How to tell her, tell anyone. From the moment Charles Barber appeared, he had fixed on her. That very first evening, their eyes met and she seemed to see in his intense gaze all the interest and understanding that she craved. He seemed a soul who shared her own ideals and longings to such an extent that she was overcome by him.

And her father saw Charles Barber as a younger version of himself – a young man burning with fervour for his faith who had fallen into a crisis of doubt, needing the help of an older man who carried the same scars but had endured. He also, Margaret’s instincts had told her, needed the consolation and love of a woman. It was as if he had reached out to her and in doing so had healed her – she was another wounded soul.

‘D’you know,’ Annie had teased, that first evening after Charles Barber had visited, ‘you’ve got roses in your cheeks all of a sudden. Now – I wonder why that might be?’

Margaret had looked in the glass in their bedroom. It was true. All this time throughout her illness her face had worn a sickly pallor. Now she saw that a glow had begun in her which she could feel through her body, arising from a sense of love and attention. From the mirror looked a beautiful young woman, her hair coiled back modestly, eyes wide and alive instead of dulled as they had been for so long before. She felt as if it was the first time she had seen herself for at least two years and what she saw was a woman who had had a flame lit inside her.

Charles shared her father’s ministry and the two men would sit talking for hours at a time. Every other Sunday it was Charles, not William, who stood in the high pulpit of the Zion chapel, preaching to the villagers and farmers who rose early on a Sunday and rode to the village, stabling their horses behind the church. He preached with a quiet passion and urgency, and the sound of it seemed to vibrate through her. He had the power to make people attend on his every word. One or two people began to bring notebooks to jot down his phrases or references. For them, as well as for herself, there was a stunning difference between her father – feared, respected, perhaps distantly loved – and Charles. Her father preached austerely, sometimes dramatically, of sin and damnation. Charles’s sermons resonated with charismatic passion for the love of God.

‘This is the driving purpose of my life!’ He did not have to raise his voice: he had them all attendant, his eyes rolling ceiling-wards as if he could see to something beyond this humble valley church. ‘To proclaim the grace and the love of our Saviour Jesus Christ!’