He had obviously been close to his parents and loved them very much. That, combined with his love of the landscape and former admittance that he still ‘felt the pull of the place’, made me wonder why he had never pushed to be more involved with it all.

He had told me that it fell to Charlie as eldest to take over and that he had wanted to get away after the crash, but surely if he’d stuck around, he would have eventually come to terms with driving by the crash site?

But then, that was easy for me to say, wasn’t it? Because I hadn’t been subjected to the horrors that he had seen that night or lost the love of my life to the person who had been the cause of it.

‘Joe . . .’

‘Sorry, Tess,’ he said, cutting me off, ‘but I think we should get back. I don’t much like the look of that horizon.’

I followed his line of sight, but everything looked fine to me.

*

Clearly, Joe had a far more experienced weather eye than I did, because within an hour the weather had changed completely. Where there had been blue sky, there were now rolling dark clouds which threatened rain, thunder and hail, and they had been quickly blown in by a roaring wind.

‘Do you think we should at least try to get the dog out from under here?’ Joe asked Charlie as he set the table in the kitchen for what I considered a very early dinner. When I mentioned it, the brothers had responded that it wasn’t all that early when you’d been on the go since dawn.

The farmhouse was absolutely beautiful, although a little run down, and the kitchen was an interesting mix of magazine-style country touches combined with practical functionality. The large scrubbed pine table looked as though it had been in situ for as long as the house had stood and it was that which Bruce was cowering under with his tail between his legs and his muzzle between his front paws.

‘No,’ said Charlie as a flash lit up the room and what sounded like a handful of gravel was dashed against the window. ‘He’s fine where he is.’

Joe didn’t look impressed, so I slipped off the sofa on to the floor where I was level with the dog. He might have been a pain in the backside, but I hated seeing him so cowed. Spotting me, he slid out on his belly and thrust his nose in my lap. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf.

‘I’ll keep him over here if you like,’ I said, trying to dissipate the tension I could feel building and which wouldn’t help Bruce’s nerves at all.