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silence and she closed the yard door, more firmly than was necessary, behind her.

Chapter Two
    It was a Friday night. Edward John Todd normally left his weekly boarding school early enough to catch the four o’clock bus from Exeter to Ledburton village where, although it meant making a slight detour, Mr Jack, his lorry laden with tired, muddy land girls, would pick him up and deliver him to his mother, where he would spend the weekend with her at the farm. Today there had been a telephone call from the school matron. Several of the small boys who shared a dormitory with Edward John had developed chickenpox. Although he was not one of them, the matron, who knew about the girls in Alice’s care, suggested that until it was certain that Edward John was not infected it might be sensible for him to remain at the school. Alice had agreed.
    ‘Has anyone ever had chickenpox?’ she asked her girls as they devoured the steak and kidney pie – which, because the butcher had been able to supply only a very small piece of stringy meat and one kidney, consisted mainly of onion, swede and carrot.
    ‘I have,’ Gwennan murmured with her mouth full. ‘You gets spots.’
    ‘And you itch,’ Winnie told them. ‘I ’ad it when I was a nipper. You did too, Marion.’ The two of them had known each other for as long as they could remember, living next-door - but-one in the same grimy street.
    ‘I never!’
    ‘You did too! And your brother Herbert.’
    ‘That were mumps!’
    ‘Mumps too! We all ’ad everything, we did! Mumps, measles, croup and the chickenpox!’
    At ten o’clock Alice, assuming that all of the girls who had gone out that evening had returned together, was surprised, when she went to lock the outer door, to find a latecomer hurrying up the path.
    ‘You only just made it, Evie!’ she laughed. ‘I thought you came in with the others!’ Evie seemed disconcerted and apologised, stammering out some complicated explanation for her separation from the other land girls until Alice interrupted her, assuring her, as she turned the lock in the door, that there was no harm done. She had called goodnight as the girl went quickly up the stairs, after which she thought no more about it, made herself a cup ofcocoa and carried it through the quiet recreation room and into the bed-sitting room which, when he was home from boarding school, she shared with her son. Alice’s room was on the ground floor of the farmhouse and ran the width of the squat, old building. There was a window at each end of it and a small fireplace broke one wall, its breast intruding into the oddly shaped space and suggesting two areas. A pair of threadbare armchairs faced the fireplace and there were divan beds, disguised with rugs and cushions, under each of the windows. Usually, at this time on a Friday night, Edward John would be in his bed, often still reading, sometimes already asleep. Alice had grown to accept his absence from Sunday evenings until late Friday afternoons, but treasured the two nights in each seven when he was with her. Tonight his absence depressed her.
    Although the room was still warm, her fire was almost out. It would have rekindled easily enough if she had thrown a handful of twigs onto the embers, but she did not and sat, sipping the cocoa. She wondered why she was missing Edward John so keenly and realised suddenly that this was not what was lowering her spirits. The ramifications of the news Georgina had confided were, she realised, more serious and more complex than she had at first thought and, worryingly, indirectly involved Alice herself.
    It was not simply that Georgina had sworn her to secrecy but that Christopher’s plan to emigrate was the direct result of his father’s treatment of him, which, although the father might not realise it, was about to drive the sonfrom his home as surely as if he had been banished from it. It was possible, too, that Georgina’s assumption of the basic qualities of care and sympathy