It was one of those perfect spring days, when the air felt alive with promise. At least, that’s what Seth had said to her as they headed outside first thing, and he was right. Maddie pondered his statement and realised that since coming to Joy’s Acre she had begun to think about the weather more and more.

When she lived in London, the only thing the weather often determined was how bearable or unbearable her Tube journey was likely to be. Rain, and it was a juggling act of umbrellas and papers getting wet. Cold, and it was a case of dressing according to the weather outside, forgetting that once underground she would swelter in too-thick jumpers. And heat, well, heat was the worst; jammed up against sweaty armpits, with her make-up running and thighs sticking together.

Here though, things were different. Here, the sun made certain flowers open in the morning and close by dusk. Even the humble dandelion tracked its passage across the sky. Here the sun had brought a smattering of freckles to her face, and lifted the colour of her hair so that it glinted with a coppery hue. The rain by turn brought a beautiful freshness with it, a smell of earth and sky, catching the light like diamonds as it dripped to the earth below. Even the wind brought treasures, fragrancing the washing blown on the line, rustling through the trees, the noise a constant lilting companion to the day.

And Seth was right, today was perfect. She had slipped on another of Clara’s soft tunics, a gentle sage green, which she wore over pale blue jeans. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the warmth of the day felt like a tender caress on her skin. The air seemed delicate, an invitation to what was yet to come, and as they walked down the path, Maddie felt her heart lift.

Tom was already hard at work, whistling a catchy melody and surprisingly in tune. He lifted his hand in greeting when he saw them, bouncing on the ladder as he shimmied to the ground.

‘Are you ready for this, Maddie?’ He grinned. ‘I reckon you’re going to be a natural, what do you say, Seth?’

Seth raised an eyebrow. ‘Probably. But let’s face it, she can’t be any worse than I was when I first started to learn how to make spars. How long did it take me, Tom?’

‘About six days too long if I remember right.’ He chuckled. ‘And just remember, whatever Seth tells you, there’s a technique right enough but the hazel can smell your fear just like a horse can. You have to show it who’s boss, so no sidling up to it, you’ve got to meet it head on.’

Maddie gave Seth a look, but he looked just as serious as Tom did. She had a horrible feeling she was being made fun of. The next thing she knew they’d have her going to buy a tin of striped paint.

‘Right, let’s crack on then,’ said Seth. ‘We’ll take the bundles over to the garden if that’s okay. We might as well be comfortable.’ He stopped to pick up two huge bundles of twigs bound with twine. ‘You might want to bring those gloves as well,’ he added, motioning to Maddie with his head. ‘The hazel will rip your hands to shreds, but to start with you’re better off without them; you’ll get a feel for the wood then.’

‘Sounds fabulous,’ muttered Maddie, but she was smiling. When Seth had first mentioned giving Tom a hand with the spars she had asked if she could help. To her surprise, he had agreed immediately, saying it wasn’t the easiest thing to learn, but if she could master it, Tom would be eternally grateful. The quicker they got the thatch finished the quicker they could attend to some of the other jobs that needed doing.

Once on the grassed area, she waited while Seth took a knife and sliced through the twine holding the twigs bound together. They tumbled to the ground like an oversized version of the child’s game, pick-up sticks. He sat down cross-legged on the grass.

‘Have a seat,’ he said. ‘And make yourself comfortable. You need to be relaxed.’

She followed his lead, realising that this was probably the first time she had sat this way since she was at school. It took her a minute to adjust her feet into the best position, but then she looked up expectantly.

‘So the object of the exercise is to bend the hazel twigs through ninety degrees, so that they have a perfect turn or twist in them.’ Seth picked up one of the sticks and with a deft flick of his wrists did just that. ‘That done, what you have is a spar; a spring-loaded “pin” for want of a better word. And it’s important that the twig is twisted not broken. If there’s no spring it won’t hold the straw against the roof.’ He let go of one end of the spar and watched as it pinged upwards and outwards. ‘See, if you simply break the twig you won’t get that effect.’

He picked up a second twig, and although to Maddie it seemed as if he performed exactly the same movement, she could see that the end result was very different. The twig didn’t spring anywhere and although it wasn’t broken in two, once Seth let go of it, both ends simply hung limply in his hand.

He turned to smile at her. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said. ‘Pick a twig, any twig.’

Maddie held it just as Seth had done, her thumbs braced a little distance apart, almost in the centre. She flexed it experimentally. It was much tougher than she thought, and she wondered whether she’d even be able to break it. She looked down at the completed spar now lying on the grass, checking the shape, trying to copy in her mind the twist in the wood. She held the twig up slightly, adjusted her grip and… The twig snapped clean in two with a sharp crack.

Seth handed her another. ‘On you go,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty more where these came from.’

Maddie grimaced. ‘Seriously, how long did it take you before you could do it?’ she asked.

‘About an hour,’ Seth replied. ‘I told you I was rubbish, and I got through about forty or fifty twigs before I got it right as well, so don’t worry. If nothing else, it will give us plenty more kindling for the fire come winter time.’

She gritted her teeth. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now I know what my target is I feel better. Half an hour or less is what I’m aiming for.’

‘Have you always been this competitive?’ joked Seth. ‘I’m not sure I should help you now.’

Maddie stuck out her tongue. ‘Spoilsport,’ she said. ‘Come on, top tips… I want to know them all.’

Seth got to his feet and crossed to kneel behind her. She could feel the warmth from his chest jump the gap between them. He gently took hold of her elbows, pulling them out to the side a little.

‘A bit more leverage might help,’ he said. ‘Then pull your elbows down and to your sides as you twist, as if you were pretending to flap your wings.’

‘Do I have to quack as well?’ she asked.

‘Whatever it takes,’ came the voice from behind her, a breath on the back of her neck.

She waited until Seth returned to his original position before trying again. There was no way she could even attempt to bend the twig with him in such close proximity.

A loud squawk echoed around them as another twig snapped, but at least it had them both hooting with laughter.

‘I might try it without the sound effects this time,’ she said.

Twenty minutes later she gave a frustrated groan. ‘Arrgh, what is wrong with me?’ she moaned. ‘Apart from being spectacularly useless, that is.’

She dropped another broken twig onto the lawn. Her hands were smarting from where the wood had rubbed against them and her thumbs felt like they were going to snap themselves. She really didn’t think she would be able to do many more.

Sighing, she got to her feet. ‘I need a stretch,’ she said. ‘I’m too tense now, I think.’

She lifted her arms above her head, feeling the pleasing pull of her muscles as she raised them higher.

Seth joined her. ‘Skip,’ he said. ‘It’s great for relieving tension.’

Maddie gave him a sideways glance. ‘Yeah, and for looking like a total prat,’ she answered. ‘I am not skipping anywhere,’ she added firmly.

‘Shame!’ said Seth, launching himself forwards, his long legs taking wider steps, his knees rising higher and higher as he skipped across the grass in front of Maddie, both arms swinging wildly by his sides. He careered in front of her.

‘Come on in, the air’s lovely,’ he said.

‘Will you come and sit down,’ Maddie hissed. ‘Someone will see you.’

Seth stopped, suddenly looking around him. ‘Like who?’ he said. ‘The only one around is Tom and he’s facing the other way.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘After all, the clock’s still ticking and you haven’t got all that long now…’ His head dropped to one side. ‘Or are you chicken?’ he said, grinning.

Maddie’s mouth set in a hard line. ‘Out of my way,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you how to skip properly.’

And with that she completed a perfect circle, setting off again once she’d done so. As she came back around for the second time, she realised Seth had done the same so that they were both coming towards one another from different directions. Without thinking she linked arms with him as they passed, dropping them again after completing a loop so that they spiralled around each other. By the third ‘pass’ she was laughing so hard she had to stop.

Seth put his hands on his knees, panting. ‘Right, now, grab a twig and go for it, and remember to show it who’s boss!’

Maddie bent to the floor, snatched up a twig and swiftly brought her elbows out and then in again. The air was filled with the delicious sound of wood splintering, not cracking or snapping, but wrenching apart; a crunching sort of a noise. She looked down at her hands. They held a perfect, twisted spar.

‘Woohoo!’ she yelled, brandishing the twig. ‘I did it!’

She grinned at Seth, rushing towards him, his arms opening wide as she did so to receive the hug he was going to get whether he wanted it or not. He pulled her in tight, the two of them rocking together in an excited dance. She could feel his heart beat, his warm breath in her hair, and then his head automatically dropped into the side of her neck, just as hers did to him…

They sprang apart. ‘Oh God, sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s okay,’ he replied, his lips parted in a grin. He nodded towards the spar in her hand. ‘You beat me,’ he said.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ She laughed. ‘Just as well, or I’d never have heard the last of it.’

‘Ah, but can you do it a second time? That might have just been a fluke.’

Maddie’s face fell. ‘I bloody well hope it wasn’t.’

She dropped to the grass again, crossed her legs, wriggled her bottom into the ground and took up another twig. Tongue between her teeth, she lifted her elbows.

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can do it!’

Slowly Seth sank to the floor beside her. ‘You can put the gloves on now,’ he said. ‘We’ve only another four hundred or so to do.’

Once she’d found the knack it was hard to see how she hadn’t been able to achieve it before, but the fact that she’d been able to do it at all made a ripple of excitement run through her. The spars she and Seth were making would be used to fix the straw onto the roof of the gardener’s cottage where they would stay for the next thirty or so years with any luck, possibly longer. They would become a little part of its history, and Maddie had never before made anything that was likely to stick around for that length of time. How many people could say that about their lives? Her conversation with Tom from the other day had started her thinking about tradition and heritage and now she totally understood how vital it was not to lose these things. And, just like making the spars, it was hard to believe that she had ever thought any differently.

She looked up at the garden in front of her; at the house with its warm red brick and handsome lines, and she smiled. It had taken only a matter of days, but once she had allowed her heart to open, the magic that was Joy’s Acre had begun to seep in, and now she had fallen completely under its spell. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

‘Penny for them?’

‘I was just thinking,’ she said, smiling again, as she dropped another spar onto the pile in front of her.

‘I can see that.’

She blushed. ‘It gets under your skin this place, doesn’t it? Draws you in, wraps its gentle arms around you and then refuses to let go.’

Seth cocked his head. ‘You get more and more poetic by the day,’ he said. ‘But you’re right, that is its magic. I like to think it’s Joy herself, keeping a watchful eye on us all, just as if we were her guests from all those years ago.’

‘Would she approve, do you think?’

‘I’m certain of it. In fact, now more than ever.’ He ran his thumb along a groove in the twig he was holding. ‘I know you still feel responsible for what’s happened, and I’m not pretending it’s going to be easy, but honestly, Maddie, I feel happier about things here than I have for a long while… and a large part of that is down to you.’

He peeped up at her from under his lashes. ‘I’m not sure who you were when you first arrived. An angry, uptight young woman with something to prove. I’m not being critical by the way; I understand perfectly how it was for you before you arrived, but that was never the real you, it was a persona you’d adopted to get you through the world you were in at the time. But it didn’t suit you, it didn’t quite fit.’

He smiled warmly. ‘The person sitting beside me now is the real you; the one who doesn’t wear so much make-up, whose hair just tips naturally onto her shoulders instead of being bound up tight, the one who likes the feel of the sun on her arms and who, even though she knows she looks very silly indeed, is still prepared to skip around the garden because, why the hell not…’

Maddie looked up into his dark eyes. She didn’t know quite what to say. His gaze was very open, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking and she found it a little unnerving.

‘I do feel different,’ she said, eventually. ‘Better. Like none of what I had before in my life meant anything.’

He nodded. ‘A big enough improvement that you might want to stick around for quite some considerable time?’

‘Oh, God yes.’

That smile again. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘And Joy would definitely approve… You see, when I look at you, Maddie, it reinforces everything I believe about this place, that my instincts are worth trusting, and right now I very much want to trust them…’

She daren’t look at him. His voice was light, he could have been talking about the weather. And yet there was something about his words that sent little shock waves through her, because she wasn’t entirely sure whether he was still talking about Joy’s Acre, or whether he was talking about her…

He expelled a breath, uncrossing his legs and stretching them out, a slight flicker of pain crossing his face for an instant.

‘I should have thought,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, that’s awful of me. Are you still in a lot of pain?’

He waved a hand. ‘Much better than I was, don’t worry; besides, I’m still drugged up to the eyeballs. I wasn’t thinking myself, maybe cross-legged wasn’t the best idea in the world…’ He looked around him. ‘I tell you what. Could you give me a hand with the bench? We could move it over here for the time being. I think legs straight will be better than legs bent.’

Maddie helped him carry the bench back to their original spot and waited while Seth settled himself onto it. She was about to sit back down on the grass when she realised he would now tower above her and so instead she sat next to him. He bent to pick up a couple of twigs, and handed one to her. She forced it quickly into shape and leaned forward to collect another pair, stopping only when she saw that Seth was still holding his twig, rolling it absentmindedly between his fingers. He was staring into space.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked, thinking. ‘Would a cushion help, or—’

‘No, it’s not that. My hip’s fine, honestly. I just…’ He turned to look at her. ‘There’s something I ought to talk to you about, something very personal, but it’s knowing quite where to begin that’s the issue.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘It was partly something Clara said yesterday, which, if I know Clara, was aimed directly at me, but she’s right of course.’

Maddie frowned, trying to think back to the day before. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Clara said it wasn’t a time for being anything less than honest with each other, and I’ve been holding something back from you, something which Clara, and Tom, both know. It doesn’t seem fair not to tell you.’

She could sense his reticence and held out a hand towards him. ‘Seth, it doesn’t have to be now, not if it still makes you feel uncomfortable. There’ll be a right time, some day. It can wait.’

‘It can’t, for all sorts of reasons, but I appreciate that, thank you. It’s not something I talk about, but it’s also partly why I didn’t discuss this with you either.’ He tapped his hip. ‘The two are inextricably linked.’

He scratched an eyebrow. ‘I’m also very aware that, once you’d learned how I helped Clara, if you’d had wanted to, you could have very easily found out what I’m about to tell you. The internet was awash with it at the time. The fact that you haven’t is something I’m also grateful for.’

Maddie blushed, knowing how close she’d come to doing that very thing.

‘How do you know I haven’t?’ she asked, trying to lighten the conversation somewhat. Seth was looking very sombre, and she was beginning to feel a bit anxious about what he was about to share with her.

‘I’d know,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’d know.’

The look on his face made it clear he was telling the truth.

‘I don’t know much about bone marrow donation,’ she said, trying to find an in-road for him. ‘Is it like blood, something you can do repeatedly?’

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘No more than four times is recommended. My body replaces what’s lost, but less so as you get older. Plus it’s rare to match with a recipient as it is. Clara took eighteen months; I got lucky.’

It seemed an odd choice of words. ‘Or Clara did,’ she replied. ‘She told me how poorly she was.’

Seth looked down at his feet. ‘Yeah… We both got lucky. With Clara I was able to donate the stem cells via my blood; that’s actually the more usual method,’ he said. ‘But this time around I donated bone marrow itself, hence why I was away for a few days. It’s done under general anaesthetic.’

Maddie nodded, wondering if Seth was going to say anything else. He seemed to have got stuck. She was about to ask what had inspired him to become a donor when he suddenly snapped the twig he was holding clean in half. Then he looked up at her.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I still find this really hard.’

‘Seth, honestly, you really don’t need to—’

‘My wife died,’ he said bluntly. ‘Six years ago. She died because she needed a bone marrow transplant and we couldn’t find one in time.’

He exhaled a long shaky breath, raising his eyes to hers and holding them there even though hers were already filling with tears. She couldn’t look away even though she wanted to.

Her hand found his, the slight movement causing a silent tear to spill over and run down her cheek.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

And suddenly it all made sense.

‘Jennifer and I had only been married eighteen months when she became ill. It all happened so fast, one minute she was fine and then in less than a year she was dead, and almost all of that year was filled with endless tests, horrible treatments, waiting, hoping and praying. None of it made any difference.’

‘So you decided to help Clara…’

‘I decided to help anyone I could. Anything to stop someone else having to go through the living hell we did. It was a way of coping with the grief, I know that, but the only sense I could find in any of it was to try and save someone else’s life. So like I said, I got lucky, because without it I don’t know how I would have coped at all.’

Still Maddie didn’t move. ‘And did it help?’ she whispered.

‘I was desperate to meet Clara, but they wouldn’t let me for two years. I understand why now of course, but at the time they were the longest two years of my life. It’s testament to the kind of person Clara is that she put up with me. I think I made things quite difficult for her.’

‘That’s not how she sees it, Seth. I think things were just as tough for her. You helped each other through what must have been a horrendous time for you both.’

Seth gave a wan smile. ‘We went through every emotion on the planet I think, but in the end we both came through it. We put each other through the mill while doing it, I might add, but now we’ve ended up in a place that suits us both.’

‘And is that why you’ve become a donor again; because you felt able to?’

‘Well of course I’d been contacted about a possible match, but essentially I think it was kind of a test,’ replied Seth, for the first time breaking eye contact with her and staring out across the garden. ‘For me, I mean. To see if I was ready.’

She studied his features, frowning, surreptitiously wiping her face free from tears. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘I was nineteen when I met my wife, Maddie; in my middle year at uni. Jen and I studied together, partied together and before we knew it we were twenty-two, sharing a flat, and struggling to pay rent, find jobs, and feed ourselves. We were barely adults but that didn’t matter; we had each other and that was enough.’

He turned back to look at her, his eyes roaming her face for a few seconds. ‘And it probably would have been enough had her grandfather not died and left her this place. He and Agatha were the first of the family to fall in love with Joy’s Acre. I think they always intended to renovate it themselves, but shortly after her grandfather bought it he fell ill himself and so it remained as it was—’

‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted Maddie. ‘Does that mean that Agatha is related to you…?’ She searched his face. ‘Oh, now I get it! That’s why she has such an interest in this place…’

Seth nodded. ‘And one of the reasons why she dislikes me so much. You see when Jen’s grandfather left her this place it was on the stipulation that the farm be restored to its former glory, and Agatha made a promise to her husband that she would help that happen by supporting us financially. It was everything we could ever have wanted. We came to live here and as we learned of Joy and her incredible story, we began to build our dreams around it. We got married of course, but then shortly after Jen fell ill, and so at the age of twenty-six I became a widower and my life has effectively been on hold since then.’

‘But why does Agatha dislike you, I don’t understand…’

‘Because like history repeating itself we both made a promise to Jen on her deathbed that we would do everything we could to make our dreams for Joy’s Acre come true. But for me that’s proved to be easier said than done. I was felled by grief to start with and incapable of doing anything much beyond renovating the farmhouse, but then once I decided that I needed to become a bone marrow donor, almost unwittingly I made it even harder for myself to carry out my promises to Jen. I lost so much time caught up in Clara’s health issues and the subsequent problems it caused us both that Agatha despises me for it. She thinks I’ve betrayed Jen’s memory even if she does recognise the good that’s been done.’

Her hand was growing decidedly hot in his.

‘I see, so the test?’

‘Was to see if I felt the same emotions after donating that I did the last time. Whether I would become consumed by a desire to know the recipient, to see if I would need another person to act as a crutch to help assuage my grief or not… or whether I am now ready to move on and finally start making Joy’s Acre something we can all be proud of.’

‘And, what do you feel?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Beyond a relief that it all went okay and a pleasure in having acted selflessly for someone else’s benefit, I feel nothing. Or to be more precise, I felt something else, something I wasn’t expecting. I only realised what it was yesterday when I woke up to find you asleep next to me.’

‘Oh.’ The sound came out before she could stop it, before clear and conscious, rational thought could take over and provide her with something sensible to say. Before she could stop her heart from leaping upwards and her stomach dropping away in shock, and even before she identified the emotion chasing around her head as joy. In the seconds that followed, all these things became known to her, as did the overwhelming certainty of her place in the world.

Even in the bright sunshine, Seth’s eyes were dark as he searched her face for clues as to how she felt.

‘It’s been a long time since Jen died, Maddie, and nothing will ever take away how I feel about her. She’s a part of this place too, she always will be and, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I could ever bear that, to be constantly surrounded by her memory…’

‘But now?’

‘All I feel is acceptance; an understanding that where I am is the right place for me to be, and possibly the right place for you to be too…’ He was leaning in towards her…

Her mouth parted, just a tiny bit, as a loud shout rose up from the bottom of the garden. It was Clara waving madly, and running full pelt towards them.

‘You have to come with me,’ she panted as she neared them. ‘You won’t believe what we’ve just found!’