Hugh stood towering over her as his heart pounded with panic. She looked in a bad way and the ground beneath her head was rapidly turning scarlet red. Her arm was at an unnatural angle too, and he didn’t think she was breathing. God damn it!

Swiping the sweat from his forehead on the back of his sleeve, he tried to steady the rhythm of his heart. If she was dead, he would be tried for murder and he didn’t fancy ending his life dangling from a hangman’s noose. What should he do? He couldn’t go into town without the money he owed. The bit about the man he owed it to being a bad lot had been true at least. It never occurred to him to run for help – he only cared about himself. But what to do? What to do?

And then it came to him. He’d get as far away from here as he could with whatever money he had in his pocket, and then first thing in the morning he would enlist in the Army and be shipped abroad. Rather that than be hanged. Rummaging in his pocket with shaking fingers he withdrew the contents and hastily counted the coins there. Not a great deal but he’d go straight to the railway station and get on the first train that pulled in. Then without giving his mother another glance he set off as fast as his legs would take him, leaving her lying there in a pool of blood.

‘I’m home, pet,’ George called wearily as he arrived at the cottage that evening. He was later than usual as he’d stayed behind to do some of the jobs that Ben would normally have done, and now all he wanted was a nice hot cup of tea and his bed. He was surprised to find the kitchen empty. Normally the kettle was singing on the hob by the time he got back and Cissie was bustling about the place, but tonight only silence greeted him. He checked the upstairs, thinking that she might have gone up for a lie-down, but the rooms up there were deserted too so he came back into the kitchen and scratched his head. He knew that she had left Treetops some time ago. She should have been home long since.

After filling the kettle he placed it on the range and stood in the window looking for her, but by the time he had measured the tea-leaves into the pot and the kettle had boiled, there was still no sign of her. With a resigned sigh, he lifted the kettle from the range and placed it on the trivet. Perhaps Sunday had called her back for something. Oh well. There was only one way to find out, so he set off back the way he had just come.

‘No, I haven’t seen her since she left after we’d got the children tucked into bed,’ Sunday told him with a worried frown. ‘Perhaps she just decided to go for a walk?’