My mother, come to think of it, would have been a welcome sight jut now... “There are no such things as ghosts,” she would have told me, and of course I would have believed her.

Whatever might become of them, she knew that there was nothing that could rob them of that happiness. For they had lived their winter, and the spring had finally come.

If I’m still on my feet, then I’m meant to be living. I’ll not give up all of my pleasures.

I’d met people in my life who were pure poison. I had learnt to know the look of them – the way their smiles came and went and never touched their eyes, those eyes that could be so intense at times and yet revealed no soul. Such people might look normal, but inside it was as though some vital part of them was missing, and whenever I saw eyes like that I’d learnt to turn and run and guard my back while I was leaving.

But it is by our actions, surely, and not by our words, that we reveal our worth.

Better to find out certain things by living them, not by reading them in a book.

Every family needs its own historian, someone to guard the stories, yes? Or else they will be lost.

Always he’s looking for something, he’s chasing it. Always the neighbour’s grass is greener, somewhere else, over the next hill.” Her smile was slight. “My grass is green enough.

I told ye I’d come back to ye.

Rob was always a gentleman.