He sat in Arthur’s chair, a dark, worn, comfortable leather club affair to one side of the fire, and gazed into the flames absently. He’d come home because he had never thought of going anywhere else. The farm was in his blood, as it had been in their father’s and their grandmother’s before him. He couldn’t see himself existing anywhere else in the long term, especially after his time stuck in Flanders’ mud. He knew Arthur had felt the same. Arthur’s relief when he’d arrived home and announced he’d left London permanently had been palpable. Arthur had needed more than just the farm and, through his studies and his writing, he got it. The land was secondary to that.
For Matty, it was the opposite—he’d enjoyed learning at school, he enjoyed reading, discovering things. He had realised he li
