‘Hello, Nell, my love. I can see summat’s the matter. Come in and tell me,’ said Betty, opening her cottage door wide. ‘Reg is out the back already with Fred Hardcastle, working on the rota for the fête, so we’ll have some peace and privacy.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Travers. It’s Mum and it’s also our Gina …’ Ellen told the whole sorry tale so far as she knew it, leaving out nothing. Betty was a good listener and didn’t interrupt.

‘… so you see, Mum could really do with some cheering up and a bit of company this morning – someone she knows she can trust,’ finished Ellen.

‘I’ll go over now and see her.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Travers. I hardly like to leave her alone, she’s been that upset. After all Mum has had to put up with, with Dad, you’d have thought that Gina could at least have tried to behave herself.’

‘Aye, you’re right there, Nell. But your father and Gina are surprisingly alike, for all they didn’t get on. Still, best to see what Gina has to say when she turns up.’

‘Do you think she will turn up, Mrs Travers?’

‘She will if she’s run away, Nell. She can’t run away for ever. Now you get off up to the Hall and I’ll go and tell Reg where I’m going and then I’ll follow you up the road. Have courage, my love.’

‘Aye, Mrs Travers. Thank you, I’ll try.’

Ellen and Tom worked silently all morning at separate tasks. It was warm, a good day for gardening, and neither of them wished to talk about the awful events of the previous day, yet what else was there to talk about when it filled their every thought?

Early on, they heard the familiar low roar of Mr Stellion’s car and the crunch of the gravel as he drove out, then Ellen was weeding along the front when he returned with Diana in the passenger seat. The car disappeared round to the courtyard and the house remained quiet. It felt to Ellen as if someone had died.

All the time she worked, she tried to think what it was that had hovered on the edge of her memory the previous day. If only she had the slightest clue where Gina had gone she would go and look for her, she vowed.

She remembered what Betty Travers had said: Your father and Gina are surprisingly alike. Dad was in a lunatic asylum – was Gina mad as well?

Suddenly she knew what she had been racking her brains to remember. It was that weird afternoon last year when Gina had said something about a magic spell and stopped her picking that strange little bottle out of the stone wall on the farm; how Gina had looked so odd and … mad. For a moment she had been quite frightening.