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beam above her head where he stored his hats. ‘That’s neat. Where do you keep your clothes?’
    ‘Behind here.’ He lifted a curtain that was nailed to one wall. ‘They’re hung on pegs and this keeps the dust off them.’
    ‘Neat,’ she said again. ‘What’s in here?’ She pointed to a small chest of drawers.
    Norman’s heart skipped a beat. Elsie’s love letters . He should have hidden them along with the sheets. ‘Razors . . . nail scissors . . . stuff that men use.’
    She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s better than I thought it would be. I was expecting something tatty.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because you call it a shack. I thought it’d be built out of tin . . . or bits of old iron.’ She patted the mattress. ‘If you’d told me it was like this, I might have come sooner.’
    He couldn’t tell if she was giving him a come-on. Because of Elsie’s moods he found women’s signals confusing. Was Bessie inviting him to sit on the bed with her? Was she inviting him to go further? Or was it a test to see how much of a gentleman he was?
    He bent to light the oil stove beneath the kettle. ‘Where would you like your tea?’ he asked.
    ‘Outside,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s warm in the sunshine.’ She pushed herself upright and walked to the door. ‘We’ll have it inside when the days turn colder.’

    After that, Norman’s life moved out of his control. Bessie started visiting the shack every night after work. And with none of Elsie’s rigid views about rubbers and wedding bells, it wasn’t long before they were having sex. The contrast between her softly welcoming arms and Elsie’s cold, stiff fear could not have been greater.
    How could he ever have fallen for Elsie?

    He tried to gear himself up to tell her the truth. He wrote letters that he never sent. He even went to London at the start of October to say the words to her face. ‘It’s over, Elsie. I don’t love you any more. There’s someone else.’
    He couldn’t do it. She clung to him like a limpet, smiling for no reason. When he accused her of being drunk, she laughed.
    ‘No, silly,’ she said fondly. ‘The doctor’s put me on tablets for my nerves.’
    ‘What kind of tablets?’
    She pulled a bottle from her bag. ‘I don’t know but they’re making me better. I’ve stopped fretting about things so much.’
    Norman read the label. ‘What the heck are “sedatives”, Else?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said again. ‘But I’m quite well now. We can get married whenever you like.’
    ‘That’s not—’
    ‘We’ll talk about it when I come down at the end of the month,’ she said happily. ‘It’s all planned. I’ve already written to Mr and Mrs Cosham to book a room. We’ll have such fun, pet.’
    ‘But—’ He stopped.
    ‘But what, pet?’
    ‘It’ll be cold,’ he said lamely.

    Norman told Bessie it was his father who was coming to stay. ‘He wants to see for himself how the farm’s going,’ he lied. ‘I owe it to him, Bess. He gave me the money to get started.’
    ‘So why don’t you want me to meet him?’
    ‘I do . . . just not yet. I’ve told him I’m working every hour God gave to get the business off the ground.’
    ‘Are you ashamed of me, Norman?’
    ‘Course not. But what’s he going to think if he sees you here? He’ll know I can’t keep my hands off you.’
    Bessie rolled on to her side to look at him. ‘That’s true. You’re worse than Satan.’
    Norman grinned. ‘Except Satan does it with all the hens . . . and I only do it with one.’
    She touched a finger to his lips. ‘You’d better not be lying, Norman. I’ll leave you if I ever find you with someone else.’
    ‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘You’re the only girl for me, Bessie.’ He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. But over her shoulder he stared unhappily at the curtain hiding his clothes.
    Elsie had stitched it for him the first time she came to the farm.

    He cleaned the hut to remove all