‘To get rid of it.’ She spits the words out. ‘Even told me where to go. Some woman in Helvedon who’s helped him out before apparently.’ She cannot hide her rancour.

‘A backstreet abortion? That’s what he’s told you to do?’

‘What other choice is there? I can hardly have it, can I? I can hardly have a baby.’

She reaches out to steady herself on the wagon, resting her forehead against its painted wooden side.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I’ll tell you what you’re not going to do.’ Jack moves towards her but holds himself back. ‘You’re not going to some backstreet abortionist to have some old biddy stick you with a bloody knitting needle and leave you hoping for the best.’

The brutality of his words brings Gwen round. His passion lays him bare and he finds he cannot stand her scrutiny. He stifles a guttural curse and works out his agitation by pacing away from her, shuddering breaths wracking his frame.

‘Do you want to get rid of it? The bairn. Is that what you want?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You could have the bairn and give it up.’

She ejects a bitter laugh. ‘Even if I wanted to, how can I do that? You know how word gets about here. Everyone would know …’

‘You could go away to have it.’

‘What? Say I’ve gone to stay with some maiden aunt in the next county and then come back a discreet time later? Do you not think everyone will guess? There is no such thing as idle gossip around here, Jack, just avid speculation and a love of scandal. I couldn’t possibly subject Dad to that, the shame would kill him! Without Gordon’s ring on my finger I have no choice but to get rid of it.’

‘No, Gwen, I can’t let you do that.’

‘Jack, it is nothing to do with you—’

‘I can’t lose you the way I lost Jenny!’

He does not mean to shout. The silence that follows is deafening.

‘Jenny?’ Gwen drills him with the piercing look of a prosecutor interrogating a witness. ‘Who’s Jenny?’

‘My sister.’ He drags his hand across his face. ‘Jenny was my sister.’ He tries to shut out the images that flash in his mind’s eye. His stomach grips at the rusty scent of blood, even though he knows it is only his cruel imagination at play. He finds himself compelled to cross to the barn’s open doors, to fill his lungs with fresh air.

‘Jack …’