FREEDOM — AND POSSIBILITY

Okay, Gran, ready?”

Esther smiled as Anna helped her from the car. She looked like the love child of a sailor, Esther thought, and a Disney mermaid. Her hair was electric blue, blunt-fringed and tied with gingham to match her pedal pushers. A 50s look – rockabilly. Her tattoos brought the sailor to mind, of course, but there’d always been a seaside air to Anna, freedom and fresh air: you could imagine her on a rock, sunning her tail.

They weren’t by the sea, though. When Anna suggested they go away together – she’d had her heart broken again – Esther thought of Cornwall; they’d sit on the beach, eat fish and chips. But Anna shook her head: “Would you trust me to arrange a surprise?”

“With you, love,” she’d said, “I’d enjoy Wormwood Scrubs. Just no planes – not at my age.” “You’re 89, Gran, you’re not old.” They’d cackled at that. Anna was her friend. She understood that inside this wrinkly old hide – her ‘walnut veneer’ – her mental life was as vivid as it had always been. Three years ago, when Robbie died, all four grandchildren helped her move but Anna listened to the memories that sorting through a life brought to the surface, the ones that had become family lore, and private ones, too, long wrapped in tissue and packed away. And she had listened – really listened. When Anna told her where they were going, Esther had cried.

The Vale of Evesham. She’d never heard of it before the Land Girls. She’d been sent here, aged 18, an Acton girl, born and brought up on the Central Line, to work fields and orchards watered by the Avon.

The time of her life – she could say that now. Freedom and fresh air. The work was hard – as her father predicted, she’d ruined her hands forever – but to stand straight from picking beans and see the Malverns, a sky stretching wider than she’d ever seen it, away from London and his controlling anger? Freedom. And possibility.

Langdon’s Farm, out by Eckington. Sharing a room with Joan and Helen, the sisters she’d never had, comparing tans and muscles, going to dances in Evesham and then, at the end, three magical back-to-back Fridays, the pictures at the Regal with Tom Langdon, a year younger but a foot taller, straight-backed, funny. Soft-lipped.

Then her father had the stroke and she’d been called home. They’d written but Tom had the farm, his family’s for generations, and she had her responsibility. Wheelchairbound, her father had lived for 16 years, by which time she’d

accepted she’d never go back and been grateful there was a man left to marry at all. Life with Robbie had been good – she’d made it good.

You had to. You found the magic. Anna had done that for her this week. From the cottage, they’d set out to look-outs and picnic spots, cream tea in Malvern. In the evenings, candles and wine in the garden.

And, tonight, the pictures at the Regal. It had been closed for years, Anna said, but recently restored to its full Art Deco glory. Beautiful, on the website. She turned to Anna now, but she’d vanished. She had blue hair, for god’s sake, how could she vanish? Esther stopped. Stared. On the cinema steps, a hat in his hands, stood a man whose hair was white now. He was still a foot taller than her, though, still straight-backed.