall and the day that surrounded it. After that, I had a little material I could fashion into jokes and conversation and I knew how to husband the link. Francis had slightly injured his wrist, so I could go around to his room to see how it was healing. I was able to ask him for his father’s address, to write to him to thank him for the use of his driver. I could compliment Jessica on her horsemanship, and on the way she had rushed to Francis’s aid. I delighted in being the first to tell Michael about the day we had spent together, and in his attempts to hide his irritation by indulging in some territorial spraying on the subject of how well he knew the countryside around Francis’s house. He asked me if we had been to this farm or that pond, and said how pretty such a village was in summertime, and restored himself.