Jumping for joy

Jane Shilling is a Times journalist and single parent who lives in Greenwich with her 12-year-old son. One day, for no particular reason, she decides to take up riding lessons. She turns up at a livery stables at Rooting Street in Kent, an establishment run by a formidable lady named Mrs Rogers. Jane Shilling had never swung her leg over a saddle before. ‘I kept thinking of poor, mad Zelda Fitzgerald and her loopy attempts to train as a ballet dancer years after it was too late to begin.’ She was too old, ‘well into middle age’ (she never lets on exactly how old, but she must be 40-something), her legs flail helplessly, and she wobbles off at a trot.

But soon she is hooked. Kent is only 50 miles’ drive from Shilling’s home, but it is another country, and she embarks on a voyage of discovery — a love affair with her new, secret life at the Rooting Street yard.