Out of the woods, Verity arched her back, tilting her face to the sun. She heard the low buzz of aircraft and ducked. Laughing at herself, she straightened and looked up. It was a silver plane, low in the sky, not one she recognised.

The plane drew its black course through the blue, cloudless sky, south-west, away from the sea. She watched it go, imagining the pilot inside peering down at the dark-haired girl in the long skirt standing in the field of barley. She twirled round, her skirt flung out wide and her arms stretched out. When it had gone, she swayed and blinked at the waving sheaves and remembered she needed to hurry home. Mrs Timms, their housekeeper, was baking a special cake, supposedly to fortify her for the imminent school exams, but really in honour of their mother. It was bound to be as bland as all the others but she saved their sugar rations and put some effort in, which was much more than anyone else did now Mother was gone. Mrs Timms was the only one left now from the old staff. It was wrong that Arthur hadn’t been invited to the tea, but it was just too awkward. If she was being completely honest, it was a relief for him not to be there, to avoid any evasions about their relationship. And to avoid a repeat of the way he’d hovered on the edge of the funeral tea a year ago, not family but more than a friend. She had made her choice. It was more important to persuade her father to allow her to take the Oxford entrance than to make a point about Arthur. In the woods, sharing wet, hoppy mouths, and pushing each other over like they used to do when they were younger, she was both there and not there. It had felt like they were children and yet they weren’t children any more.

She could hear Peter’s voice. Arthur? Are you joking? Behind the patronising tone would be something else too. She couldn’t bear her brother’s confusion, or worse, revulsion, at what he would consider wrong. But she and Arthur were not brother and sister any more; they had long ceased to be that. If only she knew what they were now. She didn’t want to decide. He was just her Arthur and had always been there. She conjured a picture of her coming home to him one holiday from Oxford and telling him she’d found a lover. It gave her a kind of exquisite pain to imagine the expression on his face. They would make ferocious goodbye-love. Though what that actually entailed she had no idea.