The weeks and months dragged on. Christmas was a hollow sham for Esther. She had hoped that she and Kate might still be invited to the Harrises’ as they had been on the two previous Christmases since Matthew had gone to war.

‘It’ll be company for the bairn being with my lot and I expect you could do with the company, lass,’ Ma Harris had said that first year in her warm, all-embracing way.

This year, no invitation came.

Since their quarrel Ma Harris had never come near Brumbys’ Farm, though she still allowed Enid to help Esther with the dairy work and to look after Kate. Even the younger boys helped about the farm and Enid still took Kate to her home. By what Esther could gather from Kate’s chatter, Ma treated the child no differently.

It’s just her mother she’s no time for now, Esther admitted ruefully.

She had thought that even Ma might relent in her coldness towards her at Christmas, if only for the child’s sake, but on Christmas Eve Kate hung her stocking on the kitchen mantelpiece and went alone to her room, whilst Esther sat in front of the range and thought of Jonathan. There was a goose cooking slowly in the oven and holly decorated the living room. There were mince pies and puddings in the pantry and only the two of them to share the festive fare.

How stupid and useless it all seemed, yet she had to try, she was obliged to try, for Kate.

But all she wanted was to go down to the beach, even in the cold of the winter, to their special hollow and try to relive those stolen hours in Jonathan’s arms.

Esther was relieved when Christmas was over. In the first few days of the New Year the weather had suddenly turned bitterly cold and, still struggling alone with the ploughing, Esther was in a state of near exhaustion each evening.

‘Esther, Esther!’

From the depths of fatigue she was roused by a loud banging on the back door and someone calling her name. She must have fallen asleep on the rug in front of the range, for the fire had gone out and the ashes were cold.

She shivered and pulled herself to her feet, staggering almost drunkenly with the tiredness that never seemed to leave her now, to open the door.

Robert Eland stood there in the darkness. ‘Esther, I’m sorry – but one of Tom Willoughby’s stacks is afire and the others are in danger. We need everyone we can get to help put it out. Will you come?’

‘Oh – of course,’ she hesitated, ‘but I must make sure Kate’s all right first.’