Time's Legacy by Barbara Erskine Page A

even from that distance she could see the child was unwell and in pain. She was about to stand up when a man ran past. He was dressed in rough trousers and a loose tunic. ‘Petronilla! Come in at once. You will catch cold! Mora is here. She has brought your medicine.’
    ‘I was looking for Mama!’ The girl stopped. She turned to face him and smiled. Abi felt a lump in her throat as she saw the girl hold out her arms to him. ‘Let me collect some more flowers, Papa. I’m not cold.’ But he swept her off her feet, carrying her as though she was much smaller than she actually was, and infinitely precious, and turning, he walked with her towards the hedge. Abi stared after them, puzzled, watching the girl’s head droop on her father’s shoulder as another woman appeared. Younger, with coppery hair, she also held a basket over her arm. Her dress too was long. Beside her a boy of about thirteen was gazing up at her adoringly.
    ‘Mora!’ The girl had raised her head from her father’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for coming.’ The younger woman smiled. She seemed to radiate kindness as she reached out to the girl and touched her head lightly. And then they had gone, the boy running after them as they disappeared through the hedge.
    Where was it they were going? Abi didn’t attempt to stand up and go after them this time. The small family group seemed so close, so warm together in their affection and she felt suddenly excluded. Swallowing the wave of loneliness which swept over her as they disappeared she stood up and turned sadly back towards the house. It would soon be seven and she could join the others in the kitchen.
    ‘I don’t believe it!’ Mat pressed a glass of wine into her hand and urged her towards an old wooden rocking chair beside the fire. ‘You’ve only been here about ten minutes and already you’ve met our ghosts!’
    Apparently Cal had been the first to see them when she had visited the house shortly after she and Mat were married. Mat’s grandfather lived there then, an irascible old man, long widowed, whose only condescension when anyone visited was to allow them to cook him a meal. Cal and Ben’s wife, Janet, took it in turns, stoically producing a roast and two veg week after week for years. Their prize, their husbands had declared later, was the inheritance of Woodley Manor. Millstone Hall as Mat and Cal’s eldest son, Rory, called it. Cal had been in the garden picking mint and parsley and, straightening up with her bowl in her hand, had found herself looking at a slim tall dark-haired woman dressed in a blue floor-length gown standing only yards from her. The woman was looking past her, focusing on something in the distance. Inevitably Cal had turned to see what she was looking at with such concentration. When she turned back the woman had gone. Cal was puzzled, even indignant. As if Grandfather hadn’t got enough problems living here alone, spaced out trespassers were visitors he just did not need. A few weeks later she saw the woman again, from the house this time. She was standing staring out of the kitchen window, lost in her own thoughts when she saw the same woman walking – drifting – across the lawn. This time she was not alone. A boy was following her and they looked as though they were arguing. Cal tapped sharply on the glass. They took no notice. She ran to the back door but when she emerged on the grass they were nowhere to be seen.
    ‘There are some gypsies parked down on the other side of Wookey,’ Mat said when she told him about it. ‘I expect they come from there. They’ve probably come to nick something from the vegetable garden.’
    The next time she had seen them was after she and Mat had moved in and were living here. The family were standing in the ruins which formed the base of the rockery and the archway which she and Mat reckoned was an eighteenth-century folly. They were with a man and when Cal accosted the group they disappeared in front of her eyes, one