A Penny A Day

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

April Grove and Burracombe characters are linked in this touching Lilian Harry novel. It is December 1952. A wedding is being planned in April Grove, Portsmouth, and Jess and Frank Budd want to bring together all their friends and neighbours. They even invite Stella Simmons and her sister Maddy, who now live in the Devonshire village of Burracombe. Dan and Ruth Hodges attend, together with Dan's son Sammy, who immediately falls in love with his childhood playmate Maddy. But Stephen Napier, son of the Squire of Burracombe, proves a strong rival and Maddy is not yet ready to make such a momentous decision about her life. Meanwhile, Ruth's niece Lizzie and her husband Alec seem to have overcome the problems they encountered when Alec returned from the POW camp which almost broke him. But their happiness is threatened when a face from Lizzie's past reappears in her life and turns everything upside down.

Release date: August 19, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

Bridge End, near Southampton, December 1952

‘Goodness me,’ Ruth Hodges said, opening the envelope that had just arrived in the post. ‘It’s a wedding invitation!’

As her husband Dan glanced up from his breakfast, Sammy came down the cottage stairs, shepherding his little half-sister, Linnet, ahead of him. Tall like his father, but as slender and fair as his mother had been, he had just finished his National Service in the RAF and would soon be returning to complete his apprenticeship with Solly Barlow, the Bridge End village blacksmith.

Ruth turned to him, her face alight with pleasure. ‘You’ll never guess what, Sammy. We’ve had an invitation to Rose Budd’s wedding, in Portsmouth.’

‘Rose Budd?’ Dan said. ‘That’s Frank Budd’s eldest girl, isn’t it?’

‘Well, you ought to know – you’re the one who used to live near them,’ she told him, laughing. ‘Yes, she’s getting married to a chap called . . .’ she scanned the invitation ‘. . . Kenneth Mackenzie. Sounds a bit Scottish, doesn’t it? Did you know any Mackenzies round April Grove way, Dan?’

He shrugged. ‘Not that I remember. How about you, Sam?’

‘Well, since I only lived there for a year or two, when I was about seven’ the young man grinned, ‘I only just remember Rose. She never had much to do with me – it was her brothers, Tim and Keith, I played with most, and that was when we were all evacuated out here at Bridge End. There’s another sister too, isn’t there? I seem to remember a baby.’

‘That’s right. Maureen. She came to our wedding – she was about six, so she’ll be twelve or thirteen now. And Rose is in her twenties – there was a big gap between them.’ Ruth helped Sammy to a plate of fried eggs and bacon and poured some cornflakes into a bowl for Linnet. ‘Well, it’ll be good to see them all again. It’s a couple of years since Jess and Frank last came out to Bridge End to visit all their friends here, and I don’t know how long it is since we saw the boys.’

‘Are we all invited?’ Dan asked, wiping the last piece of fried bread round his plate. ‘Sam and Linnet as well, I mean?’

‘Of course we are! You will come, Sammy, won’t you? It’s in January. A cold time of year for a wedding, I must say.’

‘Am I going to be a bridesmaid, with a long pink frock and a bunch of flowers?’ Linnet asked. There had been a wedding in the village church a few weeks earlier and Linnet, whose best friend had been given this honour, had longed for it ever since.

Ruth smiled and shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, sweetheart. I expect Rose will have Maureen, and maybe some other friends or relations. She doesn’t really know us that well, after all.’

‘I dunno really why we’re being invited,’ Dan observed, getting up from the table. ‘It’s not as if we’ve been all that close friends. I know Frank and me were mates for years, even before me and Nora went to live in April Grove, and Jess was good to us when times were hard, what with Nora being poorly and Sam left on his own too much. But I’m surprised they’ve asked us, all the same.’

‘Well, we did invite them to our wedding,’ Ruth pointed out. ‘And they always look us up when they come out to Bridge End. I wonder if they’ve asked anyone else from the village? It’ll be nice if there’s a few of us to go together.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Sammy said, giving Linnet a piece of his bacon. ‘It’ll be good to see some of the April Grove people again. There’s Mr and Mrs Vickers, they were good to me too, and the Chapmans and all the others. Even Micky Baxter,’ he added with a sly look at his father.

Dan snorted. ‘Micky Baxter! I’ll be surprised if he’s not in prison by now. I always thought that’s where he’d end up – it’s where he ought to have been years ago,’ he added, his thick eyebrows coming together in a dark frown. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be at this wedding, anyway.’ He went over to the back door and unhooked his working jacket. ‘Well, I got to be going. Me and Solly have got a lot of work on, with the Hunt busy again. You’d better make the most of this demob leave of yours, Sam, because you’ll be hard at it once you start down at the forge again, I can tell you.’

He gave Ruth and Linnet a kiss each and went out. Silver the parrot, who had been peacefully dozing on his stand near the range, lifted his head and observed that he was a teapot, short and stout, but nobody took any notice and he went back to sleep. Ruth poured Sammy another cup of tea.

‘It’s nice to have you back home. Are you looking forward to starting work again at the forge? It’ll be a bit different from being in the RAF.’

Sammy buttered a piece of toast and gave half to Linnet before answering. Then he said, ‘I’m not really sure, Auntie Ruth. I’ve done such different things in the RAF. I knew I wouldn’t be doing any blacksmithing, of course – not much scope for that on an airfield! – but I didn’t expect to learn so much, and get so interested in it all. I know I’ve got to finish my apprenticeship, but I’d really like to go on working with electronics.’

Ruth stared at him doubtfully. ‘You mean mending wirelesses and things? Don’t you need a lot of training for that?’

‘Not wirelesses so much, no. It’s radar I’ve been working with mostly. And I’ve had the training, in the RAF. That’s what National Service can do for you, you see – it can give you a trade.’

‘But you’ve already got one.’

‘Blacksmithing – I know. But honestly, Auntie Ruth, do you really think I’m cut out to be a blacksmith? I mean, look at me.’ He stretched his arms wide. ‘I’m just not built to be a blacksmith. It’s hard, heavy work—’

‘Your father says you’re good at it. You’re wonderful with the horses, and you can do lovely wrought-iron work.’

‘I can design lovely wrought-iron,’ he corrected her. ‘I did the design for that weather-parrot Dad made you for your anniversary. And I can make it too, because I’ve been taught – but I’m really good at what I did in the RAF. And it’s developing so fast.’ His blue eyes were bright and eager. ‘I’m going to find a night school in Southampton or Portsmouth and get some more qualifications, so that when I’ve finished my apprenticeship with Solly, I can get a job in that sort of work.’

Ruth was still looking doubtful. ‘Your father and Solly will be disappointed not to have you with them.’

‘I know. But it’ll be another year or two before it happens, and they’ll have time to get used to the idea. Solly might even decide to terminate my apprenticeship before then.’

‘But then you won’t get your indentures!’

‘I won’t need them,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m going to play fair with Dad and Solly. I don’t want to disappoint them – but you must admit I didn’t really have much say in what I did when I left school, did I? Dad was already working with Solly and he fixed it all up without even talking to me about it.’

‘Well, that’s what a good father does – tries to set his son’s feet on a path that’ll take him through life and bring him a decent living.’

‘I know, and I appreciate it. It’s just that blacksmithing isn’t the right path for me – and electronics is. And if I hadn’t gone into the RAF, I might never have found it out.’

Ruth said no more. She gathered up the plates and took them to the sink. Linnet scrambled down from her chair and held out her hand to her big brother.

‘Take me for a walk. We can go and see Auntie Jane.’

‘All right,’ Sammy said, standing up. He had grown taller than Ruth would ever have believed possible, so tall that his head almost bumped the wooden beams of the ceiling. ‘We’ll see if she’s doing any baking, shall we? I hope she’s making some of her cheese scones.’

‘Honestly, Sammy!’ Ruth scolded. ‘You’ve only just this minute finished your breakfast. I don’t know what else the RAF did for you, but it seems to have given you hollow legs.’

Sammy grinned and came over to give her a hug. ‘I’ve missed the home cooking. They fed us pretty well, but it’s not like going into a farmhouse kitchen and smelling fresh bread and scones. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’ He looked down at Linnet. ‘Go and get your coat and mittens, and that woolly bonnet with the bunny’s ears. It’s cold outside.’ He turned back to Ruth. ‘Are we having the carol singing this Christmas? That’s another thing I missed, being away from home at Christmas last year.’

‘Of course we’re having the carol singing,’ Ruth said, smiling. ‘It was because of you that we started it up again during the war.’

Linnet came back into the kitchen with her outdoor clothes and Sammy buttoned her into the thick coat and helped her pull on the mittens that were threaded on a long string through both sleeves. Then he fitted her bonnet over her dark curls, pulled on his own old jacket, and clicked his fingers at the parrot.

‘Goodbye, Silver, you old wretch. Take care of Auntie Ruth for me while we’re gone.’

‘Sammy, Sammy, shine a light,’ the parrot replied, in the hoarse voice that still bore some resemblance to Sammy’s more adult tones. ‘Ain’t you playing out tonight? Sod the little buggers. It’s a bleeding eagle.’

Sammy laughed. ‘You’d never believe I only said that once. I hope you’re not repeating the things he says,’ he added to Linnet. ‘He knows more naughty words than anyone else I’ve ever met, even in the RAF.’

‘I’m teaching him some more nursery rhymes,’ she said, and waggled her hand at the cage. ‘Come on, Silver, say “See-Saw, Margery Dawe”.’

‘Johnny shall have a new master,’ the parrot replied obligingly, then fell silent, scratching his head with one foot as if trying to rack his memory.

‘He shall earn but a penny a day,’ Linnet prompted. ‘Because he can’t work any – any what, Silver? He knew it yesterday,’ she added in disappointment.

‘Sometimes he takes a bit longer to learn something new,’ Sammy said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

Ruth watched them walk down the garden path and then started the washing-up, her mind drifting back to the time when Sammy had first come to Bridge End, a frightened little boy of eight. It had been weeks before she’d discovered that his mother had died not long before he’d been evacuated from Portsmouth, and months before his father had come out to see him. She remembered the day Dan had arrived unexpectedly on the doorstep. It was almost the first time that she’d ever been cross with Sammy over some scrape he’d been in with little Muriel Simmons, and they’d all got off on the wrong foot. But things had improved after that and now here they were, a family that had seemed complete until Linnet had arrived, almost as unexpectedly as Dan, and made it all perfect.

But nothing was ever quite perfect, she thought, scrubbing egg off the plates. And this idea of Sammy’s, that he might give up working with his father at the blacksmith’s forge and do something quite different – something Ruth didn’t really understand but was sure he wouldn’t be able to do at Bridge End – looked likely to disturb the family life she loved so much, and very possibly upset Dan into the bargain.

Well, that was all in the future and might never happen. There was something nice to think about now – Christmas, with Sammy at home once more, and then the wedding in April Grove. She would have to think about what to wear – her best grey suit with a nice flower in the lapel, probably – and she could make a new frock for Linnet. Her little girl might not be a bridesmaid, but she would still look as pretty as a princess.

Portsmouth

In April Grove, Jess and Frank were busy making preparations. Not only did they have Christmas to think about, but there was the wedding as well – the first in their family. Rose was twenty-five and Jess had begun to worry that she was never going to marry, but a year or so ago she had come home with a tall, dark-haired sailor who spoke with a Scottish accent, and Jess had seen at once that he was different from the other boyfriends her daughter had had.

‘I think this is the one,’ she’d said to Frank as they got ready for bed after he’d gone, and Frank had looked at her in astonishment.

‘How can you know that? The girl’s hardly known him five minutes.’

‘I think she’s known him a bit longer than she says – I’ve had a feeling for the last couple of months that there was someone a bit special. Anyway, you can tell by the way they look at each other.’

‘Well, you certainly can’t tell from the way they talk to each other!’ Frank had observed, pulling on his pyjama trousers. ‘I couldn’t make out a word he said. We’d better start taking lessons in Scotch if he’s going to be part of the family.’ He thought for a moment and added gloomily. ‘We’d better start saving too, if there’s a wedding coming up.’

Jess laughed. ‘Go on, we’ve been saving for that for years. And it’s Scottish, she added, ‘not Scotch. You have to say Scottish. Rose told me when we were out in the kitchen making cocoa.’

‘Oh.’ He got into bed. ‘There you are, you see. We’re having to learn already.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘You realise what it means, don’t you, if our Rose marries a sailor? He might want her to move away from Pompey. And Scotland’s a long way off.’

‘I know.’ She slipped in beside him. ‘But there’s nothing much we can do about that, Frank. And plenty of sailors settle in Portsmouth, if that’s where they’re based. Their ships come in here so often, they don’t need to move away, and by the time they leave the Navy, they’re used to the area. I don’t think we need worry too much about that.’

‘I don’t think we need to worry about it at all, until it’s a bit more definite she’s going to marry him,’ Frank declared, switching off the bedside lamp he’d made. ‘She’s only brought the lad home once and you’ve got them up the aisle already. There’s a lot of water got to flow under the bridge before we gets that far.’

Eighteen months later, Jess’s prophecy had come true. Young Kenneth Mackenzie had been in Portsmouth for several months, based at the shore station HMS Vernon, before he’d had to go to sea again, and during that time the family had grown to know and like him. Even Frank could soon understand his accent, and by the time the young Scot had asked his permission to marry Rose (even though she was over twenty-one and he didn’t strictly need to ask) they knew he would make her a good husband. The wedding had been fixed for the second Saturday in January, partly to give people time to get over Christmas but mainly because Kenneth would be at sea until Christmas and had agreed to take the second leave when he came back.

‘We’re getting married quarters,’ Rose told her mother excitedly. ‘A little flat, with two bedrooms and a proper bathroom and everything! You’ll be able to come to tea and maybe next year we could have Christmas there.’

‘My goodness, let’s get this Christmas over first!’ Jess exclaimed. ‘Not to mention the wedding. There’s a lot of organising to do, especially with Ken’s family coming down from Scotland. I don’t know where we’re going to put them all.’

The biggest problem was where to have the reception. If it had been in summer and just their own family, they could have had it at home, Jess thought, but with so many people having to be invited they would need somewhere bigger. The little church of St Lucy at the top of the road didn’t have its own hall, so they would have to find somewhere else – perhaps the hall belonging to the bigger church in Copnor. They might even decide to have the wedding itself at St Alban’s, she thought, because now she came to think about it, St Lucy’s wasn’t registered for weddings.

In the event, that was what they did. Rose and Ken went to see the vicar to fix the date, and booked the hall at the same time. Jess’s concerns about the catering were soon dispelled by her sister Annie Chapman, who declared that she and Olive would see to all that, and no doubt Freda Vickers would lend a hand as well, and probably Gladys Shaw – or Weeks, as she was now that she’d married young Clifford.

‘It’s a pity it’s not in summer,’ she said, echoing Jess’s thoughts. ‘You can’t do better than a nice ham salad for a wedding breakfast then. But it’ll be cold in January. People will need something hot inside them.’

‘But what’s it to be?’ Jess asked worriedly. ‘We can’t do a roast – there aren’t the facilities. And you can’t give people stew or shepherd’s pie for a wedding. And what about the rations? Oh, I wish they’d waited until summer, it would all be so much easier then!’

Annie thought for a minute or two. ‘Well, we could do a salad as the main course as long as they’d had a bowl of soup to warm them up. And then maybe apple pie or even rice pudding for afters . . .’

‘Rice pudding?’ Jess echoed. ‘Annie, we can’t give people rice pudding!’

‘I don’t see why not. You’ve got to admit, rice is appropriate for a wedding.’

‘Not for the meal,’ Jess said firmly. ‘And you can stop laughing at me. I knew you weren’t serious. No, a nice apple pie would do. We could get the baker to make some and deliver them hot. And we could manage the soup somehow – they’ve got that little gas cooker at the hall to heat it up on. It’s going to be a lot of work, though,’ she finished doubtfully.

‘I told you, me and Olive will see to all that. And I dare say you’ll be inviting the Vickers.’

‘Yes, they’ve been good friends, but we can’t invite Freda and then turn round and ask her to spend half the week cooking for it. Honestly, if I’d known it was going to be all this trouble I’d have suggested to Rose that she and Ken might be better off eloping.’ But she didn’t mean that, and Annie knew it. Jess’s face was bright with excitement at the thought of the coming celebration. When the two boys, Tim and Keith, married in their turn, all this would fall to their brides’ parents, and it would be a good few years yet before young Maureen thought about a wedding.

Freda Vickers was only too pleased to help; indeed, she came straight down to number as soon as she’d received her invitation and offered. ‘Anything I can do, you know you’ve only got to ask,’ she declared, standing at Jess’s freshly-scrubbed doorstep. ‘I dare say you’ll be making all the dresses, so if I can give a hand there . . .’

Jess thanked her and said she was well ahead with the dresses and had almost finished Rose’s. ‘Come in and see it, Freda. It’s oyster satin and lace trim, with a long veil and train – she’s going to look lovely. I just hope we don’t get one of those January gales that’ll blow it all to bits. And Maureen’s going to be bridesmaid, of course – they’re only having the one, since Ken hasn’t got any little girl relations – so I haven’t got too much to do. I’m making myself a costume in dark red; it’ll look nice and warm for the day and do me for best afterwards. But there is something you can do, if you really want to help.’ She explained about Annie’s ideas for the catering. ‘A good hot bowl of soup and a ham salad and warm apple pie would be about right, we thought. The only thing is, it means making a lot of soup beforehand, and then heating it up at the hall. But Annie says there’ll be time while people are arriving from the service and having sherry.’

Freda nodded. ‘That’s what we did when Gladys and Clifford got married, if you remember.’ Clifford Weeks was Freda’s nephew and had come to live with the Vickers when his parents had been killed in the Blitz. ‘Gladys’ll give me a hand too, I expect. How many are you inviting?’

‘The list gets longer every day,’ Jess said. ‘Half the street’s coming, and we want to ask some of the Bridge End people as well. Dan Hodges and Ruth and young Sammy, and Mrs Greenaway that Rose and me were evacuated with for a while, and Edna Corner that had the boys. Tim and Keith still go out to see her now and then. She and her hubby were really good to them – it was such a shame he got killed.’

‘Shame a lot of people got killed,’ Freda said soberly, but their sadness didn’t last long. People were trying to put the war behind them now and look to the future. It didn’t do any good to harp on the past. She waited while Jess got out the flowing, creamy fabric of the dress she was making for Rose and exclaimed over its beauty. ‘It’s going to look lovely, Jess! You were really lucky to get it. What colour’s Maureen going to wear?’

‘Blue. She wanted yellow, it’s her colour really, but Rose didn’t think it would go with the cream and I think she’s right. And Maureen will look very nice in a pale blue frock. She can use it afterwards for school parties and that sort of thing.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Freda asked as Jess carefully folded the material and put it away.

‘Well, if you could make some of the soup, it would be a big help. I wish we could give people a hot meal but you just can’t do it at the hall, and we can’t afford hotel prices.’

‘Goodness me, no!’ Freda exclaimed. ‘People like us don’t go in for all that, anyway. Soup and ham salad and apple pie sounds ideal. I’ll pop in and see Annie and she can tell me what she wants me to do. She used to do catering, didn’t she?’

Jess nodded. ‘She worked at one of the big houses out at Alverstoke before the war – did all kinds of posh cooking for dinner-parties and things. Mind you, it gave her a few ideas. I remember when me and Rose were evacuated and she offered to give Frank his dinner of an evening. She gave him rice instead of potatoes and he nearly died of shock! Said he thought rice was for puddings – didn’t seem right to eat it with stew.’

‘My Tommy would have said just the same,’ Freda said. ‘And how are Olive and Derek getting on? And Betty, out in the country? It must be hard for her, with her hubby being blind.’

‘Oh, they manage all right – you’d never know there was anything wrong. And there’s a lot Dennis can do on the farm. Betty says he’s a wonder with the animals; he can milk all the cows and he knows just how to handle the sheep when they’re lambing. He says his hands are as good as eyes when it comes to that sort of work. And they’ve got three little girls now, you know, and he’ll do anything for them. Happy as Larry, the lot of them.’

She wished she could say the same for Betty’s sister, Olive and her husband Derek. They’d been so much in love when they’d got married early on in the war, but then he’d been away so much and Olive had joined the ATS and somehow things seemed to have changed. And it was a tragedy that Olive had never been able to have children. Annie and Jess both felt that the couple would have been a lot happier if they’d been able to start a family.

‘It’s not that they’re always rowing, or anything,’ Annie had said once. ‘It’s just that they’re not as close as they used to be. I mean, you know how Olive used to go on in the first year or so, always talking about how much she missed him and how unfair it all was. But by the time he came home, she’d changed. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, I’m sure of that, but there seemed to be some sort of barrier between them.’

‘And you’ve no idea what it is?’ Jess had asked, but her sister shrugged.

‘I wouldn’t say that. I’ve got my ideas – but I don’t know anything for sure. She got a bit too friendly with that young soldier, Ray something-or-other, and I often wondered . . . but there, he seemed to disappear off the scene so maybe I was reading too much into it. Anyway, it’s years ago now and best forgotten.’

Jess thought of it only briefly now as she saw Freda out and turned back to get on with cooking the dinner. Maureen, who went to the Girls’ Grammar School, would be home soon and Tim, who was finishing his apprenticeship on the Gosport Ferry, wouldn’t be long after, so Jess still liked to cook in the morning and always put up a plate-meal for Frank to take to work next day. Today, they were having rabbit stew, a favourite for them all.

Her thoughts returned to the wedding. The children were growing up so fast – Rose getting married, Keith already a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, and Tim talking about joining the Merchant Navy. Soon it would be just her, Frank and Maureen. It would seem funny to be such a small family again.

It was the right way for life to go, she thought. Families growing up and going their own ways, making their own lives. It was what you wanted for them when they were tiny babies, what you brought them up to do. There was sadness in seeing the changes, but pride and happiness too. As long as everything went well.

Like most women, Jess wanted passionately for everything to go well for her family.

Southampton

Ruth’s niece, Lizzie Warren, had also had a letter, but it was not as welcome as a wedding invitation. In fact, it was not welcome at all, and she stood frozen at the kitchen table for several minutes, staring at words that seemed to have no meaning.

‘Floyd . . . coming here?’ she whispered at last. ‘But why? He said he wouldn’t interfere – he promised. Why is he coming back now?’

Lizzie and her husband Alec lived in Southampton, not far from Alec’s parents, who were distantly related to the Warrens at Bridge End. They had moved there from the village after the war, when Alec had decided he could never go to sea again and had found a job in the docks, working on the refitting of the great liners that were now back in service, crossing the Atlantic. They lived in a tiny house with two rooms downstairs and two upstairs, with a scullery tacked on at the back and a lavatory outside. It was very similar to the house in which Jess and Frank Budd lived, in Portsmouth.

Just lately, they’d been talking about trying to find something bigger. They needed another bedroom, with a boy and a girl already and another baby on the way, but houses with three bedrooms cost more to rent and were usually further away from the docks. Alec would have to travel to get to work.

‘I can use the bus,’ he said when they discussed it. ‘Or go on my bike. Plenty of blokes do that.’

They had applied for a council house too, and the arrival of a new baby would put them higher up the list. There were large estates being built, and the prefabricated ‘Phoenix’ houses that had been erected after the war to house all the people who had been bombed out or had spent the war sharing their families’ homes, were still in use. Even though they were only meant to be temporary, they were very popular and the people who lived in them were reluctant to be moved. Lizzie and Alec might have qualified for one of those if they had lived in Southampton all their lives, but since they had begun their married life at Bridge End they were at the bottom of the list when they joined it.

‘It would be lovely if we could get a house before the baby’s born,’ Lizzie had said wistfully. ‘Those council houses have proper bathrooms, you know. It would make such a difference to have a real bath instead of bringing the tin one in every Saturday night, and washing the children in the sink.’

Lizzie had plenty to think about, but the letter drove it all from her mind.

All morning, she worried about it, until eventually she could stand it no longer and decided to go out to Bridge End to see Ruth. Alec wouldn’t be home until after six, so there was plenty of time. She dressed the children in the warm coats her mother had made them and caught the bus at the end of the street.

‘Are we going to see Silver?’ Gillie asked.

‘I hope so,’ Lizzie said, but when they reached Ruth’s cottage there was nobody at home. She bit her lip and then walked up the track to her father’s farm. She would have to talk to her mother instead and, although Jane had accepted the situation, Lizzie knew that she had never quite got over her disappointment that her daughter had behaved so badly.

‘Hullo,’ Jane said as she saw them open the gate. She was out in the yard, feeding the hens, and she put down her bucket to hold out her arms for the children. ‘This is a nice surprise. Have you come to tea?’

‘We need to catch the bus back at half-past five,’ Lizzie said, ‘but I’d like a cup of tea. The children can feed the hens for you now, can’t they?’

Jane gave her daughter a curious look. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No. Well, yes. I don’t know really.’ Lizzie brushed her hair back with trembling fingers. ‘I just wanted to come home for the afternoon and – and talk to you,’

‘You’re not ill, are you?’ Jane said quickly, coming closer. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky.’

‘No, I’m fine. It’s just – let’s go inside, Mum. The children will be all right out here.’

The two women went into the farmhouse and Jane settled her daughter in the old rocking-chair by the range while she filled the kettle. She kept giving Lizzie sharp little glances. Eventually, she came and sat opposite her and said, ‘What’s up, love? You’re looking like a ghost. Is it Alec?’

Lizzie shook her head miserably. ‘No, it’s not, but I don’t know what he’ll say when he finds out.’

‘Find