Something Old Something New

by Connie Monk

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

When Tim and Sue Marshall take in a local boarding school boy on their farm, they watch as the shy, bespectacled Quentin changes beyond recognition. As the years go by there are big changes for everyone, Sue sees her family growing up and realizes that things can never stay the same.

Release date: January 14, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

1952

‘Throw me the car keys, Sue,’ Tim Marshall said as he came through the lobby into the old farmhouse kitchen. ‘I’ll go and fill up, it’ll save you doing it this afternoon.’

There was no need to explain his meaning. That afternoon she was taking Mrs Josh to the optician in Reading and, knowing the old lady’s independent spirit, they wanted to avoid stopping at a garage. Leaving her bowl of half-mixed pastry, Sue went to the key rack in the hall. ‘I’m glad you remembered. Careful, I’m all floury. Don’t forget Mrs Josh’s appointment is for half past two so we must eat punctually today. It’s only going to be ham and eggs,’ then pointing to the pastry, ‘this is for supper.’

‘I won’t be late. Where’s Liz? Has she got over being left behind this morning? She can come with me now if she likes.’

‘It was only her pride that was hurt. She soon recovered. She’s helping Josh, bless him, he’s keeping her very busy.’

Josh Hawthorne and his wife had already been at Highmoor Farm nearly thirty years when Tim had inherited it from his uncle and brought his young wife there only a few months after their marriage. When arthritis and age caught up with Josh, it hadn’t entered Tim and Sue’s heads to make any changes. The heavy work of the farm was beyond him, but still the kitchen garden was his domain and kept both their households in vegetables. To Tim and Sue – and certainly to their family – ‘the Joshes’ were as much part of Highmoor Farm as the very land. The truth was that, although as a child Tim had loved visiting his uncle during the long school holidays, he had had no first-hand knowledge of farming. Like some of the local lads, he had helped at harvest time until, completing his training as an engineer, he’d become part of the working world and no longer had the luxury of long vacations. After that Highmoor had had no more than occasional visits on his motor cycle. Then, on his uncle’s death, he had found himself its owner. The sloping fields of rich pasture had become his own, with a dairy herd, a farmyard noisy with the squawk of hens and the grunt of pigs, nearly 400 arable acres and, mercifully, with Josh Hawthorne. That had been in 1938, a time when farming was in the doldrums. Logic told him to sell out and put any money the farm raised into a property in Reading where he worked and where, just married, he and Sue had been living in a small, up-to-the-minute, utterly characterless home, one of an identical row of bungalows. It had been the best they could afford and had sold itself to them because the front overlooked meadows and there was a footpath that led to the Thames. His uncle’s bequest meant that they could look for what they thought of as a ‘proper house’. If that’s what logic told them, another silent voice urged that for neither of them could a ‘proper house’ in Reading compare with a farm on the Berkshire Downs. Reason couldn’t easily be overcome: making a living from a farm could be no more than a pipe-dream, that’s what they’d told themselves. If Tim knew nothing about running a farm, as a housekeeper Sue was a raw beginner even with the assets of an easy-to-run and modern bungalow. Where was the sense in their even visiting Highmoor? Better by far to put it straight into an agent’s hands.

It had been in October, a clear Saturday afternoon that believed itself still to be summer, when they’d packed the essentials for a weekend, locked their bungalow and set out, Tim on the motor cycle, Sue in the sidecar. They owed it to Josh Hawthorne to tell him personally what they’d decided to do. If that had been simply an excuse for their making a weekend visit to the farm, they hadn’t looked beneath the surface for any ulterior motive. So they’d come to Highmoor, eager for two nights in the country, even discussing which side of Reading they’d look for their ‘proper house’. But that first evening, curled up together in an old rocking chair in front of the kitchen range, the old house had begun to cast its spell on them. Their bungalow home, or even the more solid detached property they’d envisaged, belonged in a different world.

‘It’s as if we’ve been tossed in the air and have fallen down the right side up,’ Sue had murmured, burrowing her face against his neck. There had been no need to explain. They’d known this was where they were meant to be. By the next day their future had found a new shape and when she said, ‘Won’t our children be lucky, imagine growing up here! They’ll have ponies – and Tim, imagine when we have a son how he’ll love to learn to look after the land.’ Distant dreams from a young bride who had been brought up in the cloistered academic world of Cambridge where her father was a lecturer. But dreams she had never lost as the years went by.

That weekend had changed the pattern of their lives and, a fortnight later, they had moved into the farm leaving their newly built – and none too well-built – bungalow on the market for sale.

Josh Hawthorne had become Tim’s mentor. ‘Mr Hawthorne’ Tim had called him in those first days.

‘I can’t be doing with too much o’ this Mr lark,’ he’d been told. ‘Your uncle called me Josh, and that’ll do me well enough, Squire.’ But Tim hadn’t found such familiarity easy; even as a schoolboy he’d seen his uncle’s right-hand man as elderly – from the vantage point of a schoolboy a man can become elderly ahead of his years.

‘Tell you what,’ he’d suggested. ‘You drop the Squire and I’ll settle for Josh.’

That had been the first week and, from then on, it had been Josh and Mrs Josh. But for Josh it had still gone against the grain to use Tim’s Christian name, so he had become ‘the Guv’nor’ while Sue was Mrs Tim.

If Josh had been invaluable to Tim, Mrs Josh – or Ada Hawthorne, to give her her proper name – had saved Sue from many a pitfall. Until she’d married, Sue had never cooked and, in the early weeks while she’d lived at the bungalow she had at least had the advantage of a new gas cooker and shops nearby. Housekeeping at the farm was quite different: she’d had to get used to a solid fuel range, and learn the mysteries of dampers and draughts. It was Mrs Josh who’d taught her to make bread, to scald milk and skim off the cream, to make chutney and preserves, to ensure the crackling on her pork was crisp, and a hundred other things. Now, nearly sixteen years on, Sue had added her own natural attributes to all she’d been taught.

Images of those early days flashed through her mind as she heard Tim drive off in the seldom-used Morris, sensitive to Mrs Josh’s need to ‘pay her way’ and making sure there would be no petrol stop on the afternoon journey. Then, instead of going back to her piecrust, Sue wandered to the open window and leant out. The still air was full of the scent of summer; if she were led here blindfold she would know exactly where she was.

‘That’s it, duckie,’ she heard Josh call to her six-year-old Liz, ‘bring it here for me first, then you can turn the tap on.’ Dragging the snakelike hose behind her, Liz carefully trod between the lines of runner beans. ‘Thank you, m’dear. Now if you can give me a drop of water, not too hard on to start with …’

It was easy to take happiness for granted; Sue was determined never to let it happen. But sometimes it was quite frightening how lucky she and Tim were. If everyone’s life had a pattern, then why had she been given so much and Elspeth, her elder sister, so little?

Deftly fitting her crust on the gooseberry pie, she let her mind drift back to a time that seemed like a different world. It had been in 1935 when Elspeth had married John Ruddick. Everyone had been so full of confidence for the couple. For John had already been a Captain in the army, following the footsteps of his father, a retired Lieutenant Colonel. When, soon afterwards, John had been sent with his regiment to India, like most other officers’ wives, Elspeth had gone too. Sue remembered her own feeling of envy as she’d stood on the dockside waving. Envying Elspeth? We should be glad we can’t see into the future! Following the usual custom, Elspeth had returned to England when she was pregnant. That had been in 1939. Sue remembered her coming to stay at Highmoor just after the birth of her twins, Sylvia and Christopher. What a happy month they’d had; looking back it seemed that every summer day had been filled with sunshine, not a cloud on the horizon as Elspeth had looked forward to the babies being strong enough to travel back with her to India. Mrs Josh had taken the two girls under her wing just as easily as she had just one, for Sue had still been learning something new each day, none of it a chore. It had been just the same for Tim, working through his first round of seasons, learning from experience and from Josh. The young couple had been keen to absorb every new thing, so sure were they that, as Sue had said, ‘They had been tossed up and had landed the right side up.’ As for Elspeth, she’d never so much as picked up a teatowel until she came to Highmoor, but Mrs Josh had taken her in her stride. For all of them, even Elspeth, had remained untouched by the horrors building on the Continent. But before summer was over the world had changed; nothing would ever be the same again. Thinking of it after so many years, Sue was ashamed that her memories of those early months of the war could have been so insular, for what else could she call it? It had taken all her time – and Tim’s too – to do a new job well. That neither of them could look on it as drudgery had surely been good fortune rather than selfishness? Tim had never been a soldier, but he had worked every daylight hour – and many more in the milking sheds before the sun was up.

The pie in the oven, Sue dropped into that much-loved rocking chair, thinking of her sister. At the onset of war Tim had suggested Elspeth and the babies should make their home at the farm. It had seemed the most natural thing for all of them. The time they were all together crowded into Sue’s mind, not a cavalcade of events so much as an atmosphere that after so many years could still soften her mouth into a smile. Then something that stood alone: John was being sent home after suffering recurring bouts of malaria. There were telephone calls between Elspeth and his parents, all of them waiting anxiously for news that he’d landed safely. Sue gazed unseeingly at the familiar kitchen, reliving the morning when the call was from him, to say he had docked. As clearly as if it had just happened, in her mind’s eye she could see Elspeth rushing into the room, radiant with joy. ‘He’s home! He’ll be in London by lunchtime. Sue, will you mind the twins? He wants me to meet him there. I said “yes”, I said I could leave them with you all night and we’ll fetch them tomorrow and take them with us to his people.’ Within an hour Tim had driven off to Reading with her, using precious petrol under the pretext of visiting the agricultural engineer for a set of plough shares after he’d taken her to the station.

If John had arrived a day earlier or a day later how different all their lives would have been. Sometimes it frightened Sue that she had been given so much in her own life and Elspeth so little. For weeks London had had no raids, but that night shattered any false sense of security. She and John had both been killed. Any consolation Sue could find after the tragedy came from caring for Sylvia and Christopher. There had never been any question that their home was to be at Highmoor; they were like an elder brother and sister to Paul, Sue and Tim’s first child, who’d been born two months after they’d lost their parents.

Standing up from the rocking chair she glanced at the old-fashioned clock on the wall, its swinging pendulum never faltering. Hour on hour, year on year the old clock looked down on them all; there was a comforting continuity in the sound of its loud tick. But, combined with the appetising smell of the almost-cooked gooseberry pie, the discoloured face of the clock told her just how much time she’d been day-dreaming.

The tank filled, Tim was on his way home when he remembered that this was the day his friend Maurice and his wife were leaving for their cottage in the Dordogne for their annual holiday. He knew they weren’t planning to set off until mid-afternoon; they’d booked one night at their usual hotel in Portsmouth and were crossing on the first ferry tomorrow. He wouldn’t hinder them, but he’d just stop and say ‘bon voyage’ as he passed. Imagine what it must feel like to shut the house and go off for eight weeks! No chance of so much as a week with a herd of dairy cows needing twice-a-day milking, to say nothing of the fields of ripening corn. Therein lay the difference between schoolmastering and farming! But, in any case, would he really want to?

Turning in at the open double gate of what the large sign proclaimed to be Merton Court School for Boys Aged 8–18, he drove up the long drive to the house.

‘Hello there, Barbara,’ he called at sight of Maurice’s wife. ‘I’ve not come to hold you up, only to say cheerio as I was passing. All set?’

She came over to the car, but there was no smile in her welcome. A tall, striking woman with sleek, almost black, hair and eyes like coals, he’d often wondered whether she ever softened in her approach to the younger boys sent to board at the school. Looking at her that morning, his instinctive thought was that he wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of some poor eight-year-old, away from home for the first time. A capable woman, the welfare of the boys would lack for nothing – nothing except warmth.

‘All set, you say,’ she sounded petulant; today there was nothing of her usual matter-of-fact manner, ‘all set to stay in this prison.’

Maurice had seen the car and came out to join them just in time to hear her.

‘Come on, now, Barb, I’ll get something sorted.’

‘Damned school,’ she glared at him. ‘For nearly eleven weeks we’ve not had a second to ourselves, surely we’re entitled to a holiday the same as everyone else.’

‘What’s the hold-up?’ Tim asked. Usually so calm, he’d never seen Barbara show her feelings so openly.

‘You know we have the two McBride boys here, sons of Anthony McBride and Elvira Dereford—’

‘All very well for them,’ Barbara interrupted. ‘Pair of matinée idols, never a moment’s thought for anyone but themselves!’

‘They’re out in the States—’ Maurice tried again.

‘They live in a different world from the rest of us,’ his disgruntled wife cut in again. ‘The screen’s ideal married couple, that’s what the newspapers call them. It’s not what I’d call them! The wretched child is their responsibility, not ours.’

‘I’ll get something sorted out. The elder one, Richard, he’s gone off to California to join them, we had him accompanied to Heathrow yesterday. But the younger one, Quentin—’

‘Supercilious, dreadful child. He makes me cringe even to see him with that owl-like stare as if he’s too clever for everyone.’

‘Quentin doesn’t join up with his parents, I imagine he wouldn’t fit in with their theatrical type of life. Richard does – he hopes to go to RADA when he leaves here.’

‘So the young one goes home with friends, is that it? Has something gone wrong?’

There was no humour in Barbara’s laugh. ‘Friends? What child could stand having him under foot for nearly nine weeks? He’s not normal, I tell you. He plays no games, he’s always mooning about by himself or reading. If he had a bit of spirit it wouldn’t be so bad.’

‘Spirit or not, we’re lumbered with him until we can get a reply to my cable to his parents. You see, Tim, he usually spends his holidays with his grandparents or, latterly, his grandfather. That’s been the arrangement ever since he started here a couple of years ago. Barbara’s right about his parents, they have no sense of responsibility whatsoever. Soon after he came here his grandmother died – for years she’d been pretty well blind and, as I understand it, she had an eye operation with no more than a fifty-fifty chance and didn’t survive it. Since then he’s been sent to his grandfather each holiday. As I said, they’ve always thought the world of him. Funny really, for as far as Richard was concerned they’d never bothered. This morning we had a phone call from some nurse or other, saying it’s not possible to have the boy as Mr Dereford has pneumonia.’

‘Just like that!’ Barbara glared at the world. ‘Not any suggestion that the poor, demented owners of this place have earned their break!’

‘I got a cable off to his parents asking for instructions. They’ll come up with something, even if it means we have to drop him off at Heathrow Airport before we head for Portsmouth.’

‘How did the lad take it?’ Tim asked.

‘There’s no way of telling,’ Maurice frowned. ‘You know, of all the youngsters I’ve had through my hands, there’s never been one who’s made me feel so – so – inadequate. That’s the truth. Inadequate.’

‘Is he mentally handicapped, do you mean?’

‘Dear God, no! It’s uncanny, but whatever the subject he is top of his class. Whether it gives him any satisfaction God only knows, his expression says nothing at all. Always got his nose in a book, always learning. If only just once I could see him chasing after a ball, or managing to get across a hurdle without falling flat on his face, I might begin to look on him as human.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Probably hiding in a clump of bushes somewhere with his nose in a book.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Barbara tugged at Maurice’s sleeve, ‘I saw a movement over there in the copse.’ She shuddered, her movement exaggerated. ‘Gives me the shivers. I wish to heaven they’d hurry up and tell us where to pack him off to.’

Tim was fond of them both, but at that moment his sympathies were all with the unwanted ten-year-old. What would Sue say if—? Even in his mind he didn’t finish the question.

‘Cable his folk again. Tell them the lad is coming to Highmoor to stay. His elder brother must know where the farm is, he’ll be able to reassure them.’

‘You mean it? Oh Tim,’ this time there was nothing petulant in Barbara’s expression, ‘I could cry with relief. I was so frightened we’d not get anyone to take him off our hands. I imagined him having to come with us to France – always there, like a spider in the corner. But what will Sue say?’

‘Exactly the same as I have.’

‘I say, this is damned good of you, Tim. He’s a lucky lad,’ Maurice opened the car door for Tim to get out. ‘Come on, let’s go and find him. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. He’s all packed up ready.’ He put an arm around Barbara’s shoulder, something Tim suspected he wouldn’t have done a few minutes before. ‘Better now? We’ll get the cases strapped on as soon as he’s gone. You take Tim to find him while I get our stuff down ready.’

‘This way, Tim,’ Barbara, her good humour restored, pointed to the shrubbery, ‘he’s lurking somewhere in here, probably watching our every move.’

‘It’s not like you talk like that about a youngster.’

‘I may not be the perfect wife for the headmaster of a prep school, but most of them I can tolerate fairly well. But this one honestly gives me the creeps. He never gives an inch, never gives an inkling of what goes on in his supercilious, clever-dick mind. No child has the right to make one feel so – so disadvantaged. I sometimes think Quentin McBride bears more resemblance to an all-knowing robot than to a human. But hark at me!’ She laughed. ‘If I’m not careful you’ll wish you’d not been so free with your invitation.’ It was easy to laugh now, sure that there would be no suggestion of his changing his mind. ‘Honestly, Tim, you don’t know just how grateful I am – well, we both are, but I don’t think I could have borne it if the holiday had been cancelled. McBride!’ she called, her voice sharp. ‘Come here, please. Hurry up.’

A rustle in the carpet of last year’s leaves and a small boy appeared. Tim had been told he was ten, within a few months the same age as Paul. The lad who emerged looked a good deal less. His dark hair was tidy and well cut, his khaki shorts and white pumps unnaturally clean for a boy of his age, his short-sleeved shirt immaculate. But in that first moment it wasn’t what he wore that impressed itself on Tim, it was his solemn expression. Barbara had described him as owl-like and it was easy to see why. He wore spectacles with dark, heavy frames, the lenses seeming too large for his thin face. Whoever chose glasses like that for a child?

‘Quickly when I call you, McBride. Right over here.’ That Barbara’s tone was brusque appeared to make no impression on the boy; steadily he moved to stand in front of her.

‘Yes, Mrs Kimber.’ Quentin came to within a yard of them. Despite standing obediently still and keeping his eyes downcast, there was nothing timid in his manner.

‘This is Mr Marshall, a friend of ours.’ Then, with a laugh, ‘a very good friend of ours. He is prepared for you to stay with his family for your holidays – or until your parents contact him with further instructions. You know, this really is enormously kind of you, Tim.’

‘Not kind at all,’ Tim answered, meaning to reassure the boy. ‘My lot will be delighted to have Quentin join them.’

Quentin looked up at him then, but still said nothing.

‘Well? Have we taught you no better manners than that at Merton?’

‘Yes, Mrs Kimber.’ Then, to Tim, ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Off you hop and collect your things,’ Tim told him. ‘That’s my car by the front door, I’ll see you back there.’

Without another word Quentin left them, walking towards the house at a steady pace, his manner giving no hint as to whether he was pleased or sorry at the turn of events.

‘Poor lad. Is he always shy?’ Tim said when he was out of earshot.

‘Shy? That one! Monosyllabic often, but shy never.’

Less than five minutes later Tim and his unexpected guest were heading back to Highmoor.

‘I live on a farm,’ Tim told him. ‘You probably know where it is – Highmoor Farm.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve passed it when I’m allowed out walking. Does the copse belong to you, sir? I’ve been in there sometimes collecting ferns to take back and look up.’

‘You’re interested in botany?’

‘I like to see things grow, sir. I like to find out about them.’

‘I hope your parents will like the idea of your coming to us – I hope you like the idea too?’ If he meant it as a question he wasn’t to be rewarded with an answer.

‘They will be grateful to you.’

‘You have very illustrious parents. I understand Richard talks of going on the stage too. And what about you?’

Quentin turned to look at him as if the question had been asked in some foreign tongue. ‘Me? Oh no, sir.’ The way he said it made Tim appreciate what Maurice had meant about feeling inadequate. ‘It’s all pretend,’ Quentin went on, ‘I’d hate to have to wear clothes that weren’t my own and say things I didn’t really believe, just to make a made-up story seem like being true.’

Monosyllabic, had Barbara said? The child didn’t seem afraid to express his opinions. ‘You called me “sir”. I’m a farmer, not a schoolmaster. My name is Marshall.’

‘Mr Marshall,’ Quentin repeated obligingly.

‘Before we get to the farm let me tell you something about everyone so that we shan’t completely overwhelm you. There’s my wife, you’ll like her, I have no doubt about that. Then we have a niece and nephew called Sylvia and Christopher, they’re thirteen, twins. They’ve lived with us all their lives.’

‘Live with you, really live?’ His dark eyes were filled with concern. ‘You mean their parents don’t want them?’ Surely that couldn’t have been hope Tim heard in the way he asked the question.

‘They were very small when their parents were killed during the war. The twins seem like our own; I only told you so that you’d see why it is they call us aunt and uncle. Then we have a son about your age, that’s Paul, and a daughter, Liz, who’s younger, she’s only six.’ Quentin liked the way that when this stranger smiled his face creased, especially around his eyes. It wasn’t just a ‘smile to be polite’ face. ‘They all seem to manage to keep themselves occupied during the long summer holiday, on a farm there’s never a shortage of things to do. Do you like country things?’

‘I think I do. But I don’t know really, you see, because I’ve had no experience.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘My parents live in London when they’re in England, so when I was too young to go to Merton Court that’s where I used to be. Mrs Gibbons lived there to look after me.’

‘You must be very proud of your parents, there can’t be many people in the country who haven’t heard of them.’ Tim felt it was underhand of him, but he wanted to get some hint of the boy’s feelings.

‘Oh yes, I’m proud. So is Richard. He’s going to be famous too, one of these days.’

‘But the stage isn’t for you, you say? Well, Quentin, I can understand that, it wouldn’t be for me either. We all have to find what’s right for us.’

He sensed rather than saw the slight figure settle more comfortably into the seat.

‘Here we are, home sweet home. The big kids are all out, it’s tradition that whatever the weather they go off with a picnic on the first day they’re all home on holiday. But Liz will be glad of some company.’

‘Will Mrs Marshall mind me coming? She doesn’t even know who I am.’ Only minutes before he had made conversation with assurance ahead of his years, but suddenly Tim saw how vulnerable he was. Behind the lenses of his oversized glasses his dark eyes were full of concern.

‘I promise you, Quentin, she will be delighted. You don’t know her yet, but soon you’ll understand what I mean.’ He stopped the car in front of the house so that it was ready for Sue to drive across to the farm cottage and collect Mrs Josh in the afternoon. ‘Look, over there at the side of the house, there’s Liz helping in the vegetable garden. Let’s go and see her.’

Sue heard him speak as he passed the kitchen window and looked out to see who the visitor was. They weren’t coming to the lobby door, instead they were heading for the vegetable garden. Whoever was the solemn little scrap of a child, following Tim along the grass between the plots? Liz was busy picking enough peas for supper, for when the picnickers returned they were sure to be ravenous, but seeing her father she dumped the bowl and came to meet him. Tim said something, his hand on the boy’s shoulder; Liz smiled her pleasure at having unexpected company; the boy held out his hand with an almost adult dignity. Used to being looked on as too young to be important, Sue knew just how the little girl would enjoy being shown such deference. The two shook hands then, the first hurdle over, Tim left them to feel their own way towards getting to know each other.

‘Who’s that you’ve brought home?’ Sue asked as he came into the kitchen to find her.

Briefly he explained.

‘Poor little scrap. Well, we’ll have to make it up to him. He’ll have lots of fun with the others here.’

But then, of course, she hadn’t met her visitor. She took it for granted that given freedom to roam, plenty of useful work to help with, an abundance of fresh air to promote a healthy appetite and good food to satisfy it, Quentin’s summer holiday was bound to have the necessary touch of magic.

‘Perhaps it was fate made you stop at the school. I was thinking this morning about that sort of thing,’ she said as she spread the checked cloth on the wooden table. ‘Kind fate made us come here instead of putting the farm on the estate agent’s books—’

‘A comfortable home and a regular salary might have given us fewer headaches.’ But she knew from the way he said it that he wouldn’t have had things any different.

‘Unkind fate chose that dreadful night to be when Elspeth and John were in London. I was thinking about her, Tim, about what a rotten hand she got dealt. I’ve been so lucky. And why? She and John deserved a life just as much as we did.’

‘We get what’s dished out to us. And talking of luck …’ He drew her close, rubbing his chin against the top of her head. As a child her hair had been silvery fair, now, at thirty-five, it had darkened a little, faded a lot, and was what her enemies (if she’d had any) would have described as ‘mouse’.

‘Fate is what I was talking about, Tim. What made you call at the school today? They go to France pretty well every holiday and you’ve never just chanced to call in passing before. There must have been something, some sort of guiding force.’

‘I hope you still think so when you’ve met him. I can’t see him careering about with the other three. Even Maurice says – no, I’ll leave you to form your own opinion.’ He knew she’d do that anyway. Slightly built, only five. . .