Nothing had happened for years, and then so much had been packed into one day. His first experience of leading a pony, his nostalgic walk back to Hilbegut, the stone lions, the motorcar. All these events were stacked precariously in his mind and right in the middle was a window of honey-coloured light where he kept the memory of Kate.

Freddie sat on his bed in the candlelight and thought about her. The more he stared at the flame, the brighter it shone, growing tall with an edge of sapphire blue. Deep in its orange heart was an inviting archway. In his imagination he stepped through it, the flame was behind him, and he stood alone in a world of dazzling light. It was unlike any place he knew and yet he felt instantly at home there. The light energised and refreshed him, and in the bright core of the blaze was the face of an angel. He tried to see the wings, but the shifting patterns of iridescence were too swift. The eyes of the angel were all the colours of water, their expression imbued with wisdom and patience.

A voice called to him out of the light, its resonance infusing every shimmering strand like the wind blowing through wheat fields. He listened, and let the voice echo through him, through his hair, his skin, and the tips of his fingers.

‘Many years will pass. Be patient. Be true to yourself. And, when the golden bird returns, you will meet her again.’

Drawing a breath from the night air, he returned with a jolt to his candlelit bedroom.

The words soaked into him, but Freddie had no idea what they meant. A golden bird? What golden bird? Mentally he ticked the ones he knew – a yellow hammer, a goldfinch, a canary. None of them fitted. He reached for Granny Barcussy’s nature book which he kept by the bed. It was navy blue with the title embossed in gold letters, and inside was a cornucopia of painted illustrations and descriptions. Now he could feel her next to him, eagerly turning the pages in the dim candlelight, turning them faster and faster until a golden bird was there on the page, eating rowan berries from a branch. A golden oriole! He had it. Oriole Kate. She was named after a golden bird, and according to the text it was a rare visitor, and that described Kate perfectly, he thought, satisfied.

He’d never seen Kate properly, never looked into her eyes. He wanted to go down to the hospital with a bunch of roses. Red roses he’d give her. He drifted to sleep, threading the angel’s words into the fabric of his life.

In the morning he awoke disturbed by a sense of foreboding. Mechanically he got up and helped Levi with the bread. They worked silently together putting batch after batch of risen loaves into the ovens, cottage loaves and tin loaves, French bread and the heavy lardy cake. He looked just once into his father’s eyes as he packed the bicycle basket.

‘You do your best at school today,’ said Levi.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Don’t go telling no lies.’

‘No, Dad.’

‘You know what I mean, Freddie. If you can’t tell the truth, then keep quiet.’

Levi’s drooping eyes looked at Freddie for a long moment, a moment he was to remember for the rest of his life.

‘And look after your mother.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

Freddie cycled off on the cumbersome bicycle into the misty morning. He didn’t feel like going to school after yesterday’s excitement. School seemed totally irrelevant. He didn’t want to go, ever again.

Everyone in Monterose was gossiping about the accident at the station, and people came to look at the broken cart which was still lying there next morning with ‘Gilbert Loxley, Farmers, Hilbegut Farm’ painted proudly on the side of the cart.

‘A disgrace, that’s what it is.’

‘It was the older daughter. Etheldra Loxley. She drove that poor pony like a mad woman. And her little sister in the back. Shame on her.’

‘Could have killed someone.’

The gossip went on circulating until it reached the bakery.

Annie was coping happily with the queue. She loved being in the shop with the warm fragrance of freshly baked loaves. She enjoyed taking them down from the shelf and wrapping them in clean paper, then taking the money and chatting pleasantly. It was her ideal life. She didn’t have to go out. Levi was there, and he was proud of what he had achieved, the bakery business was thriving. Freddie was nearly fourteen. Once he left school the business would do even better. Annie was satisfied that her son’s life was mapped out for him.

Until it all changed.

‘I saw your Freddie was there yesterday, at the station,’ said a woman in a brown and white gingham dress.

Annie frowned at her. ‘What do you mean, Gladys? Freddie is at school that time of the morning.’

‘He wasn’t yesterday.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ Gladys had a piercing voice that filled the shop. ‘Your Freddie was there. I saw him myself. And he was a good lad too.’

‘What time was this?’ Annie asked, and the sudden sharpness in her voice brought Levi out from the bakery, brushing the flour from his hands.

‘Half past ten.’

‘Half past TEN?’ said Annie in astonishment. ‘Freddie should have been in school.’

‘Oh – well.’ Gladys winked. She stood there with her hand on the loaf she had chosen, the rest of the queue listening. ‘You know what these lads are. Boys will be boys, won’t ’em?’

‘And what was he doing? Are you sure it was Freddie?’

‘’Course it were. I know Freddie, he brings the bread round,’ said Gladys, relishing the story. ‘Well, I looked after the older girl, she was in a proper state, and Freddie was with the little ’un who got hurt so bad. And then he offered to lead the pony home, all the way to Hilbegut. Good of him.’

‘WHAT?’

‘And I’ll bet he enjoyed his lift back in Joan Jarvis’s posh new motorcar!’

Levi spoke then and the whole shop fell silent.

‘Are you telling me that our Freddie was down there? And that he took some pony out to Hilbegut?’

‘That’s right, Sir.’ Gladys looked staunchly at him over her brown and white gingham bust.

Levi’s face went purple.

‘Right.’ With his big hands trembling he took off his baker’s apron and hat and turned to Annie. ‘You mind the shop. I’m going up the school, right now.’

The queue parted like the Red Sea to let Levi pass through, the whites of his eyes gleaming angrily. He took two strides into the street, and crashed to the ground, groaned and lay still, his huge body stretched out on the cobbles.

‘Levi!’ Annie screamed. She rushed outside and crumpled beside him. She cradled his dear face in her arms, and sat there rocking for long hopeless minutes. The morning sky darkened while they searched for his pulse and strained to hear him breathing, but Levi’s mighty chest was still, his face frozen in anger.

‘’Tis too late. He’s dead,’ said Annie quietly, and she watched the last sparks of his life drift past her and disappear.

‘You’ll HAVE to go out now, Mother,’ said Alice firmly.

‘You’ll have to get over it,’ agreed Betty.

Annie sat miserably between her two daughters on the morning of Levi’s funeral. Her heart was full of heat and teardrops, her grey hair a storm of impossible curls, her face swollen with grief. She was silent now, rocking slightly, her hand picking threads out of the black shawl around her shoulders. She’d repeated and repeated her words: ‘I can’t,’ but no one would listen, and there was nothing left to say. Only Freddie understood her fear. She looked at him now, sitting in the window, his long legs folded awkwardly, his eyes staring into the garden. He would take care of her, she was sure. He’d leave school and run the bakery. They’d manage.

Betty and Alice had always collaborated in forecasting gloom. They’d been away from home for years, and Freddie had hardly seen them in his life. Annie knew he found them intimidating, especially today. Both were dressed in the blackest of black outfits, identical hats with black net veils covering their faces, trendy tight-fitting black skirts and jackets, and grim expressions to match. Annie felt she no longer knew who they were. To her, Betty and Alice were a long ago memory of happy children.