‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Annie sharply.

‘Not yet,’ said Freddie.

‘I should burn it.’

‘Burn it? Why?’

‘That Loxley girl’s hurt you enough,’ Annie said fiercely, her arms folded over her bust. ‘Just give me five minutes with her.’

‘Kate doesn’t deliberately hurt people.’ The look in Freddie’s blue eyes silenced Annie. She set about dishing up lunch, her cheeks twitching with disapproval. Freddie tucked Kate’s letter into his inner pocket to read when his mother wasn’t breathing down his neck. ‘This looks good, thanks.’ He rolled up his sleeves and tackled the steaming meal of steak and kidney pudding with purple sprouting broccoli and carrots. It calmed Annie to see him enjoying it. He knew she’d been trying to build him up after the long winter of illness, and it was working. It was good not to be hungry.

Kate’s letter felt like a warm hand over his heart. Yet something was haunting him. Ethie! Those pale tormented eyes kept staring into his mind. He didn’t like Ethie. So why was she there, in his mind, wanting to tell him something? On his visits to Hilbegut Farm, Ethie had regarded him with smouldering resentment. It hadn’t bothered him then, but now it hung on his conscience like a sparrow hawk.

Unable to concentrate on the stone carving, Freddie downed tools and headed for the hills in his lorry, drawn as always to the ridge of hill where he and Kate had picnicked. Still Ethie’s eyes followed him as he drove through the scented, blossom rich lanes, past swathes of dog violets, stitchwort and primroses. He longed to have Kate there beside him on the beautiful April day, and by the time he reached the parking place, her letter was hot in his pocket. Before he even opened it, he felt powerless. She was his love. That hadn’t changed and never could until the end of time. No matter how much he immersed himself in his work, his love for Kate was an eternal presence; it was both a wound and a passion.

Hundreds of butterflies bobbed and danced over the hillside. Orange-tips and yellow brimstones, hoverflies and bumblebees gathering nectar from the flowers. Kate would have loved it, Freddie thought, allowing himself the dream. He’d paint her a picture.

The sun was warm for April, and he sat on the ridge, gazing across the Levels towards the Bristol Channel. A sparrow hawk hovered right in his line of vision. Without warning it swooped like a deadly arrow and caught a linnet from a pair that were fluttering over the grasses. Freddie heard the bird scream, and saw its mate cowering in the grass, its wings trembling, its little voice cheeping in distress. He watched the hawk fly off with the tiny bird struggling in its claws, and Ethie’s eyes again looked cruelly into his soul. With a sudden foreboding, he opened Kate’s letter.

Dearest Freddie,

I hardly know how to tell you this, but your beautiful letters have only just reached me, every one since September. I sat down and read them over and over again, Freddie, and oh how I cried! Happy tears, and sad tears. I was distraught to find you had written me those interesting, lovely letters and I had not been able to respond. No wonder you stopped writing to me. You must have been hurt, and undeservedly so. I hope that the sad news I must tell you now will help you to understand and forgive me.

Two weeks ago my sister, Ethie, was out in the estuary, alone, checking the putchers as she always did. We don’t know exactly how it happened, only that she must have been caught unawares by the Severn Bore. She was swept away, tragically drowned, and when the tide ebbed, they found her body miles upstream.

Freddie stopped reading, the letter frozen in his hands. He looked up, and the sparrow hawk was there again, chillingly close, circling in a sky which was the colour of Ethie’s eyes – pale blue with that leonine tinge of gold. His vision had been true. He’d never doubted or questioned his visions before, but this one had disturbed him at a very deep level. Finding it true was shocking. Why did he have this gift? Why hadn’t he shared it? Could he have saved Ethie’s life? Was that why her eyes were haunting him now? He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Nobody would have believed him, especially a rebellious young woman like Ethie. Had his parents been right to forbid him to speak of it? Wise, he thought, but not right.

Shaken, he returned to reading the bundle of numbered pages Kate had sent him:

My parents are terribly upset, of course, and so am I. Ethie was not a happy person, but we loved her. I hope and believe that she is happy now, and in a better place. We held a quiet little funeral for her in the church at Lynesend, but we all wished we could have taken her home to Hilbegut. After the funeral we went down to the putchers and threw some flowers in the river. The tide whipped them away so fast, tiny daffodils and primroses looking so lost on that vast river. Mummy couldn’t stop crying. She said that no one ever gave Ethie a bunch of flowers in her whole life and she had to die before she could have one. None of us understood Ethie, but she was secretly very clever and loved to read, and her favourite book was The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley.

This morning I had another shock. Mummy and I were clearing Ethie’s bed, and there, under the mattress, were all your letters, unopened. Mummy said Ethie had always gone running to meet the postman while I was at work, and she must have taken your letters and hidden them. I was devastated to think that my own sister could have done that. Why, why did she want to hurt me so?

A rush of anger engulfed Freddie’s mind. He visualised Ethie’s pale sparrow hawk eyes and sent her a furious message with the power of his thought. ‘Leave us alone, Ethie. Go into the light and don’t ever come back. And if you try, I’ll have something to say to you. I’ll be waiting.’

He read on.

Please forgive my family, Freddie. They are part of me and I feel responsible. I’m sure that in time we shall get over it and that happy times will come again.

I would have loved to welcome you here on your new motorbike, but of course you didn’t know that. Will you come another time? There’s so much more I want to tell you, and I want us to have another picnic together, and next time we shall go to the sea. I want to be with you when you see the real sea for the first time! And I want to see the stone angel. Fancy you making it look like me!

I wish I could move back to Somerset, but I must stay and help my parents to get over Ethie’s death. I hope you will write to me again, Freddie, and tell me all about your work and your life, and I hope that next time I shall write you a more cheerful letter!

Love and God Bless

From Kate xx

He read the letter again, this time extracting little sparkles of light and hope from it. She hadn’t mentioned Ian Tillerman. And she’d called him ‘dearest’ Freddie. Not ‘dear’. ‘Dearest’. That felt warm and special. He stared at the word for a long time, drinking in its meaning like a man in the desert with a beaker of cider. He stared at the ‘Love and God Bless’ and the two kisses. Then he folded the letter and stuffed it back into his pocket, over his heart. Despite its sad news, it was precious, with precious grains of hope like the heads of golden barley he had gleaned from that field so long ago. Grains of gold that would nourish and heal.

But be careful, he thought, and remembered another line of Yeats.

‘But I being poor have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.’