A pride only matched by the sight of the entire village coming together to help with the harvest. He remembered how his father had loved it. Walking the vines, stopping to talk to each and every volunteer, joining in with the picking as well as the driving. He frowned as he remembered his mother hating every minute of it and rarely trying to hide her displeasure. And suddenly he felt sad. Sad that his father had loved something so much and that the two people closest to him, his wife and son, had so clearly not. Until Lily. It dawned on him that he was happy – and so very thankful – that his father had found someone to share the love and passion for the vines with.

‘Reckon that’ll do, don’t you?’

John appeared at his shoulder pointing to where the two opposing lines of pickers had met in the middle of the vines.

‘Honestly, John, I’m deferring to you in all matters wine-related,’ he said, more than happy to leave it in the expert’s capable hands.

‘I don’t know, you didn’t do too badly, Hawkesbury.’

‘High praise!’ Henry exclaimed with a smile. ‘But I’m taking it.’

John slapped him on his back and it really did feel like high praise. ‘Right, we’ll handle the last of the pick-ups, and if we can get the must into the presser in the next hour or so, we should be able to get it into the vats for the primary fermentation before midnight.’

‘Right, I’ll bring the last loads over to the distillery,’ Henry said, flicking the ATV keys around his fingers, suddenly feeling a bit at a loss in the face of the forty or so volunteers who were now beginning to mill around, satisfied with all their hard work.

‘Lily’ll see to them,’ John added before heading off to the barn.

As he walked towards where the last of John’s staff were chucking the final buckets into the trailer, he recognized faces from his past. PC Ellis giving him a brief salute and a knowing smile, Mrs Whittaker issuing a raised eyebrow and an imperious hair toss – not that her perfectly coiffured mass of permed curls moved an inch – Henry was convinced that both of them were seeing little Father Christmases. The beefy owner of the Hope and Anchor with his thick arm thrown around his overly petite wife, both rosy-cheeked and smiling. Even a few of the men from the trawlers were there, but none of them had cast sneery side glances in his direction once since the beginning of the day.