Ellen was preparing food for the evening meal. She and the children had been out walking; it had been a lovely bright morning, and although the odours of the tanning and glue factories had overridden any scents of spring in St Mary’s graveyard, there were traces of what was to come. The hidden snowdrops were just beginning to fade, the tips of their petals turning brown, but sweet violets, lesser celandine and golden aconites turned their faces up to the sky, and pale clusters of primroses nestled beneath hedges, with early shoots of pussy willow promising that winter was almost over.

The children had played hide and seek round some of the old tombstones while Ellen watched them carefully to make sure they didn’t damage anything, and when Thomas valiantly tried to climb a tall monolith she had lifted him down. There were newer graves too, and she had explained to the children that these were places where people were put to rest after they had died.

Sarah and Mary were both quiet for a few minutes whilst Thomas ran about collecting dead leaves and patting them into piles.

‘We should have brought our little hen and made her a grave,’ Mary said, and Sarah added a question: where had she been put to rest?

Ellen cleared her throat. ‘I put her near ’river bank,’ she parried, and lamely said, ‘I thought she’d be happy there with ’other creatures.’

‘Like ducks and gulls and water voles and things?’ Sarah asked, and Ellen, still feeling sad over Jim, couldn’t bring herself to explain the reality. What am I doing, a born and bred countrywoman who should know better, feeding my children myths instead of truth?

She was thinking of this as she put the pan of vegetables on to the fire and placed the guard round it, for she couldn’t risk Thomas leaning over to have a look in the pan. She gave a jump when someone knocked on the outer door. The children raced to the window to see who it was, and Sarah turned to her mother and said, ‘It’s a lady and she’s in a little trap with such a pretty pony. I’m going to have one like that when I’m big.’

Ellen couldn’t think who it might be; she took off her apron and straightened her cap and went into the hall, with the children following her. It was indeed a lady, modestly dressed, but better turned out than anyone she knew. She dipped her knee out of force of habit. ‘Good day, ma’am’, she said.

‘Good day to you. Is it Mrs Randell?’ The visitor, older than herself, perhaps in her early thirties, held the pony on a long rein. ‘I’m Bella Lucan, Dr Lucan’s wife.’ She smiled in such a friendly way that Ellen smiled back.