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laddie...’
    Steven’s heart sank. Would have ? What did his father mean by that? A shaft seemed to pierce his heart as he stared at his father’s bowed head. Willowburn was the place he had remembered when he wakened and before he went to sleep, the home he had fought for and dreamed about.
    ‘ Father?’ he prompted with a note of desperation. Slowly his father raised his head, lifted his cap a little to scratch his forehead. It was a habit Steven remembered well. ‘Father?’ he repeated.
    ‘ We-ell…’ Eddy Caraford cleared his throat. ‘I’ve told Fred we need ye lad. I’m not so young as I was. There’s more work than we can manage, especially now the land girls will all be going home. I expect Edna will be leaving now the war is over.’
    ‘ No!’ Fred protested hotly. ‘I told you! I don’t need him here. There’s no place for him. We’ve got a tractor now. Anyway Edna is staying.’
    ‘ None o’ the other girls stayed very long,’ his father reminded him sharply, ‘and they can’t do the work Steven can do.’ Fred flushed. He considered himself the boss and he was not used to his father disagreeing with him these days. He sensed his disapproval and his resentment of Steven increased.
    ‘ If he’s so good at working he can get a job somewhere else, him and his medals and promotions,’ he jeered.
    He talks as though I’m not here, Steven thought and guessed Fred had stated his opinions before.
    ‘ We ought to be keeping more cows and an extra sow or two,’ Eddy said meeting his younger son’s direct blue gaze. ‘You were aye good with animals, Stevie. And I remember you learned to plough when you were only thirteen.’
    ‘ We have the tractor for ploughing now,’ Fred exploded. ‘I’ve stayed here and worked while he was roaming about the world. Willowburn is mine. You said you’d tell the landlord to make me the tenant before he came back.’
    ‘ I can’t tell the landlord anything, I can only ask. It’s out o’ my hands,’ his father said firmly. ‘When I mentioned having a joint tenancy, the land-agent said you needed to prove yourself. He preferred to wait until we knew whether Steven was coming back.’
    ‘ It’s nothing to do with him! You could have persuaded him to put my name on the tenancy if you’d tried,’ Fred argued belligerently.
    ‘ I made you a partner to encourage you to pull your weight, Fred. It hasna done much good so far,’ his father said wearily.
    Steven’s gaze darted from one to the other. He saw the strain in his father’s face. His heart sank. Fred had always been a bully but he never thought he would try bullying their own father, even less that he would succeed. Thinking back, he knew Fred had always expected to get his own way, even when he was quite young. His mother reckoned it was because Fred had lost his own mother when he was a baby and his father had tried to compensate for the loss. Fred had played on that from an early age, manipulating their father to get what he wanted. If there was no place for him at Willowburn, what would he do when he was finally demobbed? Farming was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do. He could have attended Dumfries Academy and had an education as his mother had wanted him to do, but he had longed to work with his father, learning to plough and to sow, to shear the sheep and help with the lambing.
    Even at school, Fred had been lazy and he had never been clever enough to pass for the Academy but he hadn’t wanted his younger brother to have the opportunity either. Steven allowed himself a glimmer of a smile as he remembered it was the one and only time he had welcomed Fred’s support. He grimaced at the memory now. Fred glared at him.
    ‘ You needna smirk. Farming’s not the easy life you had here before the war,’ he said, ‘its bloody hard work and—’
    ‘ Nay lad,’ their father protested, ‘farming was never easy and Stevie aye buckled to and got on with things. He was keener to