‘The Squire would only let her stay on the farm if she were married – so that the tenancy agreement could be in a man’s name. So – she and Matthew were married all quicklike. I dun’t know to this day how they managed it without any of us knowing.’

‘You – you didn’t know!’ Kate was appalled.

‘No. I didn’t know till Matthew moved his things from – from this very house.’

‘He lived here? In this cottage?’

Beth smiled sadly. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘He was born here and lived here with his parents till they both died. Then, for a while, he lived on his own. Of course, Grannie Harris next door and me saw he was all right for food and his washing . . .’

‘Where did you live?’

‘Next door.’ Beth indicated the adjacent cottage on the other side, where her father, Dan Hanley, the coastguard, still lived.

‘And Mester Eland?’

Beth’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘On – on a boat on the river bank.’ She glanced out of the cottage window to the place on the river bank where the huge hulk of a boat had once rested, shored up on poles and sleepers, half-in, half-out of the water.

Vague pictures, fleeting and disjointed, were flitting through Kate’s mind. Memories from childhood that she could glimpse in her mind but not quite hold on to and understand.

‘Did Matthew marry her to get the farm, then?’

Beth shook her head. ‘No – no, I don’t believe he understood what – what ya mam was up to.’

Kate’s head jerked up. She felt the coolness of Beth’s deep sigh brush her cheek. ‘He wanted her – lusted after her and she – she took advantage of that to get him to marry her so she could get the farm.’

‘You – you mean it was her fault?’

‘In a way but – but try not to be too hard on her, Katie. It’s very difficult for us to understand how someone – a young girl of eighteen or so – must have felt with no family, no home. Ask yourself what you would have done in the same circumstances.’

Kate stared up at Beth in surprise. ‘You’re – you’re taking her side.’

‘I’m – trying to tell you it fairly. But it’s not easy for me.’

‘So – all this – all that happened – that’s why you never speak to each other. You – you must be very bitter?’

‘Oh yes, I’m bitter all right.’ Beth’s mouth tightened and for a moment there was a flash of fire in her dark brown eyes, but it was gone in a moment as she sighed and added, ‘It’s funny though, if things had been different – we might have been friends, yar mam and me.’ A wry smile twisted the corner of her mouth. ‘And despite everything, we always seem to come together if one of us has trouble.’

‘How – how d’ya mean?’