As the years flew by, one merging into the next, the days filled with school work, homework and work on the farm, Ella at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, still felt as if Esther treated her like a child; a child who must be protected and guarded and kept in ignorance.

One day, I’ll find out what all the mystery is, Ella promised herself, just as one day I’ll go back to Lincoln. One day, I’ll go back home.

Part Two

Sixteen

LINCOLNSHIRE, 1958

When the O level results came out in the August of 1958, Rob had not achieved the grades he needed to get into the farm institute.

‘I’ll have to do retakes,’ he told Ella dolefully. ‘It means staying on at school another whole year.’

‘Poor old Bumpkin!’ Ella teased him. ‘Never mind, it’ll soon go.’

‘It’s all right for you, Townie!’ he grumbled. ‘You’re a clever-clogs.’

‘You’ll just have to work harder, that’s all. Not so much “gallivanting”, as my gran calls it, eh?’

He smiled ruefully. ‘That’s what me dad ses.’

At sixteen, Rob was several inches taller than Ella, having shot up in the last year so that Rosie despaired of him – for ever growing out of his clothes. ‘I reckon he keeps standing in the muck heap,’ Danny would tease, ‘to mek hissen grow.’ Already his son was half a head taller than Danny, but almost as broad-shouldered and strong.

‘Eh, but he’ll brek a few hearts,’ Rosie would say fondly, her eyes following her son lovingly. Behind her back, Danny and his mother, Grandma Beth Eland, would exchange a look, but not a word was ever spoken.

‘Are they very disappointed?’ Ella asked him now.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t seem to be. I think Mum’s quite relieved really that her little boy isn’t leaving home yet.’

Despite what Rob said, the autumn term in the fifth year at the grammar school was hard work for Ella. O levels now loomed for her, too, the following June, and decisions would have to be made about her future. Should she leave school the next summer or stay on to do A levels and maybe go on to university?

‘University? Huh!’ Her grandmother would sniff each time the subject was raised. ‘What good’s a fancy education for a girl? Won’t help you milk the cows and harvest the corn, will it?’

‘But Aunty Lilian went. You didn’t stop her,’ Ella would argue, standing toe to toe with her grandmother. At almost sixteen, she was now slightly taller than Esther. Still boyishly slim, Ella had changed little in appearance in the five and a half years she had lived at Brumbys’ Farm, except to grow taller. Her short hair curled tightly and her skin, tanned to a smooth light brown from helping on the farm, was devoid of the make-up with which her schoolmates experimented. Only the birthmark marred her complexion.