Cover

Part One

One

LINCOLNSHIRE, JANUARY 1953

‘So this is ya bastard.’

Ella Hilton scowled at the old woman standing in the doorway, hands on hips, looking down at her. Beside her, she heard her mother draw in a deep breath and the hand, resting on her shoulder, stiffened as Kate snapped back, ‘Well, if that’s the way you greet your granddaughter the first time you meet her, Mam, we’ll turn right round and be off back the way we came.’

Shocked, Ella gaped up at her mother; Kate Hilton rarely lost her temper, but she was angry now.

The woman still stood there, barring their way into the house. ‘I told you ten years ago I didn’t want you here, or ya bastard, and I still don’t. Nothing’s changed.’

The young girl clenched her fists. Even at ten years old, Ella knew what the name meant; she had heard it often enough shouted after her in the playground.

‘Oh I see,’ Kate was saying. ‘So I can’t even come back for my grandad’s funeral? Well, Mam, no one’s going to stop me; not even you. We’ll stay at Rookery Farm . . .’

‘With the Elands? You’ll do no such thing. I’ll not have you staying there – with them.’

Ella felt the anger drain out of her mother now as Kate said, sadly, ‘The family feud still going on, is it? Can’t you ever forget or forgive anyone, Mam?’

With a sniff, the older woman turned away. Sighing, her mother gave Ella a gentle push, but the girl held on to the door frame, refusing to enter. ‘No, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go home. I don’t like it here and . . .’ Her wide eyes followed the rigid back of the woman and the unspoken words hung in the air, ‘. . . and I don’t like her.’

Kate, once more the gentle mother Ella knew, said, ‘It’s all right. Come along,’ and she urged the reluctant child through the back scullery and into the warm kitchen of the farmhouse.

‘Sit in the chair near the range, Ella, and warm your hands. Poor child’s perished,’ Kate explained. ‘The train was freezing. I thought me dad might have met us at the station.’

The woman thumped her rolling pin down on to the pastry. ‘Ya dad’s too busy with the ploughing to be meeting trains.’

Ella perched herself on the wooden seat of the spindly chair at one side of the huge black range. Logs crackled in the grate and the kettle on the hob gently puffed steam from its spout. The warmth hit her cold cheeks, making them burn. Flexing her white fingers, she stretched out her hands towards the glow. Tiredness swept over her in waves; like the waves she had heard distantly as they had walked along the lonely lane following the line of sand-dunes all the way from the town to this remote farmhouse.