Once in the security of her own room, Glenys lay down on the bed and let peace encompass her. She had invented the headache but now, lying quietly in the dark, she could feel the stirrings of pain in her temples and knew she was probably in for a restless night. She tried to make herself relax, to put the events of the day out of her mind, but she soon realised she would have to face up to making a decision. As she saw it she had three options: to stay where she was and let people believe what they wished to believe, for she had no doubt that there were those who suspected what Sam had spelled out, and would pass on the gossip as fact; to marry Sam despite knowing that he did not love her; or – oh, God, and this was the course she knew it would be wise to take – to leave the farm, with no promise of a forwarding address. It might look like running away, it might even be running away, but at least it would scotch the rumour that she had set her cap at Sam and had come all the way across Wales to Weathercock Farm in order to feather her nest. How she was supposed to have known that the Weathers had anything she wanted she could not imagine, but the more she thought the more she favoured the option of leaving the farm.

There were several good reasons for this. Nain might have prompted Sam to offer marriage, but what was marriage without love? It would be a millstone around both their necks, and much though she loved the children and admired Nain and Taid, she could not stomach being thought the sort of person who would scheme and plan simply to get a ring on her finger. Furthermore, although most young and fit men would go into the forces now war had been declared, surely the government would leave one reliable person in charge of every farm. On Weathercock Farm that person would be Sam, unless he were married and his wife still on the spot, in which case she would be expected to take over in his absence. And Sam must stay, for the children’s sake even more than for Nain and Taid’s.

Glenys’s head thumped, adding to her misery. She lay on top of her bedclothes, wrestling with a problem which had now shrunk to one stark choice: to go or to stay. It broke her heart to think of the children’s unhappiness if she left; they had gone through so much, had sailed such rough seas, and now they believed they had come into a safe harbour. Glenys was not conceited, but she knew the children loved her, and was determined that they should never have cause to think she did not love them too. She would leave a letter for Nain and Taid, explaining that she had gone in order that Sam might stay, and she would write to them regularly, but would never put an address on her correspondence. And anyway, she told herself, she had been a teacher for long enough, to know that children’s memories are not long. She could imagine Mo, in a year’s time, saying innocently; ‘Miss Trent? Who’s that? Oh, I know, it’s the new lady at the post office . . .’