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she would like to have a dog beside her at all times.
    ‘One day I shall,’ she announced to the empty landscape, mentally adding it to her list of requirements for a happy life. As soon as I have a job, whatever that might be, and a place of my own. And Jack, she added silently. How any of these dreams would be achieved she had not the faintest idea but the determination was strong in her.
    Meg continued upwards, her rubber boots slipping sometimes on the sharp stones. Above her the track narrowed and split into a dozen such sheep-trails, named ‘trods’ years ago by the Vikings who first populated these fells. The Herdwicks would later lead their lambs up them to the summer grazing, allowing the youngsters not a moment’s rest in their eagerness to reach the heights. Today the fells were bare and quiet and she loved the silence, feeling it heave into her heart and push away all the unpleasant thoughts and niggling worries. A skylark soared, tearing up into a blue-grey sky in a frenzy of song, a winter migrant from a colder land. Meg called up to the small brown bird, assuring it that she would watch where she put her feet and not disturb its eggs.  
    ‘I wouldn’t expect anything else from you.’
    She stopped dead in her tracks, looking all about her for the source of the deep, disembodied voice.
    ‘Jack?’ she said, half hoping, half fearing. He stepped out from behind a rowan on the fringes of the copse above her and, leaning against it, grinned down at her, turning her stomach to water.
    ‘Come on, slow coach. About time. I’m bored sick with trekking up this path to wait for you.’
    Her heart leaped into her throat, soaring as surely as the skylark’s song.
    It no longer mattered that she’d near worn herself out with the washing all morning or that at the end of this wonderful afternoon she must return to a dour, taciturn father and two selfish brothers. He had come at last. And here, on this fellside, she felt suddenly wanted and alive.
    They sat together under an old ash tree, leaning against its silver-grey bark. Meg was so overwhelmed at finding him waiting for her she could think of nothing to say. But she relished the warmth of him beside her. He smelled of tangy soap and fresh damp earth, and something she could only describe to herself as masculine.
    ‘Have you really? Been wanting to see me, I mean,’ she asked, unable to resist knowing the answer.
    ‘What do you think?’
    She turned to him, half accusing. ‘You never said. How was I to know?’
    ‘I would have thought it was obvious. Most girls would have guessed.’
    ‘I’m not most girls.’ Meg had no intention of having him think her easy. She knew all about such girls and she wasn’t one of them. All the same she trembled inside when he shifted his position, moving his body closer.
    ‘What do you expect me to do? Call on your dad?’
    ‘No. I don’t blame you for being wary of Joe. And Dan!’ The words started to tumble out, covering the sudden shyness which was so ridiculous with a boy she had known all her life. ‘Maybe Dan and I might have got on better if it hadn’t been pumped into me from the moment we were old enough to toddle about that the farm was for the boys.’
    ‘What would you want with a farm?’
    ‘I’d like the chance to decide for myself,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see what will happen? Dan will marry and I’ll be the spare part around the place, the unmarried sister.’ She shivered. ‘It doesn’t appeal, thank you very much.’
    Jack shrugged. ‘So leave. Do something different.’
    ‘How? My father won’t even let me go to town on me bike,’ she complained. ‘It’s archaic.’
    Jack made sympathetic noises but he wasn’t really listening. He was watching the rise and fall of her breast beneath the pale blue blouse she wore. It strained enticingly against the buttons. A girl turning into a woman and she didn’t even seem to notice. Jack wasn’t sure whether it was Meg’s innocence or her