It was raining in the south also when they went back to the farm. In the south rain was different, Kumiko saw, not a force any more, only rain. Claire said that it had been fine most of the time they had been gone. It had started to rain just a day or two before. Grey rain. The fields a dull matt gold because of the wet. More rain waiting in the sky in darker bands of cloud. Colour flat, shapes flat, lines horizontal. Like somebody’s painting she had seen once, only she couldn’t think whose.

So good to have you back, Claire was saying. Was it lovely there? Did you have good weather? She had picked them up at the station. She had not known until she saw them how happy she would be to have them back. They were driving home through the lanes. She drove a little carelessly, looking across to Kumiko sitting in the front, glancing back to Jonny behind, chattering because they were quiet, hoping to see from their faces that they had had a happy time together. Like when Jonny was a boy and she used to pick him up from somewhere, hoping things had gone well.

It’s been beautiful here till now, she said. Just till this last couple of days. Richard’s fretting of course. This weather’s not good for him. He was all ready to get the combine out before this rain.

There were puddles along the road, the hedges sagging, the nettles on the verges limp with the moisture. She had to brake suddenly at a bend when they met a car coming too fast from the other direction, stop and reverse to where there was width in the road to let the other car pass. Yet she went on talking, feeling the need to talk.

Do you know, we came off the road just there once, Charlie and I?

She remembered how happy two people could be, but how unhappy also.

Just here, into a snowdrift. That was in the dreadful winter of 1947. You can’t imagine how high the drifts were, looking at it all now. We had to leave the car and walk home.

You never told us that before, Mum.

Didn’t I?