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Everywhere I looked, I saw devices I could not understand but was desperate to try. My desire to get better was atavistic.

Resting on one of the plinths while my physiotherapist attended to another of her patients, I could observe fellow inhabitants who were learning to mobilise their bodies and cope with their new lives. I felt all of eleven years old, wide-eyed, evaluating my new classmates at the big school. Who would be a kindred spirit? Who would have a sense of humour? Swiftly you learnt who to seek out, who to avoid. Fetlock had also fallen off a horse; she’d had a close escape, was walking wounded and would be going home soon, but she wanted to tell me, in great detail, in the way only horsey people do, about every wisp of hay and variation of snaffle bit she had ever seen. I shrank inside myself when she walked – walked, damn her – over to me, and I could not escape, because I was not in my chair.

‘So what horses have you got? I’ve got three – my old mare and my young one – it was my young one that dumped me – and then there’s my pal Sheena’s pony, I have him too, but he pulls like mad and he’s a bugger to catch and keeps ripping his rugs and I have to soak his hay. Do you keep yours at livery?’