Basically," I say, "I’ve taken out the heart of my garden...

The plan is: we are moving. A field away from where we live now.

My heart had been having trouble catching up with our decision to move. But my mother’s putting paid to that, even though I’ve just put paid to it myself.

“Moving half a yard sideways,” she says on the phone, “I mean, what’s the fuss? And it’s not as if you’re leaving Downton, your ancestral home.”