Fields Of Bright Clover

by Elizabeth Jeffrey

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Rachel Gardner's family life is far from a happy one. Her father, Stanhope, is cold and remote and her mother Nellie seems to care for nothing but housework. Then, one day, Stanhope collapses in the street and dies - and the façade he had built up carefully for so many years is revealed as a sham. Sad and confused, Rachel leaves home and flees to the one place she has known parental kindness: the home of the rector's daughter Angela, her school friend. As her feelings for Angela's elder brother David deepen into romance, Rachel believes she has everything she ever desired. But after the outbreak of the Second World War, David joins the RAF and returns horribly injured, refusing to see her. Fate, however, gives Rachel another chance at love. And just as the pieces of her once-shattered life are falling into place, a new disaster threatens everything she holds dear.

Release date: August 21, 2014

Publisher: Piatkus

Print pages: 368

Sample

Becca read the letter and passed it across the breakfast table to her husband without comment.

‘Well, we always knew it would come one day, Becca.’ Jethro brushed his hand across his eyes as he handed it back.

‘I know. But that don’t make it any easier.’ A tear splashed on to it as she held it in her hand. She turned to the child sitting at the table with them.

‘Drink up your milk, lovey, then you can say grace and get down.’

The child’s pudgy fingers closed round the blue and white willow-pattern cup and a pair of big blue eyes was to be seen over the rim as she finished the milk, quite unaware of the drama surrounding her. She put the cup down and after a gabbled grace slid from her chair. ‘Can I go and play in the pightle, Nannabec?’ she asked, putting her arms round Becca and giving her a kiss.

‘’Course you can.’ Becca gave her a hug. ‘Go into the kitchen and ask Polly to wipe your fingers first. Look, there’s an apple on the sideboard you can give owd Prince. But don’t get yourself all dirty playing in the owd cart shed.’

‘I’m going to play on the swing Grampa made for me. I reckon I can go as high as the sky.’

‘You jest mind you don’t hurt yerself,’ Becca warned.

‘She won’t come to no harm, I’ve put it in among the clover where it’s nice and soft,’ Jethro said with a smile.

Her grandparents watched, with eyes full of love, as the child danced out of the room. She was three and a half, a pretty little thing with a mop of dark, curly hair. She had been theirs to love and cherish since their daughter died at her birth, leaving a husband too bereft to care for her. But soon she would be theirs no longer.

‘When did he say he was coming for her?’ Jethro asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Well, he’s got every right to take her away, Becca. After all, he is her father. And we’ve always known …’

Becca nodded, her face working. ‘And we’ve always told her one of these days he’d take her back with him, so she knows …’

‘I jest hope he’ll be good to her.’

‘He will. He wouldn’t take her if he didn’t want her. And now he’s remarried …’ Becca swallowed. ‘That’ll take a bit of getting used to.’

Jethro nodded. ‘I reckon she’ll miss the fields and fresh air, living in London.’

‘She’ll miss us, too.’

‘Not too much, I hope. I wouldn’t want the little maid to pine and be unhappy.’

‘No. We wouldn’t want her to be unhappy.’ She gazed out of the window. ‘I must remember to pack Patch.’

‘She won’t forget Patch, you don’t need to worry.’ Jethro smiled. ‘She really took to that little dog, didn’t she?’

‘Even though I ran outa wool and had to make one ear and half his face a different colour when I knitted him.’ Becca bit her lip and gave a sniff. ‘It’ll be better for her, Jethro. She needs to be with younger folks.’

‘Yes, that ain’t right for sech a bright little thing to be brought up by owd fogeys like you and me, Becca. If she was a boy, now, I could hev him in the workshop with me and teach him to repair furniture like I do. That’d hev been nice to hev a grandson to pass my knowledge on to …’ His face softened as he dreamed of what might have been.

‘But she ain’t a boy, she’s a girl,’ Becca said bluntly. ‘Mind you, she’s never happier than when she’s in the workshop with you, scrapping about among the shavings. But there’s nothing for her here in Wessingford, ‘cause I wouldn’t want to see her go on the land. Thass all for the best that she should go with her father.’ Her voice wavered. ‘She won’t forget us, will she, Jethro?’ she whispered.

‘No, ‘course she won’t.’

‘I dessay her father’ll bring her to see us from time to time.’

‘I dessay he will …’

But when Stanhope Gardiner came to fetch his daughter the following day, wreathed in smiles and bearing gifts, he talked about ‘a clean break’ and ‘a new life’ and they knew he never would.

Yet, as the child was driven away in the taxi, clutching the brand-new teddy bear her father had brought her in one hand and Patch in the other, Becca had a feeling, so strong that it sustained her through the many empty, lonely days until she could come to terms with her grief, that she had not seen the last of her beloved granddaughter and that one day Rachel would return.

Rachel waited anxiously outside the station for the 6.15 train that would bring her father home from his work in the City so that she could tell him the news and beg him to make Mummy change her mind. A rather thin, leggy girl, eleven and a bit years old, neatly dressed in a blue check dress with a matching bow nestling in her dark curls, white ankle socks and sandals, she was waiting with considerable patience considering how important the news was.

The train came round the bend and drew to a noisy halt. Rachel’s heart skipped a beat, whether with excitement or apprehension she couldn’t have said. She scanned the crowd that spilled out on the platform, a good many of them London businessmen, all dressed in the regulation homburg, black coat and striped trousers, and carrying newspapers and rolled umbrellas. Some also carried small attaché cases.

She easily picked her father out from among these. Stanhope Gardiner was a tall, spare man, with a pale, tired face and stern features. He slowed his stride when he saw her, so that he was last through the gate.

‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, looking down at her, his expression cool. ‘What can be of such importance that it can’t wait until I get home?’

Rachel hung her head. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, I know you don’t like to be met from the train, but I had to speak to you. You see –’ she looked up, unable to contain her excitement any longer – ‘I’ve won it! I’ve won the scholarship!’

‘That’s very good news. Very good news indeed. Congratulations, my dear.’ He smiled now, a smile that transformed his tired face, and patted her on the head.

The excitement left her and her shoulders drooped. ‘But Mummy says I can’t take it up. She says she can’t possibly afford to send me to the Girls’ High School. And I worked so hard … I did so want to go …’ Her voice trailed off miserably. She looked up at her father, the tears in her eyes overflowing down her cheeks. ‘Can you speak to her, Daddy?’ She caught his hand. ‘Can you make her change her mind?’

He let her hot little hand rest in his for a moment, then released it. With an immaculate white handkerchief, he brushed his moustache once to the left, once to the right, then a final dab before returning the handkerchief to his breast pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘of course you must take up the scholarship. I shall speak to your mother.’

‘Oh, thank you, Daddy. Thank you!’ Rachel clutched his hand again and gave a little skip of relief.

He extricated his hand and waved her off. ‘Now, run along home, child. It won’t look well if your mother thinks there’s a conspiracy between us, will it?’ He gave her another of his rare smiles and patted her on the head again. ‘Well done, Rachel, I’m very proud of you.’

This was praise indeed from a father who made a point of never showing emotion of any kind. Relieved beyond words, Rachel ran off home to number 17 Myrtle Grove.

Myrtle Grove was situated right at the end of the mile-long Station Road, overlooking the park. This part of East Northam was a rather dull, featureless suburb that had developed with the coming of the railway to the outskirts of London. Identical rows of semidetached houses, in roads with names like Acacia Avenue, Laburnum Drive and Lilac Way, bisected Station Road at respectable intervals. The houses were all the same, typically Victorian, large and solid, and at each end of every road was a corner shop. Recently, on the other side of the railway line, a rash of smaller, cheaper houses had begun to spread, while in complete contrast, across the park, what was left of the original village sprawled round the church and the duck pond.

Out of breath now, Rachel slowed as she turned into Myrtle Grove, past Mr Banks the grocer’s. As she walked she ran her hand along the iron railings behind which the shadowy houses lurked, half-hidden by laurel bushes or privet hedges, their square bay windows shrouded in lace curtains that kept out prying eyes and most of the light.

Like a good many of the others, the paint on number 17 was beginning to peel and the front gate had lost part of its latch. But there was something that set it apart from the rest; it had an aura of almost fanatical neatness. The windows sparkled, the tiles in the porch shone, the laurels were neatly clipped and there were no weeds in the small, square flowerbed – no flowers, either.

Rachel ran down the passage at the side of the house and in through the back door. Nellie Gardiner, a thin, handsome woman in her middle thirties, a wrapround overall protecting her coffee-coloured afternoon dress, was in the kitchen putting vegetable dishes on a tray.

‘Where on earth have you been, Rachel? You know I need your help at this time of day,’ she said sharply, without looking up. ‘Now, wash your hands and then take these dishes through to the dining room. Quickly, now, or they’ll get cold.’

Rachel did as she was told, anxious not to upset her mother. She carried the tray from the kitchen, a large room with red quarry tiles and a high ceiling, through the equally large room where the family lived and took their meals, and along the hall, cold even in summer, to the dining room where her mother’s two lodgers – ‘gentlemen guests’ she called them – took their meals and their ease.

By the time she returned to the kitchen her father had arrived, the meal was on the table and Mary and Joan, her two young sisters, were already seated.

The three girls ate in silence, they were never allowed to talk at table, but Stanhope and Nellie held desultory conversation. Rachel was in such a fever of anxiety that she could hardly eat, but she knew she must contain herself until her father was ready to speak.

This was not until the meal was finished and the table cleared. Only then did Nellie with pursed lips reach the letter down from behind the clock on the mantelpiece and hand it to her husband.

He read it, then looked up at Rachel. ‘This is very good, my dear,’ he said, as if he didn’t already know the news it contained. ‘And when does it say term begins?’ He scanned the letter again.

‘That’s of no consequence, Stan,’ Nellie snapped. ‘There’s no question of her going to the High School, you know that as well as I do. We couldn’t afford the school uniform, never mind books and fees’.

Rachel was sitting at the table, holding her breath and nervously running her finger along the lines in the green chenille tablecloth. It was a bad sign, Mummy calling Daddy Stan. He hated his name being abbreviated. She lifted her head. ‘It’s a scholarship, Mummy,’ she said hopefully. ‘You don’t have to pay. There won’t be any fees.’

‘Don’t have to pay?’ Nellie’s voice rose shrilly. ‘What about the uniform? That won’t be cheap, I can tell you. It reeks of class.’ She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it? The Girls’ High School’s full of professional men’s daughters.’ She shot a scathing look at her husband. ‘In any case,’ she went on, ‘if we do it for Rachel, what about Mary and Joan, when their turn comes, Stan?’

Stanhope winced. ‘I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with the little ones at this precise moment, my dear,’ he said in his rather clipped tone. ‘Since Mary is only seven and Joan barely five. If they too are clever enough to win scholarships –’ he made a face indicating that this was not very likely – ‘then naturally enough we shall do our best for them, too. I’m sure we shall manage, Nellie.’ He picked up his newspaper and opened it.

‘We shall manage, you say! Since when have you done any managing, I should like to know, Stan Gardiner?’ Nellie jabbed her chest. ‘I’m the one who does the managing in this house. And I’m putting my foot down. She’s not going. She can go to the senior school like the rest of the girls in her class.’ The subject was closed as far as she was concerned. Nellie screwed up the letter and threw it into the empty grate.

‘It would be a pity to let her miss such a golden opportunity,’ Stanhope said, and although his voice was reasonable his eyes had a steely glint as he lowered the newspaper to look at his wife. ‘Think of it, Nellie, our daughter at the Girls’ High School!’ He shook the newspaper. ‘Think how that will impress the neighbours.’

Nellie straightened her back and patted her marcel-waved hair. ‘That’s true’, she said thoughtfully, missing the barb in her husband’s words. ‘And she’s worked hard, I’ll grant you that. I suppose we might manage, at a pinch. And Mr Solomon may have some of the books she’ll need, second-hand.’ She shot a glance in Stanhope’s direction. ‘Of course, there would be no question of us not being able to afford it if they were to pay you more at that hospital. You’re simply not appreciated, Stan, that’s the trouble. All the work you do there … I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if it wasn’t for my gentleman guests I don’t know where we’d be.’

‘You’re quite right, Nellie.’ Stanhope nodded. He’d heard it all before, many, many times. ‘However, to get back to the point in question. Rachel has won the scholarship so she will take the place offered at the High School.’ He took out his handkerchief and stroked his moustache.

Nellie opened her mouth. ‘Just you wait a minute! It needs a good deal more thought. I haven’t said –’

He gazed at her and said levelly, ‘No, but I have, Nellie. This is my decision. The child will go to the High School.’ With that, Stanhope immersed himself in The Times.

‘Then perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me where the money’s coming from!’ Nellie glared at the newspaper.

‘We shall manage, Nellie. We always do,’ he said patiently from behind it.

‘I’m sure I don’t know how. Remember, there are only two gentlemen guests now, instead of four. And this house takes a lot of keeping up. The rates are high and people keep leaving lights on all over the house, wasting electricity. I don’t know how you think I can keep things going on the pittance you give me very week …’

‘Cissie Johnson, down the road at number 42 is going to the High School,’ Rachel said with a flash of inspiration, not taking her eyes off the lines in the tablecloth.

‘Oh?’ Nellie raised her eyebrows, suddenly interested.

‘She didn’t win a scholarship. Her father’s got to pay.’

Nellie’s thin shoulders moved uncomfortably as her mind wrestled between poverty and snobbery. ‘Oh, well,’ she said at last, ‘in that case, since you’ve won yourself a place …’ She gave a sigh of resignation. ‘I expect we’ll manage. Somehow!’

Careful not to show her triumph, Rachel slid down from the table, catching her father’s eye. She was almost certain he winked. It was strange, but she often had the feeling that there was a special bond between the two of them, something that neither her mother nor her sisters shared. Today there was no doubt of it. She and Daddy had won! She wouldn’t have to go to the crummy old senior school, to leave at fourteen and end up working at the clothing factory. She wiped her palms, wet with nerves, down her skirt. From next September she would be wearing the navy gymslip and the red and blue tie of the Girls’ High. Had it not been for the fact that Daddy didn’t care for demonstrations of affection, she would have thrown her arms round him and hugged him.

She glanced at the grate, where the crumpled letter lay. Instinctively, she knew that this was not the time to retrieve it. Instead, she went off to her nightly task of clearing the table in the dining room, where the lodgers – her mother refused to allow that word but Rachel knew what ‘gentlemen guests’ meant – had just finished their supper and were sitting in armchairs, smoking.

Deftly she piled everything on the large wooden tray just inside the door, and then took the brush and crumb tray off the sideboard and brushed the damask tablecloth before folding it and putting it away in the drawer.

‘Here, let me carry that tray for you.’ Mr Denton got up from his chair and took it before she had a chance to pick it up. ‘It’s far too heavy for a little thing like you to carry.’

‘Thank you, Mr Denton,’ she murmured. She didn’t mind him. He was quite young and not bad-looking and he never tried to put his arm round her as Mr Hoskins did. He’d helped her with her algebra, too, when she’d got in a muddle.

‘So, you’ve won a scholarship,’ he said admiringly as he followed her down the hall to the kitchen.

‘Yes.’ Rachel noted that in spite of her mother’s objections she hadn’t wasted any time in spreading the news.

‘Soon be off to the High?’

‘Yes. In September.’ She turned. ‘I’ll take the tray now, thank you.’ Her mother didn’t like the lodgers to step beyond the hall door.

‘Well, congratulations. I hope you’ll enjoy it. And if you want any help …’ He handed her the tray, knowing the rules.

‘Thank you, Mr Denton.’ She made a face. ‘I probably will.’

‘Good.’ He grinned at her. ‘Only maths, mind you. I’m no good at French. Or English, either, for that matter.’

She carried the tray through to the back kitchen, where her mother had already begun the washing-up, the geyser above the sink still groaning from its efforts to yield sufficient hot water for the task.

‘I expect that’ll be the next thing,’ Nellie said, irritably swishing suds. ‘We shall need a new water heater. And where’s the money coming from for that, I should like to know?’

Rachel said nothing. She knew the remark was a dig at her, because the geyser had groaned like that ever since she could remember. She took a tea towel off the rack and thoughtfully began to dry up, watching as her mother methodically washed and stacked the dishes, her sleeves rolled up to reveal scrawny arms. She worked very hard, in fact she never seemed to stop working, cooking, cleaning and polishing from morning till night. Rachel was sure her mother loved her and her two young sisters but she never seemed to feel it necessary to show them much affection. In any case, she never had time, she was always too busy working. Nellie lived by two maxims, which she quoted constantly: ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ and ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ To these ends and for the comfort of her gentlemen guests she was prepared to work her fingers to the bone.

Rachel couldn’t think why. She found the house they lived in oppressive, although that was not a word she would have used. It was cold even in summer and in winter the small coal fires were no match for the icy draughts. She hated the dark wallpaper and paint; the long, cheerless hall from which the staircase rose into perpetual half darkness and which reeked of a combination of floor polish and cabbage; the cold, high-ceilinged bedrooms and the bathroom, made even colder by being painted blue. And everywhere the dark, heavy furniture that, like the house, had belonged to Grannie Briggs.

Grannie Briggs had taken gentlemen guests and Nellie had helped her. When Grannie Briggs died, naturally Nellie continued in the same way. Rachel didn’t remember Grannie Briggs. That wasn’t surprising, because she had died before Daddy came to live at number 17 as a gentleman guest and stayed to marry Mummy. Rachel thought that was quite romantic, although she couldn’t imagine either Daddy or Mummy being romantic. But that was probably because they spent most of their time arguing about money, or rather the lack of it.

Her thoughts turned full circle back to the scholarship. ‘Perhaps I could earn a bit of money if I went and saw Old Solly …’

‘Don’t be disrespectful, Rachel. Mr Solomon to you.’

‘He doesn’t mind. Everyone calls him Old Solly.’

‘That shop of his is a disgrace to Myrtle Grove. Goodness knows when the windows last had a clean.’ Nellie untied her overall and hung it behind the door. Then she poured a few drops of glycerine and a pinch of sugar into the palm of one hand and began to rub it into her hands to soften them. ‘I don’t know how he thinks people can see what he’s got to sell. Mind you, it’s nothing more than a lot of old junk, most of it.’

‘It isn’t all junk, Mummy. He’s got some really nice furniture and silver there. And it smells divine.’ Rachel closed her eyes in ecstasy. ‘A mixture of polish and stain and old furniture and – oh, I dunno. It reminds me of something, I don’t know what exactly, but it’s lovely.’ She hung the tea towel back on the rack. ‘Anyway, I’m sure Old Solly would let me help in his shop sometimes. He might even let me clean the windows.’

‘I don’t know what your father would have to say about that,’ Nellie said flatly. She sniffed and raised her voice. ‘Although he seems to have plenty to say about most things, these days.’ She glanced into the next room where he was still sitting in his armchair, hidden by the newspaper.

‘I don’t think he’d mind. After all, I’ve been there often enough –’ Rachel bit her lip. Now was not the time to remind her mother of the numerous occasions when she had been sent to the back room at Old Solly’s, where he carried on the pawnbroking side of his business. The first time it had been her father’s gold hunter watch that had to be pawned, another time it was a ring that had belonged to Grannie Briggs. Other pieces of Grannie Briggs’s jewellery had gone over the years, as well as small items of furniture; nothing too big or Rachel wouldn’t have been able to carry it and it was unthinkable that Nellie or Stanhope should lower themselves to take things to be pawned. Some things, like Nellie’s fur coat, were redeemed and never went for pawn again; others, like the gold hunter, could have been on elastic, they were in and out of pawn so often.

Rachel couldn’t really understand why they were always so hard up, even though there were only two lodgers now. After all, her father caught the 8.15 up to the city every morning, to work in the hospital, returning every evening on the 6.15. Rachel didn’t know what his work was, he never talked about it and she didn’t like to ask. Her father was not a man to encourage questions.

All her jobs finished, Rachel went off down the road to see Old Solly, whose shop seemed to be permanently open. In her hand she was clutching the half-crown her father had surreptitiously slipped her in order to redeem her mother’s pearl earrings. Dimly she was beginning to understand that everything had a price.

Old Solly’s shop was at the far end of Myrtle Grove, at the junction with Wilberforce Road, where Rachel would catch the bus to her new school. Over the door there was a sign that said ANTIQUES in peeling gold letters and three small golden balls hung discreetly below it. Inside, the place was crammed with so much furniture that it was impossible to get near enough to see the silver in the showcases round the walls. Rachel often thought he was more of an antique collector than a dealer because the stock rarely seemed to change, only to grow. She loved browsing in Old Solly’s shop and felt quite at home among his treasures.

‘Rachel, my dear, what can I do for you today?’ The old man came shuffling in from the back of the shop, rubbing his hands together as if they were cold. He did this whether it was winter or summer, just as he wore woollen half-mittens whatever the weather. ‘You brought me a little something, no?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Not today, Solly. I’ve come to fetch Mummy’s earrings.’

‘So. Things not so bad, eh?’ He didn’t even ask for the ticket but fetched them and wrapped them in a twist of tissue paper.

‘I’m going to the High School.’ She was bursting with pride.

‘So! You hear that, Mother?’ he called to the back regions. ‘This young lady’s going to the High School.’ He turned back to Rachel. ‘You won that scholarship, then?’

She nodded, then bit her lip. ‘We can’t really afford it. I wondered …’

He nodded wisely. ‘I could do with a bit of help to tidy up the shop now and then. And Mother, too, she has trouble – her knees, you know. She could do with help, too.’ He smiled at her, his old brown eyes wrinkling at the corners. ‘Just now and then. When you got time, Rachel. Any time, you understand.’

Rachel smiled happily. ‘Oh, you are a dear, Solly! And I won’t mind what you ask me to do. Really I won’t. I’m used to hard work, because I have to help Mummy in the house and she’s very particular.’ She stroked the silk smoothness of a yew-wood elbow chair. ‘I do so love coming here. It smells so lovely and you never mind me touching things, Solly. I love these old things.’

‘I know you do, child, that’s why I never mind you handling them. I don’t know where you got the feel for them but you handle them like an expert.’

‘Do I? Perhaps one day I’ll have a shop of my own, just like you, Solly.’

‘Perhaps you will, child.’

After Rachel had gone, the earrings secreted safely in the pocket of her knickers, Solly returned to his living quarters, as cluttered as his shop. His wife, enormously stout, was sitting at the plush-covered table knitting him new mittens.

‘She’s a good child, Pansy,’ he said, putting the kettle to boil on the gas ring in the corner. ‘But it’s a very funny family she comes from.’

‘Poverty pride, I’d say, Solly. Fur coat and no knickers.’ Pansy yanked at the ball of wool as she spoke. ‘You notice you never see the mother down here, hocking things, she’s too busy making out she’s a cut above the rest. And the father’s just as bad with his homburg hat and umbrella. I’ll wager the folk he travels up to the City with don’t know the number of times that gold hunter’s been in and out of here …’

‘It’s not for us to judge, Pansy.’ Solly busied himself with the teapot.

‘Maybe not. But it’s always the child that has to come and you can’t help wondering why they should need to send her. It’s good stuff she brings, so they can’t be as hard up as all that.’ Pansy sniffed and yanked at her wool again. ‘You never see them down at the Albert, neither, so they don’t tip it all down their necks.’

‘No, I believe they’re good-living people. And the child’s polite and well-mannered. I don’t know much about the other two girls.’

‘They’re younger, ain’t they?’

‘Yes, a good bit. Don’t look a bit like our Rachel, neither. Ain’t nearly so pretty.’

‘Our Rachel,’ Pansy chided with a smile.

‘Well, I’m fond of the little thing. And we got no chick nor child of our own.’ He gazed at his wife. ‘I told her you’d be glad of a bit of help too, Pansy.’

Pansy nodded. ‘I’m sure between us we can find her enough to do to feel she’s earned a bob or two.’

Solly smiled. ‘And I might be able to pick up one or two of the books she’ll need at school. That’ll help.’

‘You’re an old soft thing, Solomon.’

He spread his gnarled old hands. ‘Have I ever denied it?’

Becca stood at the window looking out at the children waiting on the corner for the bus to take them to school. You could tell which were the ‘new’ children, the ones who had recently passed the scholarship, by their nervous appearance and brand-new blazers and satchels.

‘I wonder if Rachel won a scholarship,’ she mused, half to herself. ‘She’d be the right age for it, wouldn’t she?’ Her face softened. ‘I reckon she’d look a right treat in her uniform.’ She sighed. ‘I wonder where she is.’

Polly, Becca’s maid of all work, who had been with her for more years than either of them cared to remember, paused from clearing away the breakfast things. ‘You’ve never, ever heard a word about her since the day he fetched her away, hev you?’ She banged the teapot on to the tray. ‘Ungrateful, I call it. Shameful and ungrateful! And after all you did for her, too.’ She went off to the kitchen.

‘You can’t blame the child, Polly. I don’t s’pose she even remembers us after all this time.’ Becca wiped the corner of her eye with her apron. Never a day passed without a thought for her little granddaughter, although it was eight years now since she had last seen her. She dreamed constantly that one day Rachel would walk through the door. She even knew how she would look. Or thought she did.

Jethro poked his head in from the workshop, where he repaired some of the furniture that his son Tim sold in his antique shop in Colchester. ‘I’ve jest got to fix the handles on the little walnut chest, then I’m taking it in to Tim. You wanta come, Becca?’

Becca turned away from the window with a sigh as the last of the children boarded the bus. ‘Might as well, I s’pose.’ She gave her husband a brief smile. ‘Somehow, I feel neither won nor lost, today. I expect it was seeing all the children and thinking … well, you know.’

‘That don’t do any good, Becca my girl,’ Jethro said firmly. ‘Wishing won’t bring the child back.’ He laid his hand on his wife’s arm. ‘I dessay she?