Roman, my husband, had one of those faces that looks made to be seen in profile – a strong chin and a high forehead and an attractively broken nose, like the face you might see on a coin in the British Museum or on a bottle of Paul Newman salad dressing. His tight blond curls were darkened and matted with sweat and his white T-shirt, so pristine when we had set out today, was now smeared with the grime of moving. My boy looked good. He stood at the back of the lorry, grinning at us, one hand raised in salute.

‘Is he an actor?’ Sally asked.

‘A doctor,’ I said, feeling that familiar pang of pride that I knew would never fade. ‘Roman’s a doctor.’

Roman was helping the removal men to unload our only sofa. He was not the type who liked to stand around and watch the help. Roman and the youngest, fittest, most elaborately tattooed of the removal men came staggering up the short gravel driveway with the sofa between them.

Sally Berry watched him approvingly.

‘Welcome,’ she smiled. ‘Dr Wade.’

People like being around doctors, I find. They trust doctors. They respect doctors. They find doctors a reassuring presence. But I guessed that Sally would have brought home-made honey for any new neighbour.

‘I love honey,’ Roman said, slightly breathless at the far end of the sofa, but maintaining his impeccable bedside manner. ‘Thank you so much.’

His smile was dazzling.

‘I do hope you’ll be happy here,’ Sally said, beaming at the pair of us. ‘Nobody ever leaves the Gardens.’

‘Why would they?’ Roman gasped. ‘Clean air. No crime. Good schools. All this living space. What could you get in the city for this money? Why would anyone ever move out?’

He sounds like an estate agent, I thought – a mean thought – as they lugged the sofa into the house. But I knew that Roman was not simply being polite to our new neighbour. He was selling our new home to me, as if I still needed convincing.

And I did.

I desperately wanted this to be a happy day. A new start for us. To leave the past behind and all that. But today was just not the same for Roman as it was for me. For my husband, we were moving home. And for me, it felt more like exile.

Roman came out of the house and stood panting by my side, staring at the street with something like wonder. Drenched in the sunshine of a late summer afternoon, Castle Gardens – although I never heard anyone call it anything but the Gardens – looked like a city dweller’s dream of the countryside. Sally’s small thatched cottage, swathed in all those pink oleander shrubs, must have originally been the home of some kind of gatekeeper or estate worker or minor retainer. Roman smiled at it with wonder, as if it might be made out of gingerbread.

Apart from Sally’s pink cottage, there were four honey-coloured houses, all postcard-perfect Cotswold architecture, two on each side of the Gardens, none of them exactly the same size. We were in the smallest.