There is little conversation to be had during the evening meal. The silence is punctured by cutlery scraping on the stoneware plates. Gwen picks listlessly at her food. Nora is still smarting from her earlier reprimand and Tom is tetchy from having been cooped up all day.

‘Let’s go to the pictures,’ she says suddenly. ‘Tom? What do you say? A special treat. Nora, wouldn’t you like to come? Muriel, you’ll join us, won’t you?’ And in a fit of spontaneity, she abandons her meal and hurries to retrieve the evening paper from the letterbox. She leafs through its pages as she walks back from the hall, eager now to be away for the evening, to not be sitting in the house, watching the hands of the clock move ever closer to an appointment she has no intention of keeping.

She spreads the paper on the table and runs her finger down the local listings.

‘Here we are, a Charles Hawtrey comedy – wouldn’t that be fun, Tom? We can catch the bus into town and back. What do you say, shall we go?’ Even to her ears, she sounds desperate.

‘Yes, yes, all right, a trip to the pictures would be very nice,’ Muriel admits.

‘Nora?’ She does not particularly want the girl’s company, but she is afraid that if she fails to turn up to Allingham’s rendezvous he might come to the house and she does not want anyone to be in if he does.

Nora purses her lips and for a horrible moment Gwen fears she is going to decline the invitation, but the Land Girl has never been one to sulk, and to Gwen’s relief she now shrugs her shoulders with a wry smile. ‘Go on then, why not?’

Reassured that Gordon Allingham will now be thwarted should he come to call, Gwen sinks back into her chair and picks up her cutlery. She finds her appetite fully restored.

It is almost dark when they return. They catch the last bus home and climb down when it stops in the village. They walk through the deserted streets together, Tom riding on Gwen’s back. They pause at Muriel’s picket gate and watch her safely into her cottage before carrying on their way. They talk of the film and the joyous return of streetlights and gaiety, and they talk of the work that must be done in the morning. But there is no mention of the charming man on the motorbike.

Gwen puts Tom to bed as Nora boils milk for cocoa and then, without bothering to change, assumes the task of shutting up the farm for the night.