Luckily for me, the weather turned out to be glorious (which actually meant we could easily have driven home). And the Bath countryside was magnificent.

We’d met each other late in life and we had a lot of catching up to do, so we decided we would tell each other our stories, interview each other, cover every stage of life, not necessarily in order. Whatever the interviewer wanted to ask they could ask; no questions were out of bounds, nothing was sacred. What was said in the Bath countryside stayed in the Bath countryside. That was our motto. I was to be interviewed until we got to the lake and she was to be interviewed on the way back.

We followed the river along the flatter land. Ness was so sure of herself and her map reading and I continued to enjoy being led. She knew about the Jurassic rock and the evolution of the land itself (her father was a geography teacher). We marvelled at the trees, which were shrieking reds and golds at us. It felt more like June than September and soon it became so warm that we stuffed our jumpers into the backpack. She checked her phone with the pictures of the OS map every time we came to a stile or a fork in the path. Already I was dependent on her; why was she the one carrying the backpack, holding the phone? But I liked the way she was a bit nerdy, the way she referred to the map, knowing what all the symbols meant, her finger following the dotted red line. Initially I wanted to double-check every decision made – I was used to being prime navigator of my tribe, after all – but I soon surrendered entirely to her control. And it felt good being dominated; a new and perhaps feminine feeling that I wasn’t quite used to. I was giving myself over in a way I hadn’t for many years.

So, I was the first to tell my story. Once we’d crossed the river, we began in earnest. She wanted to start with the meeting of my parents, so a couple of hours later, by the time we’d got to the top of the peak, I’d gone through the birth of my brother David, my own entry to the world, my early schooling, the important characters from my childhood, friends – she asked me a lot of questions about my greatest friends, Grace and Ally – the teenage years, my brief first marriage. Her questions were poignant but sensitive, her curiosity sharp. She was a great interviewer, able to keep the flow going, pull it back on track, create links and point out patterns, all the while handing me little bits of Kendal Mint Cake and glugs of water.