It’s all four of us walking, the last walk of the year, and we’re going on the Wroxton Loop, which the children and I love, and which Stevie’s never done.

‘There’re surprises,’ we tell him. ‘It’s not just all trees.’

It’s past eleven when we leave Horley, and the ground is still held tight by frost. Our breath plumes fleeting clouds in the windless air and our wellies slip on the frozen tarmac of the Wroxton Road. The dogs know we’re off on adventure and pull at their leads, towing the children up onto the crisped verges and down again; Pants high-stepping in excitement.

At the bottom of our village, we go left, across Emma’s Meadow, then right, across the new wheat field and towards the old rail track. The sun has melted the frost on the path and our feet squelch through rich, red mud. The acid-green and yellow crab…

It’s early afternoon and it’s the Monday before Christmas. The clouds are cobweb grey; drooping over the fields with the sad exhaustion of over-washed smalls.

The children and I are walking the Meadow Circle, round the margins of Dave’s fields. E and J aren’t talking to each other, both bitter and truculent after an aborted game of Monopoly. They fight to hold my hand, muttering she said, she said, and I try to swallow the ball of anxiety lodged in my throat.

I concentrate on the ever-running lists in my head, clicking through in a ticker-tape litany that I must get right. Christmas lunch, presents, wrapping, washing, ironing, cooking, buying, sorting, cleaning. The Christmas cards lie unwritten next to a recipe for Extra Special Stuffing, for which the ingredients remain unbought. The hens need skipping out; the hyacinth bulbs need planting. My boots swish this-that through last summer’s grass. Must…