They stood in the shadow of the great stone pillar and studied every detail of the fields and orchards that covered the little humpy hills all around them. The old cottages, long and low, white painted, were tucked into their hollows on the south-facing slopes, sheltered from the north and west by plantings of trees. There was the odd new farm building, and a few two-storey houses, edging the little lanes that turned and twisted, dipped into valleys and climbed over their smooth, well-rounded shapes.
The blue tractor finished its work. The driver unhitched the plough and drove off down the lane below them. Gleaming in the sunlight, the newly ploughed field was left to the gulls, which hunted up and down the straight, newly turned furrows.
‘You love this place, Clare, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d be heartbroken if I thought I’d never stand here again.’
She paused, remembering a summer Sunday long ago when she’d climbed up to the obelisk for the first time. Uncle Jack had been there and various aunts and uncles she couldn’t quite sort out. She was nine years old. She’d looked all around her and made up her mind that she was going to stay with Granda Scott, even if Auntie Polly wanted to take her with them to Canada.
‘I think I do belong here, Andrew, like you do. But I’d be sad all my life if I never saw anything of the world out there, beyond the green hills.’