Marion stood silent. Then she put a hand on Hilda’s as it squeezed the dough. Her thoughts collected, she dared an unusual expression.

‘Hilda, keep your memories. Go over them again and again in your mind. Remember everything you and Dick ever did, ever said. It will be bitter tears for you but it is richer than forgetting.’ It was with great emotion that Marion delivered herself of these irreligious opinions, and Hilda looked up again into Marion’s eyes.

‘Yes, it is,’ she whispered.

Marion pressed her hand again. ‘You’re not doing the bread any good, squeezing it like that,’ she said to break the emotional spell.

Hilda, half smiling, collected up the bits of dough, and Marion stepped back to the wheelbarrow where Alice had been quietly lounging, waving the stick of purple loosestrife to and fro. The heavy clouds were breaking and the sun came out as Marion trundled the wheelbarrow out from under the gloom of the oak on to the Green. She saw Milly coming up from the stream with a yoke on her shoulders with two buckets of water hanging from it. Much as she would have liked to, there was no way that Marion could avoid her. Milly bent down, releasing the yoke and standing the buckets on the path.

‘Saw you talking to our Black Cloud,’ she said with a short guffaw as Marion approached.

‘Is she really a black cloud?’ Marion asked, hating these conflicting views in her heart but in no mood for argument. ‘She’s still shocked, can’t believe it yet. It takes time you know. He’s not been dead a month.’

‘It’s like having a black cloud come over the sun,’ sniffed Milly. ‘Always makes you feel in the wrong when you’ve done nothing, with that moody freckly face around. You hardly get a civil word.’

‘She seems to work hard enough,’ said Marion, trying to steer Milly to a brighter view. Milly conceded this with more sniffs. ‘How are the children?’ Marion asked.

‘They’re no trouble,’ Milly admitted, then searching for a cause for complaint, added, ‘except it’s all extra mouths to feed. Magda keeps them under her thumb and that keeps Magda out of my way,’ Milly guffawed at her own wit. ‘I never liked that red hair – hardly natural. Your little ‘un walking yet?’

Marion said she had been walking for almost a year.

‘Time he hardened his feet,’ Milly grumbled. ‘Still, the more he trots about the more trouble he’ll get into.’

Marion said it was a girl but Milly did not bother with such details.

‘Going to the mill?’ she asked. ‘Well, I must get back to old Black Misery. Try the patience of an angel, she would, with her silence and dreary ways. Real nasty it is, takes your spirit away to have that gloom around all the time. Want a drink?’ Milly waved at the buckets. ‘Take it while it’s offered.’

Marion scooped up a palmful of water and drank it. It was marvellously cold. She scooped up another and dextrously poured it into Alice’s mouth. Alice coughed and said, ‘More.’