His voice broke into fragments, and Freddie went on listening as George talked about his pain. His aura was clearing as if the talking was a polluted liquid draining from a barrel, and all the time Freddie could see Levi standing next to him, radiant and shining as he’d never been in life. He had his arm around George’s shoulders, and he looked just once at Freddie, put his finger to his lips and shook his head.

Freddie nodded. Keep quiet, Levi was telling him.

George heaved himself out of the low leather chair, his knees cracking. ‘I better make you a cuppa tea,’ he said, ‘or I got cocoa. Do ’e want that?’

‘Tea please,’ Freddie smiled, thinking it was the first time in his life that George had offered him anything. They stood looking at each other and he could feel the change, the melting of the barriers, the new friendship floating through in wisps. He’d come to talk about Annie, but instead he’d been silent and it had worked.

‘Want a ride in my lorry?’ he suggested. ‘It’s a Scammell.’

‘Could do,’ said George with the ghost of a twinkle. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting a go on my motorbike.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

Chapter Sixteen

LITTLE BLUE LETTERS

‘Cor, that’s a beauty.’ The postman leaned over his bicycle to admire the salmon in Ethie’s bucket, its tail flopped over the edge. ‘Ten pounder that ’un, I reckon.’

Ethie put the bucket down, rubbing her arm which was aching from lugging the heavy fish up the lane to Asan Farm. Collecting salmon from the putchers at low tide was her favourite job. She’d had to persuade her father that she was responsible enough to do it, and Uncle Don had taught her well how to read the tides and how to tread carefully over the shifting sands of the estuary. It gave her time alone close to the power of the river she loved. Going home with a huge fish gave her a new feeling in her life, a sense of being welcome. She almost felt grateful to the rainbow-skinned fish which had lost its life so that she, Ethie, could feel wanted and successful.

‘Shall I take the letters?’ she asked. ‘It’ll save you going down the lane.’

The postman rummaged in the box on the front of his bicycle. ‘There’s two for Mr D. Loxley, one for Mr B. Loxley – and this little blue one, for Oriole Kate Loxley. Lovely handwriting that. Real copperplate. Beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t put ’em in the bucket with the fish,’ teased the postman, but Ethie didn’t smile at him. ‘Where’s your young sister today then?’

‘She’s working,’ said Ethie shortly. ‘At the Tillerman’s racing stables.’

‘Lovely girl, your sister. Lovely girl. Always got a smile.’

The darkness crept back over Ethie’s morning. The way the postman looked her up and down, the way he expected a smile, annoyed Ethie intensely. Then he had followed it with the usual warm accolades for Kate, and the remark had sucked the glory out of Ethie’s journey home with the salmon.

‘Good morning.’ With a curt nod she picked up the bucket and walked on briskly, the letters in her jacket pocket. The postman shrugged and pedalled off on his bicycle, whistling a rebellious refrain.

When he had gone into the distance, Ethie stopped and took out the little blue letter with the copperplate writing. She knew it was from Freddie. Every Tuesday it came, and Kate’s eyes would light up as she sat there reading it and smiling, her dark eyes full of joy.

Ethie stood in the middle of the lane considering her options. Tear the letter into hundreds of pieces and sprinkle them into the hedge? Bury it under a cowpat? Burn it? Or should she open it first? The letter felt velvet-smooth in her hands and it had a feel of Freddie’s peacefulness which Ethie secretly admired. Spoiling the beautiful writing would only compound her crime. Ethie smiled to herself and tucked Freddie’s letter into her inner pocket. She planned to take it home and hide it in a place where Kate would never find it.

Jubilant, she walked on, carrying the bucket with the fish iridescent in the sunshine. From now on, she resolved, she would meet the postman every Tuesday.

The stone angel was slowly emerging from the block of Hilbegut stone. Freddie had chipped away at it in the mellow September evenings, sometimes working on into the twilight. He’d shaped the curving wings and the head of the angel in between. Now he was chiselling out the deep clefts between the wings and the body, so absorbed in the task that he didn’t notice anything around him, even the comings and goings of birds. So he was surprised to look up and see Annie standing there watching him in her flowery apron, her head on one side and a puzzled frown over her eyes.

‘How much longer are you going to be out here?’ she asked.

‘As long as I can.’ Freddie brushed the dust from the carving.

‘What about the bread?’

‘I’ll do that when it’s dark. I’ve got to do this in daylight.’

‘This is starting to look like a stonemason’s yard,’ said Annie, pointing at the blocks of stone Freddie had stashed against the wall. ‘What are you going to do with all those?’

‘Make things.’

‘Make a mess, more like. Look at all this dust.’

Freddie went on chiselling silently.

‘And when you’re not out here, you’re upstairs writing letters to that Loxley girl,’ complained Annie.

Freddie slowly put his tools down, dipped his hands in a bucket of water and dried them on a cloth. He looked at his mother’s eyes in the soft blue twilight and saw past the anger and into the pain.

‘You want me at home, don’t you?’ he asked.

Annie nodded.

‘Then it’s time we had a talk,’ said Freddie. He put an arm around his mother’s shoulders, led her inside and sat her down at the scullery table. He looked at her quietly, thinking that this armour-plated woman, who had both protected and intimidated him in his childhood, was getting smaller and smaller. It wasn’t just the physical weight she was losing. It was a dying flame. Since Levi’s death, Annie’s inner light had burned down like a candle flame reaching the end of the wick, turning slowly to a smoking bead of fire.

‘What is there to talk about?’ she asked, a sharp blade of anxiety in her voice.

‘Well, there’s Kate,’ said Freddie, and even saying her name brought a glow to his heart. ‘The fact is, Mother, whether you like it or not, I love Kate Loxley and I intend to marry her.’

‘Marry her?’ Annie went stiff. She stared into Freddie’s eyes and saw that he meant it. Her life stretched out before her like a wintry road leading into a dark forest where finally she must face her demons alone.

‘Now you listen to me,’ began Freddie, and his eyes flared blue with wordless passion, compelling her to listen. ‘It’s not going to happen straight away. But you’ve got to prepare yourself, Mother, find a way of managing your life without me. If you do it one step at a time, you can, and I’ll help you, but I’m not going to be here forever.’

Annie was twisting her ring round and round her finger. She wanted to be glad that her youngest son had found a future wife, she wanted to say how proud she was of Freddie. But layers of extreme fear had constructed a chrysalis around what was really in her heart.

‘I hope that brazen young hussy deserves you,’ she said, and immediately felt the sting of guilt, especially when Freddie’s face registered the hurt. She marvelled that even though his face went a deep red, his eyes stayed calm, and he didn’t get up and smash china like Levi would have done. She wanted to say sorry but the apology was buried too deep in her psyche.

‘You don’t mean that,’ Freddie said, watching the conflict crawl through her eyes.

Annie reached for his hand and held it tightly between her swollen fingers. Her throat felt paralysed.