‘Why?’ The girl’s candid blue eyes demanded an explanation.

‘Because . . . Oh I can’t explain it all now.’

‘Tell me!’

‘No, not now.’ Her mother was firm as she said again, ‘When you’re older, I’ll explain everything.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

Ella Hilton was an intelligent child with an understanding and perception which sometimes exceeded her years. But at this moment she was beginning to feel, disturbingly, that there was a great deal she did not know or understand about her own family. As soon as another thought came into her head, it came out of her mouth. ‘That old man in the coffin? Your grandfather . . .’

‘He was always so good to me,’ Kate murmured, tears in her voice. She seemed to be thinking aloud, not really talking to Ella so much as reminiscing to herself.

Ella tugged at her mother’s sleeve. ‘He’s not – he can’t be – that old woman’s father.’

Kate stopped and stared at her daughter. ‘Old woman . . .?’ Laughter bubbled up inside Kate, banishing for a moment her melancholy memories. Child-like, she clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh Ella, she’d box your ears if she heard you call her that. My mother, Esther Godfrey, an old woman!’

Ella was laughing too, dancing around her mother in the lane. She watched Kate take a deep breath, revelling in the breeze ruffling her long, shoulder-length auburn hair; saw her close her eyes and lift her face to the sky, a small smile curving her mouth.

‘Oh, it’s so good to be back,’ Kate murmured. ‘I hadn’t realised just how much I missed this place.’

Ella’s laughter died. She was suddenly, uncomfortably, aware that back here in the place she still called ‘home’, her mother did not share her feeling of belonging in the city. To Ella, these wide open spaces and glowering grey skies were awesome and lonely.

‘I don’t like it here,’ she muttered as Kate pushed open the farmyard gate and two sheepdogs near the back door of the house began barking. ‘I don’t like that tiny bedroom I had to sleep in last night. I bumped my head on that sloping ceiling and it was all – all creaky in the night.’

Kate laughed. ‘It’s only the wind. There’s nothing to hurt you.’

‘There was a funny rustling in the roof,’ Ella insisted.

‘Only birds, I expect,’ her mother murmured.

‘Well, I want to go home.’

‘Don’t you want to see Uncle Danny and Aunty Rose again?’ Kate paused, her hand resting on the gate. Even though Ella had never visited Fleethaven Point before, she knew Danny and Rosie Eland. Like Grandpa Godfrey, they visited Kate and her daughter in Lincoln, usually at the beginning of December when they came to the city to do their Christmas shopping. It was a time she looked forward to, when the tiny terraced house was filled with laughter and presents.