‘I went out there with the Squire. His eldest son had been killed and he was trying to find his grave. I – went to try to . . . She stopped, glanced swiftly at Kate and then dropped her gaze again. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘When I saw their land . . .’ Esther’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if she were not here in her warm kitchen in 1940 but out on the battlefields of France in 1919, ‘absolutely devastated, gouged with trenches as far as you could see. Not a living thing for mile after mile – not a blade of grass; trees, blackened and dead; no birds – only rotting bodies and rats!’ She shook her head, murmuring, ‘Those poor folk, they can only just have recovered from all that, and now it’s happening to them again.’ She raised her eyes and met Kate’s gaze steadily. ‘Oh, I understand all right, Kate, just how you feel. I saw for myself what all our men fought for – and died for – last time. It’s just that—’ She reached out with fingers that shook slightly to clasp Kate’s hands. ‘You’re my daughter and I – I don’t want you to be in danger . . .’

Into Kate’s mind came the words ‘you’d still have Lilian’ but they remained unspoken.

Already, Kate thought, she had said more than enough to hurt her mother.

Esther levered herself up from the table. ‘Well, I’spose ya’ll do what ya like, whatever I say. But ya’d best go in an’ tell ya grandad what you intend.’

‘Oh heck!’

The two women looked at each other and the comical expression upon Kate’s face at the thought of having to tell her grandfather what she intended, made them both burst out laughing.

Twenty

‘Grandad?’ Kate opened the door of the front room quietly. Are you awake?’ she asked softly.

‘Aye, lass. Ah’m alius awake for you. Come in, come in, dun’t stand there dithering in the doorway. There’s a draught!’

Kate smiled, stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She sat on a footstool at her grandfather’s feet and smiled up at him.

Will Benson now lived at Brumbys’ Farm. In the winter of 1936 he had caught influenza and had developed severe bronchitis. Kate smiled as she remembered how it had happened. All the time Will had been really ill, Esther or Jonathan, often with Kate along too when she had been at home, had driven in the pony and trap every day to the village of Suddaby, some thirteen miles inland.

‘You’re too old to be going about on the front of that carrier’s cart any longer,’ Esther had railed. ‘You’re just a stubborn old man who won’t realize it’s more than time he retired.’

‘Shall you retire from the farm, girl, specially now you own it, just ’cos you get old?’

‘That’s different . . .’