Now, this morning, when Jonathan had still not appeared, she was venting her frustration on her innocent daughter.

‘There, there, Katie, Mamma didn’t mean it.’

She sighed, picked up her daughter and carried her outside the back door and round to the front of the house to sit on the grass in the sunshine. Taking the child on to her knee, her arms about her, her cheek resting against Kate’s hair, Esther gave her mind over to the problem of Danny Eland.

She should have guessed it would happen. He was only behaving just like the brother to Kate that he was. She prayed that they should never find out about their relationship to each other.

‘Boys are like that, Katie,’ she explained, stroking the little girl’s glowing curls, remembering her own boy cousins pulling their sisters’ hair and her own if they had half a chance. ‘You’ll have to learn to stick up for yourself, darling.’ As I had to do, she thought. For a moment the life she had led in her childhood came flooding back – the taunts of the other children about her bastardy, her aunt’s harsh tongue and rougher hand. Only for her gentle-natured Uncle George had Esther any kindly memories.

‘When you go to school there’ll be lots of boys like Danny Eland. You’ll have to learn to put up with being teased.’

Kate looked up at her mother. She had stopped crying now, though salty lines still streaked her face. ‘I don’t think I want to go to school, Mamma.’

Esther smiled down at her. ‘You’ll like it when you get there. You’ll learn all sorts of things – how to read and do sums and . . .’

‘But I don’t want to be teased – I don’t like being teased.’

‘No,’ Esther murmured. ‘No one does, but if you greet their taunts with a smile and a cheeky answer back, they’ll soon give up. You see, they’re only trying to upset you, to make you cry. If you don’t cry but laugh at them instead, they’ll give up.’

Kate seemed thoughtful, solemnly analysing her mother’s advice in a peculiarly old-fashioned way for one so young.

‘When do I start school? Danny says he’s going next year.’

Esther sighed. Danny, Danny, Danny – always Danny Eland. ‘About the same time, I think, though you’re a bit younger than him. I’ll have to see the teacher.’

‘But Danny and me – we’ll go to the same school? We’ll be together?’

‘Yes,’ Esther was obliged to tell her. ‘You’ll be going to the same school as Danny Eland.’

Kate scrambled up from her mother’s knee and ran across the grass towards the yard and the gate into the lane.

‘Kate. Kate, where are you going?’

The child shouted back over her shoulder as she skipped across the cinders, ‘To tell Danny I’m going to school with him.’