New lines are drawn.

Day 6. Saturday.

Vera’s unpleasant reaction to Sid wanting to ride left Friday with an incongruous end and made me forget to ask her for a sub. More immediately important - was I was supposed to work Saturdays and Sundays. I had forgotten to clarify that as well. I’m as bad as the rest of the village. Give me a bit of gossip to chew on and I forget the world beyond Lower Butts. We are so parochial!

There was no other option, but at 7.43, to drag my lazy butt down the garden path and head for the House. I didn’t get further than the gate, for there was Sid with tears streaming down her face, quivering bottom lip, looking imploringly at me. I took her arm and started walking her towards the church yard. At least that would rule out a lover’s tiff if we were seen arm in arm, for there were sure to be nosey neighbours peering between net curtains. I’d have to face my gran asking me if I wasn’t ‘one of them funny women,’ and I knew, that no matter what I answered, ‘yes or no’, I’d be told not to worry as it would be just a phase I’ll grow out of. No wonder I’m promiscuous. At least the under 25s in the village won’t believe their grandmas when they hear about ‘Millie’s growing pains’.

And Sid crying? Never been known, and certainly not over a denied trot on some tatty nag. With hindsight I realise the tears had nothing to do with riding or not riding. In the ten years we’d been chums, she had never shed a tear over horse or hormone so how could an intelligent girl like me have missed the signs?

We found a gravestone, so weathered that no one knew to whom it belonged and thus, I reasoned, no family could object to us sitting on the horizontal slab at its base and sorting out Sid’s problem. Before I had chance to ask a question, she produced an envelope with neat Vera writing on it, addressed to Sidonie Watkins and delivered by palm. My heart sank. From the envelope, Sid withdrew a piece of gilded card, now totally crumpled from having been so ferociously scrunched in a sweaty hand. My tummy groaned as my heart fell far enough to hit it.

Lady Vera Ashington requests the company of Miss Sidonie Watkins and partner for the Butts Hunt. Dress - men scarlet and ladies in black hunting.

And for the Hunt Ball. Start 8pm, Ashington Hall Ballroom.

Sid regained her composure enough to release a string of invective.

'How could she do this to me? She knows I’ll be a laughing stock for the whole evening. All I wanted was to walk round the paddock on one of her woofty fucking horses for a quarter of an hour, not join the bloody hunt. She hasn’t even bothered to get my name right!'

I tried to calm her by stroking her arm, but she burst into tears again.

'This isn’t like Vera. We must be missing something,' I tried to reason.

This isn’t like Sid either. What is going down?

'It is like Lady Ashington, though. They are all the same, screaming ‘Mine mine!’ all the time. They couldn’t share a turd with one of us in case we got something out of it. Just a simple ride round the paddock Millie. She’s humiliating me now and will embarrass me next week. She’s loving this. Keep the serfs in their place.'

I read the card again, but this time I spotted the handwritten PTO in the bottom right hand corner. On the other side was a barely decipherable message from Vera, now so smudged from a mixture of crumpling, sweat and tears, that it took me a while to work it out.

See you a week today.

Charles will have a docile pony for you to practice on every day after work. Liaise with him.

X Vera.

'You see, she’s just trying to be nice.'

'Don’t patronise me, Millie. You are supposed to be my friend or are you trying to become one of them? They know I have no ‘black hunting’ or a ball gown or a partner come to that and a few circuits of the paddock on a knackered pony is hardly going to prepare me for two miles of rough country with hedges and ditches.'

I needed to ask Sid why this horse thing was so important, but instead I said, 'I’ll talk to Vera - promise.'

All of which left me walking to the house in a most distracted manner. Why was my best friend suddenly worried about Vera’s horse, or rather, too much horse! I could see her point. Taking part in the East Suffolk hunt was a step too far for an oik from the cottages. Hormones didn’t explain it either. All through puberty I’d been close to her and there had never been a hint of a moan about a period pain or a mood swing. Sid’s behaviour reminded me of a distant aunt in Ipswich, just before she cracked up. Sid and cracking up didn’t stack up. I dismissed it from my mind.

By the time I reached the House, it was clear that it would be another nice day and the tour guides were lined up in front of the grizzly bears, getting a pep talk from Vera. She peered at me enquiringly over her glasses and then smiled. I deduced that she wasn’t expecting me.

I went up to her tea kitchen and started cleaning it. She wasn’t expecting her apartment to be serviced before Monday and despite her excitement at being able to make her own tea, she hadn’t worked out that she could clean away the evidence of Wilf’s plumbing, herself. When she finally caught me up, she was all smiles and charm.

'Oh, Millicent. How good of you to come. I didn’t think we’d arranged the weekend rota.'

I turned to look at her.

'Your face is thunder, girl. Have seen Sidonie already, or at least phoned her.'

'So, you know you have behaved impossibly, slapping her in the face like that.'

'Don’t be so sensitive the pair of you. She wanted to ride, and you want to be my equal. You have both got your wish. It’ll cost me plenty by the time the malice and gossip are over.'

'Equal to you, I am already. I just don’t want what you have -  neither does she. All she wants is a little ride on a horse. Couldn’t you give her that without the need to prove that she isn’t up to scratch? You must know she can’t do a hunting outfit or ball gown, or stay in the saddle over hedges and ditches.'

'Of course, I know that, but you two have to learn the meaning of, ‘noblesse oblige’. It’s not a one-way process. You have to accept that we have our cross to bear. I can’t make horse riding on the Ashington Estate as simple as hiring a donkey for five minutes on Lowestoft beach. It doesn’t work like that. It costs me a fortune to keep my donkey and several families’ income depend on me running a stable. You wouldn’t expect to turn up at a Formula 1 pit and say ‘Let’s have a go,’ and Lewis would budge up a bit for you. Or maybe you say to the engineer in an atomic power station, ‘Got a wheel I can turn, or a button I can press’?'

'I don’t think it’s that complicated, Vera. She’s an employee in your café, a friend of a friend. It isn’t such a big deal.'

'It is a big deal, Millicent. If she wants to play with the big boys, she has to take the knocks the big boys give out. They will cut her, patronise her, insult her and belittle her. Let her take it and still be standing. She’ll be a better and wiser person for it. Every experience, good or bad, improves you.'

She was pumping adrenaline now and stormed into her next argument before I’d had chance to draw breath and respond to the last one.

'I was born into this life. She has chosen to sample it. There is no easy way. It’s the hunt or nothing. I’ll lend her an outfit and a ball gown. You can go as her partner, except we’ll call you her escort. Don’t worry about the hunt. If she just keeps to the back, out of everyone’s way during the chase, they will all expect her to arrive last if it’s her first time. And if she has fallen a couple of times, but still gets to the end, she will get a round of sincere applause. What more do you want?'

I was stunned into silence, so Vera took up her case again.

'Where I come from, it’s a great honour to be invited to the hunt and ball. I’m actually offering the most valuable thing I possess, the thing that gives my life meaning -  to belong to my social elite. Be there, smile sweetly and don’t be afraid to show off what you have achieved by being there. You may even enjoy yourselves. Above all, do it for me. I want to show people that there has been a change in my life and that you two are my new friends.

And now I think it is time to give my new tea-kitchen its maiden voyage. The way I make scrambled eggs, it may be more like losing its virginity.'

That told me.

Sid is also her friend? When did that happen? Shouldn’t she clear this with Sid?

I realised, on her own initiative, she had upgraded her tea kitchen to include a two-plate hob and next to it, a small oven. She was beginning to cook meals. Respect!