In the last two weeks everything had been neglected: weeds had taken over the vegetable patch, the sparrows had decimated the beetroot and the greenhouse badly needed clearing out for the winter. Tom would be furious if he could see the state I’ve let everything get into, she thought. Yet, even as the easy tears came, she knew she was wrong. Her brother would have understood; he was one of the calmest men she’d ever known.She let the shears dangle at her side, gazing across the fields towards the churchyard wreathed in the early morning autumn mist, where Tom had lain for such a long time in a grave next to those of Iori and Gwyneth. And near to their own mother. Four people gone from her life. And now Victoria. Her shoulders shook with the effort of stopping herself wailing out loud. She forced deep mouthfuls of air into her lungs and lifted the front of her cardigan to wipe her eyes with. Pull yourself together, she told herself. Don’t fall apart again; she’d done enough of that in the first days of Victoria running away.
