I make a grand performance of feeding my boys. I crack eggs and mix flour and drop twenty scones into the sizzling butter in the pan. They know that drop scones are one of John’s favourites and ask me to save some for him. I try to nod but the muscles at the back of my neck are rock-hard. My back feels brittle, my legs like spindles held too long on the lathe. I miss him. He would have robbed a scone straight out of the pan by now even if it meant burning his fingers.

Good job there’ll be so much to do, the cows must be fed, the chickens too. Matthew is coming to take off the first crop of silage, I’ll get him to stack some bales down by the side of the river field. I’ll have to see to the garden; the vegetables and fruit bushes are all growing wild. I’ll stoke the fire high tonight and watch the flames burst and leap.

I could hear the boys in the river field calling to the cows, hep, hep, hep as they threw the hay into the feeders, the sounds of their father. I hope he wasn’t fretting if he was awake at all. I hope he knew he was on my mind. I hope he knew that a flame of hope blazed once more in my eggshell heart.

I have Eileen down at Johns Farm to comfort me and she’s checking the cupboards to make sure I have enough cups to cater to a wake house ‘if the worst happens’! How I love that reassuring aunt of mine!

The boys were off doing the feeding and other chores while I saw to the hens. A faint breeze ruffled their red feathers as they chooked and scratched about in the handfuls of barley that I was throwing down. Was he feeling lonely up there in Belfast? He would hate the lights inside and outside the hospital; he was such a natural person, almost a part of the land. I could not picture Johns Farm without him.

For years I thought he had resisted electricity because of the cost, but I had come to learn that he liked the softer light and life that comes with gas lamps. I had missed them myself the first time the naked bulb had sprung into life in the kitchen, even though Bridie and me had danced about and declared that this was the only way forward. John had looked sad, like he had given in. He still made us boil the kettle on the range, though, and never buckled on having a toaster.

–  Why do you need a toaster when you have a fire going all day? You can toast all the bread you want.