She charged them little, and they slept in bunks in the barn. Rose provided breakfast for them, and each morning in October she was in the kitchen by the big white cooker grilling bacon, frying eggs, huge and fertile. Gerald found it hard to stay away.

The baby, a daughter, was born at home on Christmas Eve. Gerald visited the following day, his arms filled with presents for them both. In the kitchen was a decorated tree, and Rose’s older children drinking beer with their friends. They seemed to take their mother’s confinement for granted and hardly acknowledged him as he walked through on his way to the bedroom. There the baby lay on her back in a wooden cradle, her arms and fingers moving, anemone-like towards the ceiling. Gerald expected Rose to be different, changed by the experience of giving birth, but she was just the same. She was sitting up in bed knitting. Outside it was almost dark, and the room was warm and softly lit. She smiled at him and opened the presents excitedly, so the wrapping was scattered over the big bed and fell onto the floor. The baby was named Matilda.

At first that winter was blissful. There were weeks of clear days with sunshine and cold mornings. Occasionally there was a little frost. There were no birdwatchers in the bunk-house, and Gerald had Rose to himself. She never mentioned Matilda’s father, and he never asked. She seemed to have no contact with him. There were no unexpected visitors at the cottage. Sometimes Gerald dreamed that he might ask Rose to marry him, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was not only the fear of rejection which prevented him from proposing to her. It was the honesty which told him that such a marriage could never work. Rose was so cluttered and untidy. When her older children came home from college, the house was full of their noisy music and loud, confident voices. It was a relief then to go back to his own home, a clean modern house on an estate in Heanor.

Yet still he went back to her, and for a while he was content with her company. As the days grew longer, his mood changed, and the aching depression and frustration returned. He picked quarrels with her and stayed away from the cottage for days. She seemed not to notice his churlishness, though, and when he made an excuse to go to Porthkennan, she greeted him with her usual good temper.