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In the event, Ant's face had been more interesting. He'd stood on the terrace overlooking the vast, manicured garden, thrust his hands in his pockets and jingled his change nervously.

‘For just the three of us? It doesn't seem quite right.’

There was a silence as I digested this.

‘It's too far from where we've come from,’ Anna, young, but terrifyingly articulate, had commented at length. She'd picked a scab on her knee and frowned, as if she wasn't quite sure what she meant by that. But I knew exactly and I felt ashamed.

Ant cleared his throat. ‘I'm just not convinced it's sort of… us.’

‘No, no, you're right,’ I'd said quickly. Meekly. ‘Quite right.’

Suddenly it was as clear as day. This house took us out of quiet, muted, university-professor land and into loud, cushy, fat-cat suburbia. Suddenly the wall-to-wall white carpets were vulgar, the four bathrooms flashy, the orangery a joke. And I hadn't known. Not immediately. It had had to be pointed out to me by my intrinsically tasteful husband and child.

We'd headed straight back into town, and then the following day had seen this place. Tall, terraced, with a little iron balcony at the front, still central, still close to our friends, still built of mellow Cotswold stone, still with integrity. I paused at the landing window now, looking out at our long, slim walled garden, elegant and leafy, sandwiched between two similarly elegant and leafy enclosures, belonging to a chemistry don and a journalist. Yes. It suited us, I thought, going on to my bedroom. Was right up the Hamiltons' street.

I smiled and hopped back into bed with my toast and the papers.

When Ant and I had been married only a few months, he'd left for work one morning then popped back ten minutes later, having forgotten a student's essay. He'd found me back in bed with a box of lime creams, a cigarette and Cosmo. I'd been as mortified as if he'd caught me with a naked man, but Ant had roared with delight.

‘It's why I love you,’ he'd said, leaning over the bed to kiss me. ‘Because you're not up and dressed, hair scraped back, beavering away trying to write the next Madame Bovary, like everyone else in this city. You just enjoy yourself. You embrace pleasure.’

I seem to remember we'd embraced a bit more pleasure that morning as one kiss had led to another and Ant was late for his tutorial, and I remember wondering if the student waiting patiently for him to arrive had any idea that the flushed young professor, who eventually appeared waving the forgotten essay, had just achieved bliss in the arms of his wife, on top of a box of lime creams. Probably not.

These days my tastes had changed, and tea and toast accompanied the Daily Mail, but I still read the important bits: the ‘Femail’ section in the middle, the diets, the detoxing, the fashion – I didn't skimp. This being Monday I also shimmied through the local paper too, glancing, out of habit, at the houses at the back, then the furniture for sale – we were vaguely looking for a baby grand piano for Anna – when an ad in the livestock column caught my eye.

For Sale. Beautiful grey Connemara pony, 14.2 hands, 6 years. Very willing, a great character. A teenager's dream. First to see will buy. £1,000.

I stared in disbelief; read it again. Oh. Oh, how marvellous! Right here, in front of my nose. It was fate. I just knew it was. And I also knew, from listening to Anna, that 14.2 was about the right height. And a thousand pounds, I was sure, was pretty reasonable too. I feverishly read the address. Parkfield Lane. Which was off the Woodstock Road. Minutes away!

I straightened up in the crumpled bed, retying my dressing gown, lips pursed triumphantly. Never in a million years had Caro imagined I'd actually buy a pony when she'd sent her taunt sailing across the yard, and never in a million years had I imagined I could. She knew I didn't know a thing about horses, knew she'd clean-bowled me right through the stumps, and yet… what could be so hard? I peered at the