‘Hugo’s here and he’s brought a friend with him,’ she said to Adam, hurrying away from the window and towards the door leading into the hall. ‘If the meat loaf I’ve made for lunch is going to stretch to feed all of us, I’ll need more parsnips and leeks digging up.’

‘Then you’re lucky it’s a Saturday and I’m at home,’ Adam said, as pleased as she was that Hugo was apparently beginning to socialize again, ‘because the ground is as hard as iron.’

‘And bring in some rhubarb,’ Vicky said over her shoulder as she headed towards the front door. ‘I’ll make a crumble.’

Uncaring that the March day was bitterly cold she went out of the house without a coat, running to meet her beloved son as if she were a young girl and not a woman who had just celebrated her fifty-sixth birthday.

‘How long are you home for?’ she asked as he swung her off her feet, hugging her close. ‘Twenty-four hours, or forty-eight?’

‘Forty-eight. How’s Grandpa?’

‘He’s frailer than he was the last time you were home, but he’s still fiercely alert. He and Emily Elise have become jigsaw fanatics.’

Tony Walsh watched their joyous reunion in barely disguised astonishment. At the air base, Hugo never let emotion of any kind show. The general opinion was that he was a cold fish and it was rumoured that perhaps the reason for his taciturnity was that his wife, of whom he never spoke, had run off with either a Yank or a milkman.

‘Tony, I’d like you to meet my mother. Ma, Tony Walsh, my navigator.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Remer.’ The sight of flawless skin, golden silver-flecked hair and eyes that were a deep cornflower blue, stunned Tony. It was simply something he had never expected. ‘You’ve got a lovely place here. When we turned in at the drive I thought we were going to have to pay to enter.’

Compliments about her home always pleased Vicky and she laughed, liking the look of Hugo’s friend. ‘Thank you. Spring is always a good time of year at Shuttleworth Hall. The daffodils have been increasing for years now. Wait until you see them at the rear of the house. They stretch in a golden sea almost down to the river. And my name isn’t Mrs Remer, it’s Mrs Priestley. Though I’d prefer it if you used my Christian name, which is Vicky.’

‘My pleasure, Vicky,’ Tony said, relaxing into the spirit of the occasion and beginning to realize that the weekend was going to be far more enjoyable than he’d anticipated.

A pretty red-headed girl erupted from the house. ‘And this is Emily Elise,’ Vicky said. ‘She’s Hugo’s younger sister.’

Emily Elise covered the yards between herself and Hugo like lightning. ‘You rotter!’ she said, hurling herself into his arms. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home? I’ve arranged to go to the flicks this afternoon with a friend from school, though I won’t be going now. I shall cry off. It’s a Jimmy Stewart film, and as I’m not that mad about him it’s no great loss.’