Aidan has barely been here. I’m not sure I care really. Except that the dreams are worse when he’s not here. Ben has nearly finished the kitchen and it’s fabulous. He doesn’t say anything but he must know that my husband has, to all intents and purposes, abandoned me here. He’ll offer me a trip to the supermarket on the pretext that he has to get something or other from the builders’ merchants. Sometimes I catch myself staring at him. How ridiculous.
Since I heard about my ‘condition’ I haven’t seen so much of Jane. I’ve been avoiding her and I know she’s hurt. She doesn’t understand what she’s done wrong. How can I tell her that what she’s done wrong is to have a happily family; how can I tell her that to see her hug her children would feel like being stabbed through the heart right now?
Instead I’ve been splitting my spare time between Camilla and Hazel. Hazel and I garden mainly, or tramp the hills checking on sheep. We don’t talk much and it’s soothing being with someone who doesn’t ask questions, who doesn’t demand explanations. Occasionally she’ll break the silence and give me some gem of local folklore or nugget of gossip, but usually from way back in time.
‘That farm there,’ she said, pointing to a burned-out shell, ‘belonged to a man wanted to build a caravan park here.’ She laughed shortly.
‘What happened?’
‘He got drunk one night and burnt him to the ground. They reckons it was a cigarette started it.’
‘How horrible.’
‘Not really. Thought it was a blessing, meself. Nasty bit of work. He’d have concreted over all those fields. Big road threading through.’
‘Well, OK, I can see that wouldn’t have been good. But burning to death?’
She didn’t seem to see it remotely. I begin to think she sees people as totally expendable if they step out of line. Just as she won’t think twice about wringing the neck of a hen that stops laying, and popping it in the pot. I don’t think people count that much to her. She sees animals as having much more use, of being far more worthy of her care and attention.
Camilla is another story. Her home is beautiful, a manor house but not remotely offputting. It’s low-slung and long, even more ancient than our own house and with more detailing in the stonework and a grander porch to mark its precedence. Behind the house is a large cobbled yard, with beautiful old stables, carefully renovated (yes, Ben’s work), each stall with an alert head poking out, nuzzling one another or stamping impatiently. I have rediscovered riding, the sheer joy and freedom of it. Camilla lends me a chestnut mare, a neat trim horse with a definite touch of Arab in her. She’s called Trinity and I’m more than half in love with her. She is kind and sensible, no silly tricks, no rolling eyes. Yet take her up onto the moor and give her her head and she kicks up her heels and flies over the short grass, in love with speed, ears pricked, tail aloft like a banner.
Sometimes I ride alone and I find it soothing. I keep mainly to the bridleways, finding my way around this place, getting my interior map in place. You see things on a horse you’d never see on foot. One day we passed within maybe ten feet of a herd of deer, quietly cropping the grass. They looked up, gauged we were no risk and carried on.

Other times Camilla joins me and we explore more widely – she shows me the shortcuts and where the local farmers are happy for us to cut across their fields and woodlands. She’s a lovely person, softly spoken and quite retiring. Unlike Hazel, she doesn’t gossip at all, won’t say bad things about anyone. Used as I have been to sharp London tongues, it’s refreshing to hear someone try always to find the best in others. There is something else though that really bonds me to her. She too wanted children – very much – but it never happened. Ashley, her husband, refused to have any investigations carried out – seemed he wasn’t too bothered. I found myself getting indignant – what about what Camilla wanted? But she smiled gently (though sadly) and said they had found themselves other distractions. Horses for her and for him the development of a small but select shoot and various business interests that took him to London and abroad at regular intervals.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said with a smile. ‘He’s gregarious. I’m not. He needs more company, more sophistication than he gets here.’
‘But what about you?’
‘I hate London. And I’m phobic about flying. I don’t want to go. I don’t need the….stimulation.’
There was a note in her voice that urged confidences. I looked at her and nodded my head… ‘And?’
‘And yes, he does.’ An unusual shard of bitterness soured her voice. ‘Yes, he has a mistress. He’s had dozens of them over the years.’
I couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath. I wasn’t surprised but her matter-of-face acceptance was surprising.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course I mind. Well, I did. Now I’m not sure if I care or not. Anyhow, nothing to be done. Fancy a canter up this hill?’
She pulled in her reins, turned her big bay and set off at a crisp trot before breaking into an easy canter.