The mouse traps in the bedroom were empty, thank goodness, but the two in the kitchen had captured a mouse each. One seemed to be a baby. I took a moment to put on the teal-coloured tracksuit and pull on my ugg boots and then, trying not to think about it, I dropped the bodies into the bin, covering them with an old newspaper before resetting the traps and then coating my hands with dishwashing liquid and scrubbing them vigorously under the kitchen tap.

As I stepped outside, sparrows chirped in the English broom by the back door, and a high-up crow gave a drifting, morning groan. The cloud-streaked sky was a beautiful blue and pink and turquoise and gold. It was reliable, the sky; a wide and lovely place. But then I looked out across the plateau, trying to imagine it as it must have once been: a grasslands, full of wildflowers and sedges and wetland patches of dark green; a broad palette of subtle colours in a visual spectacle of abstract organic shapes.

I almost wished Leonie hadn’t told me. That place, that other place, this other place here; it seemed much closer to the sort of place I thought I was running to – somewhere that was all curves and gentleness and productivity and wildness.

Standing there, staring at the regimented squares of green and blonde and brown, I became very aware of the separation between my outside and my inside. It seemed bizarre suddenly, that no-one could see what was going on inside of me. The inside-of-me was a mysterious place that no-one knew except this new entity that was crawling out of non-existence but had not yet arrived into existence. And as if it knew I was thinking about it, it sent a wave of nausea to pressurise my blood; the blood surged at my temples and forced tears out of my eyes and saliva into my mouth. My stomach lurched but nothing came. I spat into the dirt between my feet and wiped my eyes. I was starting to get sick of this.

Standing straight again, collecting my breath, carrying my things towards Bromley in the middle of these mono-colour block fields, I wished again that I didn’t know. If I didn’t know then perhaps I could have learned to appreciate the crossed lines of roads and fences. Perhaps I could have figured out a way to find them as beautiful as I found the sky.

It was mid-morning outside the window of Bromley Cairn when the alarm on my phone blared and I closed my chemistry book. I had studied well, and now it was time to collect Bette and take her to the doctor and then collect my package. This was it. The official start of the next part of my life.

I came in the back door and found Bette bustling about the kitchen, preparing Hessel’s coffee.

‘No time for that, Grandma,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a doctor’s appointment. And I’m driving you.’