He was acting differently about it now, but in those weeks he’d been constructing it, he’d gone into that ruminative state where she could tell he was surveying his regrets. It was clear that Mr Hollis had been in his thoughts. Now and then, she’d bring him out a cup of tea while he was working at the sawhorse. Later on, she’d come out and the tea would be untouched among the cuts of timber, and she’d spot him wandering the furthest reaches of the farm, a scythe hooked on his shoulder and a bundle of pulled weeds inside a basket. ‘All kinds sprouting down there by the windbreak,’ he’d say, returning. ‘Bindweed, by the looks of it. We’ve got to stay on top of that or it’ll creep back in.’ She’d allowed him to go on like this a while, because she knew it was his way of settling his mind. But once the greenhouse had been finished, he’d begun another project and they hadn’t broached the matter with each other. It had taken her another week to notice the old man’s initials in the eave on the north side, delicately carved and painted over. Some time soon, she had to tell him that she’d seen it. Not all failures were mistakes. If he wanted to rebuild this place with her, she’d do it. She’d go with him to the borstals, set the competitions up again, select the drawings, wait for their apprentices to come – and she’d make the same decisions as before. Because their reasons had been sound and they’d not changed.

‘Well,’ she said now, ‘it’s producing the best tomatoes in the whole of Surrey. We could go into the greenhouse business.’

‘It might just come to that, my love.’

This seemed to prickle Charlie. He scraped his chair legs closer to the table, took a hefty bite out of his sandwich. ‘Well –’ he started. ‘I was hoping that your offer was still standing. I’ve been saving up, but I can see it’s going to take me till I’m fifty, working in the shop to have enough. I need to get away from Borough Green. It’s going to be the end of me.’ He wouldn’t look at them. ‘I never told you this, but there were scholarships last year that I put in for – nine of them, to be precise, and they all turned me down, so I just thought –’ He trailed off, picking at the crusts. She’d forgotten his distaste for them. ‘I’m sorry to be asking. I was going to raise it with you on the phone, but – I don’t know – I thought it would be better, face to face, seeing as I’ve told you no so many times before. And I just thought that with the baby on the way, you wouldn’t want the –’

Arthur raised his hand and then he landed it abruptly, softly, on the table. ‘Charlie, that’s enough.’ He shoved his chair back, stood and went to take the jar of mustard from her hands. ‘However much you need, it’s yours. We made that promise to you and we meant it. I’ll be honest with you: we’re not in our best position, savings-wise, but that’s my fault and I can fix it. I’ll make sure you have the money when you need it. Understood?’ He gripped the jar under his stump, twisted at the lid until it gave and put it on the counter. ‘Where are you thinking of applying? North or south?’