WHEN they had helped her back into the house, sat her in an armchair, and given her a glassful from a brandy bottle which Stephanie sought out and found in the kitchen, Martha soon recovered somewhat. She was still dazed and bemused: she kept on stroking Stephanie’s long, dark hair and feeling her arms and hands, just to assure herself that she was real.

“Yes, you are Sophie,” she murmured at last. “I can feel it, now I look at you properly. But you’re hair’s straight. When we were—separated, you were all curls.”

“Perhaps my hair straightened as I grew older. But it’s the same hair. Same colour; same me.”

“You’ve grown up indeed. You’ve grown into a lovely young woman. How can that be, if you were sent to the Fringes?”

“I wasn’t pretty while I was in the—in that place. The food was bad; the clothes were awful; I grew up very plain. But things have changed since I was brought out…”

“You were brought out…” mused Martha. She turned to Mark, who had until now remained silent, although he too had barely been able hold back his tears at the joyful reunion. Martha had already realised that he wasn’t David, Sophie’s childhood friend. He looked quite different.

“…and you are—?”

“I’m Mark,” replied Mark, laconically. He felt rather shy.

“Mark’s my fiancé,” broke in Stephanie. “Yes, we want to get married.”

“Married! So Mark here, brought you out of the Fringes, brought you all the way here, and now you want to marry him?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t Mark. Not at first. I met him later. Another young man it was, who brought me from—there. But he’s already married. I didn’t fall for Mark straight away after we met: I wanted time. But now I’ve fully made up my mind: I do want to live with him. We’re in love,” she concluded, simply.

“But,” said Martha, “they must have done it, you know what I mean—to you before you were sent to the Fringes.”

“Oh yes, they did it all right. But it hurt very little. Yes, I can’t have children. But I have been able to become a woman, and I can still have Mark. If he’ll still have me.”

Mark blushed once again.

Martha seemed still to be a bit dubious about the proposed marriage, but she changed the subject. “I suppose I’ve changed a lot, since you last saw me.”

“Well, yes, I suppose people do change in time. Was it awful, Mother, the prison and all?”

“Oh, the prison wasn’t too bad. They treated me kindly and I was set plenty of work to do. Mostly needlework. No, it was losing you, Sophie, and being separated from Johnnie, that was what broke my spirit. Yes, I know I’ve changed. I shouldn’t have grey hair and a bent back, not at my age. I’m only forty-seven…”

This prompted Stephanie to put the question that she’d been hold­ing back on, although she had already guessed what the answer would be:

“Father…?”

“I think you’ve guessed, my dear. Your father’s no longer with us. Oh, he took it hard, poor Johnnie, losing you, losing me, all in a flash. And the prison they sent him to was so awful. They treat them cruelly in the men’s prisons: make them work eighteen hours a day, breaking rocks… Yes, when they released him he was sent back to me, but he was a broken man. At first he had some wild thoughts of resuming his work, curing pelts, but it was hopeless. He sank lower and lower day by day; towards the end he was so far gone that I had to do every­thing for him: dress him, feed him, bathe him—he could no longer speak. He was taken from us just over a year ago, and honestly, my dear Sophie, it was a blessing—a mercy. But if only he’d known that one day you might come back to us—”

Stephanie had already burst out weeping, and she and her mother clutched each other tightly as they shed tears together. Mark could only stand and watch them, not bearing to interrupt. Eventually Stephanie dried her eyes and composed herself.

“So what do you do, now, Mother? Are you quite on your own?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yes, I’m alone here, Sophie. I get by. The rent’s not too much; I keep the chickens which you probably saw outside, and sell the eggs. I do a fair amount of needlework, and that brings in a bit of money too. I have something to thank the prison for: they taught me well!”

The conversation lapsed for a while. All three of them had a lot to think about. Finally Martha spoke again:

“That young man who brought you out of the Fringes. It wasn’t David, was it? But you said he was married…”

“No, it wasn’t David either. Though I have met him once, since—since that time. No, it was a boy—well, a young man—named Michael. He was very kind to me…”

“Indeed he was. I’d really like to meet him, or at the very least to write to him. To thank him—though I have so much to thank him for, no amount of ‘thanks’ will be enough…”

“Well, that’s one of the problems,” put in Mark. “We don’t know where he is now. We were setting out in search of him, and his wife Rachel: they’d had to flee Waknuk, just like you did. But of course we had to come and find out about you, first.” Martha suppressed another sob as she heard this. “And I ought to tell you,” Mark continued, “there’s a connection between Michael, and Rachel, and David and his wife, and myself—”

“David’s married too?” interrupted Martha. “Well, I’m glad to hear that too. He was such a nice boy. He did all he could to help us.”

“I’m not quite sure whether they’ve got married yet, actually, but he was very close to his cousin, Rosalind; they were certainly engaged. I can’t contact them either. But this connection between us: I suppose you ought to know: we can communicate with each other by thought—”

“I knew it!” burst out Martha. “David, when he was still just a little boy, he could read my thoughts before I even said them. I could, sort of, sense that he was doing it, though we never spoke about it. So he could send thoughts to you, and you to him, and the others?”

“Yes, that’s about it. Over quite a distance too: several miles at least. Ste— I mean, Sophie couldn’t do it when she was a child: you’d surely have known it if she could—but now she’s picking up the ability. I think being with David, and Michael, and me, had some influence. But meanwhile, my ‘power’ has been diminishing over the months. I was ill for a while, and that must have affecting me. But Sophie and I can exchange simple thoughts, when we’re near enough.”

“There’s another thing I must tell you, Mother,” broke in Stephanie, prompted by Mark’s minor slip. “I’m not ‘Sophie’ any more, at least not outside this house. We all thought it’d be safer if I changed my name. I’m ‘Stephanie’ now.”

“ ‘Stephanie’… ‘Stephanie’.” Martha repeated the name to herself several times. “Well, it’s a nice name anyway. Yes I know people often have to change their names. But to me you’ll always be ‘my darling Sophie’, whatever.”

“But please don’t call me ‘Sophie’ in front of anyone else! Surely it’s a small price to pay, for having me back again,” said Stephanie, prosaically.

“I’ll do my best,” replied Martha. There was another long pause. Martha glanced out of the window: the sun was already high in the sky and shining in.

“I really ought to get some lunch for us, but I’ll need to pop out and buy a bit more food—”

“Oh, please, let us take you to lunch, at the inn,” broke in Steph­anie. “We’re staying there anyway, and it’s our treat, really. But we can help you with the shopping later on, if you like.”

So Martha put on her warm coat and hat, but decided to leave behind her walking-stick. “I don’t really need it,” she remarked, “as long as I have one of you to lean against if I stumble. And please don’t sprain your ankle again, Sophie!” she chuckled, remembering how it had all begun. The sprained ankle that had brought David into their lives…

They set out at a slow pace and eventually arrived at the inn, where they were soon sat down to a hearty meal. Martha seemed very much recovered since their first meeting.

“You must, of course, stay with me—at least until you get married,” she said. “I have a spare room—or two at a pinch, if you’d prefer it that way.”

“One will be fine,” said Stephanie, blushing. Her mother smiled knowingly but said nothing. “But—” Stephanie broke off, uncertain what to say next.

“But what, dear?”

Stephanie quickly collected herself. “Oh, it’s just that we also have a horse. It’s stabled here at the inn at present. Can you take it in?”

“One horse?” queried Martha. “Do you have a trap or cart, too?”

“No, no cart. We started out on horseback, on a horse each, but we lost one…”

“Broke its leg,” explained Mark. “It was in terrible pain, I had to shoot it. Very sad, I hated to do it. We had to come the rest of the way, both riding the one horse.”

“Well, I’ve no stable, but there’s a rickety old shed behind the house. Perhaps it can be made secure enough?”

“I’ll have a good look at it when we get back,” said Mark. He was not as skilled a carpenter as Michael was, he knew, but years of living on the farm had given him a good grounding in practical work. “I’ll certainly give it a try, Mrs Wender.”

“Oh, please call me ‘Martha’, Mark! Johnnie used to call me ‘Martie’, but I’d prefer ‘Martha’.”

“All right … Martha.”