‘Not too sick to go jaunting into town – spending money!’ she finished bitterly.

Ma shook her head. ‘Dun’t be too hard on him. He’s had such a dreadful time,’ Ma pleaded his cause.

Esther opened her mouth to tell Ma Harris about her missing savings and then decided against it. She probably wouldn’t believe it of Matthew.

But Esther did.

It was almost midnight and Esther was still sitting before the dying embers in the range, a shawl huddled about her shoulders, her anger keeping her weary body wide awake and rigidly upright, when she heard the familiar chugging noise of the motor car echoing across the flat fields long before it reached the farmyard gate. Esther pulled herself up, her face set in hard lines of resentment as she opened the back door and went out into the yard. She stood waiting whilst the car swung in at the gate. Instead of stopping to let Matthew alight and then reversing out again, the motor car came right into the middle of the yard before it stopped. The engine died and the headlamps were turned out.

Esther blinked in the sudden blackness, unable to see anything for a few moments after being blinded by the light. Then she saw only one person climbing out of the car – out of the driver’s seat: Matthew.

‘Hello, Esther. Look what I’ve got! Go and get yar bonnet, and I’ll take you for a drive. It’s a car, Esther, I’ve bought a car.’

Matthew must have thought he was back in France under bombardment from the Hun by the time Esther had finished with him.

‘How could you do it? How could you spend all that money on a useless object like a car? Who do you think you are, the next squire? We ain’t in that class, Matthew Hilton. Just because he’s been kind to you since you came back from the war, just because he lost his son and is trying to make up to you because of it, it dun’t put you in his class . . .’

On and on she railed and shouted, stormed and raged.

‘Oh, I know you’ve had it tough in the war – none knows it better than me. But you’re alive – you’re back home with your family. But do you care?’ She flung out her hand to encompass the whole of the land around them. ‘Do you lift a finger to help me? I’ve struggled all that time to keep things going, and looking after you when you came back. You’re getting better now, Matthew. You could help, but you dun’t want to, do ya? You think you’ve done your bit for evermore. Life ain’t stopped, Matthew, it goes on, day after day after day.’