I am back walking around the garden of Wellbeck House, arm in arm with her. Admiring the clematis and catmint, the salvia, the geraniums, the laburnum. Sitting beneath the weeping willow tree, the day she told me you had feelings for me, and my life opened out. I look across at your handsome face, today engulfed by pain and grief. My heart aches with love for you. I wish I could hold you against me and comfort you. Saffron is sitting so close to you, her arm draped across your back. Your shoulders are shaking. You are sobbing silently. Aiden is calmer. Head up high facing the front. I tear my eyes away from Caprice’s sons and step back into my memories.

My birthday. The look on her face, eyes soft with kindness, as she handed me my card and a bunch of roses at breakfast time. She had made me American pancakes, and she served them to me with Canadian syrup and strawberries. Just a dash of icing sugar, sprinkled across the pancakes like snowflakes. The scent of the roses she had placed in a vase in the middle of the pine kitchen table wafting around the room.

And the necklace she bought me. She took me to London to choose it the day after my birthday. At her favourite jewellers, the Silver Mouse Trap, behind The Royal Courts of Justice, on the Strand. I lift my hand to my neck to check my treasured piece of jewellery is still there. My fingers press down against the firmness of the gold chain I wear every day, and more memories come flooding back.

Cups of coffee drunk at leisure together in the morning after I’d taken the boys to school. Italian Lavazza, her favourite. Listening to music with her. Unusual for her age, she liked Radio 1 as well as Radio 4.

The way she made me laugh repeating gossip from the school gate mums.

‘The chap in our office who checks the computers is sleeping with the head of Marketing, and they’re both married. Don’t tell anyone will you,’ she told me Penny Langton yelled into her iPhone in the playground. Everyone in the playground heard and giggled. Caprice’s stories sometimes made me laugh so much my eyes watered and my mascara ran. So black-eyed from mascara, I looked like a panda after some of our chats.

The day she took me to Wisley, the Royal Horticultural Society. Giving me such inspiration for the gardening course I hope to study when I return home. Too early for the summer borders to have reached their full magnificence. Caprice and I had a competition to see who could recognise the most plants. Caprice won. I close my eyes and try and remember what was there. Roses, allium, lavender, red thunder, silver ghost, echinacea, achillea coronation gold. Dahlias. We walked to Battleston Hill, flanked by a sea of lilies and hydrangeas. Purple, pink, and powder blue.