It had rained in the morning so we didn’t get the bike ride we had hoped for and hadn’t had time to take when our visitors were with us at the weekend. While I had stood at my easel all day long I noticed that the weather was improving and, by the afternoon, the sun was shining but I was too involved to break away from my painting until the evening.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested after dinner.

At first Chris seemed reluctant, it was getting late – perhaps after eight o’clock or even later – but he looked out the window to the pretty sky with clouds edged with pink, and he smiled.

“We won’t have long, but yes, why not?”

There were few people around to enjoy, or to mar, the beautiful evening – we felt it was for us – and the young lovers, the swans and wildfowl.