‘She’ll not be far.’ Danny tried to calm his wife. ‘I’ll go and look outside and ask Ethan if he’s seen her.’ He reached for the kitchen door, while Archie looked out of the kitchen window and spotted a horse and riders galloping like the wind, up the lane to Crummock.

‘Don’t bother going to look for either Ethan or Rosie. Come and look here. God only knows where they’ve been, but they are in a hell of a hurry to get back home.’ Archie sat down in the chair next to the unlit fire and looked up at his son’s scowling face.

‘I’ll bloody kill him! What does he think he’s doing, taking one of the horses and putting our Rosie up behind him? You should never have brought him here, Father. Isabelle said he was more bother than he was worth.’ Danny made it to the back door and opened it wide.

‘Now just think on. Rosie was the one who said she was too ill to join us today. They’ve obviously planned their day out together. Besides, they might not have been far.’ Archie tried to talk some sense into his son. It was no good that he was just blaming Ethan.

‘The fire’s not been stoked since the minute we left this house, nothing has been touched – she’s been out with him all day. By God, they are both going to tell me what they’ve been up to,’ Danny swore as he closed the door behind him.

Sensing the tension within the house, baby Georgina started wailing, and Harriet sent Ben to his room as her eyes filled up with tears at the thought that her daughter had lied to her.

‘She’s at that age, Harriet. She’s not your little lass any more, she’s nearly a grown woman,’ Archie said, as he crumpled newspaper into the dead hearth and added a few dry kindling sticks, before lighting the fire with a match. ‘She’ll have been alright, don’t you worry. Ethan is not the devil that Isabelle makes him out to be. There will be an explanation.’ Archie watched as the kindling sticks took hold, and then gently added pieces of coal until a good blaze roared.

‘She’s still our little girl, she’s only sixteen. Danny will kill Ethan.’ Harriet consoled Georgina with a biscuit from the tin above the fire, and sat her down on the pegged rug next to her grandfather.