June 1939

‘Into the house with her!’

The man Jack now knows to be Gwen’s father runs before him, hastening up the steps from the yard to the back of the house, shouting, ‘Muriel,’ before berating the dog that spins around his ankles, barking with excitement. Jack follows in his wake, Gwen’s head lolling lifelessly against his shoulder. She is light in his arms and he realises she is little more than a scrap of a girl; he doubts she is yet twenty.

‘Where the hell did it happen?’

‘Just up the lane a bit, in the bends …’

‘What the devil was she doing up there?’

The farmer’s face creases with confusion, but he instantly dismisses the rhetorical question and urges Jack to hurry while quickening his own pace. By the time Jack reaches the top step, he has disappeared into the house. The back door hangs open and Jack turns his body to angle both himself and Gwen through its frame. He blinks, adjusting to the gloom of the kitchen he has entered, its low ceiling striped with tar-blackened beams that dispel the morning light.

He pauses, unsure where to go. The dog whines at him from the rush mat on the threshold. Faint voices carry back from the front of the house, their rapid modulation betraying increasing anxiety. Jack bounces Gwen into a more secure grip then advances towards them. Mounting the step into the doorway before him, he finds himself in a long narrow strip of hall beside a staircase.

‘Hallo?’ he calls. Gwen stirs in his arms.

The farmer and a middle-aged woman emerge from a doorway to the right, where the hall broadens out at the foot of the stairs. The woman clutches a duster, which she shoves into the front pocket of her floral housecoat, visibly paling at the sight before her. She pushes past the farmer.

‘Can you manage her upstairs?’

‘Just show me where,’ Jack says.

‘Shall I go for the doctor, Muriel?’

‘Let’s have a look at her first, Jim. No point fetching him if she’s only fainted. Can you hear me, Gwen, love? This way,’ she says to Jack, starting up the stairs. ‘Did she hit her head?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jack treads carefully in her wake, ensuring his balance with each step, aware the girl’s father is following close behind. ‘She’d fallen by the time I got to her, but her foot was caught in the stirrup. She was awake, like, but getting dragged about a bit by the horse. It was a delivery van going like the clappers that scared the poor creature, I reckon.’

‘A delivery van?’ Her father makes no effort to contain his fury. ‘Did you catch the company? More’s the bloody pity,’ he spits as Jack shakes his head. ‘I’d give them a piece of my mind, I tell you.’

They reach the landing.