They sat round the table and, their feet numbing, tried to agree on strategy. Peter Bingham was young, ambitious and computer literate. He and Agnes had quickly established an understanding. Coming up for retirement, Mr Dawkins belonged to a different era.

Bingham was at pains to tell the Campion women that although John Campion had done his best to protect his house he had been able to do little in the later years, just routine maintenance.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Agnes. ‘I had talked to him about it from time to time, but the subject upset him.’

Agnes was used to meetings and to controlling them, but this one kept disintegrating as Maud demanded, first, the bungalow she craved and, second, more money to live on. Failing those, she wanted a new central-heating system installed. Then she burst into an uncharacteristic flood of tears. Bea hastened to comfort her.

‘Mrs Campion,’ Bingham was embarrassed, ‘your husband’s will stipulates that you have a home in the house as long as you wish. There is no need for you to move to a bungalow or anywhere else. Indeed, it would be impossible.’ He turned to Mr Dawkins. ‘Am I correct?’

Mr Dawkins shuffled his papers.

‘Have you anything to say, Mr Dawkins?’ Maud blew her nose defiantly, and Agnes deduced that these two were old adversaries.

‘As you know well, Mrs Campion, there is money -just – put aside for the Inheritance Tax but nothing else.’ Mr Dawkins refused to look at Maud.

‘’Scuse me.’ Paul popped his head round the door. ‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.’

Bea was on her feet before he finished speaking. ‘I’ll do it. Everything’s ready.’

Mr Dawkins looked sick. ‘I believe,’ he addressed Agnes, ‘you are going to have to negotiate a loan from the bank if you wish to do any repairs to the house.’ He made a second raid on his papers. ‘Of course, there are grants for this sort of house… Perhaps the heritage people would help.’

Agnes steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. ‘How much is there?’

Mr Dawkins named the sum, and Agnes winced.

‘Oh, good, you’re still there.’ Paul’s head reappeared. ‘I’ve had a teeny accident with the coffee on the stairs. Do you have a J-cloth handy?’

By one o’clock, they had all gone, leaving a trio of strung-out women. Thinking of lunch, Agnes hunted for a saucepan to boil potatoes, and discovered one in the pantry with several pairs of dun-coloured stockings soaking in it.

The phone rang. ‘Darling,’ said Dickie, from the BBC, ‘can’t seem to get hold of you for love or mon. Just to say I’ve secured the budgets for the lovesick farmer and the breastmilk thingy. If you can find out where the girl went, terrif. Hurry is the word…’

She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron and got on with peeling the potatoes.

‘Agnes,’ Maud fiddled around with the food that Agnes had eventually served, ‘John did say that you were to look after me, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Agnes was wary.

‘Well,’ Agnes had often wondered how eyes managed to look cunning, but her aunt’s did, ‘I would very much like to go on the tour devoted to The Sound of Music.’ Maud did not wait for Agnes’s reaction. ‘We fly to Austria and are taken to the places where the film was made, and then to Salzburg for a special showing.’

Agnes sensed what was coming.

‘Bea and I need a break. We need to go.’

Bea looked embarrassed. ‘We don’t have to, dear. Not if it’s inconvenient.’

‘Please,’ wheedled Maud.

Agnes looked at her watch. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘While you are tackling the frightful Dawkins, Agnes, I need a bit extra for one or two things. And the headstone for John’s grave. It must be organized.’ Maud rubbed fretfully at a worm of lipstick wriggling at the corner of her mouth.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ There was no escape now from the next attack.

‘I can’t think why John didn’t leave me all the money instead of putting it in trust for you.’ The gear shifted into the role of the wronged widow – a role Maud had seized as one that held infinite possibilities. But, then again, Agnes thought wryly, she was a wronged widow. ‘You would have got it in the end, Agnes. Do you know why your uncle cut me off at the knees?’

Bea assumed her frozen look, and Agnes knew that she was withdrawing into the still place that she had at her centre, a place where her sister failed to reach her. Agnes summoned her charity. She had to be fair, but dealing with Maud was like dealing with an ageing car. Some days it functioned smoothly, sometimes lack of oil caused the engine to blow up.

‘It’s so cruel of John to exclude me. So thoughtless of you to agree.’ Maud looked round at Bea as if to say, There, I’ve cleared the air.

But Agnes flashed back, ‘Perhaps you mentioned the word “bungalow” too often.’

On application for funds, Mr Dawkins simply replied that there was no spare money. That was that and, if Miss Campion would excuse the comment, he was surprised that Mrs Campion had considered such a thing.

‘There’s no slack at all?’

Mr Dawkins paused. ‘No,’ he said, with an unexpected blaze of temper. ‘I don’t think I have convinced you, Miss Campion. There is nothing in the way of slack.’

Agnes decided to pay for the holiday out of her own savings, and Maud acknowledged the gesture with a flash of the complacent smile that had once, long ago, enraptured John Campion, but not with a thank-you.

‘Dear Agnes,’ Bea hastened to supply the gratitude unforthcoming from her sister, ‘thank you.’

To her astonishment, Agnes choked back a lump in her throat. Anger? Disappointment? Fatigue? She seized her jacket from the peg and let herself out into the kitchen garden.

Nothing. Ruined earth. Ruined plants. Ruined buildings.

Echoes and sadness.

She closed her eyes, dug her hands into her pockets and encountered a small, rectangular business card. Her mood lifted, and she promised herself that she would ring him.

8

In late spring, the South Devons were due to be driven to their summer pasture – his dumb blondes, his gentle beauties, who required such pampering during the winter otherwise they drooped. Unlike the tough and hardy Welsh Blacks. Now they were cattle with an attitude.

Andrew checked with the calendar pinned up above his desk – 15 March – for in matters of the farm he was meticulous and knew exactly to the hour when any event was planned. For instance, the date of the planning inquiry, 10 June, was fixed in large letters above the calving rota on the calendar, and two weeks previous to that had been pencilled in for ‘Agnes Campion and film crew’.

Time was flying on. It eluded his grasp, and the days dropped into the slot quicker than any coin.

The computer booted up and Andrew began the daily update of the records. Betsey, Bill, Caro, Carlo… Tammy, Violet…

In the past, Penny had helped. ‘I do half of everything in this marriage,’ she had declared at the beginning, and had kept her word for twenty years, she seated at the kitchen table, he in the study, where they shouted to each other through the open door while they attacked the wall of paper.

Looking back with his newly charged feelings, Andrew was prepared to give those peaceful, productive years more credit than he had done.

Granted, spring and calving had always been bad times for Penny. ‘Everywhere is… ripe,’ she had sobbed once. A mocking conspiracy of plant and animal to show up the Penny who was unable to conceive. ‘It’s the pesticides,’ she accused, ‘used on the other farms. They’ve killed my ovaries.’

A shape at the open window made Andrew look up and, to his amazement, Penny was leaning on the sill wearing one of her more battered anoraks. ‘Hallo, Andrew.’ She had a scarf crammed down over her head and was wearing unfamiliar pink lipstick. She was obviously nervous and triggered a bristling defensiveness in Andrew. He did not bother to get up. ‘What are you doing here? Been let out of the love-nest?’

Penny’s roughened cheeks turned white. ‘I needed some things. Clothes. But don’t let’s discuss that now. I think Caro’s in trouble and you’d better get the vet.’

Within seconds Andrew was in the pen and running a hand over the sweating heifer, trying to locate the position of the calf. She was in pain, and her hard, lumpy flanks heaved in and out with each breath. He almost groaned. It was almost certainly breech and vets cost money. The Devons were usually reliable breeders but you always got one in the bunch.

‘How’s the disaster fund?’ Penny extracted a rope from the bin and tossed it in Andrew’s direction. She was referring to the money they set aside each year under the heading ‘Trouble’.

‘Low. Very low.’ The farm’s finances were never good and each year there was a struggle to meet the contingencies. Andrew swore and caught the eye of the labouring cow. ‘All right, girlie,’ he said. ‘Easy. It was nothing. Easy now.’

He knew what Penny would be thinking. You treat the cow better than you treated me. You are gentle with her, but never with me.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said abruptly, because she was right and he didn’t want to think about it. ‘I’ll manage until Peterson comes.’

Penny’s features snapped into a familiar set. ‘Don’t get on your high horse. You need help. She’s a valuable beast.’

‘Fine.’

Together they arranged the pen, working as a team who knew exactly what to do, until a van drew up in the yard. The vet did not waste words.

‘Breech,’ he said. ‘A Caesar, I’m afraid.’

Andrew did some mental arithmetic which, since there was no option, was a waste of time. Penny merely tied up Caro. Peterson administered a local anaesthetic and made the first sweeping cut with the scalpel. The flesh peeled away with a tearing sound and exposed the bulging uterus. Caro remained quite quiet and, seemingly, now not in pain. Gently, Peterson manipulated the calf, all legs and eyes, into the world and settled him beside his mother.