It took a long time for those feelings to subside and there were still days they flickered inside me. I realise now how hard it must have been for my brother to have heard me repeating the same refrain over and over again, and I felt awful I’d put him and Poppy through that. They didn’t deserve it. But other people were beyond my scope of vision at that point. All I knew was an unending see-saw of utter numbness tipping into pain so deep and so violent I longed for the numbness again.

People tried to help, but I felt like an automaton around them. I couldn’t concentrate on conversations. As terrible as it sounds, I had no interest in them. I didn’t care about their lives or their holidays or their children. I didn’t care about my own life and it was hard to even pretend to show interest in theirs. And when a few well-meaning friends made an attempt to introduce me to a man ten months after Mike’s death, I knew I couldn’t deal with any of it anymore. Everywhere I looked in London, in the flat, outside in the city, was a memory of something we’d done, or something we’d planned which would now never come to fruition. I didn’t need reminders. They were all etched into my very soul and the London I’d once loved had now become painful to look upon because I was no longer looking upon it with the man who’d meant everything. That was the day I decided to leave London and the day I’d found Meadow Blossom House.

I sat in the lounger, a blanket laid over me as I hugged a cup of hot chocolate and looked out into the beginnings of twilight and the wild beauty that was my garden. I really ought to get a gardener in, but the thought of it filled me with dread. The longer I’d stayed away from society, other than my immediate family, the worse I felt every time I thought about having to interact with anyone. As I’d told Felix, I did nip to the local shop when I had to, but I always made sure I went about 6 a.m., as soon as they opened, as there was less chance of running into people at that time. It wasn’t that the villagers were unpleasant. Quite the opposite, in fact. They always had a smile and a gentle exchange. Poppy had told me there was a bit of gossip for a while when I’d first moved in. The archetypal reclusive writer, hidden away behind tall gates and high walls. It was, even to me, with a writer’s natural fear and distaste of clichés, obvious that I did appear to have turned into one. But it hadn’t been intentional and it’s not like I never went out – just not very often. Of course, I saw my family all the time here. Although, right now, I wasn’t sure that was such a good thing.