that overlooked the gardens at the front of the house. Originally built as a minor hall, the house was much larger than the other stone farmhouses that populated the dale. It had a sunny drawing-room that overlooked the dale itself and, although the ground was barren and the winter winds icy, in the protection of the walled garden countless generations of Seton women had cultivated not only fruit and vegetables, but flowers as well.
The drawing-room was only used on formal occasions, its oak furniture lovingly waxed and its parquet floor polished.
Normally they ate in the large kitchen; and in the summer, as Kate remembered it, their evening meal had often been as late as eight or nine in the evening so that her father could make the most of the long hours of daylight.
Tea was the word used to describe the evening meal in the north, and not dinner, and on this occasion her mother had baked all the things for which she was justly famous in the dale: scones light as feathers from her bantam chickens, bread, still slightly warm from the old-fashioned bread ovens either side of the new Aga and still used by her mother, currant slices, lightly dusted with sugar, summer pudding made from some of the early fruits, the kind of salad that had never dreamed of seeing the inside of a supermarket but came straight from her mother’s garden, and tiny new potatoes, and home-cured ham. All the old-fashioned things she remembered from her childhood, and yet, as she sliced into her mother’s bread, Kate saw that it had been made with wholemeal flour, showing that even up here people were not totally immune to the power of the Press.
Despite the excellence of the food, Kate wasn’t hungry. Cherry was, though, tucking into her food with the healthy appetite of the young.
Already Kate thought she could see a change in her—an opening up, a stretching out and growing—as though somehow she had been cramped in their city life.
Throughout the meal she chatted to her grandparents, telling them about her school and her friends, leaving Kate alone with her own thoughts.
It was disturbing how much Silas was occupying them. She supposed she ought to have expected it and been prepared for it, for, although Silas had never visited her home, the emotional trauma of her own leaving of it was bound to have left a lingering resonance for her sensitive nerves to pick up on.
And yet she had barely thought about him at all in years. He was part of her past, and for Cherry’s sake she could not regret having known him, but the discovery that he had deceived her, that he was married with children, had totally killed her love.
And she had never allowed herself to fall into the same trap again.
Oh, she had dated—fellow schoolteachers, friends of friends who shared her interest in the theatre and with whom she had enjoyed pleasurable evenings—but there had been nothing like the intensity of emotion she had known with Silas.
Why not? She was emotionally and physically capable of that emotion, and yet, for some reason, after Silas she had had no other lovers, no man in her life who was more than a friend.
Was it perhaps because she had been afraid? Afraid of the vulnerability such a commitment would bring?
In the early years, of course, there had been Cherry. Most men shied away from a woman with a young child, and Kate’s life had been too exhausting to allow her to do anything other than care for her child and complete her education. Without Lydia’s help and love, even that much would not have been possible.
‘I’ve put Cherry in your old room.’
Her mother’s quiet words cut through her introspective thoughts.
Her old room. Tiny and cosy, up under the eaves, with its uneven walls and sloping ceiling.
‘You’re quite close to her… in the guest room. It’s got its own bathroom now, and I thought you’d prefer that.’
A guest room with its own bathroom. Nostalgia touched her with melancholy fingers. Even here, after all, things changed. She had noticed that her parents had also had central heating installed. A new innovation, indeed. She remembered vividly the arguments when her mother had first tentatively broached the subject. Then her father had flatly refused to even consider it.
But times obviously changed. People changed.
LATER on that evening, as she took Cherry up to bed, sitting in the familiar bedroom with its rose-patterned wallpaper, Kate listened half-heartedly to her daughter’s excited chatter, while part of her couldn’t help remembering how she had thrown herself on this very bed and wept with grief and fear, unable to believe that she was actually pregnant… that Silas was actually married… that her father was refusing to allow her in the house.
‘And Grandpa was saying that it will soon be the Dales Show. I wish I had something I could show. Mum, are you all right?’
Kate gave her a faint smile. ‘Fine…’
‘Were you thinking about my father?’
Green eyes met green, and Kate wondered at the perception of this child of hers, who could be so gravely and heart-breakingly mature.
And there was no doubt at all about where she got that perception from. It was one of the first things she had noticed about Silas… That and his almost overpoweringly male good looks.
She realised she was drifting helplessly back into the past and that she had not answered Cherry’s question. Walking over to the window, she looked out at the familiar scenery of the dale. Below them, her father’s sheep were gathered in the lowland pastures. These would be the ones that would soon need shearing.
Keeping her back toward Cherry, she said quietly, ‘No. No, I wasn’t thinking about your father. I was just remembering when this was my room.’
It was the first time she had lied to Cherry, and the small deception hurt, but coming home had stirred up too many memories, had brought to the surface of her consciousness feelings and thoughts she couldn’t share with anyone.
Thoughts not just of Silas, but of David, her childhood, her parents and her own suddenly altered perceptions of past events; it was almost as though she had turned a corner and found herself confronted with an unfamiliar view of a territory so intimately well-known that the shock of the unexpected forced her to examine what she thought she had known.
‘Time for bed,’ she told Cherry, turning to smile at her. Whatever else she might think or feel, nothing could change her love for this child she and Silas had made together.
She kissed her, hugging her briefly.
‘Happy to be here, Cherry?’
‘Oh, yes… It’s even better than I hoped.’ She turned serious green eyes to her mother. ‘If I lived here, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.’ And the sombre look she gave the view from the window made Kate’s heart tremble with apprehension.
The last thing she wanted was for Cherry to become too attached to this place. There was no way they could make their lives here on a permanent basis. Jobs in teaching in this part of the world were bound to be scarce, and where would they live, other than with her parents?
Seeing Cherry settled into bed, Kate went downstairs, automatically heading for
