‘Have you read it?’ asked Winnie.

‘Yes. On the whole, I preferred Silas Marner.’

‘I acted in a production of that, once.’

‘Playing Effie?’

‘Not a chance. My character was called “Woman with Firewood”.’

Noel laughed, for the first time in what felt to him like a couple of decades, and Winnie thought what a nice, odd boy he was, with a face that would never be handsome but which was nonetheless appealing; watchful, yet droll. ‘So you must have visited Green Shutters when Miss Simpkin lived there?’

‘I lived there with her,’ said Noel. ‘From the age of four. Here it is.’ He stopped by one of the newer graves, hard by the fence that separated the cemetery from Waterlow Park and overhung by elms, their brushwood bursting between the chestnut stakes. Winnie started to say something, and then exclaimed, and crouched beside the headstone to examine it more closely. Carved into the drab granite was the inscription:

MATILDA SIMPKIN

Spinster of this Parish

October 21st 1870 – December 7th 1939

A virtuous woman is above rubies

But stencilled in black paint underneath, in very large letters, were the words:

FAITH AND DARING

‘DR’ had been added in the same lettering in front of Mattie’s name.

‘Did you do that?’ asked Winnie.

‘No. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, and it’s renewed every now and again. I always imagine that it must be one of Mattie’s old comrades, sneaking in at night.’

‘I think that’s wonderful. Where does the quote come from? I don’t mean “above rubies” – the other one.’

‘It’s from the last verse of “March of the Women”. “Life, strife, these two are one, Naught can ye win but by faith and daring.”’

‘I remember it!’ said Winnie. ‘We used to sing it in the Amazons – there was a line about laughing, wasn’t there?’

‘“Firm in reliance,”’ recited Noel, with measured rhythm, ‘“laugh a defiance, laugh in hope, for sure is the end—”’

Winnie’s firm contralto picked up the song, joined for the last few words by Noel’s more tentative baritone. ‘“March, march, many as one. Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend!” Oh my goodness,’ said Winnie, grinning. ‘I can almost smell the woodsmoke. Those campfires! We were such a motley bunch …’

Noel bent to pull away some dead couch-grass from around the headstone.

‘Do you remember someone called Ida Pearse?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

‘Yes. Yes, she was one of the older girls – a sort of leader. All of us little ones thought she was marvellous – like an ideal big sister. Do you know her, then?’

He looked back towards his task. ‘I know of her,’ he said.

‘I liked her especially because she was very good at quietly snubbing my twin sister when she got above herself. In fact, I remember early on that Miss Simpkin – Dr Simpkin – had to tell people off for being snobbish about the fact Ida was her char, but after a while no one cared in the slightest about what Ida did for a job, because it was obvious she was capable of anything.’