‘This is Freddie Barcussy, Susan. You know – he used to help you over the bridge. Oh, you were silly.’

‘Hello.’ Freddie looked briefly at Susan. She didn’t interest him, but he remembered the frightened little girl she had been, and thought she still looked frightened, of her mother, he guessed. ‘I won’t shake hands,’ he said, ‘I’m covered in stone dust.’

‘Stone dust? What have you been doing?’ asked Joan.

‘I’m having a go at a bit of stone carving,’ said Freddie.

Joan looked at him with keen interest, and to Freddie’s relief the queue moved forward. ‘I shall come and see what you’ve made one day.’ Joan looked back at him perkily like a bird on the lawn. ‘Bye now.’

‘Bye.’

He walked home without looking at anyone, carrying the box of writing paper. The bakery was busy with customers, Annie in the shop and Gladys making scones in the back. Freddie escaped upstairs and spread the map on the table in his bedroom window. He found Monterose, and followed the road with his pencil stub, along the ridge of the Poldens where he and Kate had picnicked, on through Glastonbury and Wells, then over the Mendips. Kate had vividly described the River Severn to him, but when he found Aust Ferry and saw how wide it was, Freddie’s heart sank. He’d visualised an ordinary river, a bit wider than the Cary or the Brue, not such an expanse of water coloured blue like the sea. He took his ruler, looked at the scale of the map, and measured, once, then again in disbelief. The Severn was a mile wide at Aust Ferry. Freddie had never even seen the sea, and he couldn’t imagine a mile of water. All that space, hills and valleys and a wide, wide river separating him from Kate.

Kate’s letter was in his inner pocket next to his heart. Extracting it from the silky lining of his jacket he read it again.

Dear Freddie,

I will always treasure the time I have spent with you, such a happy time, and I thank you for sharing it with me.

Sadly, I must tell you that we are leaving Hilbegut. The Squire has died, and his family from Canada are ruthlessly reclaiming his estate, and we were given two weeks’ notice to leave. I didn’t want to go, of course, but I must support our family, Mother and Dad and Ethie. We are all broken-hearted, but we must make the best of it. Luckily we have somewhere to go. We shall be living with Dad’s brother, Uncle Don, at Asan Farm on the banks of the Severn River. He’s said we can live in the gatehouse cottage. It’s derelict but we can make it nice and we shall all help with the farm. Polly and Daisy are still in Hilbegut, on the next-door farm, and they are being looked after there until we can find a way to transport them to Gloucestershire.

I still want to be a nurse, and perhaps one day I can, but for now I must stay and help the family.

I’ll never, ever forget you Freddie, and I hope with all my heart that we will one day meet again.

All my love,

Kate xx

PS. Write to me!

A small sepia photograph on a square of cream cardboard was enclosed. It was a portrait of Kate’s face, a serious image of a young woman with bright caring eyes. Freddie placed it on the map, in Gloucestershire, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of the space between them. His heart was no longer in his haulage business. He felt unsettled and disconnected from everyone; he needed time alone to think about his life, and how to disentangle himself from his present commitments. The biggest of these was his bond with his mother. He loved her, yet she drained his energy and his time. Since Levi’s death he’d felt sorry for her, and her agoraphobia had intensified. She was totally dependent on Freddie, and on Gladys who she now employed for a few hours a day.

When he had finished his haulage job, Freddie felt an old familiar feeling – he couldn’t stay at home. He filled the lorry with petrol and headed for the Polden Hills in the balmy afternoon, driving past orchards where the trees were laden to the ground with ripening apples and the hawthorns heavy with berries. He drove slowly along the hilltop until he reached the gap in the hedge where Kate had taken him for the picnic. He parked the lorry tight against the hedge and walked up to the ridge of hill, aware that the grassland around him was now bobbing with seed heads, the orchids had died, the thyme had turned brown, and the trefoil was covered in tiny black pods of seed. Summer was over. And so was his life, Freddie thought gloomily.

He sat down in the spot where they’d had the picnic, and touched the earth where Kate had been sitting. It was warm and crisp like fresh bread, but there was an emptiness, a hollow place in his soul where Kate should have been. His eyes roamed the landscape, scanning that empty strip of silver sky between the Mendips and the Quantocks. Far away he could see the islands of the Bristol Channel floating in some shimmering misty place, and beyond was a whisper of an outline of high and distant hills. Was he seeing over that mile-wide estuary into Gloucestershire where Kate was now? It comforted Freddie to think that he could come up here and gaze directly towards her.

Surely it was possible to send his thoughts whizzing over there on some ethereal network. He remembered the vision he’d had at his father’s funeral. Sitting on the steps at the back of the church he’d seen a beam of gold deep down in the earth and stretching for miles and miles, following the curve of the earth. Granny Barcussy knew some amazing things, and once she’d told him about the Aborigines who lived in Australia, and how they communicated with distant tribes by using the song lines. It wasn’t logical, but in his prophetic soul, Freddie understood it. He wished he had a drum to beat out a message that would carry across the water to that distant shore. All he had was his voice. He looked around, checking that he was alone on the ridge, and he was.

He started to sing, huskily at first, furtively, then confidently as he remembered some of the songs Kate liked. ‘Danny Boy’ – he could sing that – and the words mirrored his feelings exactly, so he sang that first. Then he remembered ‘The water is wide, I cannot cross over’. He sang until the tears started trickling down his cheeks and drying on his skin in the afternoon sun. Then he strolled along the ridge, whistling the nostalgic tunes, and the sadness began to disperse as if the music was sweeping it away. It was a time for courage, he thought, for making the best of it, as Kate had said. He must focus on building his business, making enough money to afford a home fit for Kate. And there was no reason why he shouldn’t go to Gloucestershire and see her, he thought, especially if he had a motorbike.

Kate sat on the top bar of the high wooden gate, her arms round the neck of a sleek chestnut horse. The feel of its warm silky coat, the softness of its muzzle and the kindly dark eyes were cheering her up. There were other horses in the field, but this one, a thoroughbred, had made a beeline for Kate as if it knew she needed a friend.

Bertie knew his daughter very well, and he had deliberately sent Kate out on her own, ‘to check the sheep’ he’d said, knowing that the route to the sheep pastures would take Kate past the racing stables, and she would be sure to find a horse to cuddle. So while Ethie and Sally organised the new cheese-making enterprise, Kate had gone off by herself, dressed in her farming gear of breeches, long boots and a red shirt. She’d enjoyed the walk through the sheep fields on the wide flat banks of the Severn Estuary, the fresh salty air and the light on the water, the surge of the incoming tide as it covered the expanses of sand and spilled into mirror-like pools where thousands of seabirds bobbed and fished, their cream heads and silvery feathers shining in the morning sun. This landscape was so different from Hilbegut. The tidal river was dominant and powerful, eating away at the sheep fields, making low turfy cliffs and inlets. In the distance were the high wooded hills of the Forest of Dean.