‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he crows, drawing out a chair from the kitchen table. He sits down to undo the laces of his best shoes. ‘He’s a chancer, that lad. He would have broken your heart, Gwen – there would have been no future in it. He’s a bloody cad. To think he was here not that long ago asking you out riding, when he must have already been seeing that girl. You can’t tell me that’s the behaviour of a gentleman.’ Laces loose, he sits back in his chair. ‘Well, I tell you now, I pity that poor girl. She’s welcome to him – she’ll find out soon enough what a bounder he is.’

Gwen is at the sink washing up the crockery that has been left to languish on the drainer. Her father’s words break the rhythm of her movements, the dish mop momentarily idle in her hand. Gathering herself, she rinses off the final plate and picks up the tea towel. She dries it briskly, before slotting it into the dresser.

‘I’d better go and collect the eggs,’ she says. The door latch clatters and she is gone.

Jim glances across at Jack and shakes his head as he prises off his shoes. ‘I suppose she’s still carrying a torch for him, but in time she’ll come to realise the lucky escape she’s had.’

But Jack wonders if she will.

Later that evening, as the sinking sun stains the horizon gold, Gwen tacks up Arthur outside the stable block. Jim watches her tighten the horse’s girth as he assists Jack in the making of a new gate for Top Field. Jack is also alert to her presence, but he keeps his focus on the saw biting through the wooden bar braced before him. A muscle in his jaw flexes as Gwen rides from the yard.

When she fails to return by twilight, Jim becomes anxious. They had, as usual, retreated to the sitting room at the end of the day’s labours and for a while Jim was distracted by the newspaper, but now he rises from his chair and crosses to the window, where the curtains are yet to be drawn against the failing light. The clock strikes nine.

‘Where the hell is she?’ he mutters.

Jack has also been monitoring the passing time with growing concern. He suspects Gwen’s absence is the consequence of her earlier telephone call to Gordon, but he knows he cannot use this information to allay the farmer’s fears.

‘Perhaps she’s had a fall,’ Jim says, turning away from the window.

‘It’s been a lovely evening, perhaps she just went further than usual.’