‘What have you come to London for?’ I asked. ‘You said you had business here.’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘Though I couldn’t have left the town without seeing you. I’ve come for a meeting of a society of corporations. There’s a few other places trying to farm the land together, and we all meet together every six months or so to see how things are going. There’s talk of a newspaper as well. Wideacre is one of the more successful corporations. There’s lots who want to know how we do it. I’m to give a speech to a public meeting tonight.’

I nodded, rather impressed. ‘What will you say?’ I asked.

Will smiled. ‘You’d not like it,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them how Wideacre suffered most harshly from enclosures – that was your grandmother, Beatrice Lacey. Then the estate went into ruin after the riot. Then I’ll tell them about the rebuilding of the estate and running it as a sharing scheme with the landlord during your ma’s lifetime, when Ralph Megson was manager. And then I’ll tell them that when the estate was run by the Trust we set up the corporation.’

‘And what will you tell them about me?’ I asked.

Will’s face was grim. ‘I’ll tell them that we don’t know what the future will hold for us,’ he said. ‘That if the new squire chooses to go against us we will see the corporation ruined and we will have to leave and start again elsewhere or accept that we will become again an ordinary poor village.’

‘Leave?’ I said blankly. I had never thought that anyone might one day leave Wideacre. I had never thought of any greater change than that I should have more of a share of the profits, that it should be my decision how the land was to be used.

‘Oh aye,’ Will said. ‘There’s a few who will be there tonight who are thinking of setting up corporations: gentlemen farmers and owners of big factories in the north who want to try their hand at co-operative farming. They’d be glad to have a manager who had done something of the sort before – and made it pay,’ he added with a smile. ‘There’s a few from Acre who’d rather move than be ruled by a landlord again.’ He looked at me sideways with a half-smile. ‘Once you start changes Sarah, you may find they take you further than you meant to go.’

‘Who would stay in Acre if you went?’ I asked.

Will shrugged as if it were not his problem. With a sudden jolt of apprehension I realized that it would indeed not be his problem.