‘So, what do you hope to do down here?’

‘Anything. Anything that pays.’ Jack meets Jim’s eye for the first time. ‘I’m fit, keen, hard-working. I can turn my hand to most things … I do a bit of woodwork too, I like that …’ he admits, lowering his gaze.

Jim nods. He pours the tea through a strainer into one of the mugs and, without asking, adds milk from a small jug near the sink and two teaspoons of sugar. He sets it before Jack. Somewhere outside, a cockerel crows.

‘Do you have other family?’ Jack asks at last. He is reluctant to pick up his tea, fearful that now there is nothing to distract him, the farmer might at last notice his battered hands.

Jim leans against the drainer, nursing his own mug. ‘No, no it’s only Gwen and me. Her mother died when she was just a girl. There hasn’t been anyone else.’

‘Oh, I thought …’ Jack trails off, embarrassed that his tongue has run away with him. Jim takes his meaning and laughs.

‘What, Muriel? God, no! I’d be lost without her, she’s practically raised Gwen as her own, but no, no. Her own husband passed away nearly twelve months ago now. Stan was gassed in the war and never really recovered. Hit her hard at the time, but she’s doing well now. Speak of the devil …’ he says, as the woman’s voice carries his name lightly into the room. He places the mug down on the table and asks Jack to excuse him. Jack listens to the stairs’ creak.

Alone, he lifts his hands from his lap and wraps them around the mug. The tea is still too hot and as he blows across its top, his breath rippling its surface, he is vaguely aware of the shuffling steps on the easing boards above him. The gingham curtain at the open window flutters on an invasive breeze sweetly scented by the jasmine growing so vibrantly outside that the white, star-shaped flowers press against the glass.

Jack thinks of the place he has left behind, the grotty back-to-backs within spitting distance of the yards, their alleys the playground of children with sunken cheeks and dead eyes and hand-me-down clothes. He thinks of his own kitchen with its nicotine-stained ceiling and the chipped saucer on the table overflowing with fag ash and the concertinaed butts left by his mother and her gentleman callers.