She smiles and hobbles around. He returns inside to put away the broom and the buckets. When he comes to leave, he expects to see Gwen by the back door, but instead she has carried on past the house and is heading towards the gate and the stand from where the milk lorry collects the full churns each morning. He pauses in the doorway of the milking parlour watching her. There is something determined about the set of her shoulders as she labours her way down the yard with more speed than he has seen her use since her accident – with more speed than he thinks is wise. She is hurrying, that is clear, but her purpose is not.

She stops at the gatepost and wriggles a brick clear from the top, slipping something into the gap before swiftly replacing it. As she turns back, she catches sight of him watching her. Though she is too far away for him to clearly see her expression, Jack detects a tell-tale stiffening in her stance.

She drops her chin to her chest then resumes her return to the house.

Jim has Jack labouring for the rest of the day. The morning is spent cutting thistles from a fallow field that is to be cultivated, pressed into action by the local War Agricultural Executive Committee.

‘If this war comes, the WarAg will make us plough up every damn acre we have, because it’ll be crops the country will be crying out for, not meat. They’ll be wanting every inch of land working as hard as it can if the country is to feed itself and not rely on imports – and you can’t say it’s doing that if it’s just fattening up a few lambs for the Sunday roast. I can see us having to plough up every meadow before next year, if Chamberlain can’t work things out with that bloody German,’ Jim says, whipping his thistling hook through the spiky clumps before them with a dexterity and skill that Jack envies – his own wielding of the unfamiliar blade is decidedly cack-handed. ‘Can’t believe it’s the same bloody lot as last time,’ the farmer grumbles.

When the thistles have been thwarted they change tools, and Jim shows him how to cut back the spurting hedge that now encroaches upon the field, earning himself the chuntering disapproval of an evicted wren who flits to a nearby hazel to berate them.