She had gone to the fishmonger’s before she went to the railway station. They ate fish only when she had been into town, which she didn’t do often when there was just herself and Richard in the house; when it was just the two of them she tended to make do with what she could get in the village. Now that she had everyone home, she cooked with care. Fish pie. Family supper. Once the work started meals would be functional and hurried, left a long time keeping warm in the bottom of the oven or even taken out to the field. You used to make this, Mum, when we came home from school. Did I? Yes, I suppose I did. I’d make it beforehand, so I could just heat it up when we’d driven home. She had forgotten. It was one of those rituals, of coming home from school, when the things that were done filled in for all that had not been said, the missing and the separation. This was like the days when they came home from school for the summer. July weather, two boys home, the summer holidays stretching ahead. Raspberries from the garden, only now they would have lost their flavour a bit after the rain. Meringues and cream. They had always liked her meringues, and they were so easy to make, overnight in the Aga, these too ready before the holidays began. When the meal was over and they were watching television she took the dog out. The dog snuffled off into the dark and she followed. There was no moon. The night was dank, still. This stillness was no good for Richard. It was warmth and wind, drying air, that Richard needed. She walked to the border before the hedge, where there was only a thin scent from the tobacco plants. They needed warmth to bring out the scent. She had planted them for warm nights, aromatic flowers to draw moths in the dusk. She looked back on the façade, so formal and regular with the wisteria trained across it. There were lights in the sash windows all along, in the hall and in the sitting room downstairs, and on the landing above and in the bedrooms to each side.

Such a pretty façade. The setting for the illusion that was to have been her work. Here, Charlie, here we are, a happy family, two sons, my darling, one dark, one fair, like ourselves, and our fields stretching about us. Not quite all the land you can see from here, because the skies and the horizons are big. But enough. And we shall have a beautiful garden with hedges tall about it. And how they will love this place. They will be rooted here, in this piece of land which has been in the family for so long, in this place and in the past.