EstherShe couldn’t see him from the house so she had to step out into the night, away from the solidity of the farmhouse walls and into a cold that was shocking and intense. Esther crossed her arms over her chest, shivering in the Canterbury evening. The place was burning warm by day—it would be burning hot in the summer—and glacial the moment the sun sank beneath brown burr.
Then she saw him. Jack was sitting on a small bank of earth some distance away. He was hunched over, and Esther saw he had been crying by the time she eventually lumbered over.
Jack sprang up to take her hand as she approached and helped to ease her down. He smiled ruefully. ‘This ground won’t be comfortable.’
Esther shrugged. ‘It’s preferable to watching Isobel race around, trying to find coffee for your father.’
