She would tuck her arm into Gerald’s, and they would walk down the lane between the overgrown hedges and out onto the rocky path to the headland. The walks over the short grass to the point filled him with joy and hope. For days he would believe that she might come to care for him. Then the magic would wear off, and he would be left with a searing frustration, because nothing ever developed from the friendship. On one of the evenings at Porthkennan he had tried to kiss her. Past the bend in the lane, so they could not be seen from the cottage, he had pulled her clumsily towards him. With a little laugh she had broken away; then she ran down the lane, leaving a trail of her footprints in the moonlight. At the coast path she turned and called to him, “ Come on, Gerald, you old slowcoach,” in her old tone, as if nothing had happened. They continued their walk to the headland.

When she told him she was pregnant, he was shattered. He had no idea she had a relationship with anyone else. He thought he was the only man she confided in. When she told him, they were sitting in the kitchen of her cottage. She was perched on the thick windowsill, staring out of the open window down the valley. It was May, and all the trees were in blossom.

“Who is the father?” Gerald demanded. He might have been a Victorian patriarch.

“That’s not important,” she said, seeming not to realise how upset he was. “Not really. I wanted to be a mother again before it’s too late.”

It was true that it was almost too late. One of the mysteries of her attraction was that she made no pretence of her age. Her dark hair was streaked at the front with grey, and her hands were rough and lined like an old woman’s hands. She had teenage children from a marriage which had finished years before.

Rose Pengelly made her living by letting her converted farm buildings to families in the summer and to birdwatchers in the spring and autumn. The house was usually chaotic, but she seemed not to mind the visitors’ wandering in, disturbing her work. She also designed knitwear and had developed a thriving mail order business. She made bright exotic jerseys with motifs of birds and butterflies. Often she wore her own creations, and as she grew larger, she favoured long shapeless cardigans and fringed shawls. She looked like an Indian squaw. Throughout her pregnancy she continued to work. She drove an old blue minivan and took cones of coloured wool and patterns to the women in the neighbourhood who knitted for her. By then it was autumn, and when Gerald came to the house, the strands of wool strung around the kitchen were orange, yellow, and brown. The birdwatchers came as usual, too.