Henry Pollock, the bald and breathy family accountant, had taken Ed aside after his father’s burial and said: ‘If you want South Burlington, son, it’s all yours. You only have to say the word.’

He remembered glancing across towards Season, who had been standing a little way away from the family crowd in her black veil and her black suit like a beautiful and elegant raven; and he remembered thinking – she knows that Pollock’s offering me the farm, and she knows that I’m going to have to say yes. Why doesn’t she come across and support me? Why doesn’t she take my arm and say it’s all right?

Well, he knew now why she hadn’t, he thought to himself, as Willard drove the Jeep across the pale reaches of ripening wheat. He sure knew now.

Willard switched on the Jeep’s headlights. ‘The worst of it’s just about a half-mile up ahead, right over there, to the left. Do you mind if I take her staight across the wheat?’

‘If you have to,’ Ed told him. His father had always gone apoplectic with fury if he found tyre-tracks across the fields, and Ed had tried to keep the same rule about respecting the crops. There was only one way to run a farm like South Burlington, and that was efficient and hard, and with no favours to anyone. He sat uncomfortably in his seat, while Willard veered off the road and drove through the tall, rustling crops.

‘I don’t make a habit of this, Ed, I can tell you,’ said Willard, as if he sensed his employer’s discomfort.

Ed didn’t answer, and for a short while there was nothing but the whining sound of the Jeep’s transmission, the pattering of wheat ears on the bodywork and the occasional tap of a moth on the windshield. Ed thought: if you could drive a car into the ocean, this is what it would be like.

Willard was leaning forward in his seat now and straining his eyes to see where he was. Eventually, a white marker stick appeared through the twilight and a flashlight was waved at them. Willard turned the Jeep in a semi-circle and stopped it. They climbed out into the warm, breezy night.

‘Hi, Mr Hardesty,’ said the man with the flashlight. ‘Glad you could make it so quick.’

‘Hi, Jack,’ said Ed. ‘Willard just caught me going into supper. What goes on here?’