‘God, I don’t know. There could be lots of reasons, Ver.’ He paused and she watched him feed his horse. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing. But I have enough to worry about burying half of our cattle. And Father is no help. He comes out here every day supposedly to help, but he can’t face it. He’s back in the study by lunch time, drinking himself into a stupor. The whole herd might have to go, Ver, the Friesians, all of them. The grazing fields are still under water. If it stays submerged for much longer, it’ll be worthless, sterile like the other fields, and there’ll be nothing for them to graze on in the summer.’

They were silent. There was nothing to say. It would break their father to lose the herd he’d built up since the Thirties, and Peter too. All his plans for expansion had been sunk.

Stupidly, tears pricked at her eyes and fell silently onto Gypsy’s mane, trickling into the hair. She could feel Peter tense but she didn’t care.

‘Don’t do that, Ver. Look, he’s probably helping with the relief effort. Everyone’s flat out with it. Anyway,’ he said with a deep breath, ‘I don’t know what you got yourself mixed up in but it’s not worth it.’

‘You know absolutely nothing,’ she said, and turned her back on him.

‘Nor do you!’ Peter shouted at her back. But she kept walking, determined not to turn round.

Against her reason, she imagined Jack standing at the rear of the house, casually leaning against the brick wall. She walked slowly back to the house to keep the possibility alive. It had happened so quickly. In the village hall, that night, he had been there, his back to her, his copper hair bright in the electric light, his arm around Peter, and he’d turned and winked at her. That was it. She couldn’t even remember the last thing he’d said to her. Why hadn’t she gone back? She should have found him and held onto him.

Arriving at the farmhouse, there was a light on in the kitchen and her heart jumped in hope, but of course it was Mrs Timms.

*

Light-headed with lack of sleep, Arthur surveyed the shop. Everything up to four feet had been covered in a layer of mud and sand, and the marks remained despite his mother’s efforts to remove them. There was a musty, rotten smell in the air that pervaded the whole town and made his head reel with nausea. But the smell was so much stronger in here, a sour odour of decay like that of a decomposing animal.