other with Alison’s midday feed, and set off for the farm. She found her father drinking coffee in the kitchen in stockinged feet, wearing corduroy trousers and an old check shirt. The wellington boots he wore when working on the farm stood on the doorstep. He looked up with a smile of pleasure as she brought the pram into the kitchen.
‘Barbara, what brings you here so early in the morning?’
She laughed. ‘What a greeting! I wanted to see you, that’s all, and to thank you for the brooch. It’s the best present ever.’ She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek.
‘I always liked it on Mum.’ She fetched a mug and sat opposite him to pour herself a coffee from the percolator on the table. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine. How’s that granddaughter of mine?’
He rose stiffly to go over to the pram and it was then that she realised how painfully thin he had become. His cheeks seemed to have sunk, darkening his eyes, and his clothes hung on him as if they had been made for a much larger man, which indeed they had. She was shocked. He was ill and had been for some time, judging by his appearance. Why had no one told her? She tried to remember when she had last seen him and realised it had been over a month.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said.
‘I was getting too fat anyway.’ He was bending over the pram and she could not see his expression. ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she? May I pick her up?’
‘Of course.’
He lifted the child and took her back to his chair to sit with her on his knee. ‘Babies grow so fast, it seems only five minutes since you were this size. Now look at you, twenty-one and a wife and mother. No longer my little girl.’
She caught the note of wistfulness in his voice. ‘I’ll always be that, Dad.’
‘Yes.’ He tickled Alison under the chin and was rewarded with a broad smile. ‘Who’s a good girl, then? Who’s going to grow up just like her mother?’ He turned to Alison. ‘I don’t see nearly enough of her. Or of you.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ve packed a picnic. I thought perhaps you would take us to the sea for the day. If you can spare the time, that is.’
His eyes lit with pleasure. ‘Capital idea. I’ll leave a note for Virginia, just in case we’re late back.’
The alacrity with which he agreed pleased her. She would have him all to herself for a few hours and maybe she could find out what was wrong with him.
It took a great deal of gentle prodding, while they sat on the beach building a sandcastle for Alison’s benefit, though she was much too young to appreciate it. He had a heart condition, he told her, nothing to worry about so long as he took things easy, which was why he had rid himself of his herd of Jersey cows and the two big horses and bought a tractor. ‘It’s an uphill job making a decent living out of farming these days,’ he told her. ‘I’ve rented out the far fields and just look after the fifty acres near the house. It’s enough.’
‘And Virginia?’
‘Oh, she’s a tower of strength. I don’t know what I’d have done without her.’ He paused before going on. ‘Enough of me, what about you?’
She told him what he wanted to hear, the little details of her day, that George was busy and successful, that she loved her little house; she could not tell him that her husband’s business methods worried her to death, that the house was a standing accusation of malpractice, that she was bored to tears. And her father’s obvious happiness in his marriage made her realise there were flaws in her own. She brushed a strand of hair from her face, angry at herself for even entertaining such negative thoughts.
‘Penny has a part in a new play,’ she said, to change the subject. ‘She’s asked me to a party to celebrate.’
‘Will you go?’
‘I don’t know. There’s Alison, you see, and I know George won’t want to go. I don’t blame him,’ she added quickly in case he thought she was complaining. ‘He has nothing in common with Penny.’
‘Perhaps not, but there’s nothing to stop you going, is there? You mustn’t cut yourself off from all your old friends. Friends are too precious to cast aside, you never know when