Sometimes it was hard to understand who anyone was. This auntie kept coming back to Galloway, taking him on trips, telling him all about people in the brown photographs until he fell asleep with her chunnering. Mam sniffed a lot when she arrived and plumped up the cushions just as she did when the Minister called after church and she had to hide the Sunday Post out of sight quickly. But Carrick Shore was their special picnic spot and Gus liked his auntie’s company sometimes. No one else would play French cricket with a piece of driftwood or spot oyster catchers, rock pipits, seagulls and bobbing sand birds for his I Spy Club.

As the afternoon wore on the sky darkened and an anvil of heavy cloud over the bay threatened an outburst. It was time to turn back eastwards again to Brigg Farm, home for evening milking. He wished he had a proper bicycle not a trike. Trikes were for babies and the wheels kept sticking in the gritty tracks, making his legs tired.

*

This picnic outing marked the turning point of each visit. The days would run quickly downhill after that. Netta watched Gus bending over his collection of shells and thought of herself at that age on the same shoreline, watching her mother painting, her wispy red hair fading outwards at the sides, hunched over her sketching or looking up to capture the brightness of the beautiful scene.

Griseley seemed so far away, with its dark stone dykes and tall chimneys, sooty mills amongst grey fells where time dragged. While in Yorkshire she yearned for this place. Now, her time here was ebbing fast, this rationed time. Netta remembered that she was here for a purpose.

It was time to make demands again. She must not go back to Yorkshire empty-handed this time. Don’t forget your New Year’s resolution. You can do it! was the vow she had made to herself a week ago. Now there were only a few days left to execute the mission but courage was failing her as it always did.

*

The next day it poured down, heavy driving rain blown in from the sea lashing the grey walls of the farmhouse. Netta made herself useful mending Gus’s torn trews and fixing buttons to his shirts. She could relax if there was a thimble on her finger and a needle in her hand. Peg was baking in the kitchen, listening to the wireless, not in a talking mood. Counting the days, no doubt, until this visit ended. Gus had gone to play at his friend’s farm, out of their hair.