She hadn’t noticed anyone coming up the lane when she’d started the job. The lane led up from the main road into Hexham but not many people turned up it unless they had business at the farm further up. ‘By, you made me jump,’ she said now, looking the man at her garden gate up and down. A poor sight he was an’ all, she thought, thin and scrawny, his hair down to the collar of his scruffy suit jacket and what looked like a week’s growth of stubble on his chin. He stooped over the gate, one hand held behind his back and the other holding on to the gatepost. Mrs Timms wrung out the wash-leather in her hands as she looked at him, feeling a bit apprehensive. She was on her own in the row of four cottages, the men were at work on the farm and the women had gone into Hexham for it was market day. ‘Come on, missus, just a cup of tea.’ Nick asked again, without much hope. The last few months had taught him that women and even some men felt threatened by such as him and resented his presence if they had men-folk away at the war.
