As she delves deeper, she comes across a large blanket-wrapped bundle and a memory tugs. She brings the paraffin lamp closer and, setting it down, crouches in its puddle of gold. As the blanket falls away, the light catches on a beautifully crafted cradle in darkly polished oak and her heart forgets to beat.

Her fingers trail over the scrolls and flowers and the carved lamb gambolling on its side. She sits heavily on the brick floor, unable to breathe, as she recalls finding this very cradle all those years ago, wrapped in the same blanket, on the camp bed in the tack room – the parting gift of a husband she could not bring herself to love.

To everyone’s delight the weather has turned fair. There is talk of an Indian summer, with cloudless blue skies and unseasonable heat. It is perfect weather to bring in the farm’s final hay crop, a late mowing of rye grass and red clover, rich feed for the cattle over winter.

Gwen and Nora are in Worm Meadow. It is only five acres, steeply banked and of awkward shape, so they have decided to cut it by hand. The warm air vibrates with a blackbird’s mellow trill, and the repetitive chorus of a song thrush is interspersed with the pip pip pip of a redwing newly arrived for the winter. Their scythes, whispering through the dry grass and clover, add to the symphony with a rhythmic shush shush shush.

Tom charges down the field margins, squatting periodically to cup butterflies in his hot hands – admirals and peacocks and cabbage whites – but with little success. He accepts his failures with good grace and rises to chase them instead, but soon he catches sight of the swallows slicing through the air like Spitfires as they depart for foreign shores, and he spreads his arms to join them.

Gwen pauses to wipe the sweat from her forehead and peel her shirt from her back, where it sticks to her skin like gummed paper. The drab canopies of the spinney behind her lift and fall, sighing with placid satisfaction at the soothing ministrations of the much-needed breeze. A fleeting movement catches Gwen’s eye and she twists to follow it. From the shadow of the wood, a cock pheasant shouts his throaty alarm. For some reason she tenses, troubled by a strange sense of foreboding though she cannot think why. It turns out to be little more than a darting squirrel; she feels a profound sense of relief as it scampers up the tree to its drey, the messy ball of twigs and moss just visible through the thinning leaves.