Joe didn’t begrudge her this time with the old man, but it hurt, all the same. Finding out that Barbara wasn’t his daughter but Geoffrey’s had pained, but only momentarily, for the thought flew out as fast as it had flown in, with no time to roost in his heart.

There had been no point in keeping the place on after Geoffrey died. He couldn’t bring himself to move into the house, and the caravan no longer felt like home. The farm would tick over, but Joe wasn’t sure for how long. He had twinges of arthritis, and what the doctor called bursitis, but, in truth, his heart wasn’t in it anymore. Without Geoffrey, what was the point?

Once he heard Dora’s story too, the farm was too heavy a burden to carry.

He got a good price for it. Learned, later, that the new owner planned to build a house on the dell in the upper field, all glass and white walls. It would have a grand view, right enough, with the ocean all the way round, the skies above and the shore below. Perhaps the new owner loved the birds. Joe’d taken his binoculars with him into the home, sat most days in the conservatory watching them. The home was in town, but all manner of tits and finches, gulls and cormorants came into its gardens.

Joe offered the farm to Barbara before he sold it.

‘It’s yours, rightly,’ he said. ‘Seeing that you’re Geoffrey’s girl.’

‘What would I want with a farm?’

She’d moved to London, to be with her mother. Now they did new-fangled tests to find the true parent. He’d seen it on the television. The police used it to catch criminals. All they needed was a hair, or a bit of spittle. They didn’t need to, in her case, though they did it anyway. She had the likeness of Geoffrey when he was younger. He could see it now. No wonder Geoffrey had thought she was Margaret. They had been the spit of each other. Joe’d made a will, left Barbara what remained of his money after he’d paid for the care here, and his funeral.

She’d been ill, Dora, after Geoffrey died. Off her rocker. They had words for it these days. Soldiers got it, in Vietnam, combat fatigue. Joe had never known it in a woman. Well, there you go. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Barbara said there was a lot of talk about it now. She’d had it too, as if she had inherited Dora’s trauma and lived it all over again. Joe wondered if he hadn’t had a touch of it, in his time, for his soul had died in the war, and wasn’t that much the same thing?