James ran along the grass, his hoop and stick beside him. She smiled as she watched him stop and lift the stick in the air, as if brandishing a sword, and the hoop wend its way, wobbling, in front of him. He ran after it, stooped down to pick it up then set it off once more, sprinting beside it. Lizzie was slower, she was skipping with the new skipping ropes with beautiful wooden handles she had been given for Christmas. She’d been thrilled when she had unwrapped them. This was only the second time she had been out with it as the weather had been so bad and then of course there was the accident. Ann shifted the glasses back onto the lamppost: there was no one there now, the figure had gone. She continued to watch the children at play, wishing she could be out with them, but it was unseemly for a lady in mourning to do anything other than stay at home and grieve. For months. Besides, even if she were not in mourning, it would be frowned upon for a lady to run along the Green with a skipping rope.

She sighed, remembering her own childhood up the glen. All the children would take the washing lines down when the mothers had gone to fetch water from the spring and use them as skipping ropes. They raced along the road, skipping as fast as they could, until the women came back down the hill, tight-lipped and scowling, demanding the ropes back. Most of the children would get a skelp around the lug; James and Lizzie would not even know what a skelp or a lug was.

Her children were about to come home to a table laid formally with china cups and saucers and silver teapots, with hot scones served on silver ashets. When she was a child, after playing in the filthy streets, she would go into her mother’s tiny croft, which was invariably cold, and find little more than a chipped cup of sour milk if her mother had been to beg some milk from Bessie who worked at the big house. She shivered at the memory.

What was it Blind Mattie had said about her past? Do not ignore it. But why ever not? She lived in a different world now. She looked around the room to remind herself that this was now where she belonged. There was the tall oak grandfather clock, handmade by the best clockmaker in the city. There was the crystal decanter filled with the finest Madeira wine, with cut glasses on the silver tray. There was the chandelier, resplendent and sparkling above her even in the dim afternoon light. She turned back to the window and saw the children running across the Green towards home, Miss Graham struggling along behind them, clutching James’s hoop and stick under her ample arms.

* * *