Ursula kneaded her hands, peering out the window at the snowflakes falling on the landscape. The children loved snow, but for her it was only a nuisance – something making her shoes soggy when she had to go to the outhouse.
She turned around to see Richard feeding the tiled stove. It was a majestic piece of artwork, the patterned green tiles telling of better times. Uncle Peter came from a long line of hard-working farmers who’d acquired modest wealth over the centuries. But the war had ripped everything to shreds.
Over the past weeks the children had searched the forests on a daily basis collecting wood for the winter. Felling trees, of course, was strictly f*******n, but lugging away fallen branches usually wasn’t prosecuted. At least when a child was the perpetrator.
While the Amis m
