‘Oh Freddie.’ Kate reached out and touched the back of his wrist, looking into his face with compassion. ‘Go on.’

‘’Tis a miserable story,’ Freddie said, suddenly afraid that he had caused a cloud to drift over their summer picnic. ‘You don’t want to hear all that.’

‘I do,’ said Kate, and her eyes never left his face.

‘Well – I’m coming to a better bit now.’ Freddie remembered the storytelling tradition in his family, the exaggerations, the silences, and the laughter. He wanted to do that for Kate, turn his miserable tale into something entertaining and positive. ‘I’ll tell you how I got that lorry. Well, one frosty night in the middle of February – hard as diamonds the frost was – I gets up, quiet as a mouse . . .’

Kate sat spellbound, not moving a muscle as she listened to his story, holding her breath in the silences. She let go of Freddie’s wrist so that he could gesticulate with his long fingers, his eyes beginning to twinkle, his voice still slow and quiet. Then he came to the part where he had escaped down the steep dark street on his bike.

‘The bike had no brakes, see? So I went whizzing down there, in the pitch dark, with my legs stuck out straight and sparks flying from my boots . . .’

He was rewarded with a scream of laughter. Kate doubled over, clutching her stomach with one hand and wiping her eyes with the other. She laughed and laughed as if she would never stop, and Freddie managed to stay po-faced.

‘Well ’tis true,’ he said, and that set her off again. Secretly pleased, he continued his story, restraining himself from smiles as he related how he had paid his money into the bank.

‘As soon as the doors opened, I went in with my flour sack, dragging it along the floor. Then I stood at the counter taking out the old socks full of money and some of them blue and mouldy, and the hankies, all dusty they were and bursting with coins. And the bank clerk, he didn’t like it. He looked me up and down as if I was a tramp, and he said, “You can’t bring that dirty old stuff in here.” So I looked him in the eye and said – quite politely – “Excuse me Sir, but I can, I’m sixteen and this is legal tender,” and he didn’t like it, but he had to count it all. Took him three quarters of an hour jingling and cussing, and there was a queue behind me right out the door, and they were all grumbling. But I had the last laugh. I came out of there with my money in crisp new bank notes, then I went flying down to the motor yard on me bread bike, and I had that Scammell lorry.’

He paused to take a breath, and saw that Kate was wanting to say something.

‘What a WONDERFUL story, Freddie,’ she said passionately, ‘so funny, and inspiring. Tell me again. I loved it.’

‘Well ’tis true. True as I’m sitting here,’ said Freddie, and his smile stretched right to the edges of his face.

‘I love to see you smile,’ said Kate and she kissed him impulsively on his smiling cheek.

Startled and moved by her response, Freddie slipped his arm around her shoulders, feeling the silky dress and her warmth underneath, and she put her hand on his shoulder. For a moment they were both still, feeling each other’s heartbeat, and Freddie buried his chin in the soft lustre of her dark hair. The moment filled with light and stretched into infinity as if it had registered in some ethereal archive.

He held her in a shell-like hug, afraid of his own strength and of the sudden rush of energy through his body. His pulse wanted to race like a wild horse, yet his mind stayed calm, his inner voice telling him to slow down and savour the intoxicating feel of her satin dress, the way her dark curls were hot from the sunshine as they slipped over his bare arm.

‘This is only the beginning,’ he heard himself whisper, but he held back from speaking the words that echoed in his heart, words that Granny Barcussy had fed into his soul. ‘When you love, you must love wisely and slowly.’ Nothing in his life had felt so exquisitely precious as the warm bright silk of Kate in his arms.

A flock of small birds came bobbing and bouncing out of the woods, their voices tinkling like bells, and the grass around them came alive with fluttering wings.

‘Goldfinches,’ whispered Freddie.

But Kate was listening to something else.

‘I can hear your tummy rumbling,’ she said, laughing, and sat up. The goldfinches vanished with a burr of wings. ‘I think it’s time for our DELICIOUS picnic.’

Chapter Fourteen

THE STONE GATEPOST

Freddie stood in the stonemason’s yard, staring in disbelief at a load of stone which had appeared there. It wasn’t stacked neatly as Herbie would have liked, but tipped in a jumble of old saddle stones, and blocks of golden sandstone, some still joined together with mortar. The stones gave Freddie a strange feeling, as if they had voices and stories to tell, stories locked into the grains of sand and crystal. He looked at the wheel marks in the mud and saw the large hoof prints of a Shire horse, as if the heavy load had been delivered by horse and cart, probably early in the morning before it got too hot. Seeing the hoof prints increased his inexplicable sense of doom.

Right in the middle of the heap were two round domes of stone carved with curly patterns and covered in moss and lichen. Carvings! With a terrible sense that he was going to discover some unforeseen tragedy, Freddie climbed over the blocks to investigate. Gingerly he cleared a space around one of the domes until he could see a face glaring out at him with blind stone eyes and snarling lips. Shocked, he sat down on a chunk of sandstone, reached out his hands and touched the stone lion’s curly head. It was warm from the August sunshine, but under its chin it was cold as a tomb. Silently he uncovered both the carvings and sat studying them, not wanting to believe the thought that hammered insistently at his mind.

‘Mornin’, Freddie!’ Herbie came padding into the yard in his leather apron and dust-covered overalls. ‘’Tis hot,’ he remarked, taking his cap off to let the top of his bald head dry in the sun.

‘Mornin’,’ said Freddie.

‘You’re looking uncommonly serious,’ observed Herbie. ‘Has your mother been at you again?’

‘No,’ said Freddie. He looked at Herbie’s challenging grey eyes. ‘Where did this lot come from, Herb?’

‘Hilbegut.’

Something swept over Freddie like a gust of hot air, charged with emotion. He rubbed the backs of his hands over his eyes, brushing away the tears that prickled in there.

The stone lions from Hilbegut Farm.

Something had happened to Kate.

‘Haven’t you heard?’ said Herbie. ‘The Squire of Hilbegut died weeks ago. And he didn’t have an heir. So his place is just left empty, that great big place with the turrets. And all his tenants in the farms and cottages have got to move. Tragic, ain’t it? Those poor families. Got nowhere to go.’

‘So who’s done this?’ asked Freddie. ‘These two stone lions were on the gateposts to Hilbegut Farm.’

Herbie’s prominent eyebrows drew together in a frown, and he shook his head. ‘Can’t say I know that,’ he said, ‘I only knows what I hears, see? Maybe ’tis gossip, but they say his sister and her family have come over from Canada, and they don’t care nothing about the place. They’re stripping out the carvings and the stone and anything they can sell. They just want the money, see. Then they’ll go off back to Canada and leave Hilbegut to go to rack and ruin. That’s all I know, and ’tis none of my business.’

Freddie began to shake inside. He made an instant decision. He would unload the stone he’d brought down from the quarry for Herbie, then drive out to Hilbegut and find out for himself. But first . . .

‘What about the stone lions?’ he asked.