‘Ah, it’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ Ted says.

‘Uncle Ted says he’ll buy me a lemonade if you say I can have one, Mummy,’ Tom wheedles, leaning against her legs.

‘Did he now?’ She is forced to shield her eyes from the sinking sun to look at their neighbour.

He offers her a sheepish smile. ‘Well, I had to give him a reason to come back with me – didn’t I, Tom? He’d have been halfway home else.’

Gwen laughs. Ted has been a constant in her life for as long as she can remember. She was only five when he took over the rundown farm next to theirs. He was a young newlywed of twenty-three, green behind the ears but hardworking and ambitious and he soon earnt her father’s respect.

She can still remember him carrying her on his shoulders at harvest time, as he and her father helped each other bring in their corn. She remembers too his grief when tuberculosis claimed his wife and their little boy Henry in 1928, and how he had comforted her and her father when the same greedy disease had drowned her own mother later that year. And four years ago, it was Ted who pulled her away from her father’s cooling corpse when they found him folded over the grain sacks in the barn, his heart having given up the ghost. He had pressed a glass of brandy into her hand as she sat sobbing at the kitchen table waiting for the doctor to arrive, and to this day she is unsure whether it was her father’s sudden demise or her own unfettered grief that had moved him to tears.

In those terrible weeks that followed, Ted had single-handedly saved her home and livelihood. He would arrive in the yard at dawn to milk her herd before dividing the rest of his day working both farms, running himself into the ground to ensure neither was neglected, safeguarding Gwen’s inheritance until she recovered and was able to manage alone.

Without Ted’s sterling efforts, the WarAg would have seized the farm, she knows that for certain, the land and its produce being too precious to squander for the sake of family ties and grief. But through his endeavours, Ted had succeeded in holding them at bay until she was back on her feet, and when she was, he encouraged her to apply for a Land Girl so she could continue to farm the land to its full potential. The few meals she has offered him in return seem paltry payment for his self-sacrifice and kindness, but he is always grateful for them, and his place at her table every Sunday has become a given. Gwen always envisaged her father being Tom’s role model, but since his death Ted has become the closest thing Tom has to a dependable man in his life.