‘Eh, lass, if it weren’t the wrong thing to say on such a sad occasion, I’d tell you that you look right bonny!’

Esther had bought the outfit the previous day on a rare visit to the town. She had pondered long and hard, biting her lip in indecision, counting her savings coin by coin, trying to justify the expense. She still kept her money in the box Sam had left under the bed. Over the years, little by little, she had added to the hoard. Every penny had been hard earned, every coin represented a tiny achievement on her part. She had scrimped on new clothes for herself, making do and mending, as Ma Harris put it. As for Kate’s dresses, Esther made most of them herself, sitting up far into the night stitching tiny neat seams by hand as her aunt had taught her until her eyes ached in the flickering lamplight.

There was quite a sum now and it gave Esther a feeling of security.

Now, as if in honour of the woman who, Esther was obliged to acknowledge, had taught her all the practical capabilities she possessed, she had spent a small part of her savings on a mourning outfit to attend her aunt’s funeral.

‘I ain’t never spent any of this money – not even when we bought the ’osses,’ she told Matthew as she pushed the box back under the bed. ‘I’ve been saving it all these years. Even when it were tough in the war, I managed not to dip into it. I want to hang on to it just in case we gets a bad harvest, or – or . . .’

Matthew was sitting on the edge of the bed to pull his boots on. ‘For that rainy day, eh, Esther? Dun’t feel you have to – explain it to me,’ he added and then hesitated, as if feeling suddenly awkward. ‘If anyone deserves a new dress – I reckon it’s you.’ He paused again as he still did when striving to put sentences together. ‘Pity it’s got to be black though.’

Esther rose from crouching down to shove the box back into its hiding place, and stood looking down at him. He was a strange mixture of moods and temper, this husband of hers, and it wasn’t all down to the shell-shock either.

One moment he was laughing and jovial, swinging Kate up into his arms now that daily he was growing stronger, or kicking a ball about with Danny and the next he would be growling in anger, raging against the unfairness of his life as he saw it. His mood swings were like the see-saw that Kate and Danny had made in the meadow across the fallen trunk of a tree.

Still Matthew made no effort to work. Today though, Esther had deliberately asked him to try to do the milking for her. ‘Enid’ll be over later, but try, Matthew, won’t you?’